A Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, system does what it sounds like it should. It helps you to manage your customer data. It can also support sales management, integrate social media, deliver actionable suggestions, and facilitate communication among team members. It’s the means to manage customer accounts, track all customer interactions, and overall help your business improve its customer relationships.
As a real estate agent, how do you know what you need for CRM? Here are some things to look for in a real estate CRM software.
1. Manage Listings
What’s a real estate CRM system if employees can’t manage listings on the go? You’ll want to look for a mobile app you can use to track leads, log phone calls, enter notes, manage contacts, and more, all on the go. Users should be able to add notes from a phone call, check latest notes to refresh their memory while visiting a client offsite, and tag their boss to let him know they’re on a new lead. Users will also want to create a task to follow-up with new contacts.
2. See What’s Driving Sales
Do you know if your leads are coming from current clients, MLS, or online referrals? Reporting tools within a real estate CRM platform should give quick insight into lead sources and agent activities so you always know exactly what’s driving your business. This will allow you to fine-tune your sales process and quickly identify any problems so you can optimize sales and improve your team’s performance.
3. Streamline the Selling and Buying Process
Whether you are hiring a stager, running open houses, or putting listings online, it takes work to manage the selling and buying process for different clients, especially since they all have different needs. You should be able to create multiple and customizable pipelines for the different processes you have in place for the renters, sellers, or buyers, and it should be easy to automate your next steps and streamline your workflows in your cycle so nothing gets missed.
Your process should go smoothly for every agent who uses the software, every time.
4. Automated Services
There’s something we all need more of, and that’s time. Automated marketing services within a real estate CRM service is a huge differentiating factor in that you can check a box beside your client so they will receive mailed and/or emailed market reports or newsletters.
5. Knowledge Database
Every time a team member picks up the phone, follows up a promising lead, or meets a new sales prospect, he or she learns something that is potentially valuable. Before CRMs, this data went into unconnected media like laptops or notebooks, or stayed in that person’s head. These methods make it way too easy for details to be forgotten or lost, or for a phone conversation or meeting not to be followed up on like was promised.
Choosing which prospects or leads to focus on were a matter of guesswork instead of a method based on fact. Even worse, if a team member who holds the access to crucial customer info was to leave, all the knowledge goes out the door with him or her.
6. Ensure Efficiency and Accuracy
A CRM system has a goal to address the challenges mentioned above. It takes your customer data and transforms it into actionable insight you can use to make your business even more successful. It helps everyone to easily update their records, and gain access to the latest, most accurate information.
