What is a CRM and Do I Need One?

So you’ve been an agent or broker for a while. You’ve mastered listing presentations, you’re leveraging your sphere of influence, and your business plan is bringing in business more than you expected. How are you managing the influx of information? How are you handling cold calls, leads, and current deals?

Most broker companies provide their agents and salespeople an email tied to a calendar and the Microsoft Suite to help you build your own system that works for you. But imagine, instead of having 5 different tools to keep up with your work, you had one tool that streamlined that process and possibly automated some of your work. 

A good client relationship management (or CRM) tool can help you do all that much more efficiently. And as my good buddy Wayne always says: 

What does a CRM do?

A CRM tool lets you store customer and prospect contact information, identify sales opportunities, record service issues, and manage marketing campaigns all in one central location. You can also track information about every customer interaction available in one place.

A good CRM tool provides greater visibility of the information needed to serve your client base. It will also help clear and prioritize sales and marketing strategies, as well as help, automate follow-up contact with your leads and your clients. A CRM tool can also provide analytics to your marketing and sales strategies to help optimize your plan.

The best CRMs do all the above as well as integrate across social media platforms. Your customers may be contacting you on a range of different platforms — including phone, email, or social media — asking questions, following up on orders, or contacting you about an issue. Without a common platform for customer interactions, communications can be missed or lost in the flood of information, leading to slow or unsatisfactory responses. And in the real estate game, your reputation as a prompt responder is paramount.

Do I need one as a real estate agent?

At the beginning of your real estate career, it may not make sense to pay for a CRM tool. But as you grow and learn and expand your business, it will become an absolute necessity. 

65% of sales organizations use a CRM in 2020. Consider how much is needed to get 1 closing a month. Extrapolate that to your sales goals for the next year, whatever they are, and ask yourself, “Would an all-in-one tool help me achieve those goals?”

I’ll give you two guesses about what that answer is, but you’re only going to need one. Now imagine you’re working at least 1 closing a week and ask yourself, “How would I be able to reach out to all my clients and leads effectively and efficiently?”

CRM strategy combines everything real estate agents do to build, manage, and sustain meaningful and successful relationships with both leads and customers. With real estate's reliance on referral business, a CRM strategy is essential.

Can’t I just use MS Excel and Outlook Calendar?

While the MS Suite and Outlook are staples of any professional setting, even if Apple users won’t admit it, there are better tools out there to help real estate professionals.

“Being responsive is the first step in developing a healthy client relationship.” (realestate360.com). When it comes to MS Excel and Outlook, they require so much manual work. You would still have to manually enter customer information with every new purchase, updated personal details, or canceled order.  If you spend all your time manually inputting data, how will you focus your efforts on what actually makes you money?

And if you’re like me, someone who loves Excel and uses it as much as possible (read fantasy football leagues), you will be happy to know that a lot of the best CRMs provide integration with Outlook, Word, and Excel.

Client relationship management tools are vital to a growing business. If you have questions about client management tools, growing your real estate business, fantasy football spreadsheets, or quotes from my good pal Wayne, do not hesitate to call, text, email, or live-chat us today!