Jump Start the Housing Industry by Mandating Blackberry Usage

Fact: 24% of Buyers found the home they actually purchased on the internet last year.

Fact: 80% of consumers stick to the first agent who “responds” to them.

Fact: 23% of real estate agents have an email capable phone.

Fact: You can’t make sales to consumers you continue to ignore.

First, let’s just put your first objection to rest, shall we? Blackberries aren’t expensive. Shhh. Zzzt. Shtttt. Zip it! Any excuses that it “costs money” to get a Blackberry tells me that you just don’t belong in real estate. Is your business down? Cash flow a little slow? Well, so is business at cellular phone companies – that’s why most are virtually giving away Blackberries and other smartphones in the hopes that you’ll upgrade your plans and pay for some data services. Oh, well, then: doesn’t that mean that it is expensive to own a Blackberry, smarty-pants? No, dolt: You’re paying $99 a month now for too many talk-time minutes (you’re not using them phone prospecting buyers, are you?). When you get your Blackberry, you’re going to simply switch to a 50/50 plan: $50 worth of chatting and $50 for unlimited data and email. Same bill. Better business opportunity, though. Remember, Generation X prefers email and there’s no way Generation Y is going to pick up the phone to call you. No chance.

But you can check your email from your home computer. So why do you need to check it from your cell phone? Simple: You don’t do listing presentations or showings in your home office, do you? You don’t go on silly broker-caravan from your living room, do you? You don’t run delivering appraisal documents like a courier to your buyers from your kitchen, right? So your home computer – and office computer – is useless as “email” stations because salespeople shouldn’t be sitting in front of a computer. They should be out making sales – and they should have the “computer” with them.

And since you’re still whining about carrying around your “heavy laptop” because you bought the one with the super-large movie-player screen, not the ultra light sales person tool, you can’t possibly convince me that you’re going to check your email on your laptop. When was the last time you even took it to a listing or an open house? Right. Case closed. Get the Blackberry.

Did I mention that you can look up your listings on a Blackberry? No, not on MLS, but who cares about that outdated system anyway? You can surf the web on your Blackberry, so you can go to these websites – you might have heard of them – like REALTOR.COM or your company’s website (where you can get sold data, too) without any special software or security key or whatnot. And your Blackberry has instant messaging software built in – so you can coordinate with your office via IM and be available to your Gen Y buyers who (you guessed it) won’t be leaving you voice mail messages. Oh, and look here! Those newfangled Blackberries come with a camera in them! Time to get rid of the Polaroid, Marge! We can even take photos while we’re eating the donuts on broker-tour and maybe email them off to some of our buyers while we’re at it. Shucks! Makes you wonder how they think up all this stuff.