Episode 51: "Top Tech & AI Tools for Real Estate Agents

🔊 Episode 51: "Top Tech & AI Tools for Real Estate Agents: Streamline, Automate, and Elevate Your Business" 🔊

Description:

Welcome back, fellow listing agents! In this episode of If You List, You Last, Bob Mangold dives into the essential tech and AI tools every real estate agent should be using to boost productivity, enhance client engagement, and simplify transactions. Bob covers tools for every part of the real estate process, from CRM and lead management to marketing, content creation, and even AI-powered solutions.

Key Highlights:

1. CRM & Lead Management: Stay organized and on top of follow-ups with tools like KV Core, LionDesk, and FollowUpBoss.
2. Property Marketing & Content Creation: Use Canva for graphic design, BombBomb for personalized video emails, and Loom for screen-recorded tutorials.
3. Transaction & Document Management: Dotloop and DocuSign for seamless, digital paperwork management.
4. Open House Management: Capture and follow up on leads with OpenHome Pro or Curb Hero.
5. Market Insights: RPR for mini property reports and Palm Agent 1 for quick financial insights.
6. Social Media Scheduling: Tools like Simple Social Posting and Labcoat Agent Marketing Center to stay consistent and professional online.
7. AI-Powered Tools: ChatGPT for content creation, Descript for video editing, and Roof AI for automated lead responses.
8. Virtual Staging: Style to Design to make listings more attractive and help buyers visualize the property.

Takeaways:

• Explore These Tools: Find the tech tools that suit your workflow, and remember—the best tool is the one you’ll actually use.
• Community & Resources: Join the Real Estate Asset Advisor Facebook Group and check out resources on bobmangold.com.

Closing Message

Embrace tech and AI to make your business more efficient and profitable. Remember, if you list, you last! See you next week!

Join our Facebook Group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/realestateassetadvisors

Visit our website to watch replays of our Wednesday "Elevate Business Briefings" at: www.RealEstateAssetAdvisors.org

Download a copy of my book, "If you list, you last!" at www.IfYouListYouLast.com

Transcript

Hey, welcome fellow listing agents Bob Mangold the listing coach here with episode 51 of the if you list your last podcast as always, thanks for listening, sharing and downloading. Listen, I'm really excited to have you here today because I'm going to share some of the top tech and AI tools that agents should be using in their business.

Now, just a reminder, make sure you join our Real Estate Asset Advisor Facebook group, so you can join in on the conversation, share your thoughts, comments, or questions on any of the topics that I discuss right here on the podcast. And you can always connect with me online or on social media. at www.

bobmangold. com. Ready for some fun? Let's get to it.  So I broke this down into sections to make it a little bit easier for you to take notes. So the first and probably most obvious is client relationship and lead manage, right? Lead management, typically referred to as CRMs. Why are those important?

With a CRM, folks, it manages your data. Which is important. It tells you when you should be calling people back. It notifies you in the morning you should have a list of things that you should do with people you've talked to, things like that. It automates your marketing and your follow up and your email and reminders to call and, wish, hey, happy, house anniversary.

Those kinds of things. It's critical in real estate to stay in constant communication and keep clients engaged. It's not about just sending out a I don't know, a recipe of the month email. Hey, just thought you might find this recipe interesting. No, it's, let's start talking about what's going on in their local marketing and that.

So you do need to have a strategy of what you should be sending out, but you do need a CRM. Now, personally, I use KB core, right? So it's got quick lead qualification and prioritization. You can tag people, with follow up reminders and tasks lists Basically, it ensures no opportunity slips through the cracks.

Now, there are a ton of others and, there's LionDesk and FollowUpBoss and Sync and BoomTown and there's a lot of them out there, right? The most important thing is the one that you'll use. People always say, hey, what's the best CRM? And the answer is, and it's not glib or sarcastic it's the one you'll use.

Whichever one you decide on, make sure that you're using it. Okay, now let's talk about some property marketing and maybe content creation tools. Probably the most powerful marketing  platform is a system called Canva.  Canva is a ridiculously versatile design tool that's popular for creating like social media content, property flyers, Even presentation materials.

We do our listing appointments on Canva  and the cool thing is you can even create websites on there. So with canvas templates you can quickly create professional looking marketing assets like it's all pre designed and everything So even if you're not very good at graphic design, which i'm not Canva does that for you.

