Lifebushido/Best Agent Business

Lifebushido/Best Agent Business Key Assistant Training Call Database Management Overview Steve Kantor: Good morning, this is Steve Kantor with Lifebushido and Best Agent Business and this is a training session on Database Management. We re starting a training series, one per week, for the various 10-20 teams at Lifebushido and Best Agent Business. First, to give you the big picture, Lifebushido broadly serves the marketplace of small business entrepreneurs, and we provide part-time virtual assistant services to small business entrepreneurs. Best Agent Business was the first brand within Lifebushido, which serves the real estate market for real estate agents. Our services are delivered by a combination of Key Assistants and Teams. The Key Assistant is the person who interacts directly with the client the most, and the Teams do the specialized work. In rough terms, the Key Assistants may do 20% of the work and the Teams do the other 80%. Client Services job is to interact with the client and make sure everything is on track and to coordinate with Key Assistants and Teams as needed. We probably have 10-15 teams. Of those teams, there are a few that I consider to be core services; one of them is Database Management. Some of the core services teams are Database Management, Lead Management, Marketing, and Calling. Those are things that are almost always used by the vast majority of clients. So let s talk about Database Management a little bit. The goal is to get one database increasing in value every month with a clear database management system that s written down. One database is important, because most all of our clients operate with multiple databases. Ultimately, we want to consolidate and have one database be the master database. Because of how the industry works, however, there are often side databases that still exist. Currently, the main databases we work with are Top Producer, which is used by probably 70% of our clients, Agent Office, used by 20%, and about 10% use other things. Some clients also have a separate buyer lead database, such as Tiger Lead, Realty Generator, and BoomTown. For some clients who don t have a formal database, they may consider their database to be their Outlook contacts or maybe an Excel file or two. We do not consider an Outlook list or an Excel list to be a database. We will just call 1

those lists, and we encourage the client to get a real database. Probably for five to 10% of our clients, we help them get their first database and have them subscribe to Top Producer and get their data consolidated into it. As I said, there may be multiple side databases. For example, clients may use a service like ProQuest, where people call a 1-800 number to get information off of a flyer on a home they see for sale, and that generates a buyer lead. We may then data enter that information into the database. Or there may be outgoing databases. A client may use Constant Contact and we may export from Top Producer periodically to refresh the Constant Contact database. Back to our goal of increasing in value; ultimately, the database is the key asset for the business, especially for real estate agents. The value of their business is the database. Gradually, we will be defining for each client how much a Client person is worth, how much an SOI (Sphere of Influence) or a Buyer A, Buyer B, or Buyer C lead is worth, etc., and literally on a monthly basis be able to calculate and show how much we think their database is worth right then and track that over time. In terms of the database work, think of it in two chunks. One is client kickoff work and the other is on-going database services. In general, there s a lot more interaction in the first month or two with database work than ongoing. When we get a new client, a Key Assistant is assigned and a Database Assistant is assigned. The Database Assistant is sometimes called the Database Assistant, sometimes the Database Lead. Shaveta is currently the Team Leader, and she has a team of Cherry, Ruth, Tannu, and probably one or two other people, so the Database Management team is about four to five people, and they are great with databases. For those of you who don t know, my prior software company was a database CRM company. I like databases a lot. I like to get databases organized and I keep myself fairly involved with Database Management team. So the client kickoff process usually involves the following. We first identify the various databases and lists that the client has and try to sort out what s what and what needs to be consolidated. We get their logins and we get copies of the data or access to the data, and then we determine a plan. The plan is determined by usually me and the Database Lead, based upon the call with the Key Assistant and the kickoff. The plan involves consolidating or merging data, doing database conversion, etc., and then coding the data. The Logins team, or the Logins person, verifies the logins. When we get new logins, you always send to logins@bestagentbusiness.com and they verify and make sure the logins work. The Database Assistant first does an analysis of their database. If it s Top Producer or Outlook or Agent Office, etc., we either do, if we have access, or we get from the client, a dump of their entire database and we do an analysis through Excel of different pivot tables to try to get a top-level view of the database and see what to do. Our key tool for managing the database and looking at things similar across clients is something called the Business Database Spreadsheet, which is abbreviated BDS. During the first month of work with the client, the Database Assistant may generate an updated Business Database Spreadsheet, or BDS, maybe two or three times, then maybe once or twice a month going forward during the first three months. After that, we do a quarterly Business Database Spreadsheet for all clients. So for example, from April 1 st through 2

