Back in 2012 we posted about our iPad mobile valuation tool but because of the recent drop in apple’s profits, we thought we’d review apple’s situation.
Apples profits were down compared to last quarters but what does this really mean? Is it a sign that apple products are becoming less popular, the iPad, the iPods and iPhones are losing their fascination? I think not. Even though profits were down, even apple themselves beat its own guidance and expectations than previously.
I myself have an iPad and I began to wonder in what circumstances their products can be used to make life easier, social media monitoring, planning, presenting, and communicating, the range of apple products covers a multitude of opportunities and operational performance.
But what makes apple so successful? Here I’ve picked out a few points which I think make apple unique and something I think all estate agents could learn from.
- An astounding customer service and in store experience- Regularly I see on my facebook feed friends posting about how they’ve dropped their iPhone, broken it and then gotten it immediately replaced when they’ve gone into the apple store and spoken with a ‘genius’ at their ‘Genius Bar’ to solve the issue. Certainly a memorable and enjoyable experience which was evidently worth sharing, word of mouth is one of the most powerful tools out there to gain repute in your market.
- Staying innovative, creative and competitive- Apple sets the industry standards and is somewhat ahead of its competition. Within the property market does that mean offering bespoke services, utilising social media to gain leads or to diversifying in the property market more towards lettings which has taken over in popularity.
- Stay on top of your game- Is it worth coming second best, apple have an ethos about them that they’ll only do something if they can do it better and be the best at their game. Why bother entering a market if you don’t aim to dominate and succeed? With anything that you do always remember to focus on achieving and beating your local competition, whether this is with your website, your software or your customer service, always go one step further.
Even dezrez are evangelists! I’m sat in work and I see several fellow colleagues with iPads whilst working at their desks, with desktop computers, assisting them in their daily professional lives.
Even within dezrez we’ve began to take advantage of their products, creating an iPad valuation tool to help estate agents and negotiators with their daily lives. It has several great pieces of functionality:
What does our iPad valuation tool do?
- Diarising your day-Simply synch your valuation tool in the morning with your PC and internet and download your complete diary for the day.
- Allows write up on valuations-Fully mobile which generates instant valuations. Great for pre-setting to demonstrate the value of a property to other clients. Useful for negotiations, between valuations, offers etc.
- Comparable to other properties valued previously on dezrez- Useful for when negotiating with customers. Identify benefits and drawbacks of each.
- Send valuations back to the office- Includes, write ups and images.
Have a look at our iPad valuation tool here.
Dezrezlegal are a busy firm of Conveyancers. Our teams have hundreds of live files vying for attention at any one time. It’s always been important to us as a business and as a group of colleagues to not lose sight of the people and lives behind each transaction. Over the years 1,000s of people have made it into their new homes as a result of a winning combination between my team and our referring estate agents.
This week we all had a look back at the clients who have stuck in our memory.
A few years ago a client sent a team a voucher & a very thoughtful card (it’s still on the windowsill). She’d given up the family home she’d spent a lifetime in in favour of a small flat so she could be nearer her sick husband to look after him. We managed to move her in time for his admittance into a home & her appreciation was obvious for being treated with care at an incredibly stressful time for both of them.
One client moved specifically to be nearer her elderly mother & her daughter so she could help look after the grand kids. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong with her chain but one member of staff took it as a personal challenge to get her in … She won.
We’ve had several heavily pregnant movers. I often wonder how sensible this decision is but I guess when that nesting drive kicks in it’s hard to shake. At times we’ve all panicked as to whether there will be a nativity style night at an inn but we haven’t had a homeless new-born yet and we have the thank-yous to prove it.
More recently the pressure to get kids into a chosen school has become a theme. Our two most recent candidates have had timescales of less than 4 weeks to get the applications in. We made it and both kids are happily enrolled at the school of their concerned parents’ choice. One Council even called us to let us know the application had been successful they felt we had gotten so involved.
When you instruct dezrezlegal you aren’t just a file number. Not everything always goes to plan but our staff invest in you and care about what happens … I’m determined to keep it that way!
My favourite story? A client who wouldn’t pay his management company fees because he felt they were responsible for bird homicide. We finally got him moved and now he’s happily setting up his own seagull sanctuary. We get all sorts and I bet you do too 
If you have any really nice stories (totally anonymous) that you’d like to contribute then please feel free to leave your stories in the comments section. How did you make someones day that much better?
Wish to talk to dezrezlegal about the services they offer further? Then don’t hesitate to contact their business development manager Colin Towersey on 07717441160 or email colin.towersey@dezrezlegal.co.uk
Data alone cannot be used effectively, however when it’s analysed this data can become extremely valuable. Not following? To put it simply, if you had every contact name in your local area with their preferences on how they like to be approached by estate agents then this data would be extremely valuable right? Even if you had the email address of all first time buyers in your area this data could be extremely powerful and used to generate new business and consequently increase revenues.
