Book Review: Stephen C. Lundin, FISH!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results (2000).

Posted on July 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

Stephen Lundin’s Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results quickly became a revered text in modern management styles after its publication a decade ago, particularly well-known for its promotion of “fun” in the workplace to motivate employees.  There’s actually a lot more in the book, though, than just its “fun”-orientation, particularly in its zen-like endorsement of “choose your attitude” and “being present” in the moment.

The lessons imparted in Fish are very simple and provocatively empowering.  The authors assert that employees in the workplace have the power to change their own attitudes about their work, creating a positive environment that will not only be more productive but happier in their lives.

Clearly, these are not novel ideas, but what gives them power is that Fish! uses as an example of this management technique the Pike Place fish market in Seattle, which is known for its lively fishmongers tossing fish to and fro.  The idea is that if these workers, who have very difficult jobs that are not particularly lucrative, can maintain an amazingly motivated attitude about their work, then so can anyone.

The four elements of the Fish! philosophy break down as follows:

1.  Choose your attitude

This is probably the simplest and yet most powerful of the ideas generated in the book.  As the authors state: “there is always a choice about the way you do your work, even if there is not a choice about the work itself.”  Workers choose the attitudes they bring to work: they’re either going to be miserable, or they’re going to be motivated.  If they choose to be motivated, and get in the habit of making that choice, they will be happier and more productive.  If you have to be at work, why not be great at it rather than ordinary?

2.  Play

The second, and more celebrated, element of the Fish! philosophy is to incorporate “play” into the workplace.  The idea is that you can be serious about your business and still have fun with the way you conduct business.  It shows that you’re not taking yourself so seriously, and that you understand the importance of good humor even in stressful situations.  The benefits of play are as follows: happy people treat each other well, fun leads to creativity, the time passes quickly, having a good time is healthy, and work becomes a reward and not just a way to rewards.

3.  Make their day

This is the core service concept of the Fish! philosophy: approach customer service with the goal that you’re going to make someone’s day.  Go out of your way to give someone a memorable experience working with you.

4.  Be present

The Fish! philosophy also incorporates an element of Zen-like attention to being present in the moment.  The authors point out that people in service professions tend to “zone out” in their work.  Because they’re so unhappy, just clock-watching and waiting for their shift to end, they don’t really pay attention to their clients or customers.  They’re not fully engaged in their work.  In the Fish! philosophy, you need to concentrate on being present in the moment, and being focused on the needs of your client.

Takeaways

This is a great book, and one that every successful real estate agent should read.  The simplest advice I’ve ever heard about maintaining a positive approach to business is this: “choose your attitude.” That’s it.  You have control over the attitude you bring to work every day.  If you choose to be positive, you’ll find that it becomes easier every day to become the kind of professional, and person, that you want to be.

Really, all four lessons from Fish! are worth remembering, including everything that Lundin has to say about great customer service.  This is a must read.

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Book Review: Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It

Posted on July 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

The E-Myth books are highly recommended by a lot of other business authors, and by a number of business people I have met. I found The E-Myth Revisited to be very flabby – lots of good insights throughout, but woven around a series of stories and staccato imprecations that made the book a tougher read than it should be.

Gerber’s “e-myth” is about small businesses: the myth that people who start small businesses do so for an entrepreneurial impulse, whereas he proposes that most people start small businesses because they love what they do and want to do it for themselves. The problem, according to Gerber, is that people who love, say, baking, make great bakers but poor businesspeople. To be successful in business, you have to love running a business, not baking pies. I did like this point, which I’ve paraphrased: The purpose of going into business is not to do a job, but to free yourself up to create jobs for other people — if you’re the main person working in your small business, then you don’t have a business, you have a job, and your boss is a lunatic. I thought that was well stated.

Gerber’s main passion, though, is about establishing a “prototype” for a business, such as a franchise model, which organizes and establishes the systems under which the business will run. The point is that a franchise prototype or model sets up the systems that if operated correctly will help a business succeed, avoiding the “reinventing the wheel” phenomenon inherent in running small businesses.
The core argument is that businesses succeed when we set up thorough, tested systems to run them according to a blueprint designed for efficiency, automaticity, and order. Gerber makes a great point that you want to build a system-oriented business, not a people-oriented business, so that your system leverages the abilities of the people you have rather than requires you to hire more extraordinary people. It’s easier, cheaper, and more efficient to build one model and hire 100 ordinary people than build a bad model and hire 100 extraordinary ones. He also points out that a good business has to have a documented operations manual that sets out the blueprint.

Gerber also sets out fundamental advice for business:

  • Innovate by testing new strategies for increasing efficiency or sales.
  • Quantify everything. Track all your numbers, so you know what works and what doesn’t work.
  • Orchestrate a system which eliminates choice – i.e., it eliminates opportunities for decisions to be made that are inconsistent with the master blueprint.

This was the best part of the book, and the salient theme of the book: work on your business, not in your business, and set up a prototype (operations manual) that automatically runs your business to avoid becoming too reliant on yourself or personalities.

Takeaway

One of my main passions is customer service systems, the idea that a customer experience can be consistently maintained by creating systems that automate client service. I read this book years ago, and went back to re-read it for this review, and was surprised at how much Gerber’s argument about a “prototype” had seeped into my subconscious as I built my own personal philosophy about building a great business. I can’t necessarily recommend the whole book, but the Part II section on creating that prototype is a brilliant articulation of how to build a sustainable enterprise.

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Business and Financial Book Reviews Coming

Posted on July 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

Over the next week, we’ll be publishing a series of book reviews for classic business books that I’ve read over the past ten years. Essentially, when I read them I took notes for my own use of the books’ salient points, and thought that it might be helpful to pull together those notes into a “review” that is largely a synopsis of the best lessons from those books. I thought it might be helpful for agents who might have read them, as a quick refresher, and for agents who might have only heard of them and might like a quick overview that might tempt them to get the books themselves.

Most of the books are about management and motivation, which is always on point for real estate professionals. A few are about financial management, which is something I was interested in learning about a few years ago and which might be useful to more than a few agents I know….

Hope you enjoy them. We’ll be publishing one a day for about a week or so.

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Why Most Real Estate Agents Fail

Posted on June 12, 2011 | 5 Comments

According to the National Association of Realtors 2009 Member Profile, the average real estate sales associate in 2009 made about $27,000.  That’s the average, meaning that for every top producer putting $200,000 or $300,000 in his or her pocket, there are a dozen agents making basically minimum wage.  Put it this way: a receptionist in an office can make about $30,000 to 35,000 a year, which is more than most of the agents in that office probably make.

This is just an astounding, tragic statistic, one that most people in the industry just blithely accept in a commissioned sales environment.  Yes, it includes a lot of part-time agents, or agents who are new to the business, but that’s not really the reason that most agents make what is essentially a minimum wage.

So what’s the real reason?  If I ask a group of agents why, they’ll say that most agents don’t do enough lead generation.  Some will say, of course, that their brokers don’t do enough lead generation, like Shelley Levene in Glengarry Glen Ross complaining that he never gets “the good leads.”  But no matter how you slice it, it always comes back to sales opportunities: agents would sell more houses if they had better leads.

