Real Estate Customer Relationship Management - Ways for Agents to Increase Their Business

In 2005, The National Association of Realtors reported that its membership increased by 13 percent over the previous year, reaching 1.2 million. With this many people trying to get a share of the pie, Realtors need to find ways to differentiate themselves and stay ahead of the competition. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can help them do exactly that, and even more.

CRM comes from the observation that developing good relationships with your customers helps you deliver superior service to your clients, thereby helping your business thrive. Developing a CRM-focused business is not especially hard. It starts with basic guiding rules.

In the marketing lingo, the many ways a business interacts with its clients are called points of contact. By developing the quantity and the quality of these points of contact, a real estate agent will gain more customers.

Of all the existing points of contact, the Internet should receive special attention. In just 10 years, the Web has become an essential marketing venue for today's agents. According to the NAR, 77 percent of home buyers used the Internet to search for a home in 2005. When people think about buying a home the first place they go is often the Web. It is therefore a good place for agents to capture consumers' attention and gain their confidence.

However, many agents are still missing the point: they now have their own Web sites because they know people are looking for them, but they haven't quite figured out how to use the Web as a good lead generator. Here are ways agents can improve their online points of contact.

The layout of your site is key to retain surfers. It should be flawless, and the navigation should also be easy.

E-mails are another critical point of contact. Many agents provide their e-mail address on their Web sites, but an article in Realty Times reported that one of home buyers' main complaints about Realtors online is that they don't answer their e-mails in a timely manner. Decide now about a reasonable e-mail reply policy for your business. A 24- or 48-hour reply policy is probably what most people expect. You need to state this reply policy on your Web site and stick to it. People will appreciate it.

Another option is to allow people to schedule a tour directly from your Web site. This option is a great way to get people to meet with you.

Most people start looking for homes on the Internet a few months before they actually make a decision. It is therefore important for a real estate agent to keep in touch with future home buyers. A good way to maintain that contact is to send out a monthly newsletter, which would give the latest information about the town or area. It would also provide future home buyers with the latest listings that meet their criteria. An agent who sends out this kind of newsletters will find that many of these people remember this agent when they are ready to buy.

The key with CRM is to regularly evaluate existing points of contact to fine tune them in order to better serve customers. This in turn will ensure that agents have a successful business.

Content provided by 10x Media. Established in 2003, 10x Media provides innovative online marketing tools.It has expanded its online presence through networks such as Inside Real state, Inside Finances and Grab Real Estate, which contain thousands of pages for city and state specific real estate information across the nation.

Asset Management As A Tool In Beating The Odds

Asset Management seems like some arcane science practiced by brilliant experts at first glance. Although the expertise of most money managers may be outstanding, the techniques of asset management are available to any investor. The whole idea behind asset management is to create some kind of stability in an investment portfolio that can protect the investor, to a certain degree, from market volatility. Market volatility is only a problem because, try as we may, we humans cannot predict the future. Any investment software or tracking method can only offer approximations of what the market might do in the future.

One of the key concepts of asset management is diversification. Diversification between types of investments, such as stocks and bonds, as well as diversification across a number of industries and countries can offer a buffer against volatility in any one investment, industry or country.

For the individual investor, this aspect of asset management can cause some confusion. The first question that comes to mind is; How much diversification is enough to offer protection against volatility? There is no easy answer to that question. The individual investor realizes that they don't have billions of dollars to work with like the mutual funds do. As a result, the investor has to limit their purchases.

The best approach is to educate yourself about the risks and rewards of each investment and sector. The next step is to select a basket of investments that are best suited to your risk tolerance as well as your investment goals. Also realize that as your portfolio grows, you can diversify more. Remember that the aim is to select good quality investments, but also to protect your capital as well.

