Introduction
To help ensure the success of our agents, Watkins Realty Group is equipped with the latest in cutting-edge technology. We feel that it is important for our real estate agents to embrace technology and use it to their advantage.
Technology makes marketing and communications easier, provides online qualifying, increases productivity, and turns agents into super agents. Let our technology work for you!
Watkins Realty Group does not charge a technology fee to its agents. Our technology is provided as benefit to agents who are part of our team.
The following lists some of the types of technologies offered by Watkins Realty Group:
Office Equipment
We provide state-of-the-art office equipment for all our agents to aid in their pursuit of real estate success. We offer creative marketing solutions, including a support staff that will assist with generating camera-ready artwork for brochures, flyers and CMA presentations.
Custom Website
Watkins Realty Group offers a state-of-the-art custom website and property search engine designed to capitalize on the rapidly growing online market and to assist with lead generation.
Remote Access
We provide productivity software and Internet tools that will enable our agents to have access to the Watkins Realty Group server while working from home or on the road.
- Realty Software Tools
- MLS access
- WINForms â
- Microsoft Office Suite â
- Outlook â
- Point â
- ACT! â
- Adobe Photoshop â
- Adobe Acrobat â
Technology Training
With an expansive amount of innovative technology, Watkins Realty Group offers training for all their agents to help them take full advantage of all the technologies available.
TOP
Office Equipment
Watkins Realty Group provides innovative office technology for all its agents to aid in their pursuit of real estate success.
- We provide workstations for Watkins Realty Group agents with firewall and antivirus protection to ensure accessibility and security for all employees. All computers are networked into the Watkins Server with high speed DSL Internet access and printer sharing. The latest software and operating systems are provided and IT technical support is available in-house by a support staff.
- Desktop publishing capabilities are provided for the agent to handle in-house high quality marketing materials to promote sales activities. The creative production of Personal Brochures, Flyers, CMA Presentations and Newsletters are all available at no cost to the agent.
- Phone systems are state-of-the-art. Faxes are incoming and outgoing in digital quality. There are no blocks or charges for long distance calls or faxes.
- Digital document copiers and scanners. Color and black and white laser printers are available for small runs of marketing materials.
- At Watkins Realty Group, Agents have the freedom to be creative with numerous marketing and advertising tools, which generate a continual stream of qualified prospects.
- Creative assistance is given for marketing. We assist our agents in generating camera-ready artwork both in print and computer PDF files email formats.
TOP
Watkins Realty Group Custom Website
Watkins Realty Group offers a comprehensive state-of-the-art custom website designed to capitalize on the rapidly growing online market. It’s no secret that the Internet is a valuable tool for marketing and advertising real estate. In fact, over 70% of prospective homebuyers now use the web to search for property listings and agents!
Benefits to the WRG Web Site
- When homebuyers visit our site, they are granted exclusive online access to property information and search tools that are not available to the general public on most real estate websites.
- Prospective buyers can now easily search, compare and select the properties that interest them.
- Searches by city, price, square footage, bedrooms, baths, and type of home are all available to our potential clients.
- Access several indoor/outdoor views of each listing to further entice prospective clients.
- Direct links from all listed properties to Watkins Realty Agents! This provides our agents with a head-start advantage not available to most real estate companies.
- We p rovide a free agent web page on the WRG website, where you can place your picture and a list your accomplishments, experience, quotes from clients, and contact information. This helps potential clients develop a more personal relationship with our agents, which is vitally important in the real estate industry.
The Watkins Realty Group website uses IDX, or Internet Data Display technology. The IDX concept allows Watkins Realty Group to display publicly, on our company web site, all of the currently available properties for sale within the MLS system.
Advertising property listings online is an increasingly integral element in real estate prospecting and marketing. And since ALL property listings on the WRG website link to contact information for one of our agents, we greatly assist with online lead generation. And best of all, this marketing is provided free of charge to our agents!
Sample:
Listed at: $9,750,000 |
MLS # 046001069 |
|
|
Contact me to view this lovely home!
|
Lisa Dial Santos
Watkins Realty Group
W: 858-452-7788
C: 619-370-6059
|
|
Additional properties similar to this one may also be shown to you at your request. |
|
Why WRG uses IDX
- All Watkins Realty Agents become empowered to deal with the real estate customer of the future.
- Our Agents can fully market their services on the Internet.
- Agents can take advantage of the data brokers have contributed to the system.
- Agents can obtain and maintain first contact with the consumer in the real estate transaction.
- Our Watkins Realty Group website becomes a great source of listing data.
- We can display more data fields than many current real estate websites are allowed to display.
- As brokers become more innovative in offering on-line services, listing displays are critical factors to real estate success.
