Customer Profiles: Jerry Shea, REALTOR®

Jerry Shea, REALTOR®

Organization Profile: Jerry Shea is a REALTOR®, investor and businessman with more than 25 years of real estate experience. He successfully runs a single-agent, technology-driven real estate team in the Palm Springs, Calif., area with his technology partner Jason Barone. Prior to switching his primary focus to real estate sales, he held Senior Executive positions in the investment banking, technology and management consulting industries throughout the United States and 16 other countries. Throughout all of these positions, technology played a key role in helping his clients leverage their business and increase profitability.

Summary: After working together for three years, Jerry Shea and cross-country technology consultant Jason Barone learned a great deal about the importance of technology and its assistance in running a real estate business. Testing a vast number of real estate technology solutions, Shea and Barone found the best tools to meet their business needs from within The Small Business Web, allowing them the ability to increase business success while decreasing expenses.

Website: Jerry Shea

BatchBlue and The Small Business Web Increase Sales & Profitability for the Time- Crunched Realtor

Cross-country business partners Jerry Shea and Jason Barone know a thing or two about running an efficient business. They have been running a single-agent real estate business from opposite coasts and different time zones leveraging technology to help successfully grow their business even in one of the most challenging real estate markets in history. As the business grew, the physical space and distance of the partners proved to be irrelevant with the use web- based technology.

A former real estate agent, Barone is a web technology consultant having years of experience with small business and real estate technology, web design and development, web applications, online marketing, and contact management systems. Finding himself in need of web-based CRM software, Barone used his web know-how to test a number of software solutions that were geared toward or designed for real estate agents. At that time, a solid solution did not exist so he began asking himself, How do we find something better?

His question was answered when, after several failed attempts using other solutions, Barone discovered Batchbook social CRM from BatchBlue Software. After using many other applications, he knew what worked for the real estate business and what didn't. Batchbook suited Shea's and Barone's needs best with the flexibility to work with other systems, integrating with Google Apps, MailChimp, Formstack and other programs they already used, including those found within The Small Business Web. It also required less maintenance than other programs and streamlined perfectly into his current workflow.

"Batchbook was the clear winner among the other solutions we tried out," said Barone. "With Batchbook we can more easily funnel leads and complete tasks using fewer clicks, making its ease-of-use faster than that of other applications."

As a Realtor, Shea's target customers are those strongly interested in, or considering, buying or selling a home. To better collect his customer's information, he uses Formstack to create online lead generation forms for his website and then delivers the information obtained into his Batchbook account. Having the information stored in one location allows him to quickly search for different attributes such as price range, buyer, seller, geographical area interested in, and more. This is achieved using Batchbook's SuperTags, an innovative customization tool that groups contacts together by creating a custom field for that tag.

To stay better connected with his customers, Shea runs regular email marketing campaigns using MailChimp. "For email marketing needs, MailChimp blows the competition out of the water," said Barone, who tried other solutions in the past. "An email marketing service is imperative to the real estate business and in keeping in touch with prospects. With MailChimp's ability to integrate into our Batchbook account, we can also effortlessly sync our contacts and begin sending emails faster."

The real core of Shea's real estate business relies on Google Apps. Using Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts, he can easily stay connected during his typical "on-the-go" routine when he is away from his office. With the Gmail system, Shea also has access to the Rapportive plug-in allowing him to view richer contact profiles from within Gmail including social connections, and information from both MailChimp and Batchbook information as well.

"Google Apps have changed the way business is performed in terms of email and contact syncing," said Barone. "In our field, we're often on the go so the use of Google Apps and other web-based applications is an absolute priority for us. It gives us "anywhere" access to business information and works well with many other apps from The Small Business Web."

Operating a single-agent real estate business, Shea and Barone have successfully grown their real estate business in challenging market through the use of web-based applications and technology. "Technology has transformed how the real estate business is done," said Barone. "Web-based applications, including those offered by The Small Business Web, have allowed us to decrease business expenses while still growing our business. Using this technology has enabled us to build a low-overhead, web-based real estate business."