That’s just nonsense. The problem with our industry isn’t the leads — we have plenty of leads. NAR says that 5 million homes are going to be sold this year.  (Of course, NAR also has about a million members, so do the math).

Here’s the reason: most agents aren’t very good at their jobs.  It’s as simple as that. If you’re a doctor, and you don’t have any clients, it’s not a matter of not having enough sick people. If you’re a lawyer, sitting around all day waiting for phone to ring, it’s not because people stopped having legal problems. It means you’re not very good at your job.

That’s the sad truth, but it’s not the agent’s fault.  It’s the industry’s, which has never focused training on core competencies, instead allowing licensing classes to devolve into long discourses on “fee simple absolutes,” coaching courses to be dominated by prospecting methology, and ongoing education to be dedicated to ethics, compliance, and the hot topic of the month (the eight hundred or so short sale certifications that are now out there).

And the problem certainly is not that we don’t do enough as an industry to teach agents how to generate leads — indeed, virtually the entire sales training apparatus in the industry is about lead generation, whether it be through prospecting or sphere development or marketing online or whatever.

No, the problem is competency. Agents who are good at their jobs sell a lot of houses, just like doctors who are good at their jobs develop thriving practices. Show me a group of top performing agents, and I’ll show you a group of people I’d probably be willing to list my home with.  They’re probably agents who have basic sales skills, of course, but I bet that they also know how to take care of clients, how to do their jobs.

Think about how ludicrous it is that the industry spends so little time teaching competency, instead focusing on prospecting or ethics compliance.  The industry spends all its time teaching agents how to prospect on the sales coaching side, then spends the rest of its time on the NAR side scaring everyone about ethics and compliance.  No one teaches basic competency: learning skills that actually matter in the field, and learning how to deliver an amazing client experience.

One reason, of course, is that NAR itself is an organization largely staffed by people that don’t sell a lot of houses — all those nattering busybodies filling our local boards who themselves sell three houses a year and therefore have the time to devote to going to a lot of meetings to debate policies over coffee.  Look at a local NAR board, and add up all the transactions closed in 2010 by all the members put together, and I’ll bet in most cases there are 50 agents in the local region who sell more homes than the entire group. Go ahead, prove me wrong, send me your local board members and their 2010 production. There might be exceptions, but I’m betting that I’m right about the rule.

Listen, my point is not to denigrate our profession. I love real estate agents, even the ones that for some unholy reason don’t work with my company.  But we all know that this profession has to become better at servicing the needs of clients, and it starts with each individual real estate agent.  It should be shocking — and bracing — to hear that most real estate agents don’t make as much as the receptionists.  The question is what do you do next?  Do you keep doing the same old things that don’t work for you, or do you start building new skills, following new systems, and taking a new approach to your business.

What do we do about it? If you’re an agent, take a client-oriented approach to your business.  Stop working on lead generation, unless your lead generation activities are actually providing a service to your clients. Work on your own client service skills.  Learn how to do a better job for your clients.  If you build up those skills, the deals will come.

How do you get there?

If you need to do something RIGHT NOW to get you started in the right direction, take these three simple steps:

  1. Take a look at each of your listings, and make sure that all the details are correct, the descriptions are correct, and the pictures are high quality and in high-resolution.  If not, you have work to do.
  2. Call every one of your buyers, whether they are active or not, and touch base with them.  Find out if they need you.
  3. Do a new CMA for every one of your sellers, unless the listing is less than a month old, and send it to them.  Set a date to meet with them to review the results of your marketing plan, review the pricing environment, and decide whether you need new pictures and a new description.

And if you want to start building your knowledge and skills, keep tuned to this blog.  We’ll be publishing a lot of information and advice about how to build your skill base and take a client-oriented approach to your business.  If you want to catch up, read up on some of the back posts, which will tell you where I’m coming from.

The fact that you want to become better is the most important thing to keep in mind right now. If you want to succeed at this business, and are willing to do the things that will help you succeed, you will.

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Reviewing the iPad Apps from Realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow: The New Home Search Paradigm

Posted on May 23, 2011 | 1 Comment

I love my iPad. Seriously. I find myself curling up in bed with it, with no particular idea of what I’m going to do with it other than that I want to play with it. I read my books on it, surf the web, read blogs, and I’ve even started reading comic books again because they look so cool on the display.

But what I’ve been doing recently is looking at real estate. Not just because I’m a broker, but because, like a lot of people, I just like looking at real estate.  When I started using the iPad2 for home search, I used the Zillow app because it was the only one available, then tried out to Trulia when that came out, and immediately test drove Realtor.com’s app when I saw Brian Boero’s post that it had finally been released.

Having used an iPad2 to look for a home, using all the major iPad apps, I can tell you that tablets are the future of real estate search. It’s really a new search paradigm, built from the Godlike perspective of looking down on an area and seeing what’s available on a big map, rather than setting up a set of criteria and reviewing a list of responsive properties.  Right now, most people start a home search online by building up — identifying what they want (location, price, bedrooms, bathrooms), generating a list, and then reviewing the list.  On a tablet, you don’t build up, you narrow down — you start by looking at a map and seeing every property for sale on that map screen, then you winnow it down by putting in restrictive criteria.  The tablet flip the search experience from a building to a narrowing process, and that is bound to change the kinds of homes that buyers end up becoming interested in.

Moreover, tablets provide a gamechanging experience for most consumers through GPS search, something that most consumers never had on their laptop.  My wife and I drove through the New Jersey shore with an iPad2 in her lap, using Realtor.com’s app to constantly refresh homes for sale that met our basic price and size criteria.  We did drive bys of about 25 properties, something that would have been impossible to set up using more traditional real estate sites.

Finally, the iPad experience is much more immersive than a laptop or computer.  It’s just seductive, almost addictive, to poke, prod, and swipe the screen looking at properties on the big map.

Having spent so much time playing on them, I thought I’d put together a review of the Realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow apps (the only other major company with a search app is Coldwell Banker, but as of now it only has CB listings on it, which is pretty limited to most buyers who don’t say to themselves, “I really just want a Coldwell Banker listing”).

I broke down the reviews like so:

  • Overall Impressions
  • Main Display
  • Property Details
  • Search Experience
  • Other stuff I liked and didn’t like.

To test the apps, I not only had my experience searching for shore properties, but also looked at properties in my market area. I didn’t find a major difference in the inventory, although I didn’t really look that hard at the issue.

Overall

Overall, I will say that I liked all the apps.  They all provide truly immersive experiences, to the point that just looking at random real estate is one of my favorite things to do on the iPad.  The extent to which I’ve elaborated on differences is a little bit of hair splitting, because any one of them would be great for most home buyers looking for a home.

