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CRM in real estate: 10 Reasons Agents Should Use it to Grow Their SOI

August 8, 2016

One of the golden rules in the real estate playbook is to build valuable personal connections within your SOI (sphere of influence). But many brokerages lack a proper system to collect and understand their marketing data which is especially important for a sales and nurturing process. Meanwhile, the role of a CRM in real estate is next to vital for a whole variety of reasons – from boosting sales productivity to building a scalable and profitable brokerage.

Predictive analytics might provide agents with a glimpse of what the market can look like in the upcoming months but for big real estate success, this is far from enough. In fact, the most effective way to speed up your sales cycle is to collect and extract insights from past data.

You would need a more sophisticated system than spreadsheets to house and analyze this data without having to cut off time on essential daily activities like prospecting, listing appointments, open houses, etc. A Real estate CRM is a perfect option to start capitalizing on past data to do more business and grow your sphere of influence. Let’s see why exactly.

CRM in real estate: 10 reasons it maximizes your sales efforts

1) Put your sales system in place

Running a brokerage can be stressful enough virtually every day. Legal structure, marketing tactics, on-going expenses, new technology, performance metrics, taxes and finance is enough to consume your entire working day. On top of this, you have to generate more business to keep your pipeline full of leads.

One huge benefit a CRM in real estate ensures is that you don’t have to be the only agent generating leads. Instead, you can power your brokerage with a CRM accessible to everyone on a team and entrust them to find and nurture potential customers. Oftentimes, they can do this even better than you can as they can fully focus on the lead generation.

2) House your data in one central place

A well-managed CRM in real estate is your huge long-term asset. It lets you drill down to the core of every relationship your agency has ever had, be it with a lead, a customer, a partner, or a lost prospect. So every touchpoint with people who matter most to your business are safely stored within one central system, easily accessible anytime and waiting to help you with future sales.

The data you can store in your real estate CRM embraces your entire business activity. For example, you can easily keep data on:

contacts;
properties;
transactions;.
projects;
tasks;
emails and conversations;
business reporting.

You need to remember, however, that it’s up to you to make your data matter. No system can make wonders to your business if you don’t use it. Develop a habit of updating your records regularly, integrate your email and make sure everyone on a team is trained on how a CRM in real estate is used.

3) Find out the lead source

It doesn’t take long to work in the real estate industry to understand that real estate leads come from various sources. Some come from Facebook, while others found you organically or via print advertising. You already know that you will need to talk differently to leads that came from different lead sources.

The power of a CRM in real estate also hinges on the fact it lets you track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Naturally, some channels are going to perform better. Having everything documented in one place makes it easy to figure out which exactly.

Once you know which marketing channel works best for you, you can refine your strategy and invest more in mediums that work for your business.

4) Pinpoint the challenges your prospects face

One of the greatest benefits of a CRM in real estate is its ability to keep a whole pool of lead intelligence data over time. If you carefully save all the requirements your lead has, it’s easier to figure out what keeps them awake at night and what offer you can bring to the table to solve that problem.

For example, is your potential client only interested in fractional ownership opportunities? How many counter offers have you discussed until finally validating that perfect one? Are there any specific, even weird, requirements your buyer is concerned about?

Make sure to leave notes for each record as you move your leads through the sales funnel. Use that data at the right time to make an offer that will close you the deal.

5) Automate follow-ups

Automating follow-ups is one of the core features a real estate CRM provides. Creating a library of sales templates, scheduling messages, running drip marketing campaigns, tracking open and click rates – all of this is available in a single system.

6) Set reminders

In many brokerages, agents often find themselves being a jack of all trades. Sales, marketing, channel management, finance, law – each area demands time and dedication to learn and master it where it intertwines with real estate.

While busy with all these tasks, your team might find it extremely hard to bring new sales through the door. And because they’re overwhelmed with non-sales activities, prospects might never get the chance to learn what excellent service you offer to your clients.

Take time to agree upon follow up activities with your team and start setting automated reminders for any tasks you need to accomplish. This may seem obvious but 80% of leads are lost because they’re never followed up! And relying on your salespeople to remember everything is crazy. Take the easy way out and help your team simplify their daily work.

7) Integrate your website and CRM

Have you ever thought it’d be great to run your website or network of websites from within your CRM? And publish your properties with only a few clicks right from your property database? Or build XML feeds to submit your listings to any world’s largest and most popular property portals?

This is what some feature-rich real estate CRM’s like AgentDrive do. Having a single platform that embraces your entire business, makes it essentially easier to manage and expand your SOI online. Not only you can keep your sales process consistent and on-point, you can also do this at a fraction of the traditional marketing expense.

8) Identify any weak spots

One of the key roles of a CRM in real estate is it’s a perfect opportunity for agents and brokers to stay on top of sales opportunities. According to ActiveRain, richer agents are twice as likely to use a real estate CRM to grow their sales reach than under-performing ones.

The power of a real estate CRM goes far beyond its well-known features like real estate marketing automation. Make sure to review your past deals and try to uncover any trend behind lost opportunities. While doing so, you will surely come up with fresh ideas on how to deliver better customer experience and perfect your marketing tactics. With an accurate history of touchpoints for each prospect, it’s going to be easier than ever before.

9) Measure your wins

Of course, any brokerage (or any business for that matter) needs timely feedback on how it performed last month, quarterly or yearly. It’s hard to generate this reporting without a proper system put in place because, again, it consumes time which could otherwise have been used for valuable sales activities.

If you don’t want to overwhelm your team with monthly reporting, and at the same time recognizing the value of such feedback, a real estate CRM will be a perfect match. Generate unlimited reports automatically, dig into the data and understand your performance. This will help you get a clearer view of your sales funnel and where you fall behind.

10) Stay in touch with past clients

Your past clients are your #1 source for referrals (and more business onwards). It’s easy to neglect past customers when there’s so much on your plate every day. Again, one of the core benefits of a CRM in real estate is automation.

Why not automate reminders about past client birthdays, or wedding and moving anniversaries? Or follow up with them occasionally asking how they feel about their new home? Once in a while, you can ask for a referral and chances are huge people will gladly recommend you to others.

In fact, around 80 percent of people say they would recommend their agent to other people but they haven’t because no one ever asked them! If your business lacks a permanent flow of real estate referrals, you may find yourself missing out on a huge business opportunity. Head on to your CRM, review all of your past deals and set reminders to follow up with people who made you successful.

What’s next?

There you go – as much as 10 good reasons to start using a CRM to finally land your brokerage on the top positions it rightfully deserves. Remember, though, – you need to be serious about your real estate CRM system to make it work. Leaving notes, updating records, assigning follow up plans is about all you need to flourish. If you do it consistently, you’ll find your business relationships growing stronger, your pipeline getting more leads and your brokerage performing just as you always wanted.