PRESS: iReCal Pays for Itself in Less Than One Hour - Top-10 Reasons for iREcal Real Estate Broker/Agent Marketing-Communications Solution

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This article was developed in support of CrossPinPoints™, is an integrated marcom-marketing communications calendar. For more go to http://irecal.com or http://edcomcal.com. iReCal and iRealCal, and CrossPinPoints are trademarks. Top-10 Reasons Why iReCal - Real Estate Broker/Agent Marketing-Communications Solution Pays for Itself in One Less than One Hour

Abstract: Here are the Top-10 reasons for using iReCal-iRealCal, which include: Tracking, Timing, Technology, Tips, Tasks, Territory, Trust, Tools, Team and Trends. A broker/agent communications (marcom) calendar for buyers/sellers is an online tool designed to assist, guide, track and manage all agent-buyer-seller communications activities in a timely manner.

1 - Tracking - as you might easily guess, KTO-keeping track of functions is often more time consuming that figuring out what the task was to begin with. For most of you, you might as well STOP reading this now because if you don't have time to get and, most importantly, stay organized then anything more I say will be a waste of your time. However, if you want to get organized and like exercise do more than give it lip service, then what I have to say is the result of decades of research and business process design. To begin, it isn't that hard to be organized, however, if you aren't , then you waste a lot of time being disorganized. It is also means that you need to be sure the assistants and others who support you are also organized. For example, one Broker realized that while he assigned projects, he had no way to track whether the assignments were actually completed. With iReCal, you can "overlay" calendars, events, and any other activity with your colleagues to check for conflicts or followup assignment tracking. KTO is also more than MS Project other project management tools as the project is only as good as the persons completing the tasks or the manager driving the project to completion. Tracking tasks and projects is complex and rarely is it "all" in the Project Management (PM) system. Quite simply, the real reason why - is it so time consuming to track all these projects. More often PM is done through sticky notes and email. Collaboration systems offer Wikis, where users can enter notes and comments to provide a record, history, or archive. While this information may be useful, the written word is not the spoken one, and all too often what is written is not what is meant. This means someone needs to figure out what really happened. Without history, we are often bound to repeat it. In addition, the challenge of leadership is to think of creative ways to motivate the workers to get the job completed "on time and on budget" and to provide the means to track the project for both current and future tracking. iReCal is, according on one Broker/Agent "the most visually exciting way to track, manage and collaborate ever used." That is, with iReCal you can visually KTO all your events (open house, closings, etc.) and specific activities (email, flyers, meetings) in a single glance and manage a large number of buyers and sellers all at once (as many as 20 have been reported).

2 - Timing - or rather time is the only thing all have in common - rich, poor, smart, lucky, here or there. There are 86,400 seconds a day and while that sounds like a lot but it goes by whether you watch the clock or not. Time also has "hard stops" on projects whether you do anything or not, and you are never-ever able to do an "instant replay." One of the humorous adages is "if you can't get it done in 24 hours a day, you will have to work nights." It also seems like every day we need an extra hour in the middle of the day, not at the end of it. Having worked with Realtors for more than two decades, their day doesn't begin at the beginning but often runs late. This means that the "time" most useful to agents and brokers is the morning hours to plan, schedule, organize their day, week, month and beyond. With iReCal, you can look easily at whatever minute, month, or moment and most importantly, move it, change it or share schedules often change like the wind. Time is the most and valuable resource each of us has. Bill Gates has not more time than you do. How you spend your time will determine your success and iReCal can, as many have found more time but more control your time, saving many from spending too much time and overtime on non-performing activities.

3 - Technology - if social media has taught us anything -- it is all about technology as applied to communications. Without the internet, there would be no Facebook, Twitter, etc. Without short-message-service (SMS) technology built on the telephone network, the vast array of now multi-media group chat and mobile video would not be possible. We really don't know much about its impact except that a lot of people are in it. What we do know is that the pace of technology is increasing and it is also "stretching the rubber band" forcing, driving, even pushing by even "friends" peer pressure on users to consume more and more tech.