In my experience, though, I found myself liking and using Realtor.com the most. Realtor.com has the ugliest main display, and I don’t understand why they are still using those thumb-tacks on the map to display properties when a house icon indicating price is so much more effective. But the drawing tool in the search function is a game-changer, and so far only Realtor.com has it.  I thought Trulia provided a terrific experience, but the lack of saving features kept it from being a contended. And I was a little disappointed in Zillow, which had the best overall display but was too heavily about Zillowish stuff (i.e. Zestimates and agent advertising) and not enough about what the client actually wants in a search app.

 

Main Display

All three sites follow the same basic format, with the main display a map that shows properties for sale and a list along one side of the screen with more details about the the listings. All three allow you to view the map either as a street view (like a map) or a satellite-hybrid view (a Google Earth photo view with streets superimposed on it).

I thought that Zillow’s layout was terrific, very clean and easy to follow, with more space given over to the listing details rather than the map. That allowed for larger pictures and important information like property address to be included in the list of properties.

Trulia’s display was laid out the same way, but less space was given for the actual property details, including not providing the property address in the list unless you click on the property. That’s a pretty serious omission. The pictures were also significantly smaller, making the list view less helpful.

Realtor.com’s list view provided address information along with other pertinent sales information, but its pictures were even smaller than Trulia. I also didn’t like that Realtor.com’s default view of the map showed the listings as virtual “thumbtacks” without displaying prices. The other sites show the listings as tiny houses showing the price of the home, which is much more helpful. (You can see the tiny houses with prices on Realtor.com in the “scout” view, but I don’t know why that’s necessary). I did, though, like that Realtor.com allowed for a “gallery” view if you want to see the properties laid out for you rather than see them displayed on the map.

The Winner: Zillow

This was a close call.  All the displays are inviting and intuitive, but I thought Zillow found the best balance between space given over to the map and detailed information on the property displays.

Property Details

Although the main display of the apps are similar, the way they display actual property details is very different. In Trulia and Realtor.com, clicking on an individual property takes you to a new “property display” that shows the pictures of the property and all the details in a tabbed format. But Zillow works entirely through the list view along the right hand side of the screen, so if you click on a particular property the list view disappears, replaced by the property view. You then scroll through the details from top to bottom.

The Winner: Realtor.com

Realtor.com has the best property display, hands-down. When you click on a property, you default to an “overview” that has the property description, listing date, and the broker information along with a reasonably-sized picture. Realtor.com also gives you a large section (probably too large, frankly) to take notes, give a rating, or send the listing and a separate details tab to look at a bunch of jumbled details about the property (I wish it were organized better, and highlight the more important areas of taxes better). Most importantly, Realtor.com allows you to save the listing, which is crucial during a home search and is something that Trulia does not have yet (but promises at some point).

Trulia has the prettiest display, making the pictures more prominent than Realtor.com, and it has a great section on Tax and Price History that Realtor.com should add. But it is missing some really important property details that are included in Realtor.com. Most importantly, the inability to save a listing makes the app a nice way to surf around, but unusable for a prolonged property search. They indicate they’re working on that.

I really did not like Zillow’s property display. They limit you to looking at the property in the narrow bar that normally contains the property list view. That’s okay, since you can scroll down to get details rather than touch on different tabs. And you can save favorites, which is so important. But some property details were missing, and the setup was a little awkward when looking at individual properties. You use the same motion to swipe through photos as swipe through properties, and the display is narrow, so people like me with fat fingers are likely to accidentally swipe out a property when they’re just trying to swipe through pictures. Also, Zillow’s silly Zestimate functions are too prominent. Zillow’s “zestimates,” particularly the “Rent Zestimate,” might as well be a random number generator for all of their accuracy.  They’re a waste of valuable real estate (ummm, forgive the pun) on the app.

Search Experience

All three apps need some work refining the search experience, at least in my opinion. They all want you to search on the map, to the detriment of traditional searches based on parameters like town location that are often important to buyers. For example, a buyer wanting to stay in the town of New City (which is where our main headquarters is) in order to get the local school district will have difficulty limiting her search to just New City using all the apps, since the apps want you to use the map to define your search area.

My feeling is that map searching is an amazing thing, and one of the reasons to use these apps, but many buyers still define their searches primarily on town lines. I would suggest they make the location search easier and more prominent to accommodate those users.

The Winner: Realtor.com

Realtor.com wins for its overall more nuanced search capability, including being the one app that allows for restricting searches by area designations. Realtor.com not only has more detail based searching (such as restricting searches to homes with pools), but it was the only app that you could use to search for a particular town, and which would only show you homes in that town even if you moved off the map.

But it not only has the best area-based search, it also has the best map-based searching, simply because it has its “drawing” function that allows you to literally trace a circle on a map and search only for properties within that circle. I love that function. Although I think you need area-based searching, I think that if you’re going to have map based search, the best way to do that is to actually define your area by hand when looking at a map.  I think that it’s enormously helpful to buyers who are really just looking in a neighborhood.

For example, I was doing a search for near-beach properties at the New Jersey shore, and was able to use the drawing function to only show me properties that were near the beach, as opposed to using a town-based search that would show me everything in the town. This is the perfect application of map-based searching, and it seems to be a Realtor.com app exclusive.

My problems with Realtor.com? I found some oddities in the location-based searching, including properties from out of the area. It’s also unclear to me why Realtor.com won’t show you all the properties responsive to the search, instead giving you a prompt to “Show More Listings” without any indication of how many listings you’re not seeing.

Trulia

Trulia’s search function was great if you want to start with a map-based search. As you move on the map, the search refines itself to show you responsive properties to your search terms (price, size, etc.) within the map space. My problem is that if people want to limit a search to a town, they can’t move around on the map without refining the search to the map space. So I started a search in New City, got only New City properties, then moved south on the map only to find that the search terms automatically refined to include the map area, which included areas outside of New City.

Also, Trulia doesn’t allow you to save properties that you find in the search, or to save your searches. That’s a deal-breaker. You can’t do a rigorous home search without the ability to save properties or save your searches. Hopefully, they’ll fix that soon, because the map interface is great.

Zillow

Zillow search function is the weakest of all the apps, because it is entirely map based. You can’t search for particular towns, you can only set the map for an area and then “filter” the search for your basic parameters (price, type, size, etc.). This can be a little limiting. If you want to search for homes in Town A, you can put “Town A” in the search bar above the map and the map will go to Town A. But if the map also happens to include part of Town B, Town B listings will also show up on your search. That’s not as useful to most buyers, who often need to limit their searches to particular towns (to stay in a school district, for example).

The search (really, the “filter”) function is also littered with typical Zillow nonsense like viewing “Zestimate Homes” or “Make Me Move” homes. I’m surprised they ported those over to the app, since they’re deemphasizing them on the site.

