Not sure which real estate CRM to pick from? We totally understand it.
Even politicians will avoid making decisions when it is possible. As a matter of fact, during his time as the President of the USA, Obama only put on certain blue or gray outfits to make his life a simpler one. He had a lot of more important things to take in mind, and the same goes for you.
That is the reason why a lot of real estate agents face real estate CRM decisions and end up making these two decisions:
- Take the whole case for a new Facebook community.
- Sit down and figure out what will work properly for their business.
Next, we are going to disregard bias and aid you to attempt the latter option. Here we have a few things to figure out when picking the best real estate CRM for your business growth.
Table of Contents
- Real Estate CRM: What The Heck Is CRM About?
- The Best CRM for Real Estate, Business and The Best 3 Benefits of Using CRM
- How The Best Real Estate CRMs Can Handle Each Stage of the Client Lifecycle?
- The Best Real Estate CRM System That Let You Optimize Your Time and Become a Boss
- So How Does Your Real Estate CRM Create Nurturing Sales Leads?
- How Does the Real Estate CRM Create Leads for Buyers?
- Three Best Questions to Get the Best Real Estate CRM That Works for You
- How to Pick the Best Real Estate CRM for A Great Price?
- The Best Real EstateCRM Feature to Do List
Real Estate CRM: What The Heck Is CRM About?
The acronym of CRM means ‘Customer Relationship Management’. Based on this name, the CRM can influence many parts of the business from tracking and handling your sales leads, setting up drip campaigns, creating proper contracts, making and scheduling appointments – and many more.
Basically, a Real Estate CRM is a type of software that you use to operate your business.
However, although CRM has many great features, profits or the productivity level is the thing that can bring your business to the next level. This is because at the end, the distinction between an entrepreneur and solopreneur is a small thin line.
A solopreneur has a job. However, the latter owns an entire system to himself.
With a proper difference in mind, let’s have a look at the real benefits of using a Real Estate CRM to run your business.
The Best CRM for Real Estate, Business and The Best 3 Benefits of Using CRM
The more different things that we have listed above are just the start of everything.
With proper Real Estate CRM, you can gain several advantages for the business.
Advantage #1: A Good Real Estate CRM Saves You a Lot of Time and Trouble.
Can you count the number of times that you have asked another person on the team for a proper update on a client or business transaction and find that it takes the person with too much time to give you what you want?
Reports show that the Real Estate agent spends more than 65% of his time on making leads that do not produce income. That leads to a lot of wasted leads that could have been turned into revenue.
With a right Real Estate CRM, this does not occur.
By putting each thing in a centralized place, each thing will be properly organized in a consistent manner, so each time that you manage to get something, your real estate agents, virtual assistant or manager will know where to obtain it.
This type of expert-level company will aid you to create leads and aid you to increase your sales objectives fast.
Advantage #2: The best Real Estate CRM will aid you to convert more sales that lead to income via nurture your leads.
Only a part of the leads in the market – 27% of them, that get picked up by the real estate agents are ready for sales.
If you want to properly close the leads, whether cold or warm, you need to send the right message to the clients at the right timing. The way you can do this is by nurturing your leads.
A proper CRM makes the whole thing easy to create parts of the list that depends on what is the level of the cycle the leads are currently in.
Instead of giving bad messages to the whole list, you can send a message to matching the sales lead’s buying state that can let you connect them on another level. The leads will then tell you that you are trying to help them. Moreover, there are proper conversion rates that will increase as well. This is a win-win opportunity.
However, if you don’t create drip campaigns, there is another feature that the real estate CRM will produce.
Advantage #3: The Right Real Estate CRM That Lets You Keep up With Buyers and Sellers’ Requirements.
Like what we said about earlier, the whole magic of real estate CRM is how you nurture your leads.
To nurture your leads properly, you can use the CRM to properly create proper drip campaigns that are sent to certain parts of the list.
This is another thing your Google sheets and business cards can’t do properly.
