Our company, Agent Shield, was Selected as a Finalist for ITFlorida’s Innovation and Entrepreneurialism Award

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Lu

We have some awesome news to share with everyone.  Agent Shield has been selected as a Finalist for ITFlorida’s "Innovation and Entrepreneurialism Award".  Our official press release is below.  Wish us luck!

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Estero, Florida – September 29, 2008 – Agent Shield, Inc. today announced it has been recognized as one of only four finalist statewide for the “Innovation and Entrepreneurialism Award” in the annual ITFlorida awards program.  The Fifth annual Awards Gala is designed to showcase the best technological achievement from across the state of Florida.  Other finalist in this category include: Aleriant, Citrix, and Scripps Florida.

“We are excited to be honored with this prestigious nomination.  The other companies in our category are all outstanding leaders in their respective industries and we are thrilled to be recognized along side of them”, said Jason Dolle, CEO of Agent Shield. 

Award winners will be announced at ITFlorida’s Gala dinner on October 6 in Orlando, Florida.  Speakers at the event include:  Sandy Baruah, Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA); U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson; Florida Senate President-Designate Jeff Atwater; State CIO David Taylor; Sen. Jeremy Ring; Dr. Dale Brill, director of Gov. Charlie Crist’s office of economic development; and Terry Tamminen, former Secretary of the California EPA.

About Agent Shield, Inc.
Agent Shield provides a patent pending Web 2.0 technology that empowers real estate agents to easily and effectively market new construction properties through the use of a development’s existing website.   The core of Agent Shield’s technology involves certifying a new development or builder website to enable real estate agents to safely use the developer / builder site as a marketing tool while protecting the integrity of their leads.  The technology acts as a go-between Developers & Agents at large to maximize each parties marketing efforts with little or no technological expertise necessary. Agent Shield was founded in 2007 and is based in Estero, Florida.  More information is available at www.AgentShield.com.


About ITFlorida
ITFlorida is a public private partnership organized to assist the state of Florida’s Congressional Delegation, The Governor, The Legislature and other public policy and economic development organizations. The ITFlorida board is comprised of elected and appointed Government officials and is supplemented with leadership from CEO-level officials at both small business levels and major corporations. The focuses of ITFlorida include education, information, advocacy, conferences, programs, and promotion of regional initiatives. ITFlorida encourages Florida based industries to be a part of the technological challenges of the future. More information is available at www.itflorida.com.

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Agent Direct News Article: Why Sell New Construction Now?

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Lu

We had an opportunity to meet and talk with Ginny Lee, Broker/Owner of America’s Best Real Estate.  She’s an amazing and super energetic lady.  Thank you for the great review and article about Agent Shield.  A reprint of the article is below.  Here’s a link to view the article on AgentDirectNews.com. 

Why Sell New Construction by Ginny Lee & Jason Dolle

I had the great pleasure of meeting the creators of www.agentshield.com who have created the best way to showcase new homes on your personal Realtor website and to make it easier for Realtors to sell new homes. They created a website that brings all the leads to the Realtor that signs up for Agent Shield and that agent retains all the leads so they can sell them the new home that the buyers are interested in. No more loosing the buyers if they walk in the new home sales center without you. You get the lead from your Agent Shield website, call the buyer and then register them with the new home sales office the buyer is interested in. You can even make money selling new homes that are not in your home town sometimes not even in the USA. Best of All it is FREE to all Realtors who sign up. Agent Shield™ can help you increase sales by quickly integrating a new development project that you may not have had the ability to effectively market in the past. Currently, as a real estate professional, you may be hesitant to link to any other outside websites, including any new construction sites for fear of losing valuable leads. With Agent Shield™, you can safely link to any site in the Agent Shield™ Network with confidence. When a user clicks on a link from your site to a development site, all the contact information on that site now becomes yours!  These are just a few of the benefits:

  • Link to new developments’ websites without fear of losing leads.
  • Increase sales by quickly adding rich new products to your site.
  • Never have outdated data about a development, thus increasing your credibility and customer satisfaction.
  • Maintain full control of your leads.
  • Stay on the edge of your market with automatic notices of any new developments or changes to existing ones.
  • Maximize your website’s effectiveness.

