It is crucial to underline that CRM software is equally essential to the functionality and prosperity of real estate enterprises. In this discourse, we'll explore the concept of real estate CRM and discuss why the most successful real estate professionals leverage this tool.
The term 'Real Estate CRM' can be interpreted in two ways: as a strategy and as a software tool utilized to support real estate businesses. As a strategy, it encompasses all efforts made by real estate agents to establish, manage, and maintain meaningful and profitable relationships with potential and existing clients. Given the sector's dependency on referral business, the implementation of a CRM strategy has become increasingly critical beyond 2021.
As software, Real Estate CRM serves as a repository for organized data related to clients and leads, which includes personal details, communication logs, and transaction history. It empowers real estate professionals to maintain consistent relationships with their clients and prospects.
Although these two interpretations are distinct, they are intrinsically linked. A real estate CRM strategy without advanced technology to facilitate it can only yield limited outcomes. Conversely, a CRM software, if not utilized to cultivate positive relationships, might not deliver its full potential. While a rudimentary spreadsheet CRM may suffice during the early phases of a real estate venture, signs indicating the necessity of a comprehensive CRM solution will eventually surface. Particularly for transaction coordinators, a real estate transaction management system is often indispensable.
According to a source from SAASsessions, "real estate agents earning $100,000 or more in gross commission income are more than twice as likely to use advanced technology tools like a customer relationship management tool than agents who earn less."
Therefore, the primary rationale for employing CRM software in real estate is straightforward: agents who opt to invest in CRM solutions generally secure higher earnings. But, why is that? To understand this, let's delve into the six fundamental benefits of using a real estate CRM, which highlight its irreplaceable role in contemporary real estate practices.
1 - Garnering Invaluable Insights on Lead Origins
In the realm of contemporary real estate, it's common to conduct multiple simultaneous lead generation campaigns. These leads might originate from various platforms such as your website, blog content, digital events, or an impressive email marketing campaign. Other sources may include social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok, advertisements, or open houses. The potential channels are practically infinite.
Although mastering lead generation is beneficial, managing a multichannel strategy can become challenging without proper oversight. It's crucial to discern the source of your leads. Having this data allows your business to gauge a lead's readiness to make a purchase, understand their entry point into your sales funnel, identify what piqued their interest, and determine if they are qualified leads.
Consequently, your subsequent actions become more strategic and efficient. Not only can you identify the lead generation methods that work and those that need refinement, but you also gain deeper insights into how to nurture leads based on their specific requirements. A real estate CRM system is an exceptional tool for accurately identifying the sources that generate leads.
But how exactly does it accomplish this?
Certain real estate CRM solutions include chat tools that allow you to interact in real-time with prospects. Those prospects who take the initiative to reach out to your business are particularly interested in making a purchase and should not be overlooked.
NetHunt suggests utilizing platforms such as Intercom, a conversational relationship platform that enables you to integrate live chat and chatbot features on your website. Through NetHunt's native integration, these chats are automatically linked to the relevant client profiles.
Some tools offer tracking capabilities for website or app visitors, providing insights into the pages with which visitors engaged the most. Armed with this information, you can tailor future content to cater to their specific interests and preferences.
Leadfeeder, as recommended by NetHunt, enables you to identify visitors to your website and monitor the pages they interact with. This data allows you to better understand the potential clients visiting your website and their buying intent.
Modern CRM tools also auto-enrich logs with additional information sourced from leads' social media profiles and other public platforms. In an era where data entry is rapidly becoming obsolete, these tools offer fully automated processes, enabling you to gather data directly into your CRM with a simple click.
Web forms serve as a direct line of communication, allowing prospects to relay their information and preferences directly to you. The deployment of web forms can be customized to suit your needs, and a comprehensive guide to web forms can provide further insights into each available option.
Creating a web form can be a simple and quick process. With a range of templates available, you can also choose to start from scratch, customizing fields and aesthetics to your liking. Once established and shared, leads can submit information directly to your inbox about the properties they wish to visit. This makes the process straightforward and efficient.
2 - Prioritizing Leads to Concentrate on the Most Valuable
The reality is, all leads are not created equal.