However, we have a lot of new innovative technology like chatbots and virtual callers and Starbucks lattes, so you need to know that it is important to get a proper CRM with extra customized features that are fully controlled by the computer so that your clients do not feel that they are chatting with a robot.
With special real estate CRM, you can easily create a proper drip email campaign to generate new leads or stay in touch with different people in the same case like SOI, referrals, or other clients.
How The Best Real Estate CRMs Can Handle Each Stage of the Client Lifecycle?
To get different leads, you need to do different things.
When you can manage all different leads with a special blanket email that has to be sent to the real estate CRM, that doesn’t mean you have to do it. Each different type of lead needs different levels of care and attention.
Let’s begin on how to handle proper sales leads that come from third-party sites like Zillow or Realtor.
Real Estate CRM Requirement #1: A Special Ability to Get Portal Leads Right Away
When you get a sales lead from a third-party site, you need to follow up real fast.
This is like, super-fast.
Clients in this category are usually super motivated. They browse through different listings and do not stop to reach out when they get a real estate listing that they show interest in.
These clients also have a short buying cycle so they might book an appointment with a Realtor that gives the fastest response.
However, we need to face it, with a very packed schedule, you might not even have the time to reply to every single lead immediately.
This is where real estate CRM walks in.
With a real real estate CRM, you can set up messages that can trigger a reply each time someone fills in a form from a third-party real estate listing site.
Next, you can set up an auto-response message and send it to people that want to learn about certain real estates. This will give you the time to respond to them later and this auto-responder gives the client a response immediately.
After that, you can follow up, and make sure you send the lead a thank you for reaching out and producing a proper call to action that can schedule them a proper time to chat or discuss another appointment to meet them.
As these leads are costlier compared to others, it is crucial that you work on these leads immediately with a proper follow-up text message.
When using the site Follow Up Boss, you can call your leads the second they come in.
Real Estate CRM Requirement #2: A Proper Email Drip Campaigns for Proper Registrations
At the end of the line are your leads that are not ready for signing.
Not like the third-party leads, these clients are not ready to close the deal. These people just want to test the waters of the real estate market.
However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t reach out to them.
Thus, try nurturing leads for this category of people by trying to become warm to them until they make a decision to buy the real estate. In order to attain this, you need a proper sales system with a proper strategy to close the deal.
There are a few things to bear in mind when you are baiting the fish:
This client to seller relationship will take a bit of time. Therefore, you should not contact these customers by sending them a call to chat or letting them view the real estate. Instead, try to figure out how you can give these people help so that they can go through the available real estate.
Next, you have to add on more value before you can attain the buyer’s trust. Moreover, you need to learn a bit of things by yourself, and need to give the clients things to do for free before you can even tell them that you can show the clients a piece of real estate.
Thank god, you can try all these special follow-ups.
The Best Real Estate CRM System That Let You Optimize Your Time and Become a Boss
You have the proper follow-ups that are ready to become sales leads. However, this does not mean you have to send these leads a follow up right away.
Now try to find all these leads and this is a great method on how not to waste time on leads that will not mature into revenue.
Likewise, you need to select the clients that can mature into a deal and follow up with them. All these are also based on the buyer’s price requirements and whether they are active on the site at all.
Example, if there is a million-dollar client that only reach out once a month and there are two buyers of $600K trying to mail you multiple times a week, you need to focus your time on these two buyers as the chances of getting a sale is easier while keeping the first buyer on your radar list.
The biggest benefit of IDX registrations is that you can catch the potential buyers before they even browse the third-party real estate listing.
Due to this, it is essential that you get these buyers’ attention and make sure that they are interested in the job.
Therefore, this is what you can do by using real estate CRM to nurture the leads. However, not all real estate CRMs are made the same way.
There are a few questions that you have to think about when picking the best real estate CRM for yourself.
So How Does Your Real Estate CRM Create Nurturing Sales Leads?
A lot of buyers will manage to buy their new home before attempting to sell their former home. This means a lot of buyers from your side will have a piece of real estate ready for sale.