I would tell you probably one of the most important tools to have would be Canva. And I believe it's like 99 a year. It's ridiculously inexpensive.  But a very powerful marketing tool the next tool or number five, right? Canva's number four number five is bom lets you create personalized video emails What that does it lets you add a human touch to client communications So it's ideal for like building relationships, especially in the lead part of that in the lead conversion, or maybe just explaining some complex information in a more engaging format, right?

The mobile app also makes BombBomb ridiculously convenient for agents to utilize on the move. Now imagine if you are, like you talk to somebody in an open house and four or five days later they get a video email from you, go, hey Bob, hey I was just thinking about something that we were talking about Saturday at the open house.

That's a personal connection that you're going to get that you're not going to get by just sending out a An email right chances are great. They won't even read the email, but when they see the little video box that's in Boom, they're going to talk to you or they're at least going to click on the video and do that Plus the cool thing is bomb even tells you how long the video is so they know Oh, it's only a minute and a half video so I don't have to pay attention to it too long So I highly encourage bomb number six is loom is a free easy to use video tool that allows you to You But do screen capture or, do webinars or, a training classes, things for that, like that.

It's great to use for like personalized property tools. It's a video a video software that you can use. You can do market updates with it or answer client questions, things like that. And then it allows you to share a video via a link,  which is a lot better than trying to send this big video, right?

So Loom is free, but there's also a paid version, right? The. Free stuff is a little bit limited. But again, I want to say It might be a hundred bucks a year. I don't remember exclusively But it's not very expensive. So I highly encourage loom section three We're going to talk about transaction and document management.

So the first one is dot loop Let's just admit guys, for most agents, managing paperwork is like our least favorite task. Unfortunately, it's critical to getting the deals closed and for most brokers, it's really critical to get you paid. So your company may, have a preference on what you use, but Dotloop is designed for like seamless digital transactions, from creating the forms to getting e signatures, it's just mobile friendly.

DocuSign, number eight, DocuSign is, Also another e signature platform. Either of those two they're, they do about the same thing, right? But it's critical that you have the ability to garner and gather digital signatures. Now, personally, I prefer DocuSign. That's what we use. It's a mobile app that you can do it.

And literally folks, because so many of our agents do listing presentations online.  When they're done they prepare the paperwork and send it over for digital signature We're taking listings without ever being into somebody's home. So it's critical in today's environment I don't think it's really an option and unless you're with a very small independent brokerage it's pretty unlikely that you don't have access to either dot loop or docu sign But it's critical that you have it.

Section four open house management. What does that mean? I find agents are still using good old fashioned sign in sheets, when there's a lot more sophisticated systems and apps that you can do to gather information and make follow up easy and efficient, right? One of them is OpenHow, OpenHome Pro, which is just a sign in app that captures visitor information and automates follow up emails.

helping you stay connected, right? Or Curb Hero, number 10. Curb Hero is another option. It provides a streamlined experience for open houses, allowing clients to sign in digitally while capturing valuable lead information. Now, both of them have the ability to create a QR code where you can create a property flyer.

Instead of having these printed out and you print out a bunch of them and then you don't have the traffic and you wasted all that money doing that stuff. Guys, I encourage you to take and just use a QR code that you could get from Canva and set it up where  They can scan the QR code punch in their email address or phone number and you text it to them now you have all the information you need plus you delivered the property flyer and anything else that you wanted to deliver  And it's a much more seamless way of getting that data instead of saying, Oh no, the seller in order to let you in, the seller requires that you sign in.

Everybody knows that's not true. Section five, property data and market insights. We all need market data and we all need property insights, but how do you use it as the question? So I would say probably 99 percent of every MLS that I know about offers you RPR  in your subscription to NAR, right?

So you do have access to it and they've got a mobile version and then obviously an online version. So either one works. But what we use RPR for is we run mini RPR property equity reports and then we have a whole process of the things that we include in there, like it's a lot of marketing things, a lot of educational things.

And we deliver boxes to their doors with this information, but RPR is the heart of it. And then there's a ton of other ways that you could use those RPR reports. You could email those. You could actually literally again at an open house create a mini RPR report for somebody to say, hey, let me have your phone number.

I'll text it over to you in about 10 minutes. So somebody's at their, at your open house and they wanted to know what the value of their house was you'd be able to take and do that literally text it over to them and then obviously it allows you to you know We personally don't use this in our listing presentation You know an rpr report of comps and all that stuff, but I would say the vast majority of agents do I just think it's again in my opinion  The rpr data is really geared towards an old fashioned kind of listing the way that we do our listings we let the market dictate the price so we don't have to go through them.

