Real estate CRM software carries some key sales and marketing technologies for agencies of all sizes to benefit and thrive. Whether you haven’t incorporated them into your sales process yet, or use them already, you might be concerned about what your agents will actually get out of the system. Look no further: here’s a good checklist of the best real estate CRM software features to explore to start helping everyone on your team foster their sales productivity.
Most of the best real estate CRM software features are a prime opportunity to double your impact and design a sales process exactly as you need it. From carrying the larger part of the sales workload to providing amazing marketing tools, a real estate CRM allows for standout customer service and a competitive edge, particularly online. Now more than ever, these things do matter.
Did you know that a real estate CRM boosts sales productivity by 41%? An opportunity not to be missed, especially sales and marketing is not an uncommon matter to struggle with. To help you out, we trotted out a list of the best real estate CRM features agents love using to get more online leads, deliver greater customer service and grow their sales reach. Here’s what we found out.
10 best real estate CRM software features to rev up your sales productivity
1. Web-based
A real estate CRM software system that can only be used in the office is not a solution. Agents hardly spend most of their day in the office so a solution that works on the move is a must. Data needs to be entered from any location – at the open house, at a showing, meeting, community event, etc. Your on-the-move agents can’t be slowed down by a solution that doesn’t work where all the work is actually done.
This is why a web-based system is really one of the best real estate CRM software features agents can use. Simply speaking, web-based, or cloud, CRM lets you access your account from every location and on any device, provided you have an Internet connection. So no need to download desktop versions and be glued to your computer to enter important information.
Add to this a mobile real estate CRM which is basically an app on your mobile device that is always at your fingertips and ready to help with your daily tasks, and you’ve got your work covered. This turns a web-based CRM which also offers a mobile app into an outstanding opportunity to make agents work essentially easier.
[Want to learn about the mobile side of things? Check out this post: How a Native Real Estate App Generates You Leads].
2. Built-in website and CMS
While you’re very unlikely to find this amazing feature in the majority of CRMs, it’s the one that adds a real cutting edge to your business. Not only do you have an all-in-one platform for contact, property, transaction and task management, you also have your website with it, which brings your sales productivity to a whole new level.
You might wonder what exactly does it mean to have a real estate CRM with a built-in website and CMS.
- you can run your website right from within your CRM account (so only one software platform);
- you can add multiple sites and still manage them all from within your CRM account (especially handy if you run a franchise network of sites);
- you can reward your top-performing agents with their own websites;
- you can expand your partner and affiliate network abroad;
- you can create your own property portal exclusively available to your franchise network.
- you can report on, everything! A website is a really shop window with the actual business being the CRM. This is why a combined platform is especially important and useful.
This list is far from exhaustive as there are endless opportunities! But regardless of whether you’re a sole owner or a part of a large franchise network, the benefits are amazing. To have a real estate CRM system that helps you handle daily business easier than ever and synced with your site – it couldn’t be more perfect.
[Feeling like your website is not cutting it? These signs tell you it might be a high time to improve it: 8 Warning Signs Your Real Estate Website Needs Renovations].
3. Contact and lead management
Think of your real estate CRM software as an address book – only much more detailed and giving you a granular overview of all people who matter most to your business.
That being said, real estate CRM software brings each one of your contacts to the center of all marketing communications. This customer-centric approach is the only way to sell in today’s digital landscape where agents no longer exclusively hold market information. The customer dictates how the sales process is going to occur and a CRM helps you reflect on this important change.
How exactly? Let’s see:
- provides a central platform for keeping all information for each contact as easy-to-view records;
- lets you design a customized sales funnel to track how your leads progress towards the purchase and adjust your marketing activities to a new, better plan;
- ultimately helps with lead tracking – tracks not just the lead source, but every following interaction as well to power follow-ups;
- helps you craft a smart follow up strategy and automate follow-ups without losing the personal touch in all conversations with clients (more on the mechanics of that in #5 below);
- lets you easily manage and track all transactions, commissions, referrals for each contact;
- allows for easy team collaboration and information sharing – everyone has access to important information from everywhere and anytime.
[Here’s a big post on how to set up effective lead tracking process with your CRM: Insider’s Guide to Lead Tracking with CRM Software or Real Estate].
4. Property management & automatic property matching
Next thing you’d like to have in your real estate CRM software is an easy way to manage hundreds of properties and create an easy-to-use property database.
Just like with your contacts, a real estate CRM gives you a 360-degree view of each of your properties and everything associated with it which allows for total control. But that’s just one of the great benefits the system offers and, in fact, you can do loads more:
- easily update records for each property to keep everything relevant and accurate;
- analyze the quality of your database and check out the ratio of properties based on any criteria: property type, sales status, etc.
- write real estate listings and optimize them for SEO;
- assign team members to each property;
- track all changes.
Most of the best real estate CRM software providers will make it easy to keep your property database organized with a set of handy fields which orders all the information.
However, at AgentDrive we think a good CRM must do more than just that, which is why great features around automatic property matching are important. It makes an agents work so much easier. You don’t have to manually search your database trying to find the best match. Simply click the button and the software automatically finds the best matching deals to whichever customer requirement you chose. As simple as that, and literally in seconds. Property matching can also work the other way whereby adding a property would alert you of any potential requirements already in the system.
[There are so many ways you can use real estate CRM software. Here’s a post on how to power your local marketing with it: CRM for Real Estate Agents: 6 Ways to Fuel Local Marketing].
5. Property proposals automatically configured for you
How many times have you struggled to create a great looking property proposal to impress your client with, only to discover that the formatting went all wrong and the structure of proposal leaves all strong points of the property hidden?