While committed real estate professionals strive to assist every client, some prospects are inherently more promising than others. Thus, it is crucial to qualify your leads before nurturing them. This process involves reviewing all the contacts that have reached your database and identifying those genuinely interested in executing a transaction, such as buying or selling a property.
This does not suggest that other prospects cannot become viable business opportunities. Rather, it signifies the importance of identifying which leads are more likely to convert, enabling you to allocate your marketing resources and efforts more effectively.
The key to optimizing outcomes is to differentiate high-quality leads from less promising prospects, concentrating primarily on the former. In real estate, this group includes leads actively seeking an agent, or those who urgently need to buy or sell a property, and those who have been searching for representation or available properties for an extended period.
CRM is an indispensable tool for both lead qualification and lead scoring.
But why is that?
Numerous real estate CRM systems, including Placester and SmartBug, allow users to evaluate the quality of leads entering the system. Based on various factors, these leads can be classified as high-priority or low-priority, either automatically or manually.
Let's illustrate this with an example.
Holly is a successful real estate agent who exclusively assists clients looking to purchase high-end condominium units in downtown areas. Until recently, she relied solely on her website to capture leads. Any prospective client interested in scheduling a property viewing would need to fill out a form on her website. On average, she would secure 10 to 15 new leads each month. However, after initiating a targeted Facebook ad campaign, the number of registrations rose to over 70.
Given her time constraints, Holly is unable to host 70 individual property viewings and must determine which leads to prioritize. As an experienced real estate agent, Holly understands the need to qualify and score her leads initially. She uses several criteria to segment and score her leads:
1. Income: Prioritizing leads whose income is commensurate with property values can be beneficial. Considering that Holly works with high-end downtown condos, her primary focus is on leads earning over $100,000 per year.
2. Budget: The amount a lead is willing to spend on housing is subjective and may not necessarily correlate with their income. As Holly gathers more information, she notes these details in the CRM lead profile, evaluates if the potential commission is worthwhile, and adjusts the score as needed.
3. Timeline: Understanding when your leads plan to make their housing decisions can help you determine whether to nurture them immediately (those looking to buy or sell soon) or later (those wishing to delay their buying or selling).
4. Engagement: Collecting and analyzing data on website activity, such as downloaded materials and viewed page types (like listing pages or about pages), can provide insights into a lead's intentions and urgency.
3 - Centralizing and Organizing Customer Data
The real estate market is highly competitive, often requiring agents to employ multiple strategies before successfully converting leads into clients. This process frequently necessitates various communication channels, such as email, social media, phone calls, and messaging apps.
Consider this scenario:
Over the course of a few months, you've been nurturing a valuable lead, Jack. Jack is a seller with multiple high-end properties downtown. Although he's interested in selling, he wants to ensure he gets a fair price for his properties. After multiple email exchanges, phone calls, and in-person meetings, you identify three potential buyers for his property. However, Jack decides to hold off on selling, waiting for property prices to rise.
Five months later, Jack decides to re-enter the market. He mentions he's spoken with other real estate agents but remembered your professionalism and chose to approach you first.
The challenge lies in the last interaction you had with Jack, which was five months ago. Since then, you've exchanged countless emails, and the notes about his property taken during the phone calls are difficult to locate. Tasks, notes, and other files are dispersed across various spreadsheets, WhatsApp messages, and Facebook messages, some of which are almost impossible to recover or track down.
A successful real estate agent must store all information in a CRM system for immediate access. Besides, a CRM system ensures customer data security. People deserve their data to be kept secure, and real estate is an industry particularly susceptible to data breaches.
Take, for example, The Corcoran Group's experience with the "Meow Bot":
In November 2020, The Corcoran Group, a leading American real estate firm specializing in luxury international real estate, fell victim to a ransomware attack. The so-called "Meow Bot" caused significant damage:
1. The Corcoran Group's database was open, visible in any browser, and anyone could edit, download, or even delete data without administrative credentials.
2. A total of 30,721,534 records were exposed.
3. Agent names, emails, password keys, security tokens, and other internal records were exposed.
Although The Corcoran Group's parent company, Realogy, eventually restricted public access to the leaked database, it remained unprotected and publicly accessible for nearly four months.
