Ask every successful real estate agent what their most important digital tool is, and 99% of them would reply their CRM. Your real estate CRM (client relationship management) is critical in today’s real estate firm. It assists you in managing your real estate leads, email subscribers, potential prospects, partners, affiliates, other brokers, and more.
CRMs may also be referred to as real estate contact management software. However, that technology is rarely used and does not fully capture the dynamic and unrivaled potential of CRMs available today.
While small firms may be able to begin tracking critical contacts using spreadsheets, expanding businesses will quickly discover that managing these spreadsheets is too difficult and time-consuming, with few advantages over digital CRM software.
Managing customer connections and the data linked with them is critical to the success of any real estate salesperson. While we all need a place to live, the majority of the people you contact will not be ready to purchase or sell a property. That’s why it’s critical to retain your contacts in your sphere of influence and on their mind until they require your real estate services.
However, managing client and prospect connections on your own can be incredibly challenging. Previously, this process was time-consuming and necessitated the use of spreadsheets, making data retrieval and management challenging.
Fortunately, that is no longer the case. CRM software systems have automated numerous customer management chores, allowing you to focus on other important elements of your organization. In this post, we will introduce you to some of the best CRMs for real estate and discuss their key features and services.
The ideal real estate CRM for you is one that is designed specifically for the real estate industry and includes all of the most popular real estate processes. Above all, your CRM should provide user-friendly communication and follow-up tools, as well as lead pipeline management capabilities.
The sheer number of CRMs on the market makes it difficult to choose which is best for your specific real estate firm and goals. The first step is to learn more about CRMs, what they do, how they work, and how you can apply them to your specific situation.
Why Should You Use a CRM?
- CRMs gather all of the most critical information about a property listing into a clear, concise, easily accessible, and uniform style. You will be able to sort through homes and people based on a number of criteria.
2. Standardized contract processes make it simple to instruct agents to collect documents at a specific time, submit information, and convey sign-offs. These are just a few of the process aspects that a digital CRM supports.
3. Collect and manage key buyer, seller, and renter information throughout the closing process.
Without everything collected in one spot, you risk unintentionally breaching real estate rules and overlooking essential facts and stages in contract signatures and document management.
Keep prospect information organized and secret. Agents risk misplacing client information and breaking client-agent trust if they do not have a simple structure in place to keep it organized. Additionally, it is the agent’s job to represent their clients’ best interests, which includes privacy. You don’t want someone to steal or change your clients’ data right under your nose. When selecting a CRM, two-factor authentication (2FA), encryption, and varied user authorization levels are vital.
With all of your contact information in one location, it is simple to answer promptly. For example, if a lead inquires about your availability for an introductory meeting, you can answer to property questions instantly without having to search through your inbox.
It’s simple to keep track of which prospects you’ve already contacted and where each is in the home-buying process. Furthermore, most CRMs will show you whether they responded to your last email, visited a link within the email, and so on.
Manage your sales pipeline in one place and keep track of closings.
CRMs with calling features save time by automating part of the process of follow up calls such as recording calls for later reference and scheduled calls. All of this is managed inside the app and every call is automatically added to your CRM. All of these features help you get more out of your calling schedule.
Texting and SMS – SMS is an easy and straightforward way to get in touch with your clients immediately. Use SMS to contact clients about urgent concerns such as when a new property pops up on the market, updates are needed on paperwork, and important follow ups on concerns.
What is the best way to manage leads across from different stages home buying/selling process? How do you organize tasks within your team? Plan your sales processes keeping in mind the tools that are available in your CRM.
Is your current CRM able of identify leads within your system that you should contact after a specific time? Today’s real estate CRMs understand many steps within the real estate buying and selling process and often have prompts to help you with you lead nurturing. For example, many allow you to create custom lead lists and triggers based on specific criteria that you put in place.
Get all of your leads across platforms to sync up in one place. For example, if a prospect books a meeting with you by SMS and another through Calendy, they will both automatically appear on your calendar. It’s like having your own virtual assistant.
Your CRM should integrate nicely with all of the lead generating platforms that you are currently using, including your real estate website. It should be easy to automatically add relevant info to your CRM without constant intervention or complications.
The best CRMs will examine all of the data they capture and create reports that can help you make better marketing decisions. With this information, you can consider how to optimize your next marketing campaign. Do prospects from a certain lead pipeline covert to clients more often? Your report will fill you in.
It goes without saying, that it’s crucial to have accurate stats about your business. For example, time from contact to close, cost per lead, number of points of contact provide crucial info that help you to make smarter decisions. As your business becomes busier, it becomes more likely for money and opportunities to sneak past you.
Find a CRM that has advanced reporting and tracking to help you hold yourself and your team accountable for every lead.
What Are CRMs Used For?
Some CRMs offer additional features, like managing your marketing, social media content, workflows, phone calls, and automated communication drips, all from your dashboard. Sophisticated CRMs, with pipeline management, lead distribution, and performance analysis, are well-suited for large teams and brokerages.
We should also mention that a CRM should be easy to use. If it’s overly complicated and cumbersome, you and your team will never use it to its full advantage.
What to Consider Before Choosing the Best Real Estate CRM
There are a few necessary questions that every real estate professional must ask in order to choose the perfect CRM:
What is your budget?
How will your leads be added to your CRM?
How many team members will need access to the platform?
What features was your past CRM missing? What features did you like that you would continue to use?
What are your automation needs based on your current business and where you’d like your business to go? For example, if your current focus is on nurturing past clients, you’ll want your next CRM to develop awesome drip campaigns and tracking follow ups.
Will you be sending many bulk texts or emails?
What external providers does your CRM need to integrate with
Get Your Team On Board
When you’re investing in a tech platform that your entire team will be using, you’ll want to make sure that everyone is comfortable using it.
Introduce your team to the new platform slowly. Your agents probably won’t be able to but their whole work day on hold in order to learn a new platform top to bottom. Give them all of the resources necessary to get them familiar with the platform initially. Then allow them a transition period to catch with the ins and out of the tools they’ll be using.
Once everyone on your team is using the same CRM, chances are that your productivity as a unit will go up, ultimately leading to more deals.