Miscellaneous

Here are some other things I liked and didn’t like about the apps:

Realtor.com

  • I liked the prominent placement of the listing agent on the property detail page.  I just feel like these apps should reward the listing agents that provide them with the inventory that drives their sites. From the service perspective, it also makes sense to direct interested buyers to the person who knows the home best, rather than to someone whose primary qualification is the willingness to purchase advertising space.
  • I liked the ability to take notes on the listing, or assign ratings. Very prominent.  Maybe a little too prominent, because it takes up a lot of space on the property details display. But a serious buyer will like that feature, particularly to share notes with a co-purchaser (i.e., like a spouse sharing the account).
  • I liked the ability to go to a “gallery view” of properties, which the other apps did not have.
  • I liked the ease of saving and going back to saved searches.
  • I liked sharing shortcuts available on the settings section, which allowed me to set up my wife as my sharing “friend,” so I didn’t have to put her email address in every time I wanted to send her a property.
  • I didn’t like the necessity to go to “scout” view to see the home prices listed with the icons on the map, and didn’t understand what scout view even was.
  • I really didn’t like that the app would not show you all the properties on the map, but simply indicate that “more listings were available.”  That’s not helpful.  Put them all on the map, even if it creates a big mess, and I’ll zoom in to clear it up.

Trulia

  • I liked Trulia’s contact page, which provides a simple contact form that goes to the listing agent (at least on the properties I checked).
  • I liked Trulia’s property display, putting the pictures in a more prominent place and displaying them in a larger size. The other apps give you smaller pictures, but allow you to click on them to go into a slideshow mode.  Trulia starts in the slideshow mode.
  • I liked the tax and price history, although the data was often incomplete or wrong.  but when it was there, it was very insightful.
  • I liked the idea of Trulia’s research-y sections, involving cool shaded overlays on the maps to show you different average price ranges, and the ability to see neighborhood lines, restaurants and other amenities, and school locations.  Most of that stuff didn’t work for the areas in which I searched, but I figure they’ll build it out.
  • I didn’t like Trulia’s separation of core “property facts” from the agent-written “property description,” or the need to toggle tabs from one to the other.  They really should be combined in some way.

Zillow

  • I liked the prominent placement of “last sale” and tax info, which was tougher to find on the other apps.
  • I liked Zillow’s provision of comparable sales, which if available I could not find on the other apps.
  • I liked that Zillow allowed me to search by sold properties, which I could not find in the other apps.
  • I didn’t like Zillow putting “Zestimates” above the property description in the scroll list of information about the property was a ludicrous, self-serving choice. In particular, including a rental “Zestimate” on most properties is a waste of space, and probably should be an option for people who self-describe as investors.
  • I really didn’t like Zillow’s business model of putting competing broker advertising on a listing, directing consumers to approach buyer agents simply because those agents are paying for advertising on Zillow. Typically, Zillow suggested three “buyer agents” with contact information and a picture, then buried the actual listing agent’s name and contact information at the bottom without a picture. It’s simply wrong to take listing data from participating brokers, stock your website with that data for free, and then sell advertising space on that broker’s listing. It’s why many brokers will probably pull their listing data from Zillow, which will make Zillow a much less useful search tool in the future, although probably too late to impact their public offering.

Conclusion:

I should disclose that I have absolutely no idea what, if any, relationship my real estate company has with any of these organizations, although I am pretty sure that we give at least some of them a good deal of money to enhance our listings. I have no connection with anyone at the sites or the apps, and didn’t tell anyone I was writing this to get their insight into the app. I just used them the way consumers would use them.  So if you think I’m completely wrong, I came to my misjudgments honestly.

Also, if I have gotten something wrong factually, or if the apps are updated such that I can amend some of this, I hope someone will let me know. I’m happy to discuss this in comments.

UPDATE: this post has been modified slightly from the original.

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Client-Oriented Real Estate in Action: The Guide to Grieving Your Property Taxes

Posted on May 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

The cornerstone of the CORE philosophy is that real estate agents should perform outstanding non-transactional services to their clients.  We call these “courtesy services,” because they’re not necessarily services that relate to actual transactions — meaning that we’re not going to be directly compensated for them.

But at the same time, they have the potential to create massive amounts of business down the line, from the good will that is created when you selflessly spend time, energy, and money to help someone by providing a service they need.

The best example of CORE in action is our Home Buyer Tax Credit information site that we created last year, which ended up providing the best information about the tax credit available anywhere in the country.  Over a three month period, we attracted over 75,000 unique users to the site, providing them with all the tax forms they need, and even answering hundreds of user questions on our blog.

Did we get paid for any of that?  No.  Did it take a lot of time. Oh yes, indeedy it did. But was it worth it? Well, even though we didn’t make much direct revenue from income on the site, I like to think that by providing such a great service, we helped at least the 800 agents that work at our company by inspiring them to do the same sorts of thing in their business, and by arming them with the best information available about such an important governmental incentive program.

Well, we’re doing the same thing today, launching a new initiative on our site to help clients and other people in the community grieve their taxes.  We have put up a comprehensive guide called the Guide to Grieving Your Property Taxes, which is now available on our real estate site and gives the best information available on the internet about grieving taxes in New York State, including:

Are we getting paid for any of this?  Not directly.  It’s done as a courtesy to our clients.  But unlike the tax credit site from last year, this is information that we will be able to use year after year, because the rules generally don’t change. So it’s an evergreen initiative.
But also, we will have some benefits from it, as follows:
First, because we’re hoping that all eligible sellers with Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty, which is about 2,500 people, will grieve their taxes. If they grieve the taxes and are successful, that makes their homes more sellable.
Second, we might be able to get necessary price improvements to make our listings more competitive.  If sellers are going to grieve their taxes, they need to establish that their homes are worth LESS than the assessor believes.  They won’t be able to argue for a grievance if they have their home on the market for MORE than the assessed value.  So we might get some price improvements on it.
Third, this is the best possible reason for our 800 agents to call their spheres of support, the people that they cultivate for direct business and referrals.  We spend a lot of time and energy in a mailing campaign to our agents’ spheres, but it’s all about trying to give them a reason to call.  There’s no better reason to call than to urge a client to grieve her taxes, give her all the information she needs, and then help her by doing a CMA that can help substantiate the property value.
The point is that if you spend your time trying to provide great services to a client, you will eventually get value out of it.  That’s the foundation of the CORE philosophy, and now we’ll see how it works in action.

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Posted in CORE, CORE in Action, S.O.L.D. Systems, Services

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“THIS IS THE JOB”: Seven Things That Real Estate Agents and Brokers Do that Are Not Good Enough

Posted on April 21, 2011 | 3 Comments

In a post last week, I argued that the enemy of the good is not the great, but the crappy. That is, the classic cliche that the “enemy of the good is the great” has some truth for perfectionist types that have difficulty finishing projects because they’re never quite “good enough,” but the bigger problems in the real estate industry are actually caused by agents and brokers who  do crappy work instead of good work.

The enemy of the good, I argued, is that so many people settle for doing things poorly in situations where doing them great does not take all that much more time, energy, or money.

Why? Because sometimes those things are boring, or difficult, or take a lot of time. But like I tell my agents: THAT’S THE JOB!  The job is doing those things.

Put it this way. You know what job I don’t want? Being a mover. I really wouldn’t like being a mover. I hated having to move myself, and that was my own stuff. I’d really hate schlepping around with YOUR stuff.  When I lived in Manhattan, I had a four-story walkup, and every time I got something delivered, the guys (not being sexist, it was always guys) would huff and puff while they climbed the stairs, complaining about the walkup.