However, these leads are in the first part of the cycle and a large portion of these sales leads are just in the “keep in view” phase.
Thus, you need to take the same type of approach for new member registrations. This will then add value by nurturing leads and giving the whole thing sometime.
So how do you do it? Look below:
Use a Real Estate CRM to Get Proper Market Updates
Get ready for competitive market analysis and send all these sellers these data, with proper market updates.
The whole idea is to give these people a real sense of what the whole market values are so that when it is time to list their real estate for sale on the website, these people do not have unrealistic pricing and have a clearer picture of how real estate sells.
Make Sure to Ask the Leads Proper Questions
Another proper approach to ask all your leads a few important FAQs about their real estate.
One small example might be:
What is the best feature of the real estate that made you wish to buy it at first?
After doing this, you can open up different communication lines without forcing a lot of pressure on the listing. Now, you need to know these details will aid you in selling real estate when finally becoming a real estate agent.
Let Your Sellers Have Proper Information
Based on these updates, it is an excellent idea to make sure your leads have the latest information on market changes that will affect them, in both good and bad ways.
The more that you can prove that this is in the best interest in mind, and you are watching over them, it is even more likely that you can capture this deal.
Make sure that your leads are properly informed, but don’t bother them and update small details for them all the time. Instead, send them data that will affect them. Other things that are not related to this is then your own job, not their side.
How Does the Real Estate CRM Create Leads for Buyers?
There are times when you show a good lead, a piece of real estate, but if it doesn’t meet their requirements, leave the whole thing aside. One month later, you have realized that the problem is that you did not stay in touch with these people.
Therefore, you have felt that I think that they have bought another piece of real estate by now, I don’t think I can close the deal.
While you feel that you do not stand a high chance of winning the deal, you must make sure that you do not repeat this terrible mistake that costs so much, with proper updates and settings in the CRM.
Next, you can send these customers to other places to see and keep them engaged all the time. If you want to know how to click here.
By following these steps, you just need to tag the buyers and determine how many regulars you want to update them. As time passes, the CRM will send you a notification in order to remind you to keep in touch with them.
The best real estate CRMs will also let you add different tasks to the buyer’s personal information, so when the next alarm rings off, you know where you have stopped working and there are things that have to be done.
The next thing you do when you properly follow up is to book a time to meet the client and create a proper appointment on your CRM’s calendar.
Updating the buyer, making tasks, creating new appointments to the CRM calendar make sure that you will never lose a potential sales lead again.
The Best Real Estate CRM That Can Reconnect to Past Leads
Past customers is a great way to get new business. The issue is that most real estate agents are focused on getting newer leads and begin to neglect other parts of the business that are properly established.
Therefore, you need to stay in touch with past customers.
So starting from today, you need to spend some time making the content you give to this group of people.
Likewise, don’t make things complicated. Make sure that it is done in a simple way and you will fare much better than people competing with you.
If you are still wondering if you should spend more time connecting with past customers, check out how this group of real estate agents built a $90M business from properly nurturing each client in their contact list, of about 280 clients.
Here is an insight of the marketing plan as well.
- On the 15th of each month, the agents sent a special postcard on all their customer list.
- Next, on the 7th of each month, they then send a short, 90-second video email.
- On the 21st, they will then send out another email.
Likewise, once in three months, they give all the contacts on their list a personal phone call.
This plan sounds simple, but that’s the way it is.
As long as you remain in touch with everyone and send them content that is personalized to cater to each client, there will be a lot of repeat businesses available for you.
The Best Real Estate CRMs vs Other CRMs: What Is the Biggest Issue with The Best Real Estate CRMs
Alright. Now we know that CRM is a really big thing for the business. So what is the big thing about it? The largest problem with real estate CRMs is that there are a lot of CRMs out there.
As we are open to all different CRMs, but there are just so many systems in the market, we don’t even know how to use it. Therefore, it makes things worse when you waste investments on CRMs that you either don’t know how to use or don’t use at all.
