In the world of real estate technology, a CRM platform is often the one must-have for any agent. Which is why one of the most frequently asked questions about CRMs is, “which is the best one?”
The answer? The best CRM is the one you use.
That’s because too many real estate professionals sign up for a CRM and then… do absolutely nothing with it. It’s not surprising. CRMs can be daunting. They can be complex. And they do require a fair bit of upfront configuration before they deliver on their promise of streamlining your communication and helping you identify opportunities.
But it’s worth it! So let’s walk through the best practices for whichever CRM you decide on, with a little bit of insight as to how the Real Geeks CRM works. Let’s get into it.
Add your contacts and do a little housekeeping
There’s a good chance you have contacts scattered across multiple databases. Those might include your phone, your email address book, a spreadsheet from an open house, an older email account, an online invitation service, even a free CRM you set up and never used.
Pull everything into the one CRM you’re going to use. In the Real Geeks’ CRM incoming leads starts as “New” and changes to “Attempted Contact” once the agent logs an outgoing call, text, chat, or email. If the lead responds, the Status automatically advances to “Nurture” until an appointment is set, and so on to “Closed.”
Now, the housekeeping. You might have incomplete information for much of your database. Cleaning that up will help you know what you’re missing. Run a couple of searches: contacts with no phone numbers and contacts with no email addresses. Follow up with those contacts to get the missing information.
Then create some very simple segments with tags or types. Is this a buyer or a seller? That will dictate the kind of message you automate in a workflow.
The first workflow to configure? A simple text greeting. You don’t even have to be creative: find one holiday or event each month and write a text. Valentine’s Day. Mother’s Day. President’s Day. There’s no need to overcomplicate things! Real Geeks users have a library of workflows to leverage.
Create easy, daily habits
Habits can be hard to develop, but can make life so much easier once you have them. Begin building toward habits by doing mindful, purposeful actions that you won’t even have to think about doing. For example, the first habit is simply logging into your CRM every day.
Once you log in, your CRM should tell you what to do. For example, Real Geeks users have an activity calendar built-in, so all they have to do is follow what’s on their calendar.
Some basic activities to put on your calendar include the following reports:
1. Sellers looking through the marketing reports.
2. Sellers who are actively looking to buy properties.
3. Buyers who are active.
4. New leads you’ve not been able to contact yet.
Making contact every day will prevent you from getting dead leads. For the next 30 days, make some attempt to contact them. When you don’t reach them, start a workflow and let the CRM do the heavy lifting to get more engagement.
Now take it up a level
Once you have all your contacts in your CRM and build up some simple habits, there are real power moves you can put into play! Explore more workflows that address specific behavior. For example, these are some workflows already in the Real Geeks Library, but that you can also build on your own in any CRM:
Buyer leads – no contact after the first attempt. This workflow is eight steps with eight messages over 48 hours.
Buyer leads – inactive last 6 months. Set the leads that purchased with someone else up on a market report for where they bought and they can later become a seller.
Buyer Leads – active buyer unresponsive. This is for leads where you can see their actions on your Real Geeks site, but they are not picking up the phone whenever you call them. This workflow delivers five messages over a 24-hour period.
Be consistent!
Just remember, massive results don’t come from making a few massive actions. It’s the small actions done consistently that create the massive growth you want. Learn more about Real Geeks.