Below are some of the benefits of selling new homes:

  • Higher commissions – On average the typical split on an existing home sale leaves the agent with 3% commission on that sale. Typically, 3% is the minimum commission these days for a new construction sale. There are all sorts of financial incentives these days for selling new construction. Some developers are offering 3% when the contract is written with an additional 2% when the property closes. Others are offering a $25,000 bonus when the contract is firm. Still others offer vacations and even new cars for selling their product. These incentives are designed to grab your attention as realtors and to entice you to learn more about their development in hopes that it will be in the forefront of your mind when dealing with a potential buyer.
  • Stats on Realtors being in involved in new construction sales – Did you know that REALTORS account for over half all new construction sales nationally?  In many areas in Florida, that number can grow from 70%-90% of sale. Real estate agents as by far the biggest sales force a developer can pull from. Developers know this which is why they offer such great incentives since that money is only paid when results are produced.
  • Easier sales process – Another great aspect to selling new construction is that once a prospect makes the decision to buy, the in house sales team takes over and handles the whole process. The legal and contractual responsibility falls on the developer shoulders who then takes  your buyer through the buying process.
  • Newer product (warranties etc) – The definition of new construction is that it is new. Just like any other product people purchase, people love the idea of owning something new.  A never before lived in home falls into that same category and is a definite plus in buyer decision process. Also, in most cases, the builder provides a warranty on the home so, just like a car, if anything were to go wrong or isn’t up to par, the builder will fix for do charge. This again is a huge benefit and something a buyer of a resale just doesn’t receive.
  • Great deals for buyers (closing incentives) – Currently, there are some great perks that developers are offering buyers. Here are a few I have seen recently:  credits to upgrade home, free golf memberships, no community dues for a year.
  • Relationship building – Building relationships and networking are major parts of real estate. This is a great time to introduce yourself to developers locally and let them know you are interested learning more about that they have to offer. Not only is it good to know what products are available, but often times great realtor events that can be great to socializing and meeting others in the industry.
  • International and out of state sales (referral fees) – You don’t always have to look locally for developments to market. Agents sometimes fail understand that they may be living in an area that is a feeder market for another. A current buzz word example is the “half-backers”.  South Florida has become a huge feeder market for people deciding to buy property in the mountains of Georgia, Tennessee as well as North and South Carolina.

I personally love selling new homes because it is so easy and I know that my buyer gets all the benefits above plus a new home that no one has ever lived in before. I would say that at least half of my income comes from New Home Sales and this year as never before there are some great deals for buyers and incredible commissions and benefits for Realtors! Go to www.agentshield.com now to set up your own personal FREE New Home Website.

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Mandating of RETS – MLS Standardization

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Lu

There has been a discussion in the Inman forums about NAR mandating June 2009 of RETS. Please click here to view that post.

One of the services of our company is providing MLS/IDX solutions for Realtor’s and brokerages’ websites. We deal first hand with the data feeds. My opinion is from a software developer’s viewpoint.

Some of the comments talked about providing data to 3rd party companies. That boat has already left the dock and will never come back. The reality is that the listing data (with or without RETS) is already being provided to 3rd party companies.

Our subject at hand is the mandating of RETS and how that would effect Realtors. IMHO, there should be very little change in today’s landscape and business processes for Realtors. The listing data feeds are already out there. The biggest impact will be for 3rd party companies.

The current lack of a data standard creates a huge issue for 3rd party companies. Each board’s data feed contains a different data schema (if you’ve ever wonder why the information about your listing is wrong on your website, this is usually the main cause). Because we pull the listing data from multiple boards; what we get is a jumbled mess of listing data. Our system then has to sort through this mess and turn it into something useful. The mandating of RETS will make life much simpler for 3rd party companies. Instead of having to account for a thousand different data schemas we only have to account for one.

Mandating RETS will provide a lot of positive impact for Realtors. In my humble opinion, I don’t think the mandating of RETS will increase the Realtor’s cost (marketing dollars spent, keywords, etc) of doing business. In actually, it should lower the costs. Software companies can redirect the resources and personnel that was being used to manage and sort data feeds into R&D. I think there will be an acceleration of new tools and features for Realtors to benefit from.

