Shannon gets a visit from Google @Work: The Apps Show
John Merrifield and The Apps Show crew paid our office a visit to talk about how we utilize Google’s products with our operations. Spefically, we talk about how we use Google Calendar and Gmail to be more efficient and organized in relations to our clients and their transactions. Check out the video below followed by a transcript. Enjoy!
Hey, guys. John here from The Apps Show. Check out this interview with one of our friends who have some incredible use cases for Google Apps.
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John: Shannon, thank you so much for letting us come to your office today.
Shannon: Absolutely!
John: And do you mind telling us more about yourself and what you do?
Shannon: So, I’m a real estate agent. I’ve been in the business for 10 years. I have a background in accounting prior to that. And basically what I do now is help people buy and sell homes. You know I used to be an individual agent. Started a team a few years ago and we are the top producing team in the office. And on a national level, we are actually part the top 1% out of over 100,000 agents.
John: That’s amazing. What do you face on a day-to-day that kind of prohibits you from blowing it out of the water?
Shannon: I think the biggest challenge that we all, as a team, face is really just time management because I do run my life by 15- and 30-minute increments. So if I can’t stay on a schedule, it’s a problem.
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WHAT APPS HELP YOU?
Shannon: One of the biggest things is the calendar for me. My team has access to my calendar and vice versa. You know it’s really helpful for me to be able to schedule things. But from a customer perspective, I really use the calendars in a way that was…it’s just really helped us get organized. Each client that I’m working with, I actually create a separate calendar and I share that calendar with my client. So, basically the client can see, at any given moment, what is happening for the day or what’s expecting in the coming week. Or even in the case of a seller selling a home. Prior to going on the market, there’s a lot of project management that goes on with getting the home ready for sale. So, I will calendar things like the house cleaning, the staging, the photographer, inspections, so on and so forth. Once we’re actually in contract and there’s some contractual deadline (this is when contingencies are going to me removed and this is when we’re going to close escrow, this is when we’re signing off), all of those things get calendared into the customer’s individual calendar. It saves a lot of time because I don’t have to double communicate that to my customer or client. It’s right there in the calendar.
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EMAIL LABELS IN ACTION
John: So, I noticed in your email I see that you have a lot of different labels.
Shannon: Yes.
John: Do you want to talk about how you use these?
Shannon: Sure. Similar to the calendar, I have a label for every client. With this particular one here, I have a filter set up for that client. Very specifically, their email address, full name and then, of course, their property address. If anything comes in with this property address or from their email, automatically, it filters it and applies the label for me. Then I can actually just go to that label and search for results that I’m specifically looking for like termite inspection. You know, whatever it is that I need to just hone it on.
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OTHER LESSON LEARNED
John: So, tell us more about the lessons you’ve learned in this process.
Shannon: I think the biggest one is to stop giving out your password and use delegation. When I learned about the delegation feature, it was just like totally mindblowing. It was like “Duh!”. This is genius on Google’s part. I can actually give delegation to people on my team and then they can manage my email inbox for me. I really found it comfortable to know that they didn’t have full access to my email – like they couldn’t delete something or remove something without my approval. Right? And so, that was really, really comforting. That they can just go in and do the very minimal things that I need them to do without having full control over my email so that the number of emails that I’m dealing with is very minimized.
John: Shannon, thank you so much for letting us into your office today. I know a lot of people, including myself, have learned some great tips with our product. And hopefully soon, I will be one of those labels.
Shannon: Oh! Good. I look forward to it.
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