The point I’m making here is that as you as an estate agent become more intelligent with data capturing, you’ll be in a much stronger position to accurately market your product to the public.
Understanding customer’s needs and requirements through data collection may be a lengthy process but businesses aim to stay operating for a long time right? Data capturing should therefore become second to none as part of a daily process within your business.
Another thing to consider as an estate agent or business is what data would you like to capture and collect? It would be no use to you as an estate agent knowing the shoe sizes of everyone in the village unless you were to sell shoes to your clients or run a promotion on ‘who’s the fastest agent in the west’. Useful data to capture for an estate agent could include, house budgets (how much are they willing to spend), property location, contact details, requirements as a customer and so on. This ultimately will allow you to offer a more bespoke service to the customer
Where does dezrez fit into this?
A recent development in our software now allows our clients, you as estate agents to pick certain data fields you’d like to capture and make compulsory within a contact card. There are several reasons why this can be useful for you as agents:
- Capture important data for future use in marketing and customer care/ service.
- Allows for more targeted and specific marketing in the future.
- Data which is useful for analysis in the future.
- Ensure staff understand their customers better by identifying the crucial pieces of information required.
- The data provides a better picture of your target market and local region. Giving you a deeper understanding of your customer needs.
So what are you waiting for? Make the most of your software by giving us a call and talking to us about customisable fields. 0845 465 22 22.
What is your position within dezrez ?
I’m responsible for the marketing of dezrez!
Do you have any New Year’s Resolutions?
To get back in the gym, cut down on beer and chocolate and to also start working with another Sported. Project.
How long have you been with dezrez for?
Not long, just a couple of weeks and it’s been a big learning curve. Meeting loads of new people, learning the company’s processes inside out, it has been a lot to take in!
A short background about yourself
I was born and bred in Somerset. I took a gap year before university where I worked two jobs, a builder and a barman to save money for university so that I could enjoy it more. Studied Accounting & Management at University, Iwas lucky enough to work in Phoenix, Arizona during my first summer at University doing door to door sales. Graduated in 2011 where I worked a few temp jobs and then did an internship in January based in Dublin with Special Olympics Ireland as marketing assistant; my first real experience of marketing in a business environment. I then moved to Swansea in March 2012 where I began working for inngot based in Technium 1 for 7 months to then move here.
Funniest moment in dezrez
Probably mistaking the brand bible for something completely different. I haven’t been here that long so I’m sure there’s more to come.
Favourite Film?
Most likely City of God or any of the Lord of the Rings.
What sports teams do you support?
England Obviously, but also Bath rugby as that’s my local professional club. I also play for Dunvant RFC so I support them.
What CDs do you keep in your car, favourite music/ bands/ artists
Don’t have a car but my favourite artist is Damien Rice, mostly into rock though, so Rise Against as well.
Favourite food
Pizza!! Or Chocolate cake
Most embarrassing moment
I accidentally introduced myself as ‘Hi my names Somerset and I’m from Sabas…” during one of my first seminars at University. Needless to say I was then known as Somerset…
Achievements
I’ve completed a half marathon. Organised and participated in a couple of 100 mile charity walks along the south-west coastal path for meningitis UK.
What dezrez product would you recommend and why? Including additional features and add ons
I really like the dezrez valuation tool, its free and has many benefits for both the agent and customer. You can view all previous valuations, useful for negotiations and carry out valuations on the move, useful for that being individual who doesn’t like being a desk junky!
As you may already well know we have one click integrated tenant referencing for estate agents. Our relationship with Van Mildert means that tenant referencing has never been easier for our clients and saves a huge amount of time allowing our agents to really focus on the things that really matter. Estate agents need not bog themselves down with the ad-hoc administration that comes with different jobs in their daily lives, we understand this and try to make their day as easy and paper free as possible.
If you didn’t know we have this service available to current dezrez users you’ll be happy to know that you can even get a week’s FREE trial, simply give us a call on 0845 465 22 22 and inquire about our tenant referencing service provided by Van Mildert.
Along with the release of DezrezPM, our property management software, we’re looking to integrate our tenant referencing with this, making it even easier than before, ultimately offering an all in one service for our end users. One of our DezrezPM mantras, right time right place explains how we’re trying to integrate all services that an agent will need into the software. So if you’re entering a new tenant and they will need a tenant reference carried out the Van Mildert button will be conveniently placed to make the process easier.
