ADVANCED ACCESS August 2005 Newsletter

August 2005 Newsletter

“You can make a difference. You can change the world. Because you are the difference. You are the world.”
- Federico Pena

ADVANCED ACCESS Weekend Support
Client Reviews are in…..It’s a HIT!

Last month, ADVANCED ACCESS made the announcement that we are now open on WEEKENDS to serve you in our Customer Support department. The launch of weekend support was the final phase of a major expansion and renovation project designed to serve you more promptly and efficiently.

The newly completed Customer Support Center allows for twice the space and seating as the previous configuration, and we have increased our staff by approximately 30% from a year ago. Our Customer Support staff is responsible for addressing thousands of your inquiries on a daily basis. The recent improvements will allow ADVANCED ACCESS to provide BETTER service and FASTER response times than ever before, and now you can call us or send us an email seven days per week!

With 30,000 clients nationwide, we are committed to providing you with the latest in innovative designs, content that provides value to our clients, and most importantly, superior service you can depend on.

ADVANCED ACCESS Customer Support staff now offers new and expanded weekend coverage to our clients for both e-mail and phone inquiries. A well-trained and dedicated team is available for complete Customer Support services on Saturday and Sunday, from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (Pacific Time); 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Eastern Time).

Here’s what our clients are saying about our weekend service:

From Judy Peterson – www.JudyPete.com

“Wow! Saturday Service - I'm really impressed with your new Saturday Service. I had some time early Saturday to work on adding a few new links and by Saturday afternoon Greg had them all properly completed. Once again, many thanks for a good job. Kind regards, Judy”

From Kathy Goughenour – One of our AA Approved Virtual Assistants:

“I had a quick question and received a quick and friendly answer. Thanks for being there on a Sunday so I could get this resolved.”

From Sam Elam – www.SamElam.com

“Thank you for being available on Sunday. I didn't know if I was doing something wrong and what I was attempted to do was not possible when I was trying to be a Google sitemap for my AA site.”

From Jim Havice – www.jimhavice.com

“Keep up the excellent work, especially with employees like Roselyn. I truly appreciate your change in service hours that now include your excellent availability on Saturdays. Thank you. Jim”

We are constantly looking for better ways to provide superior products and service to YOU, our valued clients. Please do not hesitate to contact us TOLL FREE at 866-518-1571 if you have any questions, comments or suggestions to help us make our products and service the best they can be! Thank you sincerely for your business and support.

ADVANCED ACCESS’ Virtual Assistant Network New Virtual Assistants Added

Earlier this year we announced our official ADVANCED ACCESS Virtual Assistant Network, to provide you with a handy resource for expert assistance to help you with administrative tasks so you can focus on selling real estate. The response to our Virtual Assistant network has been excellent – and we are continually adding MORE new Virtual Assistants to our list. Each Virtual Assistant on the list has been screened and interviewed by our ADVANCED ACCESS staff to confirm they were experienced in the real estate industry and knowledgeable in our Classic Package™ 3.0 product. Referrals were forwarded to us by a variety of ADVANCED ACCESS clients, and were reviewed by our staff before being added to the list.

ADVANCED ACCESS approved Virtual Assistants are listed according to a “star system,” based on the number of testimonials they have received from ADVANCED ACCESS clients. Here are some excerpts from happy clients who have utilized the services of our ADVANCED ACCESS Virtual Assistants:

"Fantastic!! I asked my VA to help me make my site "profitable". It looks great and I'm very excited about using it to grow my business."

"Before I was a Real Estate Agent, I was a marketing consultant...and I was pretty arrogant about marketing and marketing "specialists". My broker introduced me to my VA and I found a marketing kindred spirit... minus the attitude! My VA multitasks like the pro she is. She developed a marketing plan based on our conversations. She adapted and revised it based on my needs and preferences. It's great working with my VA... I consider her my marketing manager and I'm excited about a mutually rewarding working relationship. "

"My VA has added tremendously to my business. After a co-worker referred her services to me, she quickly took charge of reconstructing my website and customizing its content to suit my business. This task would have taken me countless hours to do, so to have my VA work efficiently and quickly to make the necessary changes has helped free time up for me to devote to my clients. Thank you for bringing me into the 21st Century with your insightful technology skills!"

To access the list of ADVANCED ACCESS Virtual Assistants, visit the link on our website. We recommend that you contact several Virtual Assistants to find the one who best complements your personality and business style. At ADVANCED ACCESS, our goal is to help you maximize the success of your website, and we hope our Virtual Assistant Network will be a valuable resource for you in the process. The Key to Your Success – 'Is Our Service'.

