Making the Right Move, Choose the CRM That Works for Your Company
Are you using excel sheets and notepads to manage customers in your real estate agency? If yes, then you are probably wasting time doing paperwork and missing a lot of business opportunities.
In the wake of digitization, the Real Estate sector is also evolving to accommodate its internet-forward target audience. Gone are the days when realtors used physical networking to get listings; today, you can use the internet to generate leads and close sales.
Top realtors use CRM software to stay organized and move prospective buyers and tenants down the sales funnel, and close deals quickly without missing an opportunity. In fact, Real estate agents are 26.2% more productive when using customer relationship management (CRM) software.
So, if you are ready to use a CRM for our Real Estate company, you should first understand what it is:
What is Real Estate CRM?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a tool or software that allows businesses to manage leads and customers on a single platform. Similarly, the real estate CRM allows realtors to interact with their prospects, leads, and clients. It also keeps a record of all the information, including buying history, contact information, and more, so you can always be on top of your relationships.
For the real estate sector, CRM is a tool that helps realtors automate repetitive tasks like data entry and updating old information, thus freeing a lot of time so they can focus on their customers. It also allows real estate agents to close deals and improve customer retention. All these things ultimately translate into higher profits.
Think about the time wasted by your real estate agents on a daily basis, in data entry, updating customer information, and doing a follow-up on your clients. Imagine the possibilities of having software that does everything for you, be-it data collection, sending reminders, and task management.
According to a recent study, 45% of the CRM buyers are from the real estate, insurance, or consulting sector, and the largest percentage is of the real estate sector at around 21%. So, what do these companies have in common? The need to centralize customer management and that is what CRM offers.
CRM is not an excel sheet; it is a system that automatically does everything for you, from collecting customer data to building reports, so you are always prepared when dealing with customers. Therefore, CRM is a software that helps real estate agencies build meaningful customer relationships and have them come back for more.
What to Consider When Choosing the Best Real Estate CRM?
There are a lot of CRMs in the market, but not all are cut out for real estate agencies. Therefore, you must choose a CRM that is especially designed for real estate.
Unfortunately, not all CRMs are a great fit for small businesses, and most are too complicated to use and are packed with useless features with a high learning curve. Real estate is a fast-paced industry, and you cannot afford to waste time learning complex technology.
Luckily, few CRMs (like The Real Estate CRM) are designed for all types and sizes of businesses. Here are some of the essential features that you should look out for when choosing a CRM for your real estate company:
1. Is the Real Estate CRM Easy to Use?
The first important consideration is to choose a real estate CRM that is easy to use. Most CRMs in the market have a large learning curve and takes a lot of time to get used to things. Similarly, most real estate CRMs also contain fancy features that cannot be used by realtors and takes time to learn all the new features.
Therefore, the key is to find a CRM that is powerful yet intuitive. It should be feature-rich to make your job easier and help you get things done in less time. At the same time, it should be easy to grasp and learn. If you choose a feature-rich CRM that is too complicated, it will be counterproductive as it will take your team months to get a hang of it.
One way to see if a real estate CRM is easy to use and powerful at the same time is to read online reviews and see what the customers are saying about it.
2. Is It Customizable?
Every business is different and the same can be said about the real estate industry where agencies – large and small, have different goals and priorities. Therefore, you will need CRM software that can be customized to fit your business needs and sales processes.
The adaptability of a CRM is actually one of the most important things to consider when choosing a CRM for your real estate business. One major reason behind getting a CRM solution is to streamline your business processes and generate results. Well, you can only achieve that if the CRM you choose is customizable and can be integrated with other apps.
When we talk about integration, we don’t mean Office 365 or Google Suite only. No. We are talking about integration marketing, human resource, and billing/ e-commerce apps all on one platform. So, you don’t have to shuffle around apps and access everything from your CRM dashboard.
3. What Kind of Support Does it Offer?
In this technology-dominant world, even a small software glitch and failure can lead to disastrous consequences for businesses. If such a glitch happened with your CRM, you will need it fixed asap. However, that cannot happen without 24/7 customer support.
Therefore, when you are choosing a CRM, make sure that it offers efficient 24/7 live chat support, so you don’t have to wait for the working days to get a response to your email.
Timing is crucial. So it’s best to go for a CRM solution that offers live chat support even on the weekends, phone call support and has an extensive troubleshooting guide on its website that you can refer to in case it’s a small issue that can be solved on users end.
4. Does It have Reporting Capabilities?
One of the major reasons why real estate businesses use a CRM is to get real-time analytics and reports to get an overall picture of their sales pipeline and customers. So if you generate lots of reports on a weekly basis or even monthly, look for a CRM that offers advanced reporting features that generate automatic reports without having to manually put the data.
Another helpful tool is to have a CRM with a live dashboard that gives an overview of the business, and its key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure that you are on track. Similarly, make sure to choose a CRM software that allows you to generate appealing data visualization with graphs and charts so the data is easily understood and digested. This way your teams will love using data to make more informed decisions, and close deals faster.
5. Will it Grow with My Business?
Your real estate business is unique in terms of customer base, and growth. Therefore a basic, standard CRM is not the best option. You need a CRM that is scalable – meaning it will grow with your business. As your real estate business grows, your CRM needs will also change accordingly. Therefore, you need a CRM that is flexible enough to upgrade when needed without additional costs and time required.
When it comes to scalability, understand the CRM features you need because most of the time first buyers overestimate the number of features, they actually need, and end up getting a CRM that fits all. Stay away from that approach and choose a CRM that fits your needs, not the other way around. And make sure it will be able to grow as your company is expanding.
6. Are Customers Happy with It?
When you are comparing CRMs customer feedback is a great source of information regarding a brand. You also need to pay attention to how the company is responding to such negative reviews.
According to a survey conducted by ReviewTrackers, 90% of the customers find online reviews more valuable as compared to brand marketing. Well, the reason is simple, these customers don’t work for the company and their reviews are not influenced by the brand.
When choosing a CRM for your real estate CRM, user experience matters a lot. It all depends upon how YOU feel about using it as a daily tool. Is it helping you? Does it slow you down?
One way to determine that is to ask the vendor to give you a free trial so you can test its features yourself. Similarly, you can also ask for a demo and go online to see what past users are saying about the CRM in terms of its functionality and performance.
You need a CRM for your real estate business that is user-friendly. According to a survey conducted by SuperOffice, 86% of the respondents said that user-friendliness is the most important criteria when it comes to choosing a CRM
Source: SuperOffice
7. Does it Offer Frequent Updates?
Last but not least, make sure to go for a cloud-based CRM that automatically updates and backs up your data on the cloud. This was you can rest assured that your data is safe and can be accessed anytime. It is a better option as compared to CRM options that need manual updates and data is stored offline.
A CRM software that updates itself automatically requires less work on your part and it makes sure your CRM is always up to date with the latest features and functionality. Automatic update is what most cloud-based CRMs offer so make sure to pay attention when choosing one for your real estate business.
Select the Right CRM For Your Real Estate Agency
These are some of the important factors that you need to consider when choosing CRM software for your agency. CRM plays a critical role in the growth of your business; therefore, it is always a good idea to map out your needs and features you need in a CRM when buying one.
It is very easy to get caught in all the fancy features and things that a CRM can do for you – but keep in mind that the whole idea is to keep it simple and scale up as your real estate business grows.
Real estate CRM is the key to the survival of real estate companies in this competitive environment where a few seconds of delay results in losing your potential customers to your competitors. Therefore, CRM has become a necessity for real estate companies with growing numbers of clients and customers.
Keep the above considerations in mind and pick a CRM that helps your Real Estate agency meets its business goals.
