SMS an MP4 to my iPhone

It’s common to hear real estate professionals say how much technology has changed their business in the past decade. A walk through any conference these days finds more classes on techno-tips than sessions on negotiation skills. Buffeted on a sea of techno-speak, REALTORS frequently find themselves struggling to keep up with changes introduced by heavyweights like Google or Microsoft. For some, the pace of transformation far exceeds the incremental improvements their companies or MLS systems usually roll out. During the boom-cycle, most of their focus was on deals rather than building skills for the future. So it’s no surprise that the tech-gap between agents and their clients is wider than ever. And it’s equally common to see looks of bewilderment on agents’ faces when a Gen X buyer asks them to SMS an MP4 of a listing to iPhone.

If that last sentence doesn’t make any sense to you, take heed. It’s not just the techno-speak of a select few geeks bent on changing the world. It’s the everyday talk of millions of Gen X and Gen Y consumers entering the first-time home-buyer cycle. To illustrate the gap between the “new normal” of the younger homebuyers and many agents today, NAR’s recent surveys of its members is telling: less than 25% of them use wireless email every day. Some 74% have never sent an instant message. Now ask yourself what percentage of 20-something-buyers is texting every hour? Therein lies the problem for the next few years. Even without other issues like poor home pricing or buyer qualification techniques amongst the current sales force, brokers are faced with deficient core technology skills that today’s buyers are requiring in their agents.

Ironically, none of the core skills being demanded by new consumers is new. Break down our focus phrase: Can you SMS an MP4 to my iPhone? Start with SMS or the short message system.  SMS has been built into every phone for nearly a decade. It’s not new technology, but it is new to many agents. Most have rarely explored the SMS tools within their phones. Forget about smartphones, which most still don’t own. Even the forty-nine-dollar-with-fifty-dollar-rebate cell phones can send and receive text messages. There’s no need to learn the strange language of the youth, either: predictive text built into the phone actually guesstimates the word you’re trying to type as you punch the first few letters. LOL!

To be fair, some agents are texting with their kids or family members, but when asked if they text with their clients, they stare blankly. Why would I do that? No transference between the personal use to business use means agents aren’t just lacking the skill, they’re lacking the vision of technology.

Now make it more complicated: SMS an MP4. Here’s where the phone’s camera comes into play. Assume for a moment that at some point, every agent will get the hang of sending a short “running late” text message to their clients. Maybe a few will start using it to send reminders for open houses or even quick-alerts for price reductions. That level of cellular sophistication hovers somewhere around the “replaced voice mail with text message” level. And that’s the minimum standard of performance that consumers are demanding these days. Of course they’re not going to check their voice mail; they gave up doing that when they gave up their answering machines. Simple text messages are the new-normal for them. What’s outstanding is their phone’s ability to transmit video clips. We’re not talking still photos any more. Camera phones today take full-motion, full-sound video clips and send them around the world in seconds. And agents need to unlock these functions fast. Generation X and Y fully expect to browse real estate on their phones. They try to do it now, although they pretty much hate the experience, since most sites are still designed around the idea that buyers will be sitting in front of a computer. That’s just not reality any more, for Generation X and Y. They gather data from their web-enabled smart phones like Blackberries and iPhones. That’s their new-normal.

Modern buyers expect to receive at least three or four still photos of potential homes from their agent – and not by email attachment. That’s too slow. They expect to get the photo directly on their cell phone, from the agent’s cell phone. This is great news for those agents who still waste time touring each other’s listings each week. Other than doughnuts, the traditional take-away from these tours are still printed! By imagining how a Gen Y’er agent would do these tours, we can leap ahead in productivity. They would snap a few photos on their cell phone and send them directly and instantly to potentially interested buyers. Using their same phones, they would take a few short video clips and send those, too. That’s what an MP4 is: a compressed format video perfect for transmitting through cellular networks and displayed on compact wireless devices - like other phones, iPods, or iPhones. (Actually, Gen Y agents probably wouldn’t do a tour in person at all; they’d expect the listing agent to transmit a live, virtual walk-through through the web with a wireless video camera. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Some of us still change flashbulbs.)

The standard of performance has clearly changed. Can you SMS an MP4 to my iPhone simply means, Can you send a video clip of your listing to me wirelessly? It doesn’t involve a digital camera or a website or an email account. For those agents who are still practicing with those tools, the world has already moved big leaps ahead. Why worry about upgrading to Windows Vista when the real operating system is in smartphones and cellular networks? Trying to get six photos on every listing online is like still trying to beat Hank Aaron’s record: the world is way beyond that now. The best part is that most of the technology is already in your hand.

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