Therefore, should you go for low budget CRMs and be happy about it – or spend a lot of money on a system that has all the features in it?
(The answer is Neither. But we are reaching it a short while)
Three Best Questions to Get the Best Real Estate CRM That Works for You
Each CRM has its plus points and weak points. The thing that you might figure out is if the thing might be or might not be the thing that works for each real estate agent in the same neighborhood.
There are a few simple FAQs that can guide you to get a proper answer.
Question 1: What are you trying to attain personally?
Strange question for a technical topic, right?
There are too many personal agents that want to mirror another person’s success and wonder why it didn’t work out for them.
The truth is, the business that you currently have is supposed to give you a type of lifestyle.
- Do you want to earn money to live in a better way?
- Do you want to have growth in your career?
- Are you happy when you are at work?
- Do you want to have extra time to spend with the family?
(The last two options are not related to each other and exclude each other .)
It Does not matter what the answers given by the experts are. Find a proper answer that works for you.
Question 2: What is the automation level required?
The answer to the first question will lead to the answer to the second question.
There are so many CRMs and special tools that let you run your business on automation. That is one of the reasons agents overspend on buying CRMs software when they begin to have more growth in the real estate business.
(Want to know other issues arising? Check the blog post on how to avoid losing opportunities )
Next question:
- What do you need for your business at the present moment?
For example, if you are working hard on SOI and past customers, you only need a few tools to aid you in sending drip campaigns and mailers.
- What are the requirements needed for a business visionary?
If you want to make things improve and you want to invest in sales leads and start creating a team of agents, you might want to get a more specialized tool that has tracking features and data reports that produce the best leads and team members that are productive.
The best CRM will free up one hour of your spare time every day while giving the features you need to aid the next step of the business – no matter if it is having a sound investment in advertising on social media, or creating the first drip campaign and getting the best buyer agent.
Question 3: Do you like the lead system or not?
If you are not personalizing the CRM as it should be, then it is not fun to use the whole system.
Life is very short, and do not waste your time and energy on running a business on a system that you just do not like at all. A great CRM makes the whole process easier as the whole system will be properly updated, without trying to fathom what goes where.
Experts also state how important critical thinking is when picking the right CRM for yourself.
How to Pick the Best Real Estate CRM for A Great Price?
Once you have figured about what you really want to achieve for your business and your own life, then you have to start figuring which CRM features that will bring you to that spot.
Like we mentioned before, there are different CRM that can aid you in each aspect of the real estate business.
We are not going to write down any names or give you a detailed difference in the expense of each different one, everyone has personal lives as well. However, to make it easier for you to catch things, we have listed the whole thing to three general CRMs.
Real Estate CRM Category 1: Beginner CRMs
If you are just a beginner, there are quite a few low-cost CRMs that can aid you in tracking your sales leads. There are many of these that are less than 100 USD and also come with a free trial of six months.
These special tools are excellent at the start, but when you need a place to start your new business, these are the tools for you. In the future, you will be able to have enough money to get a proper CRM that has a great UI. However, at this point, it doesn’t matter how well the tool is, it just has to be versatile and easy to use.
It is rather important to take note that not all the CRMs out there is real estate-related software. A lot of agents use proper CRM because it is well-known or popular among people and is affordable or it is completely free. It is fine when you just start out, but as referrals come in, it becomes rather difficult to manage all the things in the business as it turns into a one-man show.
So what happens next? It leads us to …
Real Estate CRM Category 2: Solopreneur CRMs
Here are a few instances that you are facing:
- Reached a sending limit each month.
- Want to hire a VA
- Wondering if you will see your family that is not in the same country
- If you face any one of these instances, then you have to upgrade it.
At this point in time, you might want to come out of a homegrown system for a proper, beautiful CRM that can take away complicated things off your plate – thus making it easier to put in new agents into your business as it begins to expand.
This means saving yourself a lot of time and energy by using a proper real estate CRM to create things like generation of leads, real estate drip campaigns or SOI marketing and emailing features, etc.
