The real estate industry is built on relationships. Whether you’ve connected with people through social media, direct mail, advertising or referrals, cultivating those relationships is the life blood of a successful agency.
As Inman tech columnist Craig Rowe has stated, Propertybase is as robust and functional as any CRM (customer relationship manager) platform you’ll find today, especially in the real estate industry.
The hype surrounding Propertybase is largely due to the platform it’s running on: Salesforce. What I want to share with you are four ways you can leverage one of its most powerful functions, “Chatter.”
By taking advantage of this feature, teams are able to vastly reduce their email message clutter. If you’re hesitant to abandon internal email as a communication tool, try this method out first. Think of Chatter as an easier, faster way to ask quick questions about properties and receive updates. It’s work-specific social messaging within the CRM platform.
So, here are four reasons why Propertybase (or any other Salesforce) users should move away from internal email and texting:
1. Fast communication and actions.
The No. 1 reason you should take advantage of Chatter is that it makes everything in Propertybase faster. You can communicate ideas, share information, reference deals and generally get more done.
If you’re communicating work-related information outside of Chatter (with email or text messages), you will still need to go in and log everything, taking up valuable time.
Here is a quick example straight from Propertybase.
This makes essential data entry accessible from any device, at any location.
2. Centralized information.
The primary benefit of Chatter is it keeps all of your internal company information in one place. If you truly leverage Chatter’s power, no longer do you have to sort through email, text messages and voice mails. Everything stays in the Chatter hub, which, in turn, keeps everything connected to your Propertybase account.
3. Better organization and archiving.
Within Chatter, you can also organize groups based on a project or topic, or use the ever-popular hashtag to make any term searchable across the organization.
Because of the power of this system, it will make finding archived information much faster and easier. Not to sound like a broken record, but having this much information at your fingertips (within Propertybase) will allow your agency to work faster, smarter and more productively.
4. Two heads are better than one (and 200 heads are incredible).
Speaking of smarter, the team at Realty Austin offers a real-world example of the power of instant collaboration that Chatter offers.
“Chatter allows me to be an expert,” Sari Pearce says. “When I am out with my clients, I can use Chatter to answer their questions quickly. Having a team of 200 agents to poll makes me an invaluable asset to my client. [For] questions about schools, commute time or simply a vendor recommendation, I can retrieve answers for them fast.”
To echo what Rowe recommended in his review, you must commit to Chatter as strongly as you commit to Propertybase. The benefits you gain from collaborative communication, organization and productivity can be what sets you apart from other agencies in your area.
Want a non-Propertybase solution?
If you are not using Propertybase or any other Salesforce platform, but want to give real-time “team chat” a try, I strongly recommend Slack (there’s a $100 credit to get you started). It’s an affordable, fast and extremely flexible application with many different integrations with other apps and software. If you’re interested, check out a very brief review here.
Matt Ragland is a brand and content strategist based in Nashville, Tennessee. If you would like to learn more about how content marketing and social media engagement can help your agency grow, visit EngAgentCourse.com. You can also follow Matt on Twitter: @MattRagland.