- Watkins Realty Group Agents are able to connect with consumers and cross-sell other services to potential cliental.
TOP
Remote Access
We provide innovative Internet technology, which enables our agents to have access to the Watkins Realty Group server while working from the home office or on the road.
Our remote access server allows users to gain access to files and print services from a remote location. For example, an agent who dials into the network from home using a dial-up modem or DSL/Cable will be connected directly into our remote access server. Once the user is authenticated, he or she can access all the office software and data, as if they were physically at the office!
Benefits to Remote Access
- Remote access solutions allow our agents to access all the Watkins Realty Group office network tools from their home, or any Internet connection.
- Agents can trust in the availability of instantly accessible and up-to-date information.
- Our network provides instant access to all the latest properties for sale throughout San Diego and Riverside counties.
- Financial Pre-qualification and loan processing pulled from any Internet connection.
- Realty Software Tools – Available just about anywhere!
- MLS access
- WINForms
- Microsoft Office Suite
- Outlook
- Point
- ACT!
- Adobe Acrobat
- Adobe Photoshop
This unique remote access technology positions Watkins Realty Group agents to be a step ahead of the competition. Now it is possible for any agent to access office resources and information, at any time, from any Internet connection! After all, the true power of information cannot be realized without one prerequisite: its accessibility.
TOP
Real Estate Software Tools
In addition to the progressive Internet and remote server capabilities, Watkins Realty Group home office is stocked with advanced technology tools to aide our agents in doing what they do best - Selling and Buying Property!
WINForms
WINForms â is the software that introduced forms automation and laser printing to the real estate community. WINForms â allows Watkins Realty Group agents the ability to breeze through completing real estate contracts and add forms to a transaction as needed.
Benefits of WINForms
- Increase productivity with a standardized real estate forms process
- Offers the leading-edge in technology to Watkins Realty Group agents
- Presents a professional image to customers
- The ability to streamline administrative tasks
- Instant information recall
- Independent, secure user files allow access to all form files
- Expanded calculation and amortization features automatically carry financial information throughout the entire form.
- Specific real estate transaction information is entered once and carried forward throughout all forms needed to complete the transaction.
- Microsoft Outlook â Integration
- On-line Help Screens built in to provide instant assistance whenever needed.
Microsoft Office Suite
Microsoft Office can help agents transform information into something powerful. New and familiar products, features, and functionality improve how people and organizations connect to coworkers, information, and business processes. At Watkins Realty Group we provide our agents the newest editions of Microsoft Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Access.
Benefits to Microsoft Office Suite
Word
- Microsoft Word is the best-selling Word processor on the market today. Our Agents take advantage by creating impressive-looking documents that help emit an aura of professionalism for Watkins Realty Group.
- Word enables our agents to access, modify, and save documents in a central location on the group server that can be accessed anywhere!
PowerPoint
- PowerPoint improves the way our agents create, present, and collaborate on marketing presentations.
- Enhanced multimedia capabilities such as comparative real estate graphs and financial information charts are used to deliver marketing presentations with greater impact.
- While working in PowerPoint, agents can access Clip Art and Media online. They can select from thousands of multimedia elements—including images, sounds, photos, and animations—to add even greater effect to their presentations.
Excel
- Excel enables agents to turn data into information with powerful tools to analyze, communicate, and share results.
- In addition, agents can work with industry-standard Extensible Markup Language (XML) data to make it easier to connect to business processes. Agents can analyze and manipulate XML data sources using charts, tables, or graphs.
- Agents can find facts easily without leaving Excel by using the new Research task pane. It brings an electronic dictionary, thesaurus, and online research sites into Excel to help agents find real estate information and incorporate financial figures into their spreadsheets.
Access
- Access helps Watkins Realty Group Agents create forms-based solutions that make it easier to work with data.
- Agents can create or use powerful database solutions that make organizing, accessing, and sharing real estate information easier.
- This product also links tables so that agents can access data from multiple real estate and financial databases at one time in Access forms, reports, and other data-access pages.
Outlook
- Outlook improves the way our agents manage information, communicate with clients, and organize their work—all from one place.
- By providing an integrated solution for managing and organizing e-mail messages, schedules, tasks, notes, contacts, and other information, Outlook is an essential tool for the real estate industry.
- Agents can organize client e-mail messages more easily by grouping messages by date, size, conversation, subject, importance, or other criteria.
- Watkins Realty Group agents can access company and individual calendars in Outlook and view multiple calendars side by side to make scheduling meetings fast, organized and more convenient.
ACT!
In order to help our agents organize and stay in touch with their customer and prospect database, Watkins Realty Group uses cutting edge ACT! â customer management software.