You need to bear in mind that some CRMs are also sales leads as well, and it is an entire different story then.
Moreover, you also have to pay a lot more for the CRM software that also brings you sales leads, but if you follow up regularly and put in values to the leads, then you can get the money that you invested back.
Real Estate CRM Category 3: Team Software CRM
When you grow, these pains are real.
Therefore, when you are a proper team leader, there are parts where the business will give you pain and it is very different than when you are at the beginner level.
Thus, there is a point in business where you need to manage the work more than you can actually handle, but the whole thing will give back ten times more and when you give the team the things that they need to do, the better it will be.
At this point in time, meddling with different CRM software and different software will hurt the team’s ability to produce new lead gens and you might lose business.
Team CRMs will let you have proper lead Gen organizations in one area, then let you give agents leads. There are CRMs that also give additional features like transaction management and proper deal reports to give you the whole big picture of who is making and losing money in the group.
Likewise, at this point, you need to think about protecting the group’s focus. There are 1000 ways to accomplish one task in the CRM. You do not have time for everything. The business is growing. The team, and you, the leader, have no time for software that needs difficulty to be using.
The Best Real Estate CRM Feature to Do List
Now that you have learned about the different types of CRMs in the market, then what a proper CRM can let you accomplish, then you can begin the search properly.
Here is a checklist of some very important features to think about when picking the right CRM.
Different Systems Vs All-Rounder
When you begin to work as a beginner, you need to be aware that you will be using one software for tracking sales leads, and another one to send drip campaigns. However, as the whole business begins to grow, you might want a centralized CRM that will help to support the whole business structure:
- Lead cycles in different stages.
- Leads that should be responded in due time.
- Email drip campaigns that have been automated.
- Reminders that receive follow up.
- Reporting about sales deals.
- Reports on team members.
- Emails sent to clients.
- Dialer and VA to aid the business.
- Text messaging in a chat group.
Automation and Personalization
Proper automation is a great choice, but there are times that you need to add a personal touch that only a real, living human can give.
Does CRM give you the proper flexibility to have automation and unique personalization when it is required?
Make sure that there are integrations available. With special tools like Zippier, there are many CRMs that can help you attain the level of automation that you want to reach. Make sure that you do not overdo the whole thing. This might mean sending out emails that feel like it comes out from a template.
User-Friendly CRM
It is very crucial to have a CRM that is user friendly. When you have a team of real estate agents, this is crucial as well. Your team needs to feel good and use the CRM properly, our deals will not go through. Make sure to view the CRM site and narrow down to a few choices that you wish to select. The CRM should operate well on the iPhone and Android as well.
Customer Service
What is the learning curve that you can take? Test it out on a free trial. There should be adequate customer support that comes along with it. Make sure everyone on the team can get the right answers to these questions.
If you want to learn more about the CRM transition in an effective manner, click right here.
Reporting and Special Analytics
As the business gets better, it becomes easier for revenue and leads gens to fall through the cracks. Looking at the CRM that has tracking and reporting features that create a proper system will make the agents accountable for leads that you are searching for.
Cost of CRM
So how you optimize revenue depends on where your current position is in the business. What is the best thing that you can do with your business at the present or the next 2 days?
A free beginner CRM can do wonders, but when you have progressed in the business, you need to opt for the next two CRMs on the list. There are teams that want leads coming from different sites, so you can save a lot of other money by creating a proper CRM as the main software integrated for your business.
To get a proper view of the revenue, you need to calculate the cost and time in the business and figure out if the CRM can make this easier for you.
One final thing about costs: CRM pricing should not be complex and it should be completely transparent. Therefore, if there isn’t the right price for you on the site, you can’t afford the CRM price.
Is Follow Up Boss the Right Thing for You?
The clients that we serve the best are teams of more than 3 over agents that are focused on producing proper ROI. Follow Up Boss is meant to close more deals in a fast manner, and make all customer service agents accountable for what they do and make sure they do not lose any leads that can be turned into revenue.
