Tools Every Real Estate Agent Should Consider
A detailed review of Real Estate Prospecting Tools that I have used or am currently using, and why I like them or discontinued use of them.
Vulcan 7 is probably the most premium dialer system out there. This is because of the lead services quality that they provide. redX or Mojo (other dialer systems) don’t even compete. You’re going to receive cell phone numbers. You’re going to receive numbers for brothers, sisters, relatives of the owner.
If they can’t get you the cell phone number of the owner, then they will get you the house number. If they can’t get that, they will go after someone who is related to that person. So, you could call and end up speaking to the brother of the owner, and then it becomes your job to get the owner’s information.With Vulcan 7, it’s pretty rare that you would receive a lead and be left with no way at all to get in touch with them.
Sidenote: Get Vulcan 7 here and take them up on their new 30 day challenge!
Vulcan 7 auto dialer is a great dialer. It’s a single line auto dialer. The system allows you to pull up quite a bit of information on each prospect as you are dialing. You can use the Zillow link or the Trulia link and pull up the home listing if it is on either of those sites. I love this because sometimes people will allow a listing to expire and then re-list it right away.
Other programs have no way of showing you whether you the number you are calling is for a home that has already been re-listed. The Zillow and Trulia buttons on Vulcan 7 allow you to quickly look and make sure that this house is not currently listed.
The database behind Vulcan 7 allows you to set multiple folders in which you can categorize call lists or pretty much categorize anything you want. I organize mine into several different categories including Hot Leads and Correct Phone Numbers. I have even designed a Future Call List.
Basically, I have categories for each month and then a subcategory for each week. So if I tell someone I’m going to call them in January near the end of the month, I will put them in my Week 3 folder of January, and when it gets to the third week of January next year I will have them ready to go, and I will know I need to call them.
Being able to organize all the leads is great because it allows you to focus on lead generating and not trying to figure out who is where and when.
Vulcan 7 is $297 a month with their annual plan, $314 per month on a 6 month plan and $349 if you choose to go month to month, making it one of the most expensive dialer setups. But when you consider the fact that you get the dialer PLUS the leads, it’s not a bad price. Not only that, but Vulcan 7 recently added GEO data to the package! Now you can use Vulcan 7 for expireds, FSBO and circle prospecting which has become all the rave during the current wild west market we’re in.
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Mojo Dialer and lead services is a great company. Mojo Dialer offers something that Vulcan 7 doesn’t: a triple line dialer option. This means you can be calling on three separate phone lines at one time from your single phone.
You call into the cloud-based service and you get to choose how many lines are dialing. I personally use a single line when I’m calling Expired’s or FSBO’s and I use a triple line dialer when I’m Circle Prospecting.
The leads for Mojo are on average pretty much the same thing you are going to get from the Red X or Arch agent, or any basic Expired or FSBO service. The dialer is really where Mojo shines.
The database behind Mojo is a very similar database to Vulcan 7. It just isn’t as pretty. It can be a little bit confusing at times but with a little bit of effort it’s definitely usable and well worth the money.
Mojo dialer alone with the database information runs about $150 a month for the triple line dialer, and then you can also buy leads from them if you choose. Mojo also integrates with Top Producer and a couple other programs which is a great benefit. You can even integrate it with Vulcan 7 if you want to use Vulcan 7 as your lead source and Mojo dialer as your dialer.
The RedX Dialer offers Expired leads, FSBO leads and Probate leads. I used the redX mostly when I was just starting. They provide a basic level of leads.
RedX is all cloud-based which is great. They used to have it setup to where you had to download redX on your computer and it would scrub everything when you told it to. Now that is cloud-based, you can access it on any of your computers.
The FSBO leads from redX are on par with other FSBO lead services. Most FSBO leads are coming from the same places and are equal in quality of leads. What you need to look for in a lead service is the size of the area that FSBO leads are being generated from.
The redX is a less-expensive service than most. They also offer a program called the “Storm Dialer.”
The Storm Dialer is a new dialer released by the same company that gives you the RedX leads. The Storm Dialer is a decent dialer, but in my opinion the information on it is subpar.
The dialer itself seems to do the job, but I only used it very briefly because I didn’t find it to have anywhere near the value of Mojo dialer or Vulcan 7 dialer. The database behind Storm Dialer is quite simple and can be built to suit you if you’re not doing a massive amount of prospecting.
Personally I would skip the Storm Dialer. I don’t think it’s where it needs to be in order to provide everything a prospecting real estate agent needs. That being said, if you love it go for it. The most important thing about prospecting is that you are in fact prospecting.