Benefits of ACT!
- Store complete contact information including e-mail, notes, history, attachments and more.
- Import data from Microsoft Outlook, Palm™ Desktop and other sources.
- Choose from 60 standard contact fields—or create your own.
- Attach presentations, proposals and more to Activities, Notes and History items.
- Find anyone or any detail instantly with Lookups or Keyword Searches.
- Customize your database to access and manage information the way you want.
- Track completed Activities for each relationship so you know what happened and when.
- Link correspondence to contacts for a record of what was sent and received.
- Save time with standard letter, e-mail and memo templates.
- View daily, weekly, monthly, workweek - even mini-month calendars.
- Forecast sales with confidence using built-in sales and forecasting tools.
- Track opportunities through the sales cycle with interactive pipeline graphs.
Adobe Acrobat â
Whether you need to share files across the office or around the world, the Adobe® Acrobat® product family enables agents to simplify document processes using Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). A standard adopted by businesses worldwide, Adobe PDF is a reliable format for electronic document exchange that preserves document integrity so files can be viewed and printed on a variety of platforms. Watkins Realty Group agents utilize this software to both access and read all their PDF documents and forms.
Benefits to Adobe Acrobat
- Ability to view and print Adobe PDF files
- 128-bit encryption and password protection for increased document security
- Review management and commenting tools
- Ability to combine document types from various applications into one Adobe PDF file
- Electronic forms creation
- Enhanced tools for printing, viewing, and navigating of large-format documents
Adobe Photoshop
Professional and effective marketing tools are necessary in the real estate world. At Watkins Realty Group, we provide Adobe Photoshop â to help our agents produce the very best flyers and other market imaging to separate us from competitors. Innovative features help our agents design faster, improve image quality, and manage their marketing files with the timesaving efficiency every professional needs.
Benefits of Adobe Photoshop
- Photoshop allows agents to create eye-catching typography by placing text on paths or within shapes.
- Agents can get truer, higher quality output by working with the complete raw data files from most major digital camera models.
- A higher level of professionalism is achieved for our agents with more precise editing and retouching with expanded support for 16-bit images in core features, including layers, brushes, text, shapes, and more.
- Images can be imported and edited at the touch of a key, allowing our agents to swiftly accomplish their marketing and advertisement goals.
TOP
How To Use WINForms
A Form is a document that contains blank spaces, or fields, for insertion of required or requested information.
Create a new transaction:
- Select New Transaction from File menu of the menu bar or select Create a New Transaction from the opening screen.
- Select the OK button. The transaction Header window will open.
- Fill out the Transaction Header.
Add forms into the transaction:
- Click on the category of the desired form (Transaction, Purchase, Listing, etc.)
- Click on the title of the desired form. The selected form title will then become highlighted.
- Click on the Add Form button.
Remove a form from the transaction:
- Click on the transaction category to view all form titles for the transaction.
- Click on the title of the form to be removed. The selected form title will then become highlighted.
- Click on the Remove Form button.
- The list will refresh with the form removed.
Edit a form:
- A field is the only area or line of a form in which data can be entered, changed or deleted. With most computer monitors, WINForms â fields appear as turquoise by default and are rectangular in shape.
- When a field becomes active or highlighted, it will darken slightly or open a smaller window. When this window is highlighted, you are free to enter or edit your information for that field.
Save the transaction:
- Anytime information is altered, it must be saved on the current transaction file to retain the new information. This system does not use any auto saving routines, as with some programs, so you must save your data on a regular basis. Attempts to load a new transaction or exit the program will open a message to ask you to Save.
- To save current data to the current transaction file select the Save Disk Icon on the Toolbar, or Save from the File menu of the Menu Bar.
Print the forms:
- Select Print Form from the File menu of the Menu Bar. The Print dialog box will open.
- Select Print Range and the number of copies to be printed.
- Select the OK Button.
Using Templates
- Select Use an Existing Transaction from the opening screen.
- Select Templates from the left menu bar.
- Select the Template you wish to use and select the OK button.
- Go to the Menu Bar and select File, Save Transaction as. Then enter a file name and select OK button.
Technology Training
With an expansive amount of innovative technology, Watkins Realty Group offers training for all their agents as they become accustomed to working in the fast-paced computer real estate world. We understand that not everyone is advanced in office technology training. But if you are one of these people, you will be surprised with how quickly you too can become a technology proficient. Technical support is available free of charge to all our agents – both veteran and new.
We realize that technology is the way of the future in the real estate industry. That is why we encourage a continuing technological education for all our agents to better themselves. The only way to utilize advancements in computer and real estate technology is to embrace it, and never stop the education process. This will ultimately lead to increased productivity and a higher level of success!