So I'm not saying it's a bad thing if you use them, just we don't in the listing process that we utilize. Another one that you could use is Palm Agent 1,  right? So it just simplifies the property data. It's got calculators for buyer estimates, seller sheets, and other financial figures. It is location specific.

Which offers an agent like quick financial insights and makes it easy to explain complex numbers to clients  So a good resource right and people want to always know what the net is or hey You know how much money would I have to bring to closing costs? What would the payment on this house be so palm agent one's a good one for that  section six Social media scheduling and content management.

Listen folks if you want to take and build a personal brand Content management is critical Unfortunately when I google agents, right? I do a lot of search and agents I talk to a lot of agents when I google them.  I find very little information on probably 90 percent of all agents out there heck they don't even go to like zillow and realtor.

com and homes. com And fill in their free profile on that because typically if you don't have a social media or an online presence Those are the things that are going to pop up for you Or then it's the other link that shows up a lot is facebook Then they go to your facebook page and see you haven't posted anything on facebook in six months That's not the way to have an online presence.

So we use a system called simple social posting And what it does it's simply a media management tool. It allows you to schedule  And post across multiple platforms. Basically the social media platforms that you want, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Google business profile, LinkedIn, all the main ones that are critical. 

And what's the best part of that is a, it aggregates content, meaning it goes out into the internet and finds content for you. Or it has built in AI systems that could actually create content for you. So you could go in there and punch, could you give me a market update on real estate sold in Phoenix, Arizona, or whatever it would be, and it'll create content for you to post.

So that's what we use. Labcoat has an agent marketing center. It's similar to Canva, if you will, but it is tailored for real estate with templates and design tools. Specifically for property marketing, right? You can use it to create and schedule posts or maybe help you maintain a consistent and polished brand.

We use simple social posting because we can create templates and then everything that we post from that contains that branding. Because one of the things in personal branding folks that's extremely critical is to have consistent colors, look, branding to all the materials that you have. Okay,  so those are two tools that we use section seven safety and access management Let's be honest guys, 20 30 years ago.

We didn't have to talk about this You didn't really hear about bad things happening to real estate agents, but we're gonna we're in a different, environment now So there's a couple that kind of help protect you one is forewarned for one provides Instant background checks on clients of like a valuable feature for agents Meeting new people at open houses or maybe in an unfamiliar location, right?

It adds a layer of security helping you feel more confident when working with new clients And then super key obviously is a lockbox that allows you to manage property access through the smartphone so it just logs all those entries, but Folks, there's other personal safety apps out there. My own opinion is the best safety is precaution. 

I would never recommend doing an open house alone.  Even for, I used to say, hey, for females, yes, I know it sounds sexist, but at the end of the day, there have been plenty of male Realtors that have been harmed and injured to don't do a an open house alone. That's the best thing I can tell you The other thing is if for whatever reason you feel something's off trust your judgment Don't go upstairs those kinds of things.

So yeah, there are apps and things out there, but Nothing replaces good old fashioned common sense. Okay,  the next section eight, team communication and productivity there are tons of different communication tools, right there's slack  probably the most commonly used one  But it just centralizes team communication.

It allows you to organize conversations into channels You know based on like projects or departments, but it has integrations with google drive So slack is really good for collaborating on documents or managing products projects and staying in touch with Contracts lenders and even clients discord's another one notion is another all in one workplace and so what I want to do with this is give you a list of these so you can research because I promise if you go to On google and you say hey, what are the best team communication and productivity apps for real estate agents?

You're going to get eight or ten of them then you can look at them and determine which one's best for you  But I wanted to give you some ideas like a couple in each one of these categories That'll help you Go and do the research and find out what works best for you. Number nine time and route management without these apps guys I actually forget how we used to do real estate and just go find houses when we didn't have something like a ways or Google maps right personally I use ways  And you just punch in the property address and it tells you literally every turn you have to make and do that If you're not using a tool like that and you're out showing houses Guys, I promise you're wasting a lot of time because you get lost or you take the longest routes and things like that.

