Should it stay or should it go? Shining a light on real estate technology.
How do you make technology choices for your business?
How do you know what to buy and how long to keep it?
Do you read articles? Get recommendations from friends and colleagues? Do you get professional help to point you in the right direction?
Regardless of how technology makes its way into your life, the important thing is that you treat it like any other employee and demand that it adds value to your business. If your website isn’t making you money, change it. If your computer is sucking up hours of your time each week with its quirks and freezes, get rid of it.
In the end, technology is an investment that should create a return. Its only purpose is to add value to your business through increased speed, efficiency, accuracy and peace of mind.
The danger of course is that you lose track of whether or not your chosen technology is working for you or against you.
I tow a pretty hard line with business technology. Its job after all is to help you make money. Like any good employee, it has to earn its keep or you need to send it packin’. So here is my general rule:
If you have to fiddle with your technology more than three or four times a month, get rid of it and try something else. Its quality is not high enough to warrant your time or attention and it is keeping you from the important parts of your business like generating leads and listings.
Following some sort of a rule like this will make your technology decisions much simpler and cut down on the frustration that it creates in your business.
Let’s face it, much of the technology out there is mediocre at best. We all have computers, gadgets and other gizmos that consistently fail to work as advertised. And in most cases, it’s not your fault.
Buying mediocre computers, phones or other gadgets is often difficult to avoid. You can’t really tell how it is going to work until you try it. Keeping those same mediocre devices and limping along with them, however, is simply bad for business.
