• Don't Panic – remember to breathe; don't make rash decisions like cutting staff or drastically cutting prices. This can be very damaging and hurt you when the economy turns the corner. Instead focus on making strategic adjustments which can be positive.

• Focus - Stay on point with your core revenue generating products and services – the items that are important. Be smart and prioritize - your next big idea may have to go into a holding pattern.

• Collaborate – This means with your customers and staff. What are their ideas on how to operate in today’s conditions? Clients can sometimes have the best advice.

• Think Positive – A positive attitude from the leader keeps staff morale up and will help keep generate positive productivity and a healthy environment.

• Market - Never stop selling and marketing even if you have to cut expenses. Many things can be done at low or no cost.

• Network – Think about getting out there and also using the Web for networking. This can be a truly inexpensive way to meet new people for personal or business relationships.

• Cross Promote – Work together with a complimentary business and split the costs. This keeps you in front of your clients and allows you to stay top-of-mind with them in tough times. When the market turns, this will put you one step ahead and at the top of their list.

Peter Boritz, president of Real Data Management, now has a dual role in the real estate scene: he now hosts a new online radio show about the intersection between real estate and technology. Real Tech, which airs digitally on Commercial Property News Radio, will cover emerging technology, trends, and figures in the real estate industry.

This week, Boritz gave accolades to Google’s Desktop Search feature, which he said is a boon for busy real estate executives. “Desktop makes searching on your own computer as easy as searching on the web,” Boritz said, adding that it is able to search keywords across all file types: e-mail, text files, databases, music, video, photos, web history. “It frees you up from having to manually organize your files,” he said.

Boritz also talked about news alert services that feed real estate executives news and trends. To hear his explanation of these technologies, listen to the newest Real Tech segment here.

Future posts will detail trends in social networking, web 2.0 technologies, platforms, and mobility as they relate to the real estate field.

Boritz explained his approach to hosting the segments: “There are many choices and challenges that need to be made when dealing with new technology because of to the vast amount of choices at your fingertips. The best way to handle this is determining your needs and goals. Ask yourself what you want to get out of an investment in technology.”

In many large cities, the best example being New York City, small businesses can successfully trump major corporations. Small businesses can outrun the larger ones by cleverly attracting the right market. Manhattan is one of the only major city in America where there is no Wal-Mart and no Target (despite the sky-scraper size advertisements for Target in Times Square).

Most could argue that this is a good thing. First and foremost, major corporations cloud diversity. Second, with small businesses employees can get to know your face and name, and who knows? You may even get some friendly discounts if they like you.

But what is the price we pay with predominately small business communities? Higher prices, often based on ambiguous and inconsistent mark ups. Absolutely no standard of cleanliness or order, no reason to treat customers like they matter, all simply because these employees deal with hundreds of people a day, and have no one to answer to but themselves. These business practices often won’t be a direct result of a business failing since New Yorkers have needs that face a limited source of supply.

Most New Yorkers use public transportation, they have no choice but to do business wherever it’s convenient for them. Location is everything when deciding where to eat, bank, etc. If it’s not within a five-block radius, forget it. The vast majority of New Yorkers will choose convenience over proper customer service.

This is not to say that all small businesses in New York City are lacking in attentiveness. But for me, what sets apart one small business from another similar one is the customer service I receive. Such attitude, I believe, is shared by many. Acknowledging this, I hope that regardless of the upper hand a supplier has in the market, in the long run, lack of proper customer-salesperson interaction will ultimately lead to either more businesses entering the market, thus leading to more competition, or enough customer dissatisfaction to significantly damage business.

We all know how getting bad customer service makes us feel. Personally, it makes me angry and irritable, even long after I leave a given establishment. I may give the staff member my own dose of bad attitude, which of course rarely helps the situation.

What is most frustrating is that providing good customer service is not a major task. It’s not something that takes a vast amount of money, investment, or time when it comes to small businesses. It’s the easiest, cheapest, and most effective way to get and keep business. It starts from the view of the business from the outside, the image the business projects and how it wants to be perceived by the customers. Even just the small effort of making direct eye contact with the prospective client can make a huge impact. When I come across someone who even pretends to care about my situation, it can make my day.

Putting emphasis on this aspect of any business will tremendously affect client retention rate and might save a business from sinking in these testing economic times.

At times, Real Estate and Technology seem to be competing forces. Real Estate Technology is almost a contradiction in terms to some. This industry is for being resistant to change and slow to adopt innovation. It has become traditional “old school” stability and tradition versus modern tools and forward thinkers. We’re all too familiar with the old school “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality – at times it seems the overpowering mainstream of Real Estate is doing business this way since time began and most are resistant to change. In a recent edition of Real Estate Weekly, Peter Boritz, CEO of Real Data Management, summed up technology use among real estate companies:

"Soon, real estate companies will find enormous value in mediums like online video, sophisticated e-mail marketing, animation, and social networks.

The industry is already observing apartment brokers using low-quality video footage that's easily captured on a PDA, uploaded to a computer, and published online. Instead of meeting that broker to view apartment features, prospective tenants can see it for themselves. This indicates a demand for tech-driven marketing in what has traditionally been a handshake business."

True, most modern -day real estate businesses are using email and mobile devices and keeping up – but not expanding. The forward thinkers ponder how they can use existing and future tech to work smarter, faster – and make money. The truth is, whether industry veterans want to admit it or not, technology can be a game changer in Real Estate just as much as any other industry. With digital files, web 2.0 applications, mobile communications, voice recognition, and video readily available it won’t be long until one of the most unchanged bricks- and- mortar industries looks nothing like it did even ten short years ago. If businesses don’t keep up, they will almost surely fall through the cracks.

Get noticed, get business. It’s a maxim that seems obvious and inherent to the business of selling and leasing real estate, yet traditional real estate portfolios lack the capabilities to get noticed in today’s media-driven sales environment.

For example, when brokers or property owners showcase a home or office to a potential buyer or tenant, the preparation – scheduling the appointment, confirming the logistics, and dressing up the unit for the prospect – takes far more time than the tour itself. This is especially problematic for real estate professionals who want to spend more hours strategizing and fewer going from one appointment to the next, and potential customers often don’t want to invest a chunk of their time just to get a “first look” at a new office, condo, or investment property.

The real estate industry has begun to adopt technological tools like sharp collateral blasted over e-mail and animation-driven web sites, albeit slower than other professional fields. These tools, while important as individual elements, represent only the cusp of what’s next for real estate professionals’ marketing and advertising programs: fully integrated campaigns that use technology to its fullest extent.

Soon, portfolio companies will find enormous value in mediums like online video, sophisticated e-mail marketing, animation, and social networks. The industry is already observing apartment brokers using low-quality video footage that’s easily captured on a PDA, uploaded to a computer, and published online. So instead of meeting that broker to discuss apartment features, prospective tenants can see it for themselves. This indicates a demand for video and more-technological marketing in what has traditionally been a handshake business.

Internal marketing department at large-enough firms, design and advertising agencies, branding firms, and other service providers will soon join the fray of tech-driven real estate marketing. In sourcing this work, it’s important to combine industry experience with technological know-how to maximize the return on marketing dollars.

There are also barriers. Measurability will become important as different web- and new-media strategies surface, and solutions that ignore the need to evaluate their own performance won’t cut it. Many in the industry may also carry the misconception that newer technologies are capable of replacing sound investments and sales strategies that have worked for decades; this won’t happen. The better use of technology will drive attention to the best offerings and deals available in the marketplace, not create them.