How much technology do you need to succeed in real estate?

In the early 1990s, Toshiba laptops had been around for a while, but PowerBooks® and ThinkPads® had just arrived on the scene.  At one of the early Inman Connect conferences, I heard a speaker boldly state “If you aren’t using a laptop to do real estate, you’ll be out of business in five years.”

Around the turn of the century when laptops broke the $2,000 barrier (about $3,000 in today’s dollars), agents started buying them and the “mobile office” was born; however, I don’t remember a lot of agents going out of business for want of a laptop.  Since that time many technology “innovations” have been heralded as the certain key to your success.

One of the takeaways from last week’s Arizona REALTORS® Spring Convention is that providing a superior customer experience is how you beat your competition, not the latest technology.  Technology is just a facilitator.

Speaker Nobu Hata, NAR’s Director of Member Engagement stated, “We don’t have a technology problem in this business. We have a people understanding technology problem in this business. Understand where it stops and where you pick up because you do a lot more work than technology can ever do.”

The Internet has not only given potential clients knowledge of what’s available for sale, but historical pricing data, detailed information about neighborhoods and information about you.  

Another speaker, Jeff Turner, President at RealSatisfied, told the group “There is this period of time now which didn’t exist before the internet where the consumer has the ability to know of you before they actually meet you.  This process of delivering exceptional customer experience begins a lot sooner than it ever did in the history of real estate.”

Join us in next week’s Arizona REALTORS® VOICE, where we’ll begin discussing two themes to help you answer the question How much technology do you need to succeed in real estate?

  1. Knowing when to move away from a favorite technology and explore something different
  2. Learning more about “the customer experience,” an established concept that is becoming widely discussed around the real estate industry

Watch for these articles to be posted in the Arizona REALTORS® Blog and featured in the VOICE.