Our update to dezrezPM will soon allow agents to post all tenant and guarantor details to Van Mildert (previously just tenants). Additionally we are looking to now also be able to receive data back from Van Mildert filling in the appropriate data against the tenants making life easier for the agency.
So what are you waiting for? Give us a call and register your interest with DezrezPM or our integrated tenant referencing process.
Feel free to give us some feedback or ask a question, email me on sabastian.dyer@dezrez.com
We’ve had a photo-shoot!
Why you ask? Here at dezrez we like to archive the history of our company and that includes our staff. We also think it’s nice for our customers to meet our staff members, dezrez are more than just a company and we like to show that. We thought it would be fun to get a photographer in, let them get snap happy and see what they come up with. We provided a few different props to add a bit of character to the photos and definitely made the photo-shoot more entertaining for all.
We took two types of photos, the first being a smart, professional friendly shot along with a more funny photo which included a few props to add character and more creativity to the photo (see below for props used in our photo shoot.)
Because the photo-shoot has only just taken place, you’ll have to wait a little while until you see the finished images. Stay tuned for more updates and pictures of our staff members
Fancy reading about our staff members?
Meet Ross Liddell – Operations Manager
Meet Matt Davies- Support Manager
Meet Laura Liddell – Operations Manager of dezrezlegal
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The setup for the photographer.
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A groucho mask as a prop for our staff members.
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Our other prop, a fez hat to add a bit of variety.
With the anniversary of 40 years since the first mobile phone call was made, it got me thinking how estate agency and property management software systems have changed since I started selling them back in 1996.
At that time there were just a handful of software providers selling on the whole pretty rudimentary packages that just about held a database of applicants and properties, carried out some basic matching and perhaps linked with MSWord to produce sales particulars. DOS and Windows95 were the order of the day. The internet was just about taking off albeit with dial up connections at 56bps! Rightmove, pahh.. not invented yet!
Demonstrating to potential customers involved cranking up a very basic laptop and connecting it to a 17’ CRT monitor and portable printer which I had to lug all round the country! It was all about printing out brochures and property lists, instantly. One mention of the internet and you had comments thrown back at you like “that will never take off, not for property anyway”!
During the intervening years, we have seen; floor plans, virtual tours – come and go!, twitter, QR codes, MMS messaging – come and go!, audio tours, Facebook, thin client, cloud computing and so on…how it has evolved and how technology has been embraced. True, some agents have hidden behind their software but for the most part it has enriched the quality of service and presentation delivered by the majority.
But what’s next? I am no clairvoyant and I do this job because I just love all the new stuff but what do you think is ‘the next big thing’ or more importantly what would you like your technology to do for you? Clean answers only!
[Latest upgrade goes live at dezrez towers!]
Me, for one, the next couple of years with dezrez are going to be so very exciting mainly because I do know some of the clever technology on the way.. you lot will just have to wait .
Nick Silverstone
Head of Sales
@dezreznick
2013 is all about online …with 90% of all internet traffic set to become video
Video marketing is beginning to take off and with the popularity of ‘going digital’ forever increasing the question begs to differ, is 2013 the year of the video? Have a read and we’ll let you decide….
Standing out online is essential for any business and in particular the challenges the competitive property market face require maximum impact at low cost. Marketing online demands a totally integrated solution, a picture paints a thousand words …or in the digital world… online video is five times more effective than the written word.
Audioagent has revolutionised the estate agency market with its TV style audiotour product, combining stunning photography and professional voiceover with video like moving images. It has become an integral part of corporate and independent estate agencies across the UK successfully increase listings, market share, revenue and reducing market withdrawals.
A cost effective marketing and sales tool, an audiotour is a valuable way to engage with your audience, recent research conducted by Nethouseprices.com verified homes sell faster with an audioagent audiotour as part of a comprehensive market package*.
Audioagent audiotour properties sold (stc) on average in 12 weeks compared to a 34 week average for non-audiotour properties as part of a comprehensive marketing package.*
Click to see the audioagent PDF
A constant innovator, audioagent has successfully changed the industry view on asking for upfront marketing fees, transforming both independent and corporate estate agency marketing solutions.
In just over a minute an audioagent audiotour not highlights the key selling points of a property, it showcases your brand and increase click through rates by up to 60%. Audiotours are easily accessible through a host of devices, so getting social and sharing has never been simpler for consumers.
Online marketing is a must in today’s digital age and audiotours are a ‘must have’ stand out product for every agent!
Footnotes:
*audioagent audiotours help homes sell faster as part of a comprehensive marketing package, based on independent research conducted by Nethouseprices.com and verified by audioagent, using a cross section of different house types and styles, between 1 to 5 bedrooms and ranging in price from £40,000 to £450,000 across England, Scotland and Wales.