AA Participates in NC Affiliate Fun-Day

ADVANCED ACCESS participated in this year’s Annual REALTOR® & Affiliate Fun-Day, which was held on Tuesday, July 19th, and hosted by the Pinehurst-Southern Pines Area Association of REALTORS®, Inc.

The event was held in the Pinehurst Fair Barn, which is located next to the site of this year’s 105th U.S. Open Championship held at the famed Pinehurst No. 2 Golf Course.

Approximately 200 members attended the event that featured real estate vendors, music from a D.J., miniature golf, fun, food, and events for the entire family. CEO Barbara Barnes of the Pinehurst-Southern Pines Area Association of REALTORS® was pleased and excited about this year’s event. “…All of us were extremely pleased with our successful event, which was a change in format this year. The success was due largely to the hard work of the committee and members who planned this wonderful event!”

Roger Livingston, North Carolina resident and Regional Sales Manager for ADVANCED ACCESS, attended the event to announce the addition Pinehurst-Southern Pines Area Association MLS data to our Website network, and also to demonstrate the various products, programs, and services to attending members.

“…We were very excited about announcing the launch of our IDX service for this area, and also to attend this outstanding event hosted by the Pinehurst-Southern Pines Area Association,” stated Roger Livingston of ADVANCED ACCESS. “The event featured great hospitality, great food, and of course, the hospitable local members of the Pinehurst-Southern Pines Area Association who are also members of the State Association,” he concluded.

Roger is one of the newest additions to the ADVANCED ACCESS sales family, and has a diverse background of education and experiences across many industries and several states. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Cum Laude, from The University of Hartford, Connecticut. After a brief career programming robots in the jet engine industry and managing research and development teams, Roger then rode the wave of the PC evolution and held IT management positions at manufacturing, engineering services, and governmental organizations.

After twelve years with IT, Roger moved on to technical sales and sales engineering positions in the telecommunications and office automation markets. His first venture into the real estate industry was as a Regional Sales Manager with Ascot Technologies, a start-up company offering MLS access from PALM-based smart-phones. Roger's vast technical knowledge and honed presentation skills allow him to be very effective in the real estate environment, where it is often required to communicate new technology to people of varying degrees of technical aptitude.

Married, to his wife Joan, for 18-years, Roger is originally from Connecticut, and moved to South Carolina where he lived for three years. In 2000, he moved to North Carolina where he currently resides. Roger and Joan have two children, Rachel, 10-years old and Brian, 2 ½ years old, and the family enjoys swimming and “hanging-out.” Rogers likes the people in the Carolinas, because they are unique, friendly, hospitable, and diverse, with all kinds of people and backgrounds from all over the country.

NAR Sponsors REALTOR® Safety Week

The National Association of REALTORS® has designated September 11 – 17, 2005 as the third annual REALTOR® Safety Week.

The purpose of the REALTOR® Safety Week is to help create safety thinking among real estate practitioners and to remind us all about the importance of safety. NAR is also urging local and state Realtor organizations to hold training classes and awareness seminars on how practitioners can keep themselves safe on the job.

Al Mansell, President of the National Association of REALTORS®, states, “Personal safety on the job, including working in the office, at open houses and property showings, client meetings and traveling to appointments, should be a constant priority for every REALTOR®. And the safety of our more than one million members is always a top priority for NAR… Educating our members can literally mean the difference between life and death.”

NAR offers a variety of resources on its website, including powerful tools that can be used to build members' awareness of potential on-the-job dangers and the proper procedures that can save lives. Some of the resources include Safety Tips, Video Presentations, and other items designed to educate REALTORS® about safety on the job.

By working together, REALTORS® can have the knowledge that will empower them to work with confidence. For more information about REALTOR® Safety week, click here.

ADVANCED ACCESS Trade Show & Convention Schedule

We invite you to stop-by and visit our ADVANCED ACCESS staff when they visit your part of the country. Bring a friend, have them sign-up for service, and receive a FREE MONTH OF HOSTING! The following appearances have been scheduled, and for more information or an updated schedule, visit our Website at www.AdvancedAccess.com.