So use Waze. You download it to your phone. It's free. Why not use it?  For your time management, I use Calendly and I highly recommend it, right? So we use Calendly links and ads that we do and emails that we send out. So that people can schedule time with us and then do it in a time management or in a time frame That's convenient for both of us because it allows me to open up and say hey i'm available From these hours fill it in and then they can pick and choose when it works And then you're able to take and utilize managing your time more.

Make sense? Both of those are powerful tools that I use. I use both of those. Next is the AI powered tools. Section 10, AI powered tools. Unfortunately, I think so many agents They want to fight this and I'm not really sure why. So obviously the mac daddy of them all is ChatGPT.  I promise folks, go sign up for an account for ChatGPT, pay the 20 bucks a month, it's faster, it doesn't time out, things of that nature, and start to utilize that in a thousand different ways.

You can create blog posts, social media posts, you can research the most common or the most popular tags right now, or the most Popular trends on Instagram. If you wanted to create social media content, you can create free e guides, right? 10 things that every home buyer needs to know, or all those things, all that can be done now on AI.

Then I use for video editing. I use something called Descript. Descript is simple. It's a video and audio editing tool  that lets you edit a video or an audio,  just like you're editing a Word document. And then it'll put in automatic transcription so that you can literally take your video, take it to  ChatGPT, say, could you clean up the the grammar,  and turn this into a blog post.

Because when we record video, we stumble and we fumble, and I do that, and most of the time I don't even edit them out of my videos because I want people to know, hey, I'm really doing these things live.  Or I'm sorry, that it's like, Hey, I'm just a regular guy doing these things, right? If I mess up, it doesn't bother me.

But you could edit it out. But  now you could literally do a video, right? So like this, I actually take and do a podcast. I record it on Zoom,  I edit it onto script, turn it into a video for YouTube. Take the audio for PO for the podcast, take the and use the script to turn them into social media clips like reels. 

For Instagram and shorts for YouTube, I take one piece of content like this podcast and I turned it into video shorts, blog posts that I use on all my social media posting. So descript helps me take and do that. And folks, I used to pay somebody to take and edit all my videos. But it literally is as easy as editing a word document.

It takes five minutes to do.  And then you could, put studio sound quality on it and all that type of stuff. So it's a very powerful tool, right?  Number 23, Roof AI. Roof AI is simply a  lead generation and consumer engagement tool, but it interacts with website visitors. So imagine you let's say you put a post up about a new property that you had listed and somebody says, Hey, can you give me more information?

Roof AI will take and do that for you 24, seven, 365 days a year. They'll get them the information. It uses AI.  And then it literally examines what it does and tailors their responses so that you don't have to be available 24 7, 365 days a year. So I highly encourage that to make that process easier. And then write.

homes.  So what they do is they offer 33 different AI tools. For creating real estate content such as property descriptions or emails and newsletters. It's simply designed to make content creation easier so agents can focus on connecting with clients. So one of the things that we use that for is we create a newsletter that goes out every Friday via email and text to our databases. 

And it's the newsletters, hey what's happening in your city? Hey what's happening in Phoenix this weekend? And it's designed and written in minutes. Instead of somebody sitting there slaving over a computer trying to find out what's going on and things like that. The AI tools and systems allow you to do that.

And then, finally, a style to, excuse me, style to design. Say that fast ten times. So what they do, it's a virtual staging tool that helps agents present properties in the best possible light by allowing virtual furnishing and decorating. So let's say your house is vacant. Your listing is vacant. You can actually take and use style to design to create virtual staging.

So when you promote the house, people have an idea of what it could look like. Or maybe you have a house where it's just, Hey, they have a lot of clutter, their furniture is older and things like that. It just doesn't  do, it just doesn't do the house justice. Using a tool like style to design  will allow you to take and show the house in the best possible light.

And it lets buyers visualize the potential of a property Before they even step inside and so AI is simply there folks to make our life easier don't fight AI. It's a good thing for us You know, will it take over the world one day and you know rule us? I have no idea But for right now it's making my life easier, which means i'm more efficient Which means I can make more money per hour in the time that I invest in my business.

Make sense?  So there you have it. Top tools and apps that I think every real estate agent should be using from your CRM to your AI powered marketing, the tools to streamline your process. You can use it for surveys, for client satisfaction, and just make everyday tasks more manageable. So I hope that helps.

Really, the idea behind giving you a couple of each of these is to research which of these You're most comfortable with because again the number one recommendation for any of these tools is the one that you will use So I hope that helps and we'll talk to you on the next episode and remember if you list You last talk to you next week