The consequences of the Meow Bot disaster could have been mitigated or entirely avoided had the real estate company utilized a more secure solution to store and manage their sensitive data.
As for data backup, NetHunt stores all data on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which automatically encrypts data at rest, distributes it for availability and reliability, and provides backups on their site. This helps protect against unauthorized access and service interruptions.
Additionally, for larger real estate companies, deploying a CRM solution can ensure internal security. CRMs provide several layers of security:
1. Role-based security: This sets privileges for specific types of users.
2. Record-based security: This restricts access to certain records by unauthorized CRM users.
3. Field level security: This restricts access to specific fields or entities.
4 - Enhances Lead Nurturing
Managing a small number of buyers and sellers is relatively straightforward; however, as your real estate business expands and becomes more successful, you may find yourself negotiating with a large number of potential customers each week. The need for more complex lead management becomes evident.
As an experienced real estate agent, you likely have a sales process mapped out in your head: host a few open houses, exchange some emails, arrange an in-person meeting, take clients on property tours that align with their needs, negotiate, and close the deal. Sounds simple, right? But in reality, even for the most seasoned realtors, things rarely go as smoothly as planned. Not all potential clients convert into won deals right away; some require additional nurturing and a personalized approach. So, how do you determine which stage of the deal your client is at? How do you advance them further down the sales funnel?
This is where a real estate CRM system can be of immense help.
Modern CRM tools offer visualized sales pipelines, allowing you to track the progress you're making with each client. These pipelines can be customized based on your business's specific needs. For example, NetHunt CRM allows you to categorize your sales pipelines using custom names. You might include stages such as "Pitched," "Followed Up," "Virtual Tour," "View Property," "Negotiation," "Won," and "Lost."
With a visualized pipeline, you can see the bigger picture and strategize your next steps accordingly. Coupled with access to all previous communication data and notes, you can better personalize your lead nurturing activities, providing your leads with exactly what they need to become customers.
Moreover, a CRM system enables you to monitor your performance and fine-tune your lead nurturing strategy based on the insights gathered. This ensures that you're constantly improving and optimizing your approach to better meet the needs of your clients and your business.
5 - Automation of Sales and Marketing Processes
A compelling argument for the adoption of CRM is its ability to automate sales and marketing processes, which can significantly increase efficiency and productivity. For instance, according to Zillow, buyers spend an average of 4.5 months looking for a home, and sellers take an average of six months to list their property. This delay could be due to significant life events such as marriage, divorce, children leaving for college, or job changes. The stress involved may cause potential clients to delay their decision to buy or sell.
With this in mind, it becomes crucial for real estate agents to stay in touch with their clients, continually nurturing the relationship rather than applying pressure for immediate transactions. The challenge is in the follow-up process - specifically, how to effectively manage it amidst growing numbers of leads and deals. Implementing a real estate CRM system with sales and marketing automation features could be the solution to this problem.
For instance, NetHunt CRM's Workflows allow for the setting up of drip campaigns for lead nurturing, with an algorithm that advances a lead to the next stage based on their response. This way, no opportunities slip through the cracks. Furthermore, the task function ensures that important steps like informing new tenants about move-in policies are never forgotten. Automations can even be set up for sending out necessary documents for signing whenever a space is leased - without any manual effort.
6 - Scaling of Referral Process
Lastly, CRM software enables you to maintain strong relationships with your clients even after a deal is closed, which can significantly enhance your referral process. Customer satisfaction is crucial in generating referrals; the more you understand your clients' needs and provide tailored solutions, the more likely they are to recommend your services to others.
By using a CRM, you can improve your relationships with clients by remembering significant milestones and acting on them. Whether it's an anniversary of a move-in day or a client's birthday, a CRM system can remind you of these important dates, allowing you to send a card, an email, or even a gift to strengthen the relationship further.
Moreover, understanding your clients better allows you to identify more opportunities for referrals. In essence, utilizing a CRM solution helps you scale your referral process, leading to increased sales. This feature is especially useful in the real estate industry, where personal relationships and referrals are key to business growth.