My reaction was always the same: “THIS IS THE JOB!”.  If I lived on the ground floor, I could carry my own stuff in.  The only reason I AM PAYING YOU is that it requires carrying heavy stuff up stairs, and I am a soft, pasty man who doesn’t like carrying heavy stuff up stairs.  So stop complaining about the job.

It’s like if you went to the dentist, and the dentist looked at you and said, “Oh, God, more teeth. I hate teeth.”  THIS IS THE JOB!

So let’s stop complaining about things that we have to do for our jobs. If we can do things the right way, and the right way requires just a little more work than the crappy way, then do it the right way.

I got some emails from people who asked for specific examples to demonstrate the point, and I came up with exactly seven. Not nine, not six, but seven.  Amazing how that always happens.

So here are seven things that most agents and brokers could do that would be great, but most do crappily:

1.  Crappy Pictures of Listings

This is one of my pet peeves about the real estate industry.  Even thought great pictures of listings are the single best way to market a home, most agents take too few pictures, and take them poorly. It’s like the old joke: the food is bad, and the portions are too small.

There’s no excuse for this. Good digital cameras are cheap, and if you learn how to use them they can take really great pictures. You just need a decent-sized sensor, a wide angle lens, and a basic understanding of lighting.  And then you just need to keep snapping. Most MLS systems allow for a lot more pictures than most agents submit, and some allow for high-resolution photos. Instead, though, you’ll see a listing for a high-end property that has 4,000 square feet, a pool, and two acres, and you’ll get eight pictures with none of the pool, or the grounds, or half the rooms.

That’s unacceptable, and it’s not because the agent was trying to be great and thus couldn’t be good.  The agent was willing to settle for crappy.

2.  Crappy Property Descriptions

The same goes for property descriptions. It takes a little time to sit down and write a good property description, one that engages the reader, describes the entire property, and inspires buyers to want to see it. Probably not a lot of time. Not as much time, for example, as it took me to write this post, but a little time.

But most agents under self-imposed pressure to get a description done in the inadequate 24 hours that most MLS’s require to get listings uploaded will just dash off a couple of cliches, use abbreviations as if they’re under a strict word count, and just leave it there like a festering pile of crapulence for the entire listing term without every revising it.  Not good enough.

3.  Crappy Listing Information

What are the taxes? What is the square footage? Does the property have an updated certificate of occupancy for the new porch or downstairs bathroom?  That’s something that buyers need to know, and listing agents need to provide. But most agents never confirm the taxes, never go to the municipality to get the property card to confirm the C/O, and are often afraid to provide estimations of square footage for fear of being sued if they get it wrong.

But that’s the job. You’re brokering a piece of property. How can you do that properly if you haven’t confirmed that the property is legal.  All that’s going to happen is that the lack of the C/O is going to show up on a municipal search and delay the closing. Or you’ll get the taxes wrong and the buyer will demand some sort of concession. And even if you get the square footage wrong, just make clear in listing that it’s estimated and you’ll be pretty much safe from lawsuits.

Getting that information, and getting it right, is not a lot of work, and it’s the job.

4.  Crappy Broker web sites.

Okay, we’ve hammered the agents enough, what about the brokers? Most broker websites are abominable.  Indeed, most brokers don’t even have a website, and it’s 2011.  I can set up a reasonably professional website with a dedicated domain in bout two hours for less than $100 to write Star Trek fan fiction, and brokers who are selling millions of dollars in real estate every year do not have a website.

And even if they have a website, most of them are pretty crappy.  I’m not talking about “crappy” in the way that the smart guys at 1000WattBlog talk about real estate websites that are not intuitive or up-to-date or client friendly, and have the challenge of competing with well-funded national sites like Trulia or Zillow. I’m talking about stuff like this (no names or links, because I’m not trying to disparage anyone personally):

  • A local competitor of mine in Orange County, New York, one of the top 3 brokers by marketshare in the area, whose front page of the website has two paragraphs of text with three grammatical errors and discusses all of its 2009 accomplishments.  2009!!!!  Obviously, one of the 2010 accomplishments did not involve updating the website…
  • A local competitor of mine in Rockland County, New York, one of the top 5 by marketshare, whose website has scrolling text, flashing links (smiley faces), about 50 link icons and over 80 links on the sidebar.  80 links!  Lots of stuff I don’t even know what it is, but I did find the “Contact Us” link there, coming in at number 75, right above the “Find Your Agent”.  Can you imagine sifting through 75 links to find a “contact us” page?
I could do this all day, but the fact is that at least those companies have websites. By my calculation, about 35% of the business in our market is done by companies that don’t even have one.  That’s seems odd, given that the internet has kind of become a big thing.

5.  Crappy Agent web page pictures.

Earlier this year, my company had an “Extreme Makeover” training class for about 300 agents.  During the full-day class, we provided every agent who attended with new head shots.  The photographer was actually in the back of the room, and people signed up for times and would get up from the class to take their picture when it was their time.  Why? Because I was tired of low-resolution, lousy headshots on marketing materials and the website.

You can go get a good headshot for $40, and put it on every piece of marketing that you do. Or you can continue to have that cropped, low resolution photo that a friend took with a camera phone four years ago, and use that as the way you present yourself to the world.  Get a new picture.

6.  Crappy Disclosure Documentation

Disclosure documentation is a fact of life in the real estate business.  Every agent meeting with every client is supposed to provide a set of documents for disclosure and acknowledgment. If that’s the case, though, why are most disclosures so crappy? Why are brokers still requiring agents to provide clients, at the first meeting, when first impressions are formed, with documents that are fourth-generation copies of copies, on different-sized paper, all bundled haphazardly in a cheap folder.

It’s such a terrible system.  The first impression you make on your clients is that you’re too cheap to get professional forms copied. Brokers — find out what forms you definitely need for a new listing, and a new buyer, and get them bound together and copied professionally so that they look good, don’t get lost, and make a good impression. It costs a little more, and it takes a little more work, and you get killed on printing costs when the stupid department of state makes a technical change on the New York State Agency Disclosure form and leaves you with 5,000 extra copies of your bound disclosure packets that you now are going to use for mulch (okay, that’s pretty much just me, this year).

But on the whole, you make a better impression than when your agent has to root around in a folder looking for some grainy copy of a form that might have fallen out in the car.

7.  Crappy Industry Knowledge

Why do so few brokers and agents stay on top of what’s happening in the industry? Every year, I attend about four or five industry conferences. I see the same people there. We all know each other. But I’m shocked at how few agents and brokers actually attend these gatherings.

And for the most part, agents and brokers don’t even follow industry news.  Each week, I send out an email with industry and real estate news.  The biggest response I get is that the email is too long.  Too long!  It’s news about the industry we work in, with information that keeps us up to date about how we can best service our clients!

Imagine going to the doctor and he looks over at a pile of medical journals on this desk and says, “Oii, I hate reading all that stuff.”  Would you feel good about your upcoming surgery?

