Prudential Office Provides Technology to Make Salespeople Mobile

Gay Pinson used to display her grandchildren’s pictures on her office desk. Her awards used to hang on the wall behind her. Today she can still put up those photos and awards, only it’s in her home office.

Pinson is part of a test group of top producers at The Prudential Atlanta/Georgia Realty who’ve been outfitted with all the hardware and software they need to conduct business on the fly. She doesn’t even have her own desk at the brokerage anymore. Instead, her new branch office is more of a docking station.

“It eliminates a place that we have to go to,” Pinson says.“We don’t need to go to the office to run the computer.” Salespeople can even fax in contracts, if they prefer.

“In a traditional setting, so much time is spent going back and forth to the office, and so much time is wasted there,” agrees Jill Wyatt, another top producer testing the Office II program, which was just getting up to speed in early August, with about a dozen committed practitioners. In fact, the salespeople haven’t had a chance to see any results yet.

Eligible top producers (making at least $75,000 in gross commissions per year) from the company’s 21 offices receive a free portable printer; a laptop computer loaded with Microsoft Office 97, Quicken, Post-It Notes software for electronic note taking, and Top Producer; and a printer, scanner, copier, and fax for their homes. Software training, if salespeople want it, is available free from the company through a relationship with CompUSA.

“We’ll be carrying a lot more stuff with us than we ever have,” says Pinson. “I have a pager and a car phone already. My sister said she has never seen so much stuff attached to one person.”

The new branch office where the Office II practitioners will be based is designed to accommodate a transient workforce.Workrooms include docking stations so that practitioners can plug in their laptops and use an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Conference rooms include computers and phones to use with consumers, and voice mail is free.

The program redirects funds that would pay for leasing a large traditional space to the purchase of high-tech tools.

“This branch will target about 45-50 salespeople and would normally have needed 4,500-5,000 square feet,” says David Nix, branch manager. “We’re able to house the same number of salespeople in 2,400 square feet.”

Nix estimates the top producers were spending only about four hours a week in the office anyway. So the scaled-down virtual workplace will be used for less frequent sales meetings, as an optional consumer meeting place, and for camaraderie. “We’re a close group,” Pinson says. “We have a lounge where people can talk and commiserate.”

But Pinson plans to be out. “I’m best with people,” she says, “so why have a desk in an office when you can be out?”