I’m personally very excited about the mandating of RETS.

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Google Street View now available in Naples & Southwest Florida!

Posted on June 20, 2008 by Lu

For those of us who live in smaller markets; technology gets to us last.  That’s one of the things that I really miss about living in a big city.  Down in Naples, we are finally getting some of the fun stuff like fast wireless Internet (ATT Wireless’ 3G network) and now Google map’s Street View.  Street view is an awesome addition to Google Maps. 

SW Florida, being a vacation and 2nd home destination, many buyers and renters make their purchase/rental decisions sight unseen.  Before Street View, they may have a few photos to work off; now they can really explore the neighborhood and make more informed decisions. 

Specific address can be embedded and linked directly to Street View.  You can now better inform your prospects by adding Street View to your real estate listings.  Trulia.com has implemented in the listings on their website. 

The upside is that buyers will be able lower some anxiety by being able to view the neighborhood.  The downside is that i areas of high change (like Naples) the pictures can get outdated pretty quickly. I’m not sure how often Google comes back to update pictures … my guess is not too often. 

None the less, it’s really cool to see Street View to finally hit my area. 

Here’s an example of Street View:


View Larger Map

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Lessons from the iPhone

Posted on May 31, 2008 by Lu

I am a pretty hard core geek when it comes to gadgets and especially cell phones. For the past few years, I’ve been tooling with a few Windows Mobile phones. I’ve done everything (flashed, overclocked, ect) to them to push the limits of their usability and functionality.

Recently, I had an opportunity to buy an iPhone. I was a little reluctant considering the release of the new iPhone is a few weeks away.

Long story short, I’ve been using the iPhone for about a week now. I must admit, the phone does live up to it’s hype. I am surprisingly impressed. The hardware side is comparatively (to other high end phones) good but the impressive part is the thought that was given to the user experience.

1) Simplifying and keeping the user interface simple: When you interface with the native iPhone apps, everything that you do is limited to just a few options. It also only shows you options and buttons that apply to what you’re doing.

When you choose an option, the phone takes you down a specific path until you complete that task without introducing additional options. This keeps the user focused to complete their task at hand while being able to keep the interface clutter free.

2) Attention to details: Apple did a great job to think out every little detail and then going the extra mile to provide a solution. Take for example the soft keyboard. Coming from phones that had full hardware Qwerty keyboards, switching to a touchscreen keyboard was something that I thought I would not like. Although it takes a little getting use to, I actually type faster now. Check out the little video of the design of the keyboard to see the thought that was put into this.

We are in the process of designing the new version of the Agent Shield back end. The iPhone has really help, inspire and influence the design of the new back end. We are shooting to release it in the next couple of weeks. Enjoy the video.

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Apply the principles of crowdsourcing to accelerate the sales of new construction properties

Posted on May 8, 2008 by Lu

CrowdSourcingTo gain an edge in today’s overly competitive market, we have to think beyond the usual marketing avenues of the past. As Web 2.0 develops and evolve, it has created some new technologies and marketing principles that could be applied to the real estate market.

Crowdsourcing is leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web2.0 technologies to achieve business goals. Applying the principles of crowdsourcing can be a very powerful tool to accelerate the sales of new construction properties.

To illustrate. The best marketing tool of any new development project on the internet is it’s website. Developers spend a large investment time and money to create an amazing website/marketing tool. Currently, the website can only be used by a handful of people (usually the in-house sales team) as a marketing and sales tool.

Realtors will not send their clientele to the new development website. With the in-house sales team’s contact information on the website, there’s a huge potential for the Realtor to get cut out of the transaction. With only a few people using it, the website’s market penetration is very limited and thus the development’s exposure to buyers is limited.

Imagine what would happen if that new development’s website was provided to the 2 million+ Realtors in the US and the millions more around the world to use as a marketing and sales tool? It would exponentially accelerate the development’s exposure, reach and velocity of sales. Real estate agents are the crowd!

With the invention of Agent Shield’s Web 2.0 technology, the crowdsourcing principle can be applied to accelerate the sales of new construction properties.

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Where should we spend our marketing dollars?

Posted on April 30, 2008 by Lu

In a soft market where the volume and velocity of sales have slowed down significantly, a lot of companies/people are cutting back on their marketing. Right now is the time to do more marketing! If we focus on marketing now, we can captures more market share because there’s less competition. Although we have less dollars to spend on marketing, the key is to spend those dollars effectively and understanding (not guessing) how those dollars are producing (ROI).

In developing a marketing budget and strategy, there are a few things that we should do.

  1. Try new marketing avenues
  2. Focus on attracting internet buyers/online shoppers
  3. Track and quantify every effort/dollar (ROI)

Try New Marketing Avenues: If sales are sluggish and we are not receiving results; try something new! Using the same marketing avenues and efforts will produce the same results! We all understand this but for some reason, maybe because it’s comfortable, we continue the same marketing efforts but expect the results to be different. Get out of the usual routine.

Focus on attracting internet buyers/online shoppers: With 90% of real estate buyers already shop online for homes, we need to focus our marketing efforts to attract these online shoppers. We should allocate a larger percentage of our marketing efforts/budgets online.

In the real estate industry, online shoppers are our ideal clients/demographics (especially if we are looking to accelerate the velocity of our sales). Here are some interesting statistics (thanks to Dakno Marketing).

  • The average internet buyer spends an only 2.2 weeks working with the Realtor to find their home. The traditional buyer spends almost 6 weeks!

  • Internet Buyers only previewed an average of 6.65 homes while the Traditional Buyer previewed 21.7.

Buyers who use the web as an important part of their buying process are usually savvy and have already invested the time to educate themselves. We can spend less time educating and more time selling.

Track and quantify every effort/dollar (ROI): Unlike expensive traditional media (newspapers, magazines, billboards, painted busses, etc), online marketing is track able and quantitative. It’s tracked automatically (avoid the human error associated with asking “how did you hear about us”) so the data is accurate. Every online marketing effort (paid or free) is 100% track able. If set up correctly, we can use Google Analytics (which is a free service) to calculate our actual ROI. Understanding which marketing avenues and campaigns are effective is one of the most important factors of any marketing.

What online/marketing avenues have worked (or not worked) for you?

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Wooing Realtors … Realtors wooed! … now what?

Posted on April 24, 2008 by Lu

In today’s soft real estate market, developers are spending more time, money and resources to woo Realtors.  And rightfully so.  On a national average, according to NAR, Realtors account for 51% of new construction sales.  In some areas like South West Florida, realtors account for over 80% of the sales of new construction properties.  Developers want Realtors to expose their clientele to their new developments in search of a sale. 

Developers go through great lengths to woo Realtors with lavish parties, gifts and incentives.  I’ve seen multiple developers throwing excessive parties and events.  Others have given out  $150k+ private golf memberships.  The Realtors are wooed … now what?  How do Realtors promote these developments to their clientele?  Do they mail flyers about the developments to their prospects with their own contact information as the contact person?   Probably not.  Mailing are expensive and the Realtor may be cut out of the transaction.  Do Realtors send out a mass email to their database promoting the development?  Again,  probably not because they can be cut out of the transaction. 

Engaging the Realtor is the first step.  Providing them with an action item; something that they can tangibly do to promote the development while ensuring that they will be compensated for their efforts is needed to achieve a successful level of Realtor participation.  This action item needs to have two main components:

  1. It has to be easy, requiring minimal time and effort. 
  2. It has to ensure (provide a level of protection) that the Realtor will be compensated for their efforts.

Without a tangible action item to help the Realtor promote and sell,  the only thing that the developer is doing is throwing parties and giving away gifts. 

A developer once shared with me “We just spent $40k on this wine and cheese party.  At the end of the day, I don’t know which Realtors are interested in selling my development and which ones are here for the wine and cheese.”

A question for Realtors & developers. What action items, marketing tools and/or sales aids have developers provided to Realtors? Were they useful/successul?

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