April 10 th, every single active client will have an updated Business Database Spreadsheet run and sent to them and the Key Assistant and relevant people. We also do a Business Database Spreadsheet for side databases, like Tiger Lead and BoomTown, etc. The way you should describe a BDS to your client is as a snapshot of their database, and it keeps track, when we update every few weeks, of the changes. So we have columns for, let s say, what it looked like in January, 2010 versus what it looks like in March, 2010, so you can see things getting cleaned up and organized further. The Business Database Spreadsheet usually should be able to be printed out as one to three pages, and you often have to format it in Excel to print on a certain number of pages and width. It s sent by the Database Team to the client, copying the Key Assistant and Steve and other parties. Usually what happens is Steve or Shaveta, the Team Leader in the future, will give guidance to the Database Lead of the next steps to clean it up and which data to pull and send to the client for coding. So that s the Business Database Spreadsheet. The next perspective within the database is to organize the data. This is critical. Think of all the client data in three main chunks. One chunk would be what we call Client Marketing, the next is Leads, and the next we ll call Other. Within Client Marketing, that refers to Clients and SOI, within Leads it refers to Buyers and Seller leads, and Other refers to agents, vendors, and other. Let me walk through those. We use the word Clients to refer to people who have already done business with that company or with that real estate agent. It s people who ve actually closed a deal with them. SOI stands for Sphere of Influence, which is an industry jargon term. It would refer to people like their friends, family, people that they know, and people they ve met but they have never done a deal with them. Ultimately, Clients are worth a bit more than SOI. The hope is with the SOI that the next time they buy or sell real estate, they ll do business with that agent, or they may refer someone to them. Buyer leads and Seller leads are people looking to buy a home or people looking to sell a home. Other would be agents, other agents they interact with, other vendors, or other being anything else that s sort of sitting out there. When you look at a big picture, though, there are really four chunks, and you can focus the clients on four things, saying the core of your database is four things: Your Clients, your SOI, and your Buyers and Sellers. Our coding scheme is to get everybody organized in those chunks and code them with an A/B/C rating, so they ll be a Client A, Client B, Client C. We already have documents, which if you do not have, email me for a copy of them, explaining the different coding schemes. The one other caveat is we have something called Buyer New Lead and Seller New Lead, which are brand new leads that they don t know whether it s an A/B/C rating. So top level, we come up with a strategy for their database, we do an analysis, we have a Business Database Spreadsheet that we can all look at and start to clean up the codes and get a sense of things, and we gradually organize things using these codes. The advantage is that every single one of our clients is using the same database system and structure, so anyone at Best Agent Business can interact with any other client and be looking at the 3

same thing, and that s very powerful. So far, we ve had tremendous success and pretty much convinced probably almost all clients to use our systems. Next is database cleanup; this is a tough one. If a client asks us to help clean up their database, there s some stuff that we can clean up and do on our own, which the Database Team does, and there s some stuff where we need them to review data and code it. Let me give you some metrics, and I ve never said this before and this should be very helpful. To clean up the data, we typically need one hour of the client s time for every 200 records, meaning that if the client has a database of 1,000 records that need to be cleaned up, you should estimate to them that that may take about five hours of their time. We typically suggest that they spend one to two hours a week to clean it up. So the commitment you want to get from them is usually one hour a week on cleaning up the database over a month or two; almost always they should be able to say yes. The next issue is to hold them accountable to that. In comparison, if they didn t have us helping and they tried to do it themselves, meaning if they went into Top Producer and tried to flip through records and clean it up, I m pretty confident that they d only be able to do it at a pace of one hour for every 50 records. So if you ever have a client who says, I don t understand. I thought you guys were going to cleanup the database. Why are you asking me to code the data? The answer to them is that it s a combined effort. By doing it with us, it s far more productive. For example, you have 1,000 records. If you do it our way, it ll take you about five hours, but if you do it your way, manually, it would probably take you 20 hours, and that s the amount of time that we re saving you. Once the database is cleaned up, then what s happening and flowing is Lead Management. Lead Management and Lead Management Team refers to capturing leads, putting them into the database and organizing them with a Weekly Lead Report to manage the flow of leads. Think of Database Management as an audit function. If someone messes up the database again after we get it clean, Database Management s job quarterly is to review and get it cleaned up again. So for example, if the client or their staff enters data incorrectly, or Best Agent Business Lead Management team makes data entry mistakes and enters stuff incorrectly, it will be discovered by our quarterly process of the Business Database Spreadsheet. The most typical example is someone may add a person to the database but not tag them with a contact type, so it would appear as a missing contact type. When coding data for clients or giving them data to code, we do two different methods. One is a report where we run a PDF report like Summary of Contacts, and we may send them a printout of 10, 20, or 30 pages of people for them to mark up with changes and fax back to us. We typically will do that when there are 50 or less records to be updated and coded. If there s 100, 200, 300 records, etc., we typically will export that to an Excel file and have them do what we call a type rating review of the database. So they may see a list of 100 people alphabetically who are mainly their clients, and they re just going through and saying who s a client, who s an SOI and rating them A/B/C. The Database Management Assistant gets that file back and updates their database in Top Producer or otherwise. 4