August 17th – 20th, 2005
2005 RE/MAX International Summer Conference for Brokers/Owners/Managers
Denver Convention Center, Denver, CO

August 18th – 19th, 2005
Honolulu Board of REALTORS® 2005 A Tech Faire Sellabration
Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, HI

August 25th – 26th, 2005
Florida Association of REALTORS® 2005 Convention & Trade Expo
Wyndham Palace Resort & Spa, Lake Buena Vista, FL

September 9, 2005
Texas REALTORS® 2005 Trade Expo
American Bank Center, Corpus Christi, TX

September 12-14, 1005
Maryland Association of REALTORS® 53rd Annual Conference & Trade Show
Roland E. Powell Convention Center, Ocean City, MD

September 12-14, 2005
North Carolina Association of REALTORS® 2005 Annual Convention & REALTOR® Business Village
The Homestead, Hot Springs, VA

September 12-14, 2005
2005 Keller Williams Mega Agent Camp
Hilton Austin Hotel, Austin, TX

September 15, 2005
Sacramento Association of REALTORS® 2005 Marketing & Technology Expo
Antioch Progressive Church, Sacramento, CA

Keep in Touch With Holiday Intellicards™ Greetings

As the end of the summer approaches and the kids go back to school, remember your clients and prospects with friendly Intellicards™ to commemorate the end of the season. ADVANCED ACCESS created the Intellicards™ automatic email marketing system to save time for busy real estate professionals, with colorful and friendly email greetings to keep your name in front of your clients and promote your real estate business. Our automatic email campaigns ensure you will continue to contact your clients on a regular basis – even when you’re too busy to do it yourself!

Here are a few examples of our ‘Back to School’ Intellicards™ selections:

The Virtual Office in your ADVANCED ACCESS website provides a nice selection of specially designed Intellicards™ for nearly every holiday and special occasion. Simply add your personal message, and you’re good to go.

Keeping in touch with your clients and prospects regularly is EASY with Intellicards™ Email Marketing Program. Or, to display a seasonal theme on your website, ADVANCED ACCESS features back-to-school website designs in your Virtual Office, along with holiday designs for every month of the year.

If you have the Classic Package 3.0™ design, you can make the changes directly through your Virtual Office. Any of our customer support representatives would be happy to assist you in making the changes to your site. Simply give us a call TOLL FREE 866-518-1571 or e-mail us at support@advancedaccess.com.

Subject lines on email messages are like headlines on Advertisements; You Need A Great One To Grab Readers And Make Finding Key Emails Easy!

By Bill Koelzer

You and Fred, the client, have sent each other more than thirty emails back and forth, and now the client is on the phone urgently asking you to look up that one particular email that he CCd you on where Joe Johnson, the landscaper, left his vacation cabin’s fax number. Fred needs to fax Joe something legal ASAP about fixing the latest of the continuing lawn sprinkler problems on the new house that Fred bought some months ago through you.

You put Fred on speakerphone, and race through your inbox, sent and deleted files. OMG, there are soooo many emails there that you’ve gotten from and sent to Fred. Worse yet, they all say, “From Janie RealtorLady,” which is YOU. How can you possibly find the particular one he wants you to find in the next few minutes?

Sure, you can find that single email he wants by going to EDIT, then FIND, then MESSAGE, then LOOK IN, then choose FROM, and then LOOK IN MESSAGE, and then enter the word “Johnson.” But you might have a dozen messages containing the word Joe Johnson, since Joe Johnson himself sometimes uses that word in his own business signature on HIS emails.

Yes, you can isolate messages in Outlook and Outlook Express by what date they were sent, but what if you don’t remember when that particular message was sent? And Joe’s still on the phone waiting while you, frustrated, make excuses and sweat bullets.

Well, you could have found that email easily if you (and the client) had known the rule that most early people on the Internet routinely observed, which is this: CHANGE YOUR SUBJECT LINE with each new email!

See, if somewhere along the line, you’d have labeled the email topic he wants you to find now as “sprinklers Johnson Cabin #s” or “Joe’s input and cabin phone number re: sprinkler problem” you’d have already found the email he seeks, just by scanning only the subject lines of the emails.

You could have done this subject line scanning even faster if you’d have first gone to ANY email from Fred, and directly above it in your email client, have clicked on FROM. After you had done that, ALL the emails that are FROM Fred would have appeared in one place in your email preview pane. You could far more quickly scan these since they’re all the ones from Fred.

What about when you get and send a volley of emails between you and someone, all on the same subject? We do this all the time with our friends when we gossip with them, and sometimes with clients instead of Instant Messaging (IM) them.

C’mon, use your noggin. If you need to email back and forth about the same subject, there must be some element in each succeeding email that clarifies something earlier. Just notice what that element is and add THAT to the forefront of the subject line on the email.

In the case of Fred’s missing email, when you answered him back, that email’s subject line might have said: CabinContact#s/Johnson/BackPatioDrain/Sprinkler Problem. See, it’s almost like the Dewey Decimal System, using words instead of digits, and for email subjects instead of books, right?

