It’s important to be professional when you are contacting anyone associated with your real estate business. Even if you are operating out of your Mom’s basement, you still want people to think you are in the penthouse suite of the Trump tower.
Well, maybe not that… but you know what I mean.
Being professional in your communications sends several positive signals:
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People believe they are dealing with someone who can close deals
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The other party in your negotiations might feel that you don’t need their deal as much
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Your business must be successful if it can afford all these extra bells and whistles
To be professional in today’s crazy technology world, you might have to purchase lots of different services:
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A fax machine or a service that faxes online
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Your own local number or a toll-free number that is easy to remember (good for bandit signs)
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Professional sounding voicemail. If you want to really do it right, voicemail that routes the caller to one of several ‘departments’ in your business – even if they all route to you
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Voicemail transcription that you can read on your phone or other device
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Call recording so you can prove that angry tenant admitted he didn’t pay the rent
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Web conferencing to show prospective buyers new properties you have
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Conference calling for many of the same reasons as web conferencing, but you don’t need video
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The ability to control all of this from your mobile phone while you’re on the go
Whew, that’s a lot!
That’s a Lot of Checks to Mail Out Each Month
There are a lot of companies that provide one or two of these services. Wouldn’t it be nice to just have one service that does all of this?
Well, of course, there’s one. It’s appropriately named Onebox. Onebox provides all the above services for one monthly fee.
You can find their fees here, but to summarize, think of a cell phone plan starting at $49.95 (as of the writing of this lesson). The amount you pay depends primarily on the number of minutes you use. The plans they offer are really like having another cell phone with lots of extra services.
For those of you who are really successful, you can add a live receptionist starting at $129.99 per month. That may seem expensive at first, but it’s a lot cheaper than a virtual assistant.
You can circumvent the live assistant if you just route the calls to yourself or one of your business partners.
Taking the list of requirements for real estate investing communications, let’s see how Onebox stacks up:
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Online faxing capability to both send and receive faxes. To send a fax, you just type out a message like you are sending an email, attach any relevant documents and hit send. Incoming faxes go directly to your email as a PDF attachment. They can also be automatically forwarded to your own fax or another email address.
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Either local or toll-free (800, 877, 866, 855, etc.) numbers are available with Onebox. You can also have a number out of state for all you virtual wholesalers out there. What’s more is that Onebox provides the capability to have your local or toll-free number show up on other people’s caller ID, even when you are using your private cell phone.
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The voicemail that comes with Onebox is very professional. Onebox can route your calls to different ‘departments’ for the caller, or route the call to different phones for you depending on what you set up. It also can transcribe your voicemail and email or text the transcription to you. You can organize all the messages on your Onebox site. The voicemail can even be set up in different languages.
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By hitting ‘*2’ on your phone when you are on the phone, you can record your conversation quickly and easily. No more ‘he said/she said.’
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Onebox provides web conferencing capabilities. You can show houses to prospective buyers worldwide, field questions and potentially see their reactions.
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Communicate with up to 95 people worldwide in a similar way to web conferencing with conference calling. You can have this feature like the others with your cell phone. So if you need to talk to all your contractors about scheduling different parts of your rehab, you can easily do it all at once.
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There are apps for Apple, Android and Blackberry to give you access to all the features of Onebox through your phone. In addition, the Onebox apps can link to your contacts on your phone so you can easily interact through Onebox with them.
Onebox really provides a lot of services to help you communicate professionally in your business.
Share a Tech Tip
There are probably some other services out there in addition to Onebox. We would love to hear if you have better ones or other alternative ideas. If so, please leave them in the comments below.
Communicate Professionally – Let people know, your business means business. Be professional in everything you do and people will want to work with you.
Fake It 'til You Make It – Just because you don’t have a huge investing business at this time, doesn’t mean you can’t look like you do. We’re not talking about lying. Just look confident. Find ways to improve your image.
Reach Out – Once you have your communication systems in place, don’t just sit there. Reach out to other people. Then follow up with them. Be the proactive one in all your relationships.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.