Diversification within a sector can also offer protection against volatility. For example, in the consumer sector, investing in a supermarket chain that sells to basic consumer needs could be complimented by investment in a more diversified, higher end supermarket chain that situates itself in upscale neighborhoods. In this case, one would expect the high-end company to have higher profits, but in an economic slowdown, the basic supermarket chain might see less of a contraction. If possible, viewing data about how one performed in comparison to the other during past economic contractions may give a hint of future possibilities.

The speculative view of investing, whereby an individual hopes to make a large amount of money quickly, tends to be at odds with the diversification model of investing and asset management. There are two reasons for this; the first is that speculative investing is high risk, where as the diversified approach tries to limit risk and secondly, the concept of asset management aims at protecting capital, thereby ensuring survival and long term profits. One of the predictable outcomes for many speculative investors is to run out of capital and be forced out of the market.

There are three components to a realistic goal in investing; the first is a accurate idea of what can be earned through a particular kind of investment; the second is to know what you want to earn through investing; and the third is to decide when you will abandon an investment that is falling in value. All three of these issues call for some study and thought. It's easy to make an unrealistic judgment in this area. Once again this is where careful asset management can help you. If you are diversified, a mistake on a single investment won't be as devastating as it would be where there is only one investment.

The whole idea behind asset management is to give the investor the best possible chance of survival, which in turn will offer the best odds of ultimately succeeding in achieving their investment goals. Nobody can predict what the markets will actually do, but if you have a system that will protect your capital and keep you in the game longer, your odds of winning will improve.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to Asset Management

Asset and Portfolio Management : How To Say Goodbye To Emotional Investing

Portfolio management is an important part of your life. Maybe more important than you realize. You have an overall portfolio that is made up of everything you own. Within that portfolio is your investment assets that you need to manage in order to reach your financial goals and have a healthy and wealthy egg-nest to enjoy in your golden retirement years.

In order to profit from portfolio management, it is important to start by designing an investment policy statement and keep to it during the course of investing. An investment policy is your guideline? it's a rule of thumb meant to help you or your portfolio manager make the best decisions for you. Sometimes (actually, often!) our emotions cloud our judgment when it comes to investing.

A fairly significant time when emotion clouds our judgment is when our portfolio value is falling. Our knee-jerk reaction is to sell it all and put the money in a hole in the backyard. That happens far too often and was one of the major causes of the Great Depression in 1939 and the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000/2001. Investors are so easily swayed by emotion and what's called "the herd mentality."

An investment policy is designed to help you avoid emotional investing or getting caught up in the herd mentality. It's a statement ? as detailed or as vague as you want ? that outlines what your goals are with your portfolio, what your preferred asset mix is, and the timeline you have to get there.

Here is a sample investment policy statement. Due to space limitations, it is not heavily detailed.

Investment Policy Statement for John Doe

March 14, 2006

Purpose: the purpose of this statement is to provide me with a framework in which to manage my investment portfolio.

1. Account: My account is held at XYZ Discount Brokers. Their number is (800)555-1234. My account number is 123-456-789-123.

2. Investment objectives: My primary goal is growth and the mix I have selected is as follows: a.Growth: 55% b.Income: 25% c.Safety: 20%

3. Assets: My account is a standard account to hold equities, bonds, mutual funds, etc.

4. Current: I am investing a lump sum of $5000 into an equities and mutual fund mix that correlates to the above asset allocation. Each month I will deposit $200 into my account, divided into each of the asset allocations.

5. Goals: I want to have $100,000 within 25 years to enable me to buy a boat and sail around the world.

On this note, I hope that everybody who desires to generate massive profit from portfolio management, to take out a piece of paper and build your investment policy now. And remember to live with it, and I am sure you will find yourself much more rational in your investment decisions !

Stanley Chua is an investment optimizer and has been providing value-adding advisory in international business innovations, financial planning and portfolio management for the past 10 years. Looking to find out more how you can massively profit from managing your personal portfolio ? You can instantly receive a Free ?Portfolio Management and Asset Assessment? E-Course, at => http://www.portfoliomanagementguide.com