Think of it as adding a subfolder to a subfolder…at least with “slugging” each email’s subject line with a newly added “slug,” your eye can travel quickly down the preview pane of emails listed on your screen and find in seconds what otherwise might take minutes. (Time is money, and all that, right?)

Okay, children. Let’s review what we have learned today:

1. ALWAYS write a new, explanatory, specific, logical slug in your email subject line.

2. NEVER send an email back to someone with it having the identical subject line as when you got it.

Do this forever and watch how quickly your clients and friends catch on and begin making their lives, and those of their friends and clients, much easier, by doing the same thing as you have taught them to do. Remember, you should always RE-slug your emails!

Bill Koelzer is a Web marketing consultant to Web-proficient agents nationwide. He is co-author, with Barbara Cox, Ph.D., of the Prentice-Hall books, "Internet Marketing in Real Estate" and Internet Marketing. Koelzer is also webmaster of Orange County Real Estate - Search MLS, among the most-awarded known Realtor® sites. Contact info: www.koelzer.com or e-mail him at Bill@Koelzer.com

Featured AA Employee of the Month: Scott Dietzel

This month we are featuring Scott Dietzel from our Customer Support department. Scott has only been on board with ADVANCED ACCESS for a few months; however, he is such a strong member of the team that he was recruited by the management to be involved in our newly created Weekend Customer Support Group.

Scott has lived in the southern California town of Glendora for nearly 20 years. His close friends call him “Fate.” Scott grew up in a household with an older brother, David, and sister, Ann Marie – both of whom are now happily married. Scott attended Damien Catholic High School in La Verne, California and graduated in 1997. In pursuit of higher education, Scott is taking classes at the local community college where he hopes to earn a degree in Computer Science and get involved with programming.

Before his affiliation with ADVANCED ACCESS, Scott worked in various customer service positions and in the retail industry, working with people and honing his excellent skills. In addition, Scott worked as a Network Administrator, where he learned valuable information about computers and troubleshooting problems. Scott feels that his most redeeming quality is his patience, which is an essential element in a successful customer support representative!

In his spare time, Scott enjoys playing computer games and writing in his Internet “Blog.” He keeps in touch with his friends and family using email and instant messenger as a great alternative to spending his money on long-distance charges. He also has a passion for martial arts and its capacity for gaining physical and mental fitness. Scott is currently involved in a serious relationship with his girlfriend, Erin. In the future, Scott would like to run his own company, designing computer programs for corporate entities.

Scott is a rising star at ADVANCED ACCESS, and in his short tenure here he already has accumulated many letters from satisfied clients. Here are a few comments we have recently received:

“I have been a Customer Service Supervisor and Manager in previous employment and customer service is very important to me. I greatly appreciated the courtesy and caring attitude that Scott displayed. He was very professional and made me feel that I mattered. He also resolved my issue. He did an outstanding job! - Jackie Hovey

Scott was absolutely fabulous at 7:30 am. He was so pleasant and creative with his thoughts. he knew how to do everything that I needed done. He also offered some thoughts to improve my site. I was so thrilled to have so much of his time. I feel very satisfied that my site is improving. - Beverly Taki

“Scott was one of the best customer service experiences I have ever had, period. Customer service these days is so poor in most areas, it was a surprise. Scott took his time and solved things that I've been putting off.” – Glen Cosper

“Give this man a raise! … .Simply awesome work. Kudos on selecting Mr. Dietzel as a customer support rep - and surprisingly, I think this is the first time he's helped me! Again, whatever you're paying him - isn't enough.” - John Mayne

Scott enjoys his work at ADVANCED ACCESS, commenting “I really enjoy teaching clients about the potential that their website has to offer. I have never seen a more powerful and flexible website creation and management tool in all the years of working in the computer industry, and that’s really saying something!”

We know we can count on Scott to provide friendly, courteous and efficient customer service on behalf of our valued clients. People like Scott Dietzel truly make a difference, and we’re pleased that he is on the ADVANCED ACCESS team.

ADVANCED ACCESS Labor Day Office Closure

ADVANCED ACCESS will close its offices on Monday, September 5, 2005 in observance of the Labor Day Holiday.

The entire Management Team and our staff wish to take this opportunity to extend to our valued customers, friends and families a most sincere Happy Labor Day!

Normal office hours will resume on Tuesday, September 6, 2005.

As always, we thank you for your business and for your referrals.

July 2005 | Back to Main Page | September 2005