Yes, going to industry conferences can be expensive and a drain on your time. And, yes, trying to follow the unending stream of news about the industry and the market can seem like a full time job. But that is, after all, the job.

So do the job well.

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Posted in Conventions and Conferences, Services

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Who are your clients? Ummm, your clients, dummy!

Posted on April 19, 2011 | 1 Comment

Whenever I am at an industry conference, I’ll hear a real estate broker make the observation that a broker’s real “client” is the “agent.”  That is, although individual real estate agents have buyers or sellers who are clients, a broker’s clients are actually the agents: the broker provides services to the agents, who then treat the clients, but the broker’s main role is maintaining that client relationship with the agents. The theory is that the broker does not actually have a relationship with the buyers and sellers, but only with the agent.

This is one of those observations that always seems clever when people say it, kind of a counter-intuitive perspective that is presented as a flash of insight.  Except, of course, that it’s become pretty much of  a cliche, given that I hear it at every conference.

More importantly, it’s wrong.  If you’re a real estate broker, your agents are not your clients. Your clients are your clients.  Your agents are your agents.  That’s why we call some of those people “clients” and some of them “agents.”  

And even more importantly, I think that it’s gone from counter-intuitive clever insight all the way through to cliche and now all the way to a pernicious system of real estate brokerage that elevates the agent above the client in the broker’s perspective.

Put it this way: a great real estate broker provides outstanding client service to buyers and sellers.  The main delivery system for those services is through the individual agents, so the broker does have a significant obligation to empower those agents with tools, technology, and training to provide that client service. And, of course, the broker has to provide a reasonable compensation system to incentivize agents to stay with the broker and do lots and lots of deals.  

But you cannot always serve two masters.  Too many brokers, I think, including me, sometimes elevate the agent at the expense of the client. Here’s an easy example: do you provide dedicated parking at your offices to your agents, or your buyers and sellers?  At our offices, where possible, we have dedicated parking spots in front of the entrance for clients. Why? Because we want to make it easy for clients to be able to park at the offices.  That’s a good client service.  But I know lots of brokers who leave those spots open for agents to park in, because the “agent is the client.”

Of course, this is sort of a cross-industry standard, because you can go to most businesses in the country and find dedicated parking for staff or important employees, but not for clients.  And if you go to any mall in the country at 9AM, you’ll find the first ten rows of parking taken up by employees of stores in the mall, who will squat on those choice parking spots all day long.  

But it’s not just simple things like parking spots.  For example, many brokers, including ours, provides for “call coordinating” of sign calls and online inquiries, which go first to the listing agent.  This can be considered a good client service for the seller, who is probably best served if an inquiry is delivered to a listing agent who has a tremendous incentive to try to sell that listing.  It also can be considered good customer (not yet client) service to the potential buyer making the inquiry, since the inquiry is directed to an agent who really knows the property.

But in a lot of cases, this is actually bad customer service for the potential buyer, made in the spirit of the listing agent being the client of the broker.  Although sometimes online inquiries are made about a particular property, at other times the inquiry is spurred by that property, but the customer would be better served by talking to an agent who is sitting in front of a computer and can dedicate as much time as necessary to fielding that call.  Instead, the inquiry goes to a listing agent, who is likely out in the field, with clients, or otherwise distracted and occupied.  It’s a good service to the listing agent, good for the seller, not necessarily good for the person making the call.

This is not to criticize call coordinating, but simply to give an example that treating the agent as a client is not always in the best interests of the buyer or seller who are the actual clients of the company. This one’s a close call, but only if you actually think that people who call into your company deserve the best treatment possible. If you actually think that your agents are your clients, then it’s an easy call.

Finally, while I understand the impulse to treat agents, particularly productive agents that drive the bottom line, as the clients of the broker, I don’t see why service to agents should come at the expense of the client.  The idea that you have to choose between treating your agents/employees as clients, or your buyers/sellers as clients, is a false choice that sends us down the wrong path.  I don’t think you can have a great client service company without providing great tools, training, and technology for your employees (or in real estate, your agents).  

Inded, other industries do just fine in adopting client-centric approaches that actually empower employees and treat employees fairly without adopting a “employees are the client” standard that we hear bandied about in real estate. For example, Zappos is one of the gold standard companies in providing great client service, but Zappos also has a legendarily empowering employee culture. In fact, the great client experience wouldn’t exist without that employee culture.

A great real estate company should be able to recognize that the buyers and sellers are the clients, and provide amazing services to those clients through an empowered, trained, and motivated workforce.

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Posted in Conventions and Conferences, Services, World's Best Service Standards

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The enemy of the good is the great, but that doesn’t mean that the friend of the good is the crappy.

Posted on April 6, 2011 | 5 Comments

I am definitely someone that needs to remember that the “enemy of the good is the great.”  In everyday usage, the phrase refers to situations in which a perfectionist doesn’t actually finish anything because nothing is ever “great enough” to go out.

That’s me.  My worklife is just filled with projects that are incomplete because they’re not finished to my standards, when probably anyone else would just put them out.  It’s very frustrating, I think, to the people I work with, particularly when those projects get delayed as I continue to tinker with them. I need to be better about that. 

I also need to remember that sometimes, “great” projects can crowd out getting anything else done. For example, last year my team created an informational website for the Home Buyer Tax Credit.  We did it for two reasons: (1) to provide good information on the tax credit to consumers, and (2) to generate some inbound and outbound referrals from people who would get that information and want assistance in buying.  It was a great site, including:

  • A dozen videos explaining the tax credit.
  • A full overview, FAQ, at-a-glance charts.
  • A blog with updates, a legislation page, all the IRS documentation.
  • And an unbelievably detailed eligibility test that included about 100 different questions and about 60 different possible outcomes.

It was an unbelievable site, and I honestly believed that it was the perfect articulation of the client-oriented perspective I want to bring to real estate, but it was definitely much better than it needed to be.  Why? Because at the time we launched it, the tax credit only had a few months to run.  The amount of time and resources we put in might have made sense if we were a nonprofit government entity — the information we provided was 100 times as good as anything the federal government put out about it — but it wasn’t necessary for our purpose.  I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s clear in retrospect.  I am running a business, but I spent a lot of time and energy writing and designing content, and answering questions from people who had no businss relationship with my company. In that case, the great was the enemy of the good insofar as having a “great” tax credit site wasn’t necessary for a three-month project, and a “great” site prevented me from getting other things done. 

That’s the essence of the “good versus great” dynamic — being great can sometimes prevent you from getting something done, because the perfectionist instinct either (1) soaks up all your time, preventing you from accomplishing anything else, or (2) prevents you from actually finishing a project, because you can never bring yourself to be quite “done.”  I’m sure a lot of agents fall into that trap, and I warn against that in my training. 

Essentially, you don’t need to be “great” if:

  1. what you’re working on isn’t going to last for very long (i.e., a tax credit site that has three months to run, a printout of a showing sheet that will be thrown out after a showing).
  2. it isn’t directly related to building your business (i.e., anything that doesn’t relate to generating or servicing clients).
  3. being “great” will take a long time, a lot of time, or a lot of effort, and “good” can be accomplished quickly and cheaply and accomplish what you’re trying to do.

