Real estate agents are some of the most mobile professionals around. We're constantly on the move, and we never really know what we're going to be faced with at the start of our day. And even when we're at home with our families or out with friends, we'll get phone calls from clients or other agents looking for information. We need to be able to access massive amounts of information wherever we are.

As a top producing real estate agent, I rely heavily on my Windows Mobile device. It's my lifeline to my office and staff, and it allows me to provide superior service to my clients. In this article, I will go through some of the challenges my Windows Mobile device has helped me overcome, and some of the projects that my team and I are currently working on.

Running on Windows Mobile

I head a team of five agents with four administrative assistants who are the "glue" that holds us together. Currently, we are managing just over 500 active properties for sale and we are involved in about 25-30 sales every month. We have to be able to stay on top of things, remain up to date with our information, and keep in constant contact with each other and our clients. Every agent is equipped with a mobile device of some sort, with almost all of us choosing Windows Mobile 6 devices over Palm or BlackBerry.

Personally, I am using an HTC Touch device on the Bell CDMA network. Currently, we have three of these devices on the team, as well as two Palm Treos. Our office manager has been using a BlackBerry for some time, and we keep her too busy to make a switch to a WM device. Our entire business is based on Windows Mobile 6, Outlook, and SharePoint.

First contact is our first priority

Studies have proven that 80% of potential clients work with the first agent that returns their call. Because of this, we have a 15-minute "first contact" rule—one of our agents must make contact with the person within 15 minutes of receiving the lead. Maintaining this 15-minute response rate is the primary use of our PDAs. Through the use of a hosted Exchange Server, e-mails that come into our office are "pushed" to our agents' devices immediately. In fact, my Touch receives e-mails faster than my desktop does.

For the nominal cost of $100/month, we are able to get the information faster than our competitors, and this allows us to contact the prospect immediately and shut out the other agents.

Up-to-date information

Our single largest challenge is ensuring that our agents have the most up-to-date information on each of our homes. There's nothing more embarrassing than not knowing about a price change or new listing when talking to a client or a prospect. Given that our information is changing on an hourly basis, we are faced with the huge task of sharing information back and forth.

We discovered the power of Microsoft's SharePoint (microsoft.com/sharepoint) recently, and it's an excellent online storage medium for us. Each of our properties is contained on that site, with everything from paperwork and contracts to property details and transaction information. The moment one of our administrative staff updates a listing, we all have access to it immediately. The system was designed to work with Outlook, and allows us to preview most documents in the preview pane of Outlook.

Leads are "pushed" to our e-mail accounts as they come in. We respond within 15 minutes. (left) (For this article, confidential information has been grayed out in these screenshots.) SharePoint lets us access accurate information about properties and formats it to fit the screens on our mobile devices. (right)