I’ve used Cole Realty Resource in the past and I think it’s a great service. I did have a couple issues here and there with getting phone numbers for different areas.
Sometimes I had a hard time finding the address I was hoping to use to get phone numbers surrounding the area of that address. I had to switch the address with a neighboring address or neighboring street, and eventually I was typically able to get it working and get the numbers for the area I was looking for. I do know they offer cell phone services. I don’t currently use that. I typically just use the standard house numbers and get about 30% pick up rate.
It’s not a huge deal because I’m usually using Mojo Dialer when I use Cole Resources, so I’ve got three lines going at once. Quite often one of those three is going to pick up and the other two go to voicemail, or may be bad numbers. It’s a great product. I definitely recommend using it.
I don’t know how it compares to the Mojo Neighborhood Search because I haven’t really used Mojo’s Neighborhood Search. It’s definitely a great product for what it is.
The Arch Agent setup is awful. I used it temporarily when I was first getting started before I knew more about the programs offered by other companies.
Arch Dialer is simple to use and extremely basic. You can dial numbers (obviously), but keeping track of them all is very difficult because the program does not do it for you. You literally have to write everything down.
The Arch Agent Dialer comes with a limited number of minutes. The last time I used them, you had to pay additional money each time you wanted to buy minutes. When you are prospecting for 3 hours a day, you run out of minutes in the first week. Very frustrating.
By the time I added up the cost of using it for 3 hours a day, 20 days per month, the total was as expensive as Vulcan 7 or Mojo! Which are both far better products!
The leads from Arch Agent are basically the same as RedX. Not great, but not terrible either. They work if you work them, but they are definitely not a premium lead source.
Landvoice is an interesting company. They recently came out with a quad line dialer. I personally am not a fan of the quad line dialer. In order to be prospecting legally, you have to maintain a certain number of calls connected to calls dropped ratio. By calling 4 lines, it is easier to exceed the maximum amount of calls dropped that you are allowed and you could be in for a hefty penalty.
Landvoice offers multiple services for their leads. You can get their standard leads, and you can also get their pro leads. I’m not a big fan of this. I don’t like the fact that a company is willing to sell you subpar leads OR pro leads. I feel as though if they were to sell everyone pro leads, maybe they could raise the cost of their subpar leads while lowering the cost of their pro leads and offer a better product.
I also didn’t care so much for the backend on Landvoice. However, I have heard they have been working on it and are improving it all the time.
Top Producer CRM, Market Snapshot, Five street etc. There are multiple products from Top Producer, but I don’t personally use the CRM. I do use Market Snapshot.
Market Snapshot a great tool for circle prospecting! It is awesome for adding another way to connect to the people that are in your database. I would highly recommend Market Snapshot. I think it’s a quick way to add a lot of value to the services you provide for your customers in the future and past.
Your current clients who are looking might not find as much value in Market Snapshot, because you will be providing them more detailed information from the MLS. Your previous clients, on the other hand, will LOVE getting an email once a month that lets them know what the market is doing.
I did use Top Producer CRM for a couple of months. Honestly, I wasn’t working my database the way I should have been, so I did not see the value in having CRM. Especially when Market Leader was provided by my brokerage.
But the thing I really was not crazy about with CRM was the contract. I called to try and cancel my account when I realized I was paying every month for this service I was not using. They wanted to charge me a fee for canceling. I was not happy with their customer service, especially because I had been planning on getting setup with multiple programs through them. I just wasn’t really excited about Top Producer CRM overall. I do feel Market Snapshot is definitely worth the money, though.
Market Leader is a great product. They offer websites and CRM. It is a basic product and as a Keller Williams agent, I get it for free, so I definitely use it.
They also have a pro version. After trying it out with the trial, I decided to stick with the standard version of Market Leader. I didn’t see a whole lot of added value in the pro version. Market Leader is similar to Top Producer. They offer similar options. I’m using Market Leader because it’s currently set up with my website and most of the programs that I am running through Keller Williams. The fact is, whichever CRM you go with, the important thing is that you actually use it.
Other Dialers and Services A lot of these products have been popping up over the past couple of years. If you’re like me, you can easily get distracted and bogged down with “New Shiny Object Syndrome.” So I’ve pretty much stuck with what I needed and what works. Feel free to let me know if you have used any of these and had a different experience with them than I have, or if you had better/worse results. And if you think there is a tool I should add to this list, let me know!