But the fact that the enemy of the good is the great doesn’t mean that we should generally settle for the crappy.  I see marketing materials generated by agents all the time that are embarrassing — flyers that are generated out of some old presentation template with a mix of fonts and low-resolution pictures and misspellings and all sorts of things that do not present a strong impression; CMAs that don’t cover the full area; agent websites that include profiles that are misspelled or incomplete; property listings online with low-resolution photos, two-line descriptions, or three pictures of a 4,000 square foot home.  That’s pretty crappy, and I think that crappy is a bigger enemy of the good than the great.

To give another example, a real estate company just put out an iPad app that purports to allow for real estate search, but has an extremely limited usefulness (I’m not going to say who, because I’m not trying to slam anyone). It only shows a very small set of properties that might be available to clients.  How useful is real estate search, if the search only shows a very small percentage of what’s for sale?  They obviously spent a ton of time and money on it, but not enough to actually make it useful to clients.  In my mind, putting out something like that isn’t worth the time and effort, not because it’s “great” and crowded out other projects, but because it’s crappy.

So then, when do you want to be great:

  1. When what you’re doing is going to last a long time, like a system or a website that can be done correctly and then used for a very long time.
  2. When what you’re doing is directly related to building your core business.
  3. When being “great” can be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time, for a reasonable amount of effort and money.

If you’re doing something that’s worthwhile, and the “great” is worth it, then, by all means, be great.  Don’t be crappy.

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Posted in Productivity

The Guide to the Best Smartphone Apps

Posted on March 27, 2011 | 3 Comments

A good smartphone is really a mini-computer in your pocket, capable of doings things that computers even five years ago could not do.  But you’re not getting the most out of your smartphone if you’re just using it for making calls, checking email, and surfing the web.  Those are all good things to do, but if you really want to take advantage of your smartphone you need to learn how to use your apps.

What is an app?  Simply put, it’s a mini-application.  You use applications all the time: Microsoft Word is an application, so is Powerpoint, so is your mail program.  Traditionally, applications are big complicated pieces of software that can cost hundreds of dollars. But Apple pioneered the idea of an application as an “app,” a high-powered but simple application that you can get for free or purchase for a relatively small amount.   Some apps are simply smartphone versions of websites or programs that you can use on your computer, while others were created simply to use the power of your smartphone in interesting ways.

What follows is a very unofficial, incomplete, and totally personal Guide to some of the best apps out there for the iPhone and Droid smartphones.  There are hundreds of thousands of them out there, and lots of places where you can get advice about what to buy, but these are the apps I use all the time.  Amazingly, the Android operating system for Droid phones has caught up with the iOS operating system for iPhone, and almost all major apps are available on both platforms.  I also included iPad apps that are specifically designed for the iPad.  I did not include Blackberry apps, because I have not used them and the Blackberry is still very far behind in establishing its app sales.

You can find iPhone and iPad apps at the  App Store, and Droid apps at the Android Market. Just search for the name and you’ll find them.  This is a work in progress, so if you have suggestions of new apps to add to the list, just email me.

Here is an outline of the organization for the apps that follow

  • Business and Productivity Apps
  • Communication Apps
  • Information and Reference Apps
  • Leisure Apps
  • Entertainment Apps
BUSINESS APPS: Productivity, Social Media

Google (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
The Google app is a must, if only because it gives you quick access to the Google sites you might be using, like Docs, Calendar, etc. Unfortunately, Google does not have dedicated apps for most of its services, so this is the collective “hub” for getting to them without going through Safari.
You can also do a search through the app. Just convenient to have it directly.

Google Voice (iPhone, GV Connect for iPad, Droid) (free or $1)
If you don’t use Google Voice at all, you should check it out.  You can set up a universal phone number that will ring all your phones (i.e., mobile, work, home office) at once, so people can call you at one number and get you wherever you are.  And then Voice can also transcribe your voicemail (although the transcriptions are not great) and save it as an audio file link that you can access with a click.  If you use Visual Voicemail that comes with the iPhone, this is a slight upgrade.  Also great because your text messages are all available on Google Voice wherever you are (any internet computer, and your phone), which can be helpful. For the iPad, Google doesn’t have a dedicated iPad app for Google Voice, but you can buy GV Connect that provides a good app experience to review your messages and texts.

Evernote (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
A terrific notetaking app that can sync your notes between your mobile device, computer, and any other device, accessible anywhere you can get on the internet.

Social Media Apps (iPhone, some on iPad, Droid) (mostly free)
All the big social media sites have apps for your smartphone that are very useful and often better than the computer experience: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin Foursquare. They’re all free, and what’s great about them is your ability to check out social media updates in your downtime, without interrupting productive work. For example, surfing social media is a fun and easy thing to do when you’re waiting on line, which turns out to be a lot of my day. Not all of the sites are on the iPad with apps (no Facebook app?), but they all have third-party services that let you check out your social media fees (fyi, the best Facebook iPad app is Facely HD).

Dragon Dictation (iPhone, iPad) (free)
People that don’t type well will love Dragon Dictation, a free app that will transcribe what you say into it, turn it into text, and allow you to save it as a note or send by email.  Very effective, and pretty good with transcription.

WordPress (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
Wordpress has a dedicated app for reviewing your WordPress blogs.  You won’t want to write a blog post, but you can review comments, approve them, do some little things.

Real Estate Search Apps (iPhone, some iPad) (free)
The real estate search apps are all pretty good and free.  The best smartphone  are Realtor.com’s and Trulia.  Great for searching on maps, so you can see where the properties are. The best iPad app available right now is Zillow, which I don’t love (seems like the inventory is incomplete) but does provide a big screen experience for home browsing on the iPad.

DropBox (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free for 2GB storage)
DropBox is an amazing app that allows you to store your big files so you can share them between computers, and now between your mobile devices.  Great way to move big files from one computer to another (like, from work to home), or to keep them available wherever you are.  You can also share files by putting them into a public folder, and sending people the link, which is better than emailing them that 10MB PDF.  It’s a great service, and the apps are terrific. Perfect for moving movie and picture files from computer to computer, and then having access from your smartphone.

COMMUNICATION APPS: Messaging, Calling

FaceTime (on iPhone, $1 app for iPad)
Facetime is not strictly an “app,” because it comes on the iPhone 4 standard and can be found when you pull up a contact, but you should make sure you know how to find it. When you pull up a contact in your phone, you can  click on the number to call the number, the email to email the contact, but at the bottom of the contact are buttons for text message and facetime.  For iPad, you can get an app for about a dollar that works great.  Remember Facetime only works when you’re on a wireless network.  (I don’t know that Droid has anything similar.)