Yes, creating well-structured, nicely formatted property proposals and putting this process on fast track is difficult. It shouldn’t be though. We strongly believe that a good real estate CRM software should take care of this for you.
For example, a CRM automatically configures a property proposal for any of your properties and you can then send it out to your clients easily. Best of all, you can keep track of all proposals sent and even printed!
Now your follow up is essentially easier because creating and sending out a beautifully formatted and well-structured property proposal takes a few seconds.
[Not sure why your sales just stopped happening? This post will help: 5 Signs Your Brokerage Needs A Real Estate Agent CRM to Fuel Sales].
6. Email/SMS automation and follow up tracking
Let’s admit it, solely relying on your salespeople to handle all correspondence and follow-ups is crazy. As hard-working as your team is, it’s easy to miss calls, follow-ups and walk-ins out when there are so many things to do every day.
Here are just a few ways you can use real estate CRM software to simplify follow-ups and put the strain off your daily activities:
- schedule your emails/SMSs and send them automatically;
- easily personalize each message to your contacts;
- connect your inbox to your CRM account and take your correspondence under total control;
- create a library of templates to send out to clients;
- track open rates to figure out the best times of day to reach out;
- automate reminders to follow up and create follow up alerts.
Not only do you automate tedious and time-consuming tasks, you pull all of your conversations to one system. This is invaluable for future records, especially when it comes to real estate referrals you’d like to ask your happy clients for.
So as an agent, you take additional strain off your work and get all your follow up activities perfectly setup and automated where appropriate.
As a team manager or business owner, you have a 360-degree view on each of your contacts via a single platform. Use these insights to discuss a follow-up strategy with your team and figure out even better ways to grow your sales reach.
[Save yourself some time and check out the best practices on setting up an effective follow-up strategy: CRM for Real Estate: 6 Perfectly Actionable Follow-Up Formulas].
7. Stronger multichannel support
Because you’d want to catch up with as many qualified leads as you can, a much larger ecosystem of communication tools is very much appreciated. In a nutshell, you’d want to be available through more than one channel, especially so with mobile.
At the same time, you need to have a good think on how to make multichannel customer support smooth and efficient so it doesn’t consume too much of your resources. Either way, it should be integrated with your CRM as otherwise, it’s difficult to manage different systems.
The best real estate CRM software providers make it easy for you to integrate essential support channels such as SMS campaigns and live chat lines to your website. You can use SMS campaigns in addition to your email campaigns and stay on top of your mobile customer’s minds. At the same time, live chat will help you catch up with your website visitors in real time and increase the odds of converting them into qualified leads and, eventually, your customers.
[Yet another wonderful way to leverage a real estate CRM: Real Estate CRM Solutions: for Agents Who Want to Sell But Can’t Start].
8. Social CRM
Whatever you may think of social media, it’s not going away, especially for local businesses like real estate agencies. 45% of people walk through a home found on social media. Moreover, 95% of people use Facebook to get themselves familiar with an agents services.
This makes a socially connected CRM the next important item on your list of the best real estate CRM software features.
You’d certainly want your real estate CRM to do the following:
- automatically post your latest properties to your social media (Facebook, WhatsApps, Line, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest);
- help you map social signals with social monitoring tools;
- chat with your fans and followers via a single CRM interface.
Social media is a powerful lead generation channel. A social real estate CRM does a stellar job of helping you leverage it smarter and faster.
[Want to add more cutting edge to your marketing and sales? These are the tools that deserve your time of day: 6 Real Estate Software Innovations You Should Master Asap].
9. Reporting and dashboards
We’ve been taking a look at the real estate CRM features that boost an agents productivity every day, from automating follow up tasks to getting more deals closed. Now we’ll outline a feature that should power your every business decisions.
Reporting features are essential to a good CRM as you can only imagine. However, because your team does a lot of work every day, you don’t want to overwhelm them with extra tasks like reporting. At the same time, you do need accurate insights into how everyone’s performing.
Whenever you need to make an important strategic decision, optimize your work or figure out what needs to be improved, head on to the reporting dashboard and take a look at your most important data. A good CRM generates these reports for you automatically.
One of the best real estate CRM software features is that it makes it really easy to understand important sales and marketing metrics. You can analyze your performance from all angles: per agent, property category, activity, franchise office, location, region, time period, etc.
Use these insights to decide which activities should be eliminated and which deserve even more investments, and you’ll see how your business thrives now that it’s backed up by real data.
10. Collaborative tools and task management
Did you know that the average ROI for a CRM is $8,71 for every dollar spent? Not only does real estate CRM software boost your sales productivity, it does this at a fraction of traditional marketing expense.
There are many outstanding ways a CRM makes team collaboration straightforward and easy. Here are just some of the best real estate CRM software features when it comes to task management:
- automates reminders, notifications, recurring tasks;
- lets you schedule your activities and get a full calendar view of the work ahead;
- makes file and information sharing easy within the team;
- syncs with your inbox so you don’t have to keep switching;
- lets team managers assign agents to leads and monitor every single activity (proposals sent, emails received etc.).
Add to these all of the best real estate CRM software features we’ve just outlined above and you have at least 9 powerful reasons to get started with it ASAP.
[With a real estate CRM, even huge franchise networks are easy to manage: 7 Ways Real Estate Franchise Software Builds a Stellar Network].
What’s next?
Before you start using a real estate CRM, it’s really important to understand the functionality behind it and how the system benefits you. The ones that we outlined above are the very best real estate CRM software features that do all the heavy lifting for your business. Together, they make a striking difference to your sales productivity and empower you to achieve brilliant results that you’ve always wanted.
