Real Estate CRM Solution

The purpose of a customer relationship management solution is to help you create leads. Is your giving you the lead conversion results you’ve expected?

Why do CRM solutions fail? Some experts believe a lack of planning is the reason. Quite possibly the issue for small business is a lack of leads and traffic to their website. There just isn’t enough for the system to work with and add value to.

If you have enough traffic, then you can begin to draw some conclusions about where the best prospects are coming from (Google) and what content, value proposition, and communications get the best results. A really good CRM system does make a difference to your customers — and it reflects your respect for them.

An Endless Sea of Possible CRM Solutions

There are endless varieties of CRM solutions available out there, from Salesforce to Agile CRM to Follow up Boss, offering a bewildering array of promises and actual features. So how do you formulate what’s essential for you? You’ll get some helpful ideas below.

I had the good fortune of working with a client in Calgary who used Real Estate Webmasters CRM system. I was impressed with the range of information it provided from keyword tracking to lead scoring. Of course, when you’re spending $30 to $40k for a real estate website, you’d expect to have all the bells and whistles in your CRM service too.

Yet even if with all that power, a lot of the actionable intelligence comes back to your own content and engagement strategy. If you don’t have one, there’s not much to measure.

Your CRM can do it a lot for you, however you might not be getting much out of yours. The bigger your realty business, the more likely you’ll need a good CRM solution. The key to CRMs is improving your understanding of prospects and your engagement with them. That’s because you need real estate leads and improve conversion and closing rates.

What should a CRM system give you?

make customer relationship management very easy
excellent lead management using SMS, email, and web forms all in one solution
ability to send custom responses to inquirers
track visitors from landing page to ongoing engagement via email
ability to run promotions
ability to do A/B testing and assess performance
provides a customer scoring system
prospect nurturing – helpful, no hassle tools to nurture your leads

The REW CRM is awesome. And they offer good customer support. All in all, REW has what I call an awesome unique value proposition. Although some people aren’t as impressed about the UVP, I pivot all digital marketing under the significant, personalized and unique value proposition.

Real Estate Webmasters — Screen Capture courtesy of RealEstateWebmasters.com

Automated Mediocrity = Annoyance and Brand Damage

Before you get carried away with the CRM solution euphoria and automation, focus on what messages, value proposition and epic level content you’re going to deliver via this system. I hope when you’re deciding which real estate customer relationship management system, that it’s the system that lets you deliver unbeatable value to your clients that will win you new business. Treating your CRM as an administration tool might make your marketing mediocre — it has to be to discover what messaging and content will move the needle for you.

Automating your marketing could also destroy your credibility, sincerity and brand, so ensure that it is a helper for a real relationship with clients and prospects. Trust and competence I believe are the 2 things that convince. The accent shouldn’t be on automation. Instead, it’s about improving timing of manual messages and improving engagement.

Here’s Tom Ferry with his Opinion on CRM Choice. He says the CRM’s purpose to “be the Hub” rather than trying to be the Realtor with the best unique value proposition. Which do you think is more important? Hey Tom, I do know a Realtor in Palm Beach!

Besides REW, other evolved CRM’s exist out there. One good one you might consider is Realvolve, and when you visit their website, you’ll be confronted with their UVP right away. That shows they’re on the ball. No monkeying around. They communicate right away how their system will nurture and deepen a natural/responsive relationship with your prospects. And it lets you communicate your value proposition more effectively though all touchpoints with those visitors, prospects and clients.

How to Choose the Right CRM System

As Travis Robertson talks about in this video below: you need to break the CRM selection problem down by identifying your needs first. Then with that established, you can find a solution that fits your business. Don’t skew yourself or your business to suit someone else’s system and priorities.

Here’s a List of CRM Priorities You Want to Consider:

ease of lead management – is it easy to learn and manage?
ability to build rapport and be helpful to prospect
ability to collect information from prospects
powerful search features including fuzzy logic to find things you can’t remember clearly
geo location segmentation – give prospects information relevant to where they’re living
prospect interest segmentation – discovering their preferences/interests to enable better engagement with the prospect
manual tagging of leads – tag whatever might be meaningful to conversion
integration with your website mls listings and content — a standard feature
analytics integration – with Google or other 3rd party analytics solutions
analytics quality and insight – lead tracking, visitor reports, member activity, knowing what generated a lead and what actions tend to maintain a prospect, time of day activity reports, content overview reports.
integration with marketing automation – ease of creating and managing email campaigns
quality of forms and pop up registrations
integration with SMS/mobile applications
A/B testing of email and marketing content and incentives
client meeting and event management
drip campaigns and nurturing
integration with other apps (realvolve doesn’t give any examples of apps)

The key to Realvolve Solution is its CRM analytics – such as prices of homes and neighborhoods clients look at, any notes they made, content viewed, where they came from, and the ROI on those prospects. You can also A/B test your pop ups and other marketing collateral and personalize your email campaigns. Find out what works fast, and refine it.

1. Real Relationships
2. Actionable Intelligence
3. Limitless Automation

These 3 keys to Realvolve’s value proposition are excellent. How many agents wish their FB and content strategy was genuine and of true personal interest to visitors and clients? How many want real insight and better yet, actionable insight?

Delivering the right content at the right time at all customer touchpoints. That’s the real value of these CRM solutions.