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4
Change The Game With Next-Level Tech
If you have seen any of the sales or training presentations I've delivered to REALTORS® in the last 12 months, then you'll know I've been beating the drum that the industry needs to "BE DIFFERENT." That's because there's growing disruption within real estate that's not going away anytime soon. In particular, we have continued to see massive movement from industry juggernaut Zillow over the last 12 months.
This is old news, but Zillow has been a licensed brokerage inside of every MLS in the country for months now. They also strategically made an acquisition of popular showing service "ShowingTime" in early 2021. I don't believe they are finished making big-time plays this year, as they also made the switch to power their property search on zillow.com with true ID...
1
Seeing Stars: Get to Know Five Star Real Estate Lakeshore
Five Star Real Estate Lakeshore was built to be different.
Initially owned by David Gritter, Terry Brinks, and Don TerHorst, Five Star Lakeshore opened its doors in April 1999 with a singular purpose: To provide Western Michigan a real estate option made up of the best agents in the area. With those agents in its corner, Five Star Lakeshore quickly built a reputation of quality service, integrity, and professionalism -- all without working under the umbrella of a national agency.
"[Five Star Lakeshore] started because the three original founders were at a different brokerage, and they were tired of the higher fees," explains current owner and partner David J. Arnoldink. "So, they just said, 'Hey, we think we can do this a little better.'"
Five Star Lakeshore's offices are locally owned, staffed by people who are familiar with the West Michigan area. These are people who know the ins and outs of the community, giving clients a local edge when buying or selling a home.
No matter how many years pass or what else changes — like Steve Grilley joining Arnoldink and Brinks as partner — Five Star Lakeshore's agent-focused mindset has helped the company continue to color outside the usual real estate lines. Five Star Lakeshore prides itself on offering an efficient and high-value option for agents and clients alike, buoyed by the strength of a branded franchise without the overhead and control of a bigger organization.
This is a company focused on its people. On what agents can do when given the freedom to do it, because Five Star Lakeshore, at its core, wants its agents to succeed as much as its clients.
"This is the way it was set up from the beginning," says Agent Development Leader Kimberly Ryan. "We're definitely more agent-focused than brokerage-focused."
A FOCUS ON AGENTS
It's easy to claim that a business model puts a spotlight on agents. Plenty of real estate brokerages do that every day. But at Five Star Lakeshore, that spotlight shines a little brighter, allowing agents the power to forge their own real estate paths while still giving them the confidence that the company name on their business cards is there to support them every step of the way.
Since opening, Five Star Lakeshore has evolved without losing sight of its agents and what they're looking for out of their careers. For Five Star Lakeshore, agents are the star of this particular show, and the goal of every transaction is to receive a standing ovation, metaphorical as it may be.
"When it comes to how we're making decisions, whether it be something cost-wise or a website or anything else, we're trying to focus on what's best for our agents versus what's best for the brokerage," Ryan says. "The name Five Star Lakeshore shows our reputation and the backbone of who we are, and we want to have that be a nice umbrella that our agents are comfortable being under. They have the reputation, but they also know the focus is on them and that they can go out and promote their businesses."
"We don't have a corporate number or an office number on our signs," Arnoldink adds. "Our signs are big and bold with the agent's name and their direct line. We want the listing agent to get the phone calls on their own properties. Reward those who are getting the listing themselves."
Real estate can be a tricky business. Buying and selling a home is one of the most important moments in anyone's life, and Arnoldink admits that in a "commission-based business, that's scary for a lot of folks," particularly these days. That's why finding agents with the innate drive to succeed is at the crux of Five Star Lakeshore's company-wide mindset.
After all, Five Star Lakeshore began with three people looking to carve out their own real estate niche. Now, agents are building on that legacy. First-time agents, especially, have found Five Star Lakeshore an appealing landing spot, the perfect jumping-off point for the rest of their careers. With Five Star Lakeshore, agents are in control of their day-to-day life. No one is "breathing down their necks," Arnoldink says, or "telling them they have a task list." As the public faces of Five Star Lakeshore, even things like marketing are left up to the agents to fine-tune and use as they see fit.
