Real estate crm comparison for Operations

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[Music] if you are like most real estate professionals either barely using your crm or not at all or maybe you don't even have one or perhaps you're overwhelmed with which one should you choose oh my god and then when you do have one you feel it's way too complicated to learn or you say something like you know i'll get to that someday sound familiar in this video i'm going to show you how to select the best crm that's the client relationship management software which features you must have to be a modern real estate agent and then i will demonstrate how to use your crm effectively on a daily basis hey everyone jan o'brien here with wbnl coaching i think i