Research is based on a sample of 250 audiotour properties sold (stc) during the period of March 2010 – August 2012, compared against 250 comparable non-audiotour properties in terms of exactly same number of bedrooms, style (i.e. bungalow), type (i.e. detached), postcode incode and sold (stc) within a closely defined matching price and time period.
Are you tracking your KPI’s? Here at dezrez we track our KPI’s daily, weekly and monthly. KPI’s are those metrics that we deem the most important to give us an “at the fingertips” view of how our business is performing at different levels. Whether it is call answer times, hold times, the number of support calls we receive and on which areas of the product. These KPI’s help us focus resource and provide the best customers with the best service.
More long term we look at our new business, where it’s coming from, how clients find us and how well we retain our existing clients. Are you doing the same for your agency? It always surprises me the number of manager and owner level agents that don’t invest time in creating a dashboard of reports to help them manage their staff and understand where they are.
Do you know where your vendors come from? How effective is your portal spend? How much business did you get from your last advertising campaign? How many people walk off the street these days? Who’s the most effective staff member, and how much activity is being carried out by that individual? How many vendor reports are being sent out? You might have an idea but do you know? And do you compare them month on month?
There are a range of metrics that you can report on within Dezrez. Our reporting functionality is very strong. Why not let us help you with your KPI’s. Our account managers would love to help.
What is your position within dezrez?
Operations Manager for Dezrezlegal
Do you have any New Year’s Resolutions?
I always make them and never keep them. This years were to take up a hobby outside of work (fail so far) and the obvious get healthy (I’ve been to the gym 3 times in 3 months).
How long have you been with dezrez for?
Nearly 7 years
A short background about yourself
I finished uni with a 2:1 history degree and decided I’d like to be a teacher. Having started teacher training I felt that I didn’t have enough life experience to teach these kids anything useful so went to looking for something else. I started working for Dezrez as a referral assistant, managing a small group of estate agents to use the conveyancing service and generating estimates for the clients that they sent through. I have never looked back. Over the years I’ve gotten stuck into lots of exciting stuff, met my husband, made loads of great friends, and worked my way up professionally. I now report directly to the MD and manage the sales team for the Dezrez in-house conveyancing service as well as implementing improved working practices and business solutions in the legal team with my friend and colleague Laura Burkinshaw.
Funniest moment in dezrez
I’ve been lucky enough to make many very good friends at Dezrez over the years and so I have quite a few funny moments. Darren Michael from Web being told off by building management for walking around in his socks amused me. Matthew Dendle dressing up as a giant phallus for the Christmas party a few years ago (possibly the funniest person I know). Ross Liddell putting a sketch together to document ‘milkgate’ was worthy of an Oscar – don’t ask.
Favourite Film?
Probably Napoleon Dynamite (He’s Just Not That Into You and Dirty Dancing are the guilty pleasures – don’t judge)
What sports teams do you support?
I’m not a big sports fan. I like to watch the rugby internationals but that’s about it.
What CDs do you keep in your car?Favourite musics/ bands/ artists
I’ve ruined a good few songs by sticking them on repeat play. I tend to be obsessive about the odd dance song – Florence and the machine, Swedish House Mafia. Cold Play or Mumford and Sons for a bit of easy listening. I’m also a sucker for a bit of good quality 80’s Sting and the Police, U2, Ah Ha, Queen.
Favourite food
I love food. It’s like a hobby for me and luckily (maybe not for the waistline and our wallets) my husband is the same. I love sushi, thai, and good old fashioned fish and chips. When it’s cold I want spag bol with garlic bread, and when it’s warm I hanker after a nice piece of tuna steak on a salad.
Most embarrassing moment
I’ve had loads! Falling asleep in the back of the works car on a long trip and the MD taking a picture of me dribbling. Or maybe panic winking at a member of support as I was walking out of the office, starting a lot of office gossip and increasing the size of his ego simultaneous (luckily he left shortly afterwards-hope it wasn’t my fault ).
Achievements
I’ve had many over the years. Getting married to Ross Liddell (Dezrez Operations Manager) is a high, as is making some long lasting friends and getting involved with the company as a whole. Work based achievements include getting Dezrezlegal off the ground and hitting our first 100 completions in a month. Lots of hard work has been put in over the years but it continues to go from strength to strength, I take great pride in being part of building such a great team and taking them along with us.
What dezrez product would you recommend and why?
Including additional features and add ons Mine of course! Dezrezlegal is an in-house conveyancing solution that is integrated into the Dezrez software making it a unique solution for our users. We pay the introducer a commission and we pride ourselves on you being able to get through to a human being every time you call.