I teach a Social Media Soup-to-Nuts course (http://socialbusinesscollege.com is available for delivery anywhere) teaching newbies to C-level's how to think about social media marketing from basics to advanced strategy. Social marketing strategy for real estate is built on that cache of being the most creative, not just the best tech. How this applies to real estate is also that technology is constantly changing the way brokers/agents communicate with their clients and prospective clients. Also mentioned in this article blogging or writing articles is a great way to communicate with prospective, new and existing customers. Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are also great ways. Twitter is very immediate, Facebook is more daily, and weekly Linkedin posts can all expand your business customer network or territory. However, most people make the mistake of not having a plan for their social media marketing. Posting here or there or anywhere is not a plan. For social media to be effective, it must be cohesive (why you should know about you are writing about), considerate (not be annoying), collaborative (invite feedback), congenial (playful and positive), timely (cynchronitic -- a term we created to mean more than timely) and other factors. There is another paper on the Top-10 Types of Communications that details more issues surrounding this area. Bottom-line is technology is a critical tool in your real estate marketing strategy. Like fire, it can be a powerful force or one that burns your house down.

4 - Tips - My colleague Doug Green once said, "You can’t sell what you don't know." From the customer's perspective, you also don't buy what you don't want or more specifically, can't live in. Both sides focus on achieving certain results. For the Agent, it means arranging the buy or sale; for the Buyer it means getting a home of their dreams; for the Seller, moving on to another one. In finding new ways to help solve real estate business or marketing problems, there are already thousands of business apps, but seriously how many can anyone realistically use even if he or she really like anyone of them a lot. In our research, we have found Realtors spend the vast majority of their time in communications. While most think they do a good job at communications they really rarely really do. In addition, social media really focuses our attention on finding ways for people to communicate not just more but better, closer, more personal. How many times have you looked at a Facebook page that one of your so-called "friends" is constantly posting -- thinking of yoga, going to yoga, at yoga, had a great time at yoga and so on. When do communications becoming really annoying and are you engaging or annoying your customers? Marketing is the art of developing engaging concepts for buyers-sellers, making sales more efficient and effective, and ultimately solving customer problems. Through our research and customer use of iReCal, we have found on the other hand that they have found that being organized with a marketing plan (social and otherwise) they do engage customers more effectively. We will also be building tutorials on how to build better communications tools and engage with your customers. In the meantime, bottom-line, if you engage, you will sell them more.

5 - Tasks - is facing the most challenging part of the problem or process rather than just the simplest tasks. Social media marketing is forcing real estate companies, brokers, and agents to tackle customer service and customer communications in a public environment, not just behind closed doors in a call center. Unless you respond also in public, then the task is managed by the social media not you. One way to do this is the "community manager," a person who addresses local issues but also presents them in a global setting so everyone and I mean everyone can see. This is a task that really didn't exist even last year or did it? There are so many great case studies of how Twitter is used for political uprisings but also how companies use Twitter to solve customer support issues/problems. The flip side is that when people complain they don't call or send emails (that go unanswered), they just Twitter it or post it on Facebook, Linkedin or their other social media sites. Marketing tools give you the means to tackle the task that challenge you in this new "constant courtesy" world. iReCal is about a tool that communicates visually with you helping you organize your tasks as shown above. Also by providing private and secure calendars with either buyers or sellers, you can provide an individual tool to post specific activities between you and each of your clients. This way both parties know what to do at which time, means fewer errors, re-schedules, and shorter sales cycles.

6 - Territory - since all real estate is local and often just a neighborhood or even a HOA, one of the effective tools to communicate is by writing a blog for your territory or coverage. However, there is not territory on the internet as anyone from anywhere can find you. In the era of buyer/seller "self-service," the more you can show your knowledge, the more your name will in front of potential customers. In addition, if you do your blog key word "tagging," the higher you can place in the general search area of Google. That is, key word tagging and content publishing is a way to the top of the page. If you are interested in receiving blogging guidelines, we suggest you signup for Heidi Cohen's daily marketing newsletter (http://heidicohen.com). It can be a bit daunting at first but once you get the idea of publishing often and writing useful content the more effective Realtor you can be. iReCal can help by adding the Write Blog or Write Article icon to your calendar, and you can include topics you want to cover. You can expand or change your territory with your blog and use iReCal to help you keep organized about your writing.

7 - Tools - Great Realtors have often been heard to say it is their personality that makes the sale. Certainly that is a great skill, however, in a social media world, individual personalities are often less important (unless you are Lady Gaga). The point is that agent sales and marketing need close integration and planning with marketing (social or otherwise) more than even before. Planning all marcom activities is important to ensuring everyone is "on the same page." There is a famous book called the "Mythical Man Month" about the amount of communications and productivity for software development. Communications and productivity, of course, apply to every person and every group. The concept is that if you have one person you can get a good amount of work done for one person. Adding one more person, you can almost double the amount of work with a little less because the two of you have to communicate to each other what the other is doing. Adding the third to sixth person keeps adding productivity without loss due to having to communicate about each other’s activities. What he found out was that beyond six people productivity fell appreciably. Two points relevant to Realtors is that is you need a tool that keeps all the people, and there can be a lot of them, each involved in their tasks and the timeline. In addition, only certain people need to know about their own activities and not everything. This is particularly true of F2F (face-to-face) meetings which can require tedious and time-consuming crosstown driving.

That is, sales and marketing need to be in sync on activities, plans, presentations, and all content. Each is dependent on what the customer perceives everything about you. iReCal gives you a new integrated communications approach to managing your real estate practice. One of the key tools is the iReCal Library where you an upload and store, files, images, graphics, videos, text files, and other key documents, which can be shared or not with assistants, buyers, or sellers.

8 - Trust - In any business you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. In real estate that is also very true. In real estate marketing, the problem is that if you are not marketing on the social media soapbox, then someone else probably another agent is speaking they may be getting more clients than you. Also, trust once lost is seldom regained. The price to regain trust is also more than the cost of the original mistake. The internet is also "ink" and everything will always be there and you can never delete it, so plan your content carefully. The other part of trust or lack or it is the lack of privacy. Analysis of customer information or pro-active use of so-called private information may also be privacy invasion. Marketing has always been challenged with "profiling" the customer or using non-specific individual information. Certainly you want to target age, demographics, location and other factors. Most companies begin by analyzing current customers. However, understanding your customers' needs versus designing a campaign for certain customers requires a detailed planning and coordination effort. That is, planning is a critical element to that process. In iReCal, rather than having to rely upon your ability to recall them, you can save comments and thoughts. We like to think of this as giving you the ability to provide your own "history" or a particular transaction which may also provide you necessary details in the case of litigation you don't have to try to remember something as you have a written log or file. Building a history gives you credibility, accountability and even compliance with many governmental regulations including a records management system that acts as a document collection and storage mechanism. This also allows for secure Sarbanes-Oxley, OFAC, the USA PATRIOT Act, Money-Laundering Control Act, and other U.S. laws and regulations compliance and auditing.

9 - Team - it is always and always will be about the team. Hiring an assistant, working in an office, or trying it on your own, there is always a small team you will be working with. The point is that iReCal makes it easy to work by yourself just with your clients or in a large office, where there a number of people involved in your listing or clients. In iReCal, any authorized party can add comments, provide support services, coordinate with all parties, and be involved as needed to expedite the process. Proper training and company socialization will indeed result in the best employees. The point is to identify the people, skills, as well as how well they work together. If you like sports or fruit companies, you can see what happens when a great coach builds a compatible team; they are unstoppable. In addition, tools like iReCal can track team activities then the "newbie" can get up-to-speed faster, more effective than before. That is, understanding where the team is on their journey also helps newbies and executives evaluate future direction.

10 - Trends- most people gasp when they see what has happened over the past decade and also what has not happened. What history gives us is not necessarily insight into the future but the means to review what did happen and then either build upon or, in many cases, don't make the same mistakes again. What this means for you is to have tools that you can review your mistakes and successes and build upon them. However, do you really think Apple thinks about where customers have been or more about where they want customers to go and moving them in that direction. Apple has never been totally full-proof but they are increasingly flawless. However, they have the same amount of time as you and I do, they are just better organized about it. We see that iReCal is an integrated broker/agent-client marketing-communications calendar approach can give you insights into future trends and your own personal planning. Those who have used iReCal realize it is very much a great tool for personal (of course, iReCal is used to KTO personal events and responsibilities such as family activities) and professional success. In addition, iReCal will be continuing to track and add new features designed to maximize your performance.

Summary - Real Estate is an increasingly complex business. iReCal was developed and will continue to be an innovative solution for Realtors. I have gone way beyond my Gettysburg address limit but have a little more to say, hopefully there you found value in these ideas and more importantly can make them actionable for you. However, iREcal will indeed for itself in one hour or less.

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"I have known Tom for close to seven years now. In 2005, As Director of MARCOM at Carrier Access, he saw the great possibilities of the online VoIP system we were building and worked hard to help us get the word out both internally and externally. Since then, he has followed the unique and exciting opportunities of my venture startup. Over the past year when funding has been available, Tom has created exciting user training, Marcom strategy, channel sales, online tutorials, and consulted on other new venture strategies as well as making investor presentations. He is smart, determined, persistent and has a great asset to my company. I highly recommend Tom for any of your marketing, communications, advertising, SEO, website, customer sales, corporate presentations, training, strategy and other needs you may have." Roger Toennis CEO RockIT

Here are some of the marketing-communications (marcom) solutions available:

- Strategic Planning, Market/Business Development (Qwest, BellSouth, ICG and others)

- Newsletters (e.g. www.lyncuserforum) from Constant Contact Certified Experts

- Webseminars ("Highest Scores Ever" - Microsoft)

- Customer Case Studies (Winner of "Best Customer Case Study" from Broadsoft)

- White Papers (Top-10 Tips for VoIP Implementation - XO)

- SEO (top placement of key words in Google), e.g. Google IVR Lync

- Social marketing (Twitter, social media course) Twitter accounts @techtionary @beautyapps

- Social Business College - social media training (course evaluations available)

- Articles (XO, Qwest and others)

- Press Releases (Gold Systems, RockIT SimpleSignal and others)

- Training delivery (Qwest, TimeWarner, Cox Cable and many others)

- Course development new courses (Qwest, Microsoft, others)

- Elearning course development and delivery (Qwest)

- Videos and Flash tutorials (RockIT, TECHtionary, Social Business College)

- Consulting (product, strategic planning, crossnetpoints model)

TECHtionary.com produces marketing solutions, dealer and customer training programs, online presentations including iPod and PC formats sales brochures, virtual installation manuals and animated online presentations. TECHtionary.com has more than 3,015+ free online animated presentations on data communications, internet, wireless, SIP, OCS-Office Communications Server, VoIP-Voice over Internet Protocol, PBX Systems, central office switching, protocols, telephony, telecommunications, networking, routing, IPTV, WiMax, power systems, broadband, WiFi-wireless fidelity and other related technologies available at http://www.techtionary.com. More details on training are available by calling Tom Cross at 303-594-1694 or [email protected]. Thomas Cross is a magazine columnist with many key technology publications and a member of the Technical Board of Advisors for the VoIP-Security Alliance. He holds Comptia Security+ and other certifications.

About Cloud/Skype/Lync User Forum

LyncuserForum.com is an independent forum on Contextual Communications, UC-Unified Communications, Skype, Apple, Google, Microsoft Lync Communications Server and other solutions. LyncForum sponsors the Lync Summit and other educational events. Lync Forum provides classroom and webseminar training as well as a non-production communications server environments for those IT departments without additional equipment, budget or time. This allows planners and users to test ideas, dial in and dial back out, IM file transfers, remote desktop sharing, video conferencing, run scenarios, review logs, break linkages and learning about new telephony features and network access. Lync Forum is also designed for both the system integrator/consultant who wants to learn about Lync without having to build their own system as well as the enterprise customer who doesn't have the time, resources or knowledge to develop one. Lync User Forum Labs are designed to be "hands-on" or "over-the-shoulder" with experts available for Q&A; and classes for feature-specific review.

Lync User Forum is a vendor-independent laboratory environment designed for learning, technical guides, knowledge resources and online "live" services. Lync User Forum provides planning, project management, consulting, training, case studies, white papers, speaking engagements, market/customer research, network planning and other services. For more go to http://www.lyncforum.com and is an independent Forum. Microsoft is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

Lync Summit will have keynotes from Lync MVPs, Media Gateway/SBC experts, customers, planners and others. Attendees and exhibitors will receive thousands of dollars in valuable videos, training courses and online access to a "live" Lync system. There will be sessions on Lync Planning, QoS, Compliance, Endpoints, Phones, Security, Firewalls, Media Gateways, PBX Integration, Mobile Lync, Communicator, WAN-Bandwidth Planning, Customer Applications, Troubleshooting, Session Border Controllers and others.

About Tele/Presence Forum

TPF provides education, research, and events designed to improve awareness of the benefits of tele/presence whether video, audio, computer, multi-media, web and other systems. Among the many benefits, Tele/Presence can: - Reduce sales cycles - and are proven to increase revenues - Reduce business costs - travel, downtime, meeting delays, business processes - Improve productivity - increased coordination yields improved customer communications - Accelerates communications - faster communications means faster product cycles - Reduce customer communications disasters - reduce impact of crisis situations

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