Speed Dial (iPhone) ($1)
A must for the iPhone, which does not have dedicated buttons for speed dials.  There are lots of variations on this.  You can get a free app called “Speed Dial #1,” “Speed Dial #2”, and so on, which gives you a dedicated button for a one-touch dial, but you’ll have to memorize the order.  A better choice is “Speed Dial,” which provides a yellowish version if iPhone’s “Phone” app and leads you to up to 24 programmable buttons that you can label for your speed dials.  Takes about 10 minutes to set up, and then you have two-touch speed dialing: hit Speed Dial, then hit the name you want. Very quick.

Meebo (iPhone, Droid) or Imo.Im (iPad, Droid) (free)
If you use computer-based instant messaging (as opposed to text messaging on your phone number) on services like MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Facebook messenger, Google Chat, or lots of others, you can consolidate all of them on Meebo on the iPhone/Droid or Imo on the iPad and have one site to check for your text messages.  Set up all your accounts, and lot onto all or some of them at any time.

INFORMATION APPS: News, Sports, Reference

Pulse News (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
Zine (iPad only) (free)
Pulse is a great app that aggregates news based on the preferences you put in, and then gives you news feeds that fit your preferences. If you use Google Reader, for example, it pulls in all your RSS feeds. If you don’t understand that last sentence, don’t worry – the basic idea is that it customizes a news feed. If you do nothing else other than set up a real estate news feed on Pulse to keep up with the news, it’s a great use of the app. And looks amazing on iPad.

NYTimes (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free for now)
A great app for checking out top stories, even if you’re not a subscriber.  You get it free if you’re a subscriber, but soon they’ll be charging heavier users. It’s not clear what the apps will cost, but it will probably allow for some access to top news with payment if you want deeper coverage.

Sportacular (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
For sports updates, Sportacular is quicker than any of the ESPN apps, which are slow and laden with a difficult interface.  Sportacular just gives you the scores by sport, easy to look up.

Wikipanion (iPhone, iPad) (free)
Wikidroid (Droid) (free)
A great app for looking stuff up without having to go to Google.  Wikipedia is a user-generated encyclopedia that is surprisingly effective, and I find myself looking something up on it once or twice a week and always being entertained and informed. Wikipanion and Wikidroid are great apps for getting into Wikipedia in a customized setting without going through the browser.

The Weather Channel (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
The iPhone and iPad come with a very cute weather app, but it doesn’t give you a lot of information.  The Weather Channel app isn’t ideal, but it provides a lot of information for your area with cool graphics.

Google Earth (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
I already mentioned the Google app, but the Google Earth app is so good that I want to highlight it separately.  Google Earth on the computer has been around a while, but the experience on the mobile device is just great because of the location search and just the visual of watching the globe zero down on where you.  A must for real estate people that need to know their terrain and maps.

Maps (iPhone, iPad) (installed)
All smartphones come with the Maps app, but it’s worth pointing out just how great it is and how you need to become familiar with how to set your location and get driving (or walking!) directions.  The idea that years ago you bought a specialized device for this service, and now the your phone has it, is just amazing.

LEISURE APPS: Books, Movies, Food

Yelp (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
Yelp is a great business directory website with user-generated reviews, mostly of restaurants but growing.  This is the kind of website that is geared for mobile device, because you can literally be standing on a corner, go on Yelp to look for nearby restaurants, and choose them based on cuisine and user reviews.  Vastly superior to the Zagat app. I use it all the time, and constantly when traveling.

OpenTable (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
My wife swears by this app, which allows you to find restaurants and then make restaurant reservations right from the app.  No phone calls, no waiting on hold, and you can find the right time by yourself.  Has location-based searching, so you can look for restaurants near where you are.

Kindle App (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
If you have a Kindle, this is a must – all your Kindle books can be loaded onto your Smartphone.  You’d think it would be difficult to read on the phone, but once you get used to reading your email, news, and other items on it, books are not much of a reach. And with the iPhone 4, the resolution is so clear that you don’t get eyestrain. The books also look amazing on an iPad.  Tip: you can store your Kindle books on up to six devices (your Kindle, your iPhone, iPad, etc.), which means that you can get just one Kindle account and share your books on multiple devices with other members of your family (i.e., you get a Kindle and an iPhone, your spouse has an iPhone and an iPad, and your kid has a Droid, all sharing the same book account).

Epicurious (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
The best recipe app, with tons of recipes searchable in a lot of ways.  It also lets you create a shopping list, a great use for your mobile device.

Movie Apps: Fandango and “Movies by Flixster” (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
If you like movies, you need these two apps.  Fandango is the app for the website that allows you to buy tickets online for movies, and Flixster has content from the Rotten Tomatoes movie-reviewing site.

ENTERTAINMENT APPS: Music, Video, TV, Radio
Pocket Tunes (iPhone, iPad) ($6.99)
A great app for people that like to listen to the radio.  Virtually every radio station you can think of in very good audio.  Great for getting local news and sports stations on your iPhone, superior to traditional radios because you don’t get static.

SiriusXM Premium (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free app with subscription)
If you have either Sirius or XM in your car, you can get access to the satellite radio service on your iPhone or iPad and listen anywhere.  Audio is slow, though, if you’re not connected to a wireless network.

MLB.com At Bat 11 (iPhone, iPad, Droid) ($14.99, lite version for free)
If you are a baseball fan, this app is amazing. You can get updates on any game, with highlight videos that look great, and in many cases can actually watch an out-of-market game right on your device.  Fantastic if you’re a fan of a non-New York team and want to watch the games, and better than getting the cable service that provides access to games because it’s more portable on your device and less annoying to the non-baseball fans around you. If the $15 is too pricey, the free version has some great features also.

Slingplayer Mobile (iPhone, iPad, Droid) ($29 plus Slingplayer)
Slingplayer is a device that costs about $200 which connects to your television and lets you watch THAT television from any internet-connected computer.  This app lets you do it from your Smartphone or iPad, great for traveling if you want to watch something on your DVR. A little pricey, but it allows you, as I have discovered, to watch TV in bed with the headphones on and your spouse happily sleeping.

Shazam (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free, or $5)
Soundhound (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free, or $5)
The classic apps for people that like music.  Hear a song you like, just hold your device up and it will identify the song for you so you can buy it. Both are free for a limited number of songs per month, and a few bucks to get unlimited use. They also have other features I haven’t tried (like lyrics)

Pandora (iPhone, iPad, Droid) (free)
Last.FM (iPhone, Droid ) (free)
Slacker Radio (iPhone, Droid) (free)
Pandora was the first breakthrough app on the iPhone, the idea that you could create your own personalized radio station based on very specific music or artists you like, and have the station play similar music.  For example, you can tell the app what artists you like (e.g. “Jack Johnson”), and it will create a virtual radio station for you – not just of that artist, but artists with similar styles.  And if you don’t like a song, you can “skip” it or give it a “thumbs down” and the system will learn your taste. Great for finding new artists that fit your taste.  Pandora has started running commercials, so a number of competitors have gained popularity.  They all have positives and negatives, but having one of them is a must (or all of them, then decide if you want to upgrade one of them).

 

Again, if you have additions or corrections, or if you would like to contribute a list of Blackberry apps, I would welcome that. Just feel free to contact me here.

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