Q&A How do I know what work is being done by the Database Team for my client? Will I be copied on the emails? Will someone let me know when work is being done, or is it done on the sides and I m never told about it as a Key Assistant? The Key Assistant is copied on all communication back to the client about Database Management. So when the Database Assistant sends the client something, the Key Assistant is copied. In addition, in the Client Agenda, the Database Assistant has a database section where they keep track of the changes they made and files sent to the client that we re waiting on. In addition, if the client is not responsive, the Database Assistant will likely send the file to the Key Assistant for them to interact with the client and make sure it gets done. If the Key Assistant ever wants to find out the status of something, they should just email the Database Assistant and ask. And they can tell who their database lead is by checking the Client Database and it will always be filled in, right? Correct. Is there anyone on the Database Team that s able to speak to my clients on the phone? If not, what is the procedure? Currently, we don t have anybody ideal for talking to the client about a specific database situation. Our goal is to change that over the next few months by bringing a few more people onto the team that would be more appropriate for that. So at this point, it s either the job of the Key Assistant to explain something, or I, Steve, would get on the phone with them, which is rare. The objective is that we want to train the Key Assistants so they understand the process fully, so they can talk it through and explain it to the client. Shaveta: For the time being, until we have a person that can talk directly to the person on the phone, if any Key Assistant has any questions and they just want to talk on the phone, they can call me on my number or they can have me call them, so that s not a problem. Steve: The Key Assistant can contact Shaveta, who is I think in Bangalore, India at this point. She has Skype and she can call them if they don t have Skype to call her. My client is frustrated and overwhelmed with so many Excel updates that they re being asked to do. What do you suggest we tell them when that happens? That s something that s happened a few times. What we ve got to do is go back to the client expectations and determine whether Database Management is something that they want, which hopefully it is. Then the issue is once we ve done the analysis, we re able to say how many records they have to clean. Let s just say it is 1,000 records. The issue is the Key Assistant needs to get clarity and commitment from the client of how much time they re able to and want to focus on cleaning it up. If there s 1,000 records and we say 5

ballpark it will take you five hours of focused effort, do they want to spread that out over six months or one month? You can just get a determination with the client whether they re up for an hour a week or two hours a week or a half hour a week. If the client is then separately overwhelmed by the number of records to code, we can always give it to them in smaller chunks. In the past that was an issue, but going forward, I think it will be less so, because we ll get more clarity. The Key Assistant will be responsible for getting clarity from the client of how much time per week are they up for investing in cleaning up their database. Remember, this is a one-time effort. Their database is a mess for two to three years, and we re usually asking for five to 10 hours maximum, one time. After the initial cleanup, what other services can I offer my client that the Database Management team can do? Currently, across our 50 clients, no one has a perfect database. All of them are still in progress of getting improved, so it s a never-ending process, basically. And one thing that s not happened well but it s going to be happening more in the future is to have the Database Assistant just proactively be pushing things forward and not wait for the client or the Key Assistant to ask for something. One key thing is, though, on the kickoff call, we talk through Clients, SOI, Buyers, and Sellers and determine the sequence of what s the most impact for the client. It depends, but usually for the client, the easiest to focus on first for the client is either Clients or Sellers. After the client has been here for several months or even a year, and there s work such as duplicates that they notice in their database, what is the procedure for getting those cleaned up? Do we contact the database lead? Do we go to you first? We have a new policy: On a quarterly basis, we ll have a dump and a check for duplicates and de-duping. So on a quarterly basis, as part of our services, we review and cleanup any duplicates that have emerged. Often, when we take over a database, we find lots of duplicates; sometimes a total disaster of hundreds of duplicates and it takes many hours to clean up. But the simplest answer is for a variety of reasons, there s times when there may get to be duplicates in the database. If the client gets their weekly lead report and they see a duplicate, they should just circle both records and write dup, please fix. Lead Management should then clean that up. So they don t necessarily have to contact anyone, just direct your client on how to send it to Lead Management? Correct. 6