Your passion is to help people find their dream homes. So it’s understandably frustrating when your sales pipeline becomes a disheartening trickle of leads, most of which aren’t converting. One of the methods realtors can use to counteract this ‘prospect drought’ is a customer relationship management system (CRM).
A CRM system — such as HubSpot (free) or Market Leader (paid) — can assist the overwhelmed realtor by streamlining, automating, and organizing your pipeline in the following ways:
- Integration with your current tools and systems, such as Google Apps or Microsoft Outlook.
- CRMs offer a 360-degree view of your customer, so you’ll know where they are in the pipeline and when to engage them.
- Reporting and performance tracking can predict future trends in your chosen demographics for better targeting.
‘But do I have the time to manage a CRM effectively when I’m already stretched to breaking point by the whirlwind of important tasks the property market generates?’ Don’t worry, we’ll get to that in a bit…
A customer-centric brokerage begins with a CRM
A real estate customer relationship management system (CRM) is an all-in-one repository for lead contact details. Without one, you’ll be hard pressed to keep up with repeat business opportunities, calendar management, and active prospects in your sales pipeline. Different people require different approaches, so it’s vital you group and segment your database into leads and prospects. By doing so, you’re able to tactfully move them along the sales pipeline with specific, targeted communication.
CRMs take the legwork out of database compilation
Sure, generating traffic to your website is terrific, but it means nothing if you can’t build and segment a comprehensive database of leads, as well as where they’re sitting in the sales pipeline. The benefits of implementing a CRM into your strategy include:
- Analytics that accurately segment prospects into most and least likely to make a deal. Based on this information, you’re able to allocate valuable time and resources to great effect.
- Time is money! And the quicker you respond to a lead, the more likely they are to choose you for their real estate needs. Leading CRMs use cloud functionality, mobile apps, and response automation to ensure you’re able to get in touch wherever, whenever.
- An all-in-one information database allows you to strategically deploy email drip campaigns or social media campaigns to see what works and what doesn’t.
- Leading CRMs integrate Trulia, Zillow, and Realtor.com into their functionality, so you can stay abreast of market fluctuations, property movements, and prospective buyers and sellers.
- Seamless integration with Google Apps helps you manage and track your prospects, documentation, calendar events, and interactions in one intuitive place.
The leading real estate CRMs are Pipedrive, HubSpot, and FreeAgent.
CRMs allow you to keep in touch with (prospective) brand ambassadors
Recent research has concluded that it costs five times more to source new clients than to retain current ones.
Keeping in touch with former clients can turn them from satisfied customers into brand ambassadors. Their reviews can generate the referrals and positive word-of-mouth necessary for business growth. A CRM allows you to automate and manage your communications with former clients. For example:
- A personalized message congratulating a client on their birthday, the anniversary of their purchase, or other special events/calendar holidays.
- Invitations to your open houses or brokerage events.
- Offering them valuable property market content, such as how to improve their home for maximum value.
- You can personally thank past clients for referrals or positive reviews.
- Provide state-of-the-market updates to position your brand as the property expert in the area.
Simplify lead and CRM management with a Virtual Assistant
Remember when we said we’d get to the effective management part of CRM? Well, here it is:
A single oversight could be the difference between the sale — or fail — of a lifetime. And because purchasing a home is an emotional decision, you need to be responsive and visible when a lead decides it’s time to take the plunge. But if you’re set upon from all sides by repetitive administration, how can you be as present as you need to be to move your leads along the pipeline?
With the help of a courteous, professional Virtual Assistant (VA) who’s well-versed in the ways of real estate. And that’s where Zirtual comes in. Our proactive, experienced VAs will assist you in the following ways:
- They’ll vet prospective leads and properties, while fielding inbox messages and phonecalls
- A Zirtual VA will delve deeper into a suburb to produce granular insight that makes your decision-making easier.
- Our VAs are comfortable with the latest online technology and CRM platforms, including the filtering of prospects, inquiries, and meeting requests.
Find out how our qualified, experienced VAs can help with the micro-tasks that are hampering your ability to sell homes by downloading our free eBook:
