Though real estate agents serve under a broker, their day-to-day work - i.e., networking, generating leads, working with clients - is carried out independently. When you take on this role, you're not only working as an agent but as a one-person digital marketing team.
Your ability to earn a commission hinges on how well you adapt to the roles of content creator, marketer, sales representative, and adviser to your clients.
To thrive in the real estate industry long-term, you have to get really good at managing each of these roles simultaneously and tracking your growth year-over-year.
This is where using a dashboard works to your advantage.
A dashboard is a data hub that takes all of your important analytics and presents them in the form of graphs, tables, and charts. This allows you to keep the wide view - we're talking big picture growth - even as you work one-on-one with your clients in the here and now.
In this post, we're sharing five reasons why real estate agents stand to benefit from using dashboards. So if you've been on the fence about the best way to track data on sales, leads, etc., you might not be by the end of this article.
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#1. Dashboards are straightforward, comprehensive, and intuitive.
I know what you might be thinking: Spreadsheets have served you well in your career so far, so why make the jump now to dashboards? Well, a main reason is that dashboards give you a succinct and simplified version of your important data. Instead of sorting through spreadsheet after spreadsheet, you can review all of your KPIs and metrics in one place.
You can access up-to-date information anytime you need it, which comes in handy if you want to review your progress over the past quarter or year but don't want to dig up old spreadsheets.
While you could build your own dashboard in, say, Google Sheets, there's a steep learning curve if you don't already know the ins-and-outs of this process. And even if you do, there's the risk that human error will distort your numbers. That's where a service like InetSoft comes in.
InetSoft offers customizable dashboards and reports, which is to say that it can compile and structure your many different types of data in one dashboard.
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“Flexible product with great training and support. The product has been very useful for quickly creating dashboards and data views. Support and training has always been available to us and quick to respond.
- George R, Information Technology Specialist at Sonepar USA
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#2. You know exactly which channels generate the most new leads.
Lead generation is what keeps business on the up-and-up, especially in the world of real estate. To put yourself, your clients, and the properties you represent out in front of more people, you're likely managing multiple channels of communication (i.e., your social media, email, website, etc.).
With dashboards, you can track the traffic from these different channels and find out which channels are the most effective at attracting new leads.That way, if you want to see how many calls, emails, and messages you received from prospective clients each week, you can find out quickly.
You can then compare last week's numbers to this week's numbers to see if any significant changes have occurred. If you notice that one channel's engagement seems to be plateauing or declining, you can do some reverse engineering to figure out the potential causes.
#3. You can gauge the effectiveness of your marketing plan.
We all notice when there's an uptick in emails or calls from prospects. And we recognize when a work week has felt exceptionally slow or busy. It's one thing to notice these types of changes in engagement, and it's another to have the quantitative data to back it up.
Dashboards house different pools of data together, which gives you a big-picture view of how different parts of your marketing strategy are performing. These numbers show you in real-time whether your marketing plan is yielding the type of results you're looking for.
You can compare the engagement analytics from your real estate videos with your static images on Facebook. Or the open rates of email A versus email B. From there, you can make changes to your marketing strategy as you go — instead of at the end of the year when it's too late to go back and benefit from those changes.
#4. You can track short and long-term trends and progress.
What is the average amount of time the homes you represent spend on the market? How does your earnings from last fall compare to this spring? Are your seller concessions too high?
Whatever questions you may have about the effectiveness of your current approach, you can answer over time with data. And that is because data reveals trends. With dashboards, you're able to track short and long-term trends in lead generation, traffic, revenue, etc.
While a word bubble saying "This was good because you did this" or "This was bad because you did this" won't appear on your dashboard, you can make these inferences and connections with the data in front of you.
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#5. You can gather and analyze client feedback in one place.
Because dashboards are customizable, you can prioritize customer feedback data in your dashboard. Let's say you send a survey to each client after you close a deal, and they can rate their experience with you from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent).
The quantitative data you collect from your clients shows how they feel about you. This data essentially serves as a performance review by the people who are most qualified to give it.At the end of each quarter and/or year, you can examine the results and identify areas that need improvement and areas that are going strong.
By using a dashboard in this way, you prevent any of your own personal bias from compromising the results. Especially since you make your living by connecting with and working with other people, it's important to seek out this type of data on a regular basis. By using dashboards, all of the data you need to move business forward is organized, intuitive, and accessible.
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AUTHOR BIO
Mackenzie is a copywriter at Soundstripe, a music licensing company that provides filmmakers, creators, and advertisers with a range of royalty free background music options.