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You can
enhance the follow-up results and relationship building with
your listing and sales transaction
sellers, buyers, and other contacts by using REAL/Easy’s form
letter printer. Further, you can
use the letter printing to also communicate with your agents and
other staff members.
First, if you are doing a good job of entering listing and sales
contact names and address details, you
can build various form letters to print to all of these
contacts. Many companies send letters on behalf
of sales managers to new listers, buyers having signed new
purchase agreements, and all contacts
after sales closings.
With REAL/Easy, letters can be sent on behalf of the owner,
branch managers, administrative staff,
relocation staff, and/or the listing/selling agent that would be
working directly with the contact. For
added flexibility, letters can be printed one-at-a-time to a
contact while viewing the listing and or
sale data, or in batches to any number of contacts. An example of
batches of letters include:
• Thank you to all new listing sellers who went under contract
last week
• Call any time for assistance to buyers who went under contract
last month.
• Anniversary thanks to all buyers of buyer controlled sales
that closed this month last year.
The following pages instruct how to set-up your form letters and
then how to target your letters to
your listing and sales clients and other contacts.
How to setup
form letters
Letters are setup under the BOS Setup module of REAL/Easy BOS.
Go to BOS Setup, the Security and Controls tab and click on the Letters
button
Click on the Add Letter button
Type in a name for the letter. Then, select the letter type.
There
are three types:
• Agent: would be letters to Agents and/or Staff.
• Listing Contact: would be letters to Sellers or any other
contacts entered with your
listings records (contacts are entered within Edit Listing - the
“Contacts” tab).
• Transaction Contact: would be letters to Sellers or Buyers or
other contacts involved
in pending or closed sales. (Buyers and sellers are entered
within Edit Transaction -
the “Contacts” tab).
Level: Pertains to BOS users. An Office level user cannot use a Company
level letter.
Contact Type: Identify the contact type the letter is to be printed for.
Click “Next” to present the letter body editing screen.
Above
is the letter editing screen. At the top are a number of tools
you can use to
build the letter. Next, still above the typing area, is a
“Table” and “Item” selector
so that you can place “data” items in the letter.
So start, click on the body of the letter to see the initial
cursor placement. The
header margin is 1”. If you are using
stationary with a letter head you can click on the
Page Setup icon to adjust the header, footer and margins.
Note: I
anticipate using a letter head, so I set my header at 2.5. I am also
using a
date so I chose to Center it on the page and clicked on the Today’s Date
field tool.
More
sample steps:
1. Enter (carriage return) down to Line 10
2. Left Justify
3. Select the table that the Sellers field entries will come
from
4. Select the ‘Salutation’ field. It will display First Name Last
Name
5. Click the Insert Field tool.
Next
line Street Number (space) Street Name. Then City, State and
Zip. All
fields are related to the database and will fill in when
printing the letters.
Example
for a transaction contact: To reference the Transaction you are
writing
about, switch to the Transaction table and select and insert the
Street Number and
Street Name fields. You will print the letter from within the
Transaction you are
editing so the address for that Transaction will fill in here.
Switch
back to the Transaction Contacts table and address your letter
with the field you would normally use. e.g. select Salutation or
just the First Name.
Now you
can type the body of the letter. You can also Copy and Paste
from another document. Be sure to check it over for formatting.
Example
of a “From Agent” closing: select the Agent table and insert the
First
Name and Last Name of the agent fields.
You are finished! Run a test on the first letter so the format
looks correct
before moving on to additional letters. (See sample next page).
Letters
can be printed from these areas in BOS:
• From within a Listing in Manage Listings to any contact (e.g.
seller)
• From within a Sales Transaction in Edit Transactions to any
contact.
• From Reports/Labels- mass mailing to listing contacts, to
transaction contacts, or to company
agents and staff.
Following is an exmaple of printing a letter to a seller of a
particular listing.
Go to Manage Listings
Select
a Listing to view the seller-contacts.
Click
on the Contacts tab and highlight the Contact you want to write
the letter to. Then, Click on “Letters” button at the bottom of
the screen.
Based
on the contact type, e.g. “Seller”, the above window will
provide a list
of letters that have been built for that contact type within
listings. Select a
letter from the drop-down
To
generate the letter, click on the “ Preview” button.
Above,
preview example. You can view then print the letter. Note, the
letter is previewed in the word processor and makes it possible
to edit as well.
Go to
Edit Transactions
You can print letters to any sales transaction contact. The
following illustrates this:
After
locating a sale and choosing to edit that sale, click on the
Contacts tab.
Then, highlight the Contact you want to write the letter to and
click on the “Letters” button.
Then
next window will have a list of letters for that contact type.
Select a
letter from the drop-down
Click
on Preview
Above,
sample preview from which you can then print the letter.
To
print many letters at once to certain sellers or buyers, use the
“Standard Reports”
“Labels” tab letter commands:
From
here you can print a batch of letters to Agents, Sellers and
Buyers.
For an
example, click on ‘Listing Followup’
Select
an Office or leave it at ‘Select All’. Click Next
Set the
parameters for your letter batch and select a letter. Click on
‘Preview First Letter’. The parameters enable you to target
which sellers are to have letters printed. For example, by
selecting active listings listed last week, you can target only
those new sellers.
This a
partial preview of the first letter. You cannot preview all the
letters. If there is something wrong with the body of the letter
do not print. Go back and fix the body of the letter. This batch
showed that it was going to print 150 letters.
Using
“Standard Reports” and “Labels”, you can also print letters to
sellers and buyers involved in your sales transactions to help
them during the sell/closing cycle. Further, many companies have
learned that keeping in contact after closing is beneficial too.
To send
letters to your buyers, for example, click on “Sales Followup”
Select
an Office or leave it at ‘Select All’. This time we will print a
“Buyer” letter, so select contact type “Buyer” and then click
“Next’
Above
is the window for targeting the contacts, buyers in this
example, that you wish to target. Use the options/tabs to select
by “Transaction Type” and other tabs as well as “Closed Dates”,
“Closed Status”.
In this example we are printing a “Buyer Closing Home” letter so
we only want our buyers within a certain close date range. By
selecting the two sale types “FL-FS” and “CL-FS” , “FS” meaning
“Firm Sale”, we are only selecting the buyer controlled sales.
(We do not want to send letters to the “CS”, or CoBroker-Sales,
since those buyers were represented by another brokerage.)
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