"We don't do brokerage marketing very much," Office Manager Diane Wolters says, "because [agents] are the ones that the clients are working with."
When someone is thinking about working with Five Star Lakeshore, the goal, more often than not, is to have them think of working with an agent. Because for as obstacle-filled and nerve-wracking as real estate can be, it's also a distinctly human business, and agents provide that personal connection between Five Star Lakeshore and the communities it serves.
So, now, whenever Arnoldink and Ryan meet with potential agents, they're looking for that specific personality, that desire to be the best they can be and to represent Five Star Lakeshore's decades-long reputation whenever they get a new listing.
"Ambition is a huge key," Arnoldink says. "We try to provide the structure, the umbrella, a good culture for them to work under, but they have to go out and do it themselves."
LEARNING CURVE
While Five Star Lakeshore wants agents with self-motivation and the drive to create their own circle of influence with the sort of local relationships that drive business, the company isn't leaving its people entirely on their own, either.
Training sessions are offered as soon as agents are brought in, educating associates on what it takes to succeed in the area from both an immediate cost standpoint and to help them plan for the future.
"Over the last eight years, we've been focusing on education so our agents can grow, not only in their skill sets but in their commissions," Ryan says, adding that Five Star Lakeshore saw record commissions paid to agents earlier this year. "We're focusing on education for our existing agents, as well as our new agents."
In addition to training sessions, Five Star Lakeshore also offers a mentor program, spearheaded by Ryan, who says it gives new agents "a chance to get into a career that they might not have had guidance in before." Working with existing agents, many of whom have a background of multi-year success, Five Star Lakeshore's most recent hires get an inside look at what works and what doesn't in Western Michigan, giving them a solid foundation to build the rest of their careers. The program beings with Jumpstart, meeting several times a week over three months to cover goal setting, buyers appointments, listing appointments, understanding the purchase and listing agreements, and technology pieces from using a CRM, the MLS, to pricing a property.
Following each session, agents receive homework to, as Ryan details, help "build not only their knowledge but their confidence before working with clients."
Through the program, which got its start, in part, as a response to the Great Recession, every agent also receives a syllabus detailing the local market, a resource they can keep with them for as long as they stay with the company.
"Agents can refer back to their previous lessons and use them for future reference," Arnoldink says. "We've had a lot of success with it. We also started offering some split programs, better, stronger commission splits than a lot of our competition, and more education."
Ryan adds: "The mentor program follows agents as they work on their transactions. They have constant access to me to call, text, email, or meet and get answers to their questions. Since no two transactions are the same, it's helpful to have an experienced agent focused on helping our newer agents. No question is a 'dumb question,' and I would rather hear it all so I can walk side by side them in their transaction.
"As time goes on, the agents start to feel more comfortable, and usually after a year or so, they can handle it on their own and 'graduate' from the program," Ryan continues. "I'm never far away and sometimes have an agent reach out even a few years afterward to discuss a question they haven't run into before. I love helping our agents build their businesses faster and stronger than if they were in a traditional program. We feel like this unique approach is a major piece to our past and future growth and shows them how much Five Star Lakeshore cares."
With the mentor program flourishing and more opportunities than ever for agents to thrive, Five Star Lakeshore has doubled its agent total, bringing in and retaining more and more people looking to take their careers to the next level. And it's that continued growth within the company that's helped Five Star Lakeshore increase its footprint across Michigan.
Most recently, Five Star Lakeshore added offices in Grand Haven and Zeeland and merged with a smaller company, WestEdge Realty. Arnoldink says the growth has "come organically," but it's Five Star Lakeshore's stature as a company with dependable associates that consistently gets the ball rolling on expansion.
"It's been connections that we have in our area, and we've been approached, or we've approached somebody and said, 'Hey, you'd be a great fit,'" Arnoldink says.
FIVE STAR LAKESHORE & DELTA MEDIA GROUP
There'll be no partying like it's 1999 when it comes to technology at Five Star Lakeshore. At least not anymore.
Just a few years ago, while working with a small, local tech provider, Arnoldink admits that Five Star Lakeshore wasn't significantly "involved with technology." So, when Delta Media Group® came into the picture, Five Star Lakeshore wasn't all that knowledgeable of its new tech partner. It didn't take long for that to change. Suddenly, the tech sky was the limit, and Five Star Lakeshore was anxious to make the jump toward that horizon.
DeltaNET® 6 gives agents a suite of tools and, most importantly, provides them with cutting-edge technology to stay at the top of their game without breaking the bank.
"[Agents] keep more dollars in their pocket to allocate where they best see fit," Arnoldink says. "We've started to look inwardly and say, 'Hey, you guys, here's the set of tools.' We know a lot of your business comes from your relationships. Here's a tool to keep track of that in a better way, manage that in a better way."
No matter what their expertise with tech is like — from agents who grew up with a phone in their hands to those who are a little warier of recent changes — the DeltaNET's ease of use gives Five Star Lakeshore agents confidence every time they turn on their computer. Today's real estate world doesn't often afford extra time to learn a brand-new platform, but with DeltaNET 6, Five Star Lakeshore doesn't have to. Instead, agents have an intuitive system that makes sense for their busy schedules and even helps take some of the stress out of their everyday workload.
"Because we're not a national corporation and we're independently owned and operated, we don't always have the marketing background to know what to do," Ryan says. "So we rely on Delta to help us. And the communication that we've had has been awesome to allow us to put those pieces together."
These days, not only does Delta Media Group provide Five Star Lakeshore with the industry's most powerful CRM, but the duo is working on a large-scale website refresh. Moving away from individual agents sites, Five Star Lakeshore's main site will provide clients with an informational hub, giving them all the knowledge they need before buying or selling a home.
"In this revamp, we wanted it to tell a different story on who we are," Ryan says. "As far as what agents are looking for, our website tells a story about us."
When originally coming onboard with Delta, Arnoldink says Five Star Lakeshore's site was "so blatantly templative; it was crazy." Without the ability to customize, the site didn't give clients a sense of what Five Star Lakeshore was truly all about. Now, from the first click, users can learn Five Star Lakeshore's history, while also finding the perfect agent to work with.
Through it all, Arnoldink says the communication between Five Star Lakeshore and Delta has been "smooth," making the entire redesign process seamless. But that's nothing new; open communication is tradition for Five Star Lakeshore and Delta, with regular meetings and updates regarding brand-new tech.
"I check in once a year, at least, and say, 'Hey, what new changes do you have? Are we offering everything we could or can?'" Arnoldink says. "And [Delta] always says, 'These are the couple of changes we've got going on.' They listen and recommend options for some of the things we've taken advantage of or some of the things we haven't, and it's been a good fit for us."
GETTING SOCIAL
Five Star Lakeshore's tech focus has centered on its site refresh recently, but the advent of social media has also required attention. As agents move away from individual sites, social media gives them an avenue to continue marketing themselves and hone their brand, something Five Star Lakeshore, with its reputation of providing agents the leeway to bolster their careers, loves to see.
Social media also allows agents to flex their creative muscles. They're not just selling a property. They're selling their ability to sell that property. Posting photos on Instagram is as important as any other marketing strategy and might even work better to help create relationships with the community.
"As a company, we're letting the agents go out there and do what they're comfortable with," Ryan says. "So we have agents that are using TikTok regularly; they're using Instagram. They're not only showing the public what they have for sale and what open houses are coming up, but they're showing them who they are as a person. And we feel that that's so important because we know that the public's going to work with the agent because of who they are."
By putting not only their name but their personality out there, agents make themselves more approachable, more dependable, and a real estate partner in the truest sense of the word. It also helps create a sense of community, something Five Star Lakeshore has encouraged in the last two decades.
"In our sales meetings before COVID, we would consistently ask all of our agents, 'Where does your business come from?'" Arnoldink details. "And probably 90% would come back and say, 'It's from my sphere of people.' So we want to look more inwardly and offer these tools that [agents] can nurture their sphere. We're hoping it makes a big difference for them."
Building on those relationships also means giving back to the area. In those same interviews where Ryan and Arnoldink look to find self-starting agents, they're also looking for people who want to better the communities where they live and work. Teaming with agents, Five Star Lakeshore supports a handful of organizations and events every year, including Habitat for Humanity, as well as local initiatives like the Mount Baldhead Challenge to support the Boys and Girls Club.
Says Arnoldink: "As far as the community goes, it's everything."
WHAT'S NEXT FOR FIVE STAR LAKESHORE
As Five Star Lakeshore turns its attention to the future, the drive to succeed won't change. That drive is built into the DNA of Five Star Lakeshore, from the company's opening day to this very moment. And with the hopes of seeing agents' continued success while growing teams and expanding into new offices, Five Star Lakeshore is more confident than ever in its structure.
There are no plans to slow down. No plans to back down from any challenge. Only the desire to provide Western Michigan with a dependable real estate pro, led by agents who do their company proud.
"The future of Five Star Lakeshore is to continue to find ways to support those teams, to continue to bring new agents in, educate them, build loyalty with them through the mentor program," Arnoldink says. "And to continue our community involvement and hopefully even grow that."
30
Using Instagram To Sell Homes
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms for real estate agents.
At first, it might seem very similar to Facebook. In fact, Facebook owns the platform and has tweaked it for ease of use. Dig a little deeper, and you'll start to see many ways it offers unique value to real estate professionals ... and lets them do the same for their customers.
Social media is a double-edged sword, as any platform can be a time sink. But real estate agents coast to coast have found creative ways to get results from it. According to the National Association of Realtors, social media is
28
You Can Compete With Zillow
Agents and brokers around the country are casting wary eyes on Zillow's latest moves. The number of markets in which Zillow is buying and selling property continues to grow. In an industry that has seen more change in the last 24 months than virtually any other, it's fair to respond to all of this with a groan.
Maybe it feels like "one more thing" to navigate around — and a particularly big one, at that. But don't be discouraged.
Zillow is a large, highly visible platform, so it's easy to overestimate its power to "disrupt" the market. Across the U.S., buyers and sellers know Zillow as a convenient platform for finding and comparing properties. But rumors of the death of modern real estate have been greatly exaggerated.
Like any other company, Zillow relies on r...
28
Tech Tuesday - System Notifications & Settings
In this Tech Tuesday, Harley Wolfarth covers the various system notifications that the DeltaNET is capable of sending as well as how those notifications can be turned on or off.
Video Transcription
Harley:
Hello and welcome to Tech Tuesday, presented by Delta Media Group, where we think that Harley Quinn is just misunderstood. I mean, her heart's in the right place most of the time. So we really think she's good at heart. So today we are going to take a look at system notifications in the DeltaNET. Now, specifically, we are looking at notifications that the system will send out to you to give you information about various things or update you of various circumstances in the DeltaNET. Now, these are all the ones that can be switched on and off independently, so you can control what those are. And then we'll also take a look at some of the details about the information included in each of those types of system notifications.
Harley:
So to be clear, we are not looking at like lead notifications exactly. That stuff's going to go to you no matter what, you don't want to turn off your lead notifications. But there are different settings where you can go in and control where those lead notifications go, things like that. And we do have videos that cover that piece. So today, like I said, we're just going to take a look at the system notifications themselves.
Harley:
So first off, the easiest way to go in and control these system notifications is to do so from your profile page. So just click on your name up here in the top right. Click on profile. And that takes you to your profile page overall. Now I could just scroll down and find them and actually can see they're right there on my page, but I can also type in system notifications, or if I were to type in notifications, you can see that it narrows the whole page down to just this thing that I want to see.
Harley:
So looking this over, the first thing you can do here is you can control where these system notifications go. So if you wanted these to go to an address that is different from what you have set up in your public email address, then you can add that address here. If you want it to go to multiple addresses, you can actually put multiple addresses here, separated by commas as well. So I could say emailaccount@email.com and then a comma, and then email account2@email.com and onward. So if I want multiple people or five office assistants, anything like that, and I want them to get notifications of these emails, I can do that by just entering those into that field. Now keep in mind, they will go to those addresses instead of your public email address. So if I clear this out here, you can see it opens up my email address section again, and then right there is my public email address. So if there's nothing filled in here, that public email address is where those will go. So we'll go ahead and narrow that back down again.
Harley:
Now as to the notifications themselves, you can see, we have a wide variety here. Now, your list might not look exactly the same as mine. It kind of depends on what features your company has turned on, and also your company admins have the ability to go in and switch off some of these different notifications on the admin side. And if they're switched off there, then the toggles won't show for you here. So just keep that in mind, as you look through these, or as you walk through these with me. But now we'll just run through each one and give you some details about what each one does.
Harley:
So first we have the digest notification. This is a monthly notification email that provides various information about what happened in the DeltaNET or what the DeltaNET did, or what happened on your website the previous month. So it's actually looking at the previous calendar month whenever you receive one of these. The first thing it'll have is it includes an announcement section at the top. So if there's any kind of announcement to make, and really these would be announcements that Delta has created. So if there is one, it would include that at the top though, generally you won't see that section.
Harley:
After that, it includes a notification about your newest leads. So this would be leads that came in the previous month. It includes information about customers that have logged in the previous month. Any customers that have created a saved search, any customers that the system suggests that you would follow up with, it'll include a section for that as well. It will include a section for listing performance. So if you've got any new listings a previous month, basically how those listings performed, and really it's looking at up to 20 of your active contingent or pending listings that are on the market, that were entered in the previous month or added to our system the previous month.
Harley:
If you are running any ads through Adwizard, it will include information about those and not just what ads were created, but it'll actually include performance statistics there. So basically how those ads performed. It will include email statistics from My Customer for Life, e-cards and market watches. So basically how many of those have gone out on your behalf? How many of the agents ... Or not agents. But how many of the customers interacted with actually clicked through on to get into your website?
Harley:
And lastly, it will include some new listing notification stats. So this would be specifically customer saved search emails. So if customers have gone to the website, saved a search, basically how many of those went through to your customers and the related stats? So how many were opened and how many click throughs there were just like the stats with My Customer for Life, e-card and MarketWatch. So this is kind of your big overall email. So once a month, you'll get one of these. As long as you have this toggled on, you'll get one of these that includes all of that information from all of those happenings in the previous calendar month.
Harley:
Now the next one is the new listing tips email. So this will be triggered every time you add a new listing to the system. And basically it provides some suggestions about what to do with your new listing or features and things that you can do through the DeltaNET to help you market that listing. Specifically, it suggests that you set up seller report. It suggests the creation of an e-card, printable fliers, social media sharing. And if you or your company have properties in motion turned on, it'll give you some information about properties in motion related to that listing as well. Each one of those sections does include some information about that, as a link into the DeltaNET to kind of shortcut you into the correct page in the DeltaNET to set those things up.
Harley:
So for example, creating an e-card, it includes a link that will actually pipe that listing information into the e-card system in the DeltaNET. So it takes you straight in there, and then you just select the template you want, and it'll show that listing information right there on the template. So just designed to be a nice time-saver for you to go in and do some quick marketing of your listing without having to put a whole lot of extra time or effort into that.
Harley:
Now, the next thing we have here is the Adwizard notifications. So if this is turned on and you are using the Adwizard system, when you have a listing that is listing a notification that is about to run out, not a notification, I'll get there. When you have an ad through Adwizard that is about to expire, this system will notify you of that and give you the opportunity to click through, go back into Adwizard and renew that if you wanted to continue that ad. So that's what this one is for.
Harley:
The next one is upcoming email digest. And this one has a nice convenient description right here below it. It will send you an email if there are any campaign emails, e-cards or email blasts that are scheduled to go out in the next three days. Now, the purpose of this is so that you can see these automated emails that are about to go out on your behalf. And then if you want to make changes to those at the last minute before they're actually sent, this gives you the opportunity to do so. So that's why it gives you that three day buffer there. So the idea is three days before, you'll get this email, you can go in and say, oh, well, I want to make some changes to this email or who the recipients are of it. It gives you a chance to do that.
Harley:
The next one here is our daily digest email. So what this does is it sends you an email of any tasks or to-do's that you have in the system that are either past due, or will be due very soon. And you can also exclude the upcoming events. So if you just want to see the past due tasks or the currently due tasks, you can check that box and then you won't get tasks that are upcoming, that aren't for you to do yet. So that's the idea, just a quick notification to let you know there are things to take care of so that you can go in and take care of them.
Harley:
And the next one we have here is company news. So what this one will do is if the company creates any news articles on the admin side of the DeltaNET, this thing will automatically send you an email and just let you know what those news articles are.
Harley:
And next we have the weekly bounce report. And this one also has a nice description below it, but what this one comes down to is, as the system sends out a wide variety of email on your behalf, if it receives a bounce response from any of the customers that it sent an email to, it will add it to our bounce table and also add it to this report. Now, the idea is that if we send an email out to a customer and it does bounce, that's basically the customer's email host telling us that that customer can't receive email for some reason. If it is a permanent reason, like the account doesn't exist, it just classifies it as a bad email address, something like that. Then it'll send that response and will log it, and then add it to this email so that you can see and then go in and address any of those.
Harley:
The idea is that you could use this report to go into the DeltaNET and either verify that these email addresses are correct, or whether or not they're correct, or you can go in and get a new email address for that customer if have sending email to their old address is starting to bounce.
Harley:
And then lastly, we have the Dotloop import notification. So this one's very specific. It really only will exist to customers that the company has the Dotloop integration turned on. So if your company does use Dotloop for transaction information, and that integration is turned on, then what the system will do is automatically send you a note, if this is turned on, automatically send you a notification every time it does import customers or import transactions on your behalf. But this option will only be available if that integration is turned on for you, since it is an optional integration to begin with. Now, if it is turned on at the company level and you don't want to receive those notifications, then you can switch it off here. That is what this toggle is for.
Harley:
So there you go. Now, keep in mind any change that you make here, you have to click this update notifications button down here at the bottom to actually save your changes. But this does allow you to turn off a wide variety or turn on a wide variety of different notifications that are all designed to give you more information about what the system is doing for you on one hand. And also what else you can do with the system that might not be immediately obvious to you.
Harley:
So the only other thing to add here is that this is a dedicated interface to just look at these pieces. However, there is another page that you can go to in the DeltaNET that kind of consolidates these system notifications along with the lead notification settings for when you're actually getting notified of new leads and things coming into the system. Now, we do have another video to cover that, but to just show you where that's at, if I just type notification, if I could type the right letters here. Notifications up here, you can see there's a notifications settings link. I would just click that to go through to that overall notifications page, or I can click on the settings gear up here in the top and I can search for it on my settings page as well. So there you go. As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, feel free to send an email into support@deltagroup.com or give us a call and we will help you through whatever else you need. Thanks a lot.
