“Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate. More money has been made in real estate than in all industrial investments combined. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate.”
-Andrew Carnegie
Real-estate business seems enticing to many as it is the fastest way of making money. There is no doubt that real estate is a lucrative industry with a lot of opportunities. But we can’t avoid the fact that it is one of the most challenging and competitive markets. Real-estate professionals need to stay on their toes to survive and position themselves in this fast-growing industry.
You should not prioritize commissions else. Finding a Florida real estate broker who charges 100 percent commission real estate broker FL is relatively easy. For the best results, you need to think beyond money.
From preparing leases as well as contracts to accompanying prospects to the property site, there is a lot in a real-estate agent’s to-do list. Which is why it has become essential to harness the power of a strategic tool like a CRM software for real estate.
It is one of the most useful tools that real estate agents can use to manage important day-to-day activities and maximize their profits. Before we dig deeper into why a real-estate agent should use a CRM software, let us first ponder over the importance of CRM in real estate
What does CRM mean in real estate?
Customer Relationship Management software popularly known as CRM plays a significant role in the real estate industry. Though it is a massively booming industry still you’ll find many real-estate agents who are struggling in this profitable market without the right technology in place. The top players of real estate industry have understood the importance of CRM and seen its extensive capabilities. A CRM software has great potential, it helps real-estate agents in managing, streamlining, automating, evaluating, and synchronizing business processes.
A CRM provides great visibility into the selling process for businesses into the real-estate industry. With the help of a CRM, realty professionals can effortlessly manage multiple relationships with vendors, landlords, buyers and tenants. They can function more efficiently and productively. With CRM, real-estate professionals can maintain a healthy pipeline of deals and quickly increases their lead-to-customer conversion ratio.
6 reasons why real estate agents need a CRM
Real-estate agents can not only win new business but also get referrals if they deliver utmost satisfaction to their clients. 73% of all buyers say they would use their agent again or recommend them to a friend. But sadly, providing a good buying experience isn’t that easy in this challenging domain. Realty agents need to wear multiple hats and look over various things which is why they fail to give attention to all their clients. Thankfully a CRM can save the agents from losing profitable deals and help them in serving their clients in a better way for getting more referrals.
Here are the reasons why a real-estate agent needs CRM:
1. All the information at one place
Real-estate professionals are expected to make new contacts and capitalize on those opportunities. Unfortunately, they fail to maintain the information of these new prospects. Due to this, they miss many opportunities. This wouldn’t have been the case if the contacts and their related information were managed in a CRM.
The best thing about a real-estate CRM is that it allows the users to call, messages and text from the CRM directly. Moreover, it even tracks and maintains all the data from contact information to activities in a centralized repository. So real estate agents don’t need to spend their precious time in finding information about their prospects.
Let’s take an example:
Clara, a real estate agent approaches Allegra, who was interested in selling a property. After several email exchanges and telephonic conversations, Allegra decided to take a step back as her friend suggested to wait till the property prices go up. After six months, Allegra contacted Clara again as she was firm about selling her property this time.
Clara being a real estate agent who interacts with multiple buyers and sellers would surely not remember all the details about the deal she was handling six months back.
Well, Clara wouldn’t have to depend on her memory if she would have used a CRM.
She could easily find all the email conversation, notes about the details shared on the calls and Allegra’s contact information in one place. She could even listen to the calls recorded and saved in the CRM to continue from where she had left last. This would also create a good impression on Allegra as she didn’t have to answer the same questions about her contact information and property again. Clara could easily find everything discussed earlier in one place.
Hence, having a single location for all the important information doesn’t only save time but also helps realty agents in offering a better experience to their clients.
2. Quicker response
With the fluctuating real-estate market prices, the buyer demands are increasing. They want a property that suits their needs as soon as possible. Buyers aren’t willing to wait; they expect quick answers to their queries.
82% of consumers expect an immediate response on sales and marketing questions
So, real estate agents need to be available round the clock or else they might lose a deal to the competitor.
This is the reason why modern CRM comes with cloud functionalities and have a mobile app so that realty agents can provide utmost satisfaction to their clients. CRM gives them the flexibility to access vital information from anywhere.
Real estate agents can keep a track on their sales activities ever while traveling. They can instantly schedule meetings and reply to the clients on the go. The CRM keeps the user notified about all the upcoming tasks and meetings. This decreased the chances of missing out on anything important.
3. Easier follow-up
Most of the loyal client provide referrals. But unfortunately, those referrals do not turn into customers as real-estate agents fail to follow-up with potential prospects. Without proper follow-up, it is difficult to move a deal forward in the real-estate business.
Nobody intends to ignore a potential customer on purpose. But the busier things get, this ought to happen; though this can be avoided with a CRM for real-estate business. A CRM allows the user to set reminders while drafting an email. So, the real estate agent can easily set a reminder for their next follow up. In this way, the real-estate agents can follow-up with their prospective clients in real-time.
Features like shared inbox can also help your entire team follow the client communication. So when a teammate is not available to answer the query, other members can effectively manage the follow-ups.
4. Prioritizing deals and automating tasks
Often the warm leads do not get deserved attention at the right time, and they end up slipping through the cracks. Few prospective clients are willing to take the next step as they want to buy or sell a property immediately. But such opportunities aren’t visible in a messy sales pipeline. This is why it is necessary to clean and prioritize the sales pipeline. CRM plays a major role in prioritizing deals.
By setting win probability in a CRM, realty agents can know which deals are about to close. So, they can prioritize and focus on converting those high-value deals.
The email has always been the preferred mode of communication for many professionals. 93% of real estate agents prefer to use email to keep in contact with their clients. Combining emails with automation can aid in nurturing the prioritized deals. CRM software is really good in remembering dates. So automated emails can be sent on the client’s birthdays and anniversaries to build a healthy relationship with them.
A CRM allows the users to add tags and group prospects with similar interests together. By grouping the high-value deals together, real estate agents can send automated bulk emails about special offers or discounts to these high-potential prospects.
5. Clears visibility into the sales process
Real estate agents deal with different people at the same time. This gets cumbersome at times. With CRM, real estate agents can create a different pipeline for buyers and sellers. The pipelines can be customized as per the users’ specific needs. They can add or edit steps in the sales process like Initial contact, qualify the prospect, virtual tour, view property, handle objections and deal won/lost.
Real estate agents can keep a tab on the entire sales process and see how are the deals progressing. These visual pipelines make it easier to track the progress of the prospects in the buying process and spot the deals that are stalled for long times. Real estate agents can easily find out the time a deal takes for moving from one stage to another as well estimate revenue they will generate in the coming month. A CRM gives real estate agency agents clarity into their sales process and helps them in closing a deal faster.
6. Sales analysis
In order to get better and win more business, real estate agents need to evaluate their sales. Which can be done through a CRM for real estate, that allows users to create various sales reports for drawing actionable insights. Using these detailed reports, real estate professionals can find out performance gap, identify risks, spot trends, and draw out strategies for increasing sales further. Sales reports helps real estate agents in understanding customer preference and finding the best channels to reach them.
Besides with a CRM, real estate agents can even optimize their email campaigns. They can instantly get email open rates and click-through rates on links to understand what’s working and what needs to be changed. Realty professionals can experiment with different call to actions and subject lines to increase their response rate,
Wrapping up
There is great importance of CRM in the real estate industry. It helps in expanding profit margins and increasing conversion rate if real estate agents put it to the right uses. The best CRM provides all the information needed to convert a potential prospect into a paying customer. If you too are in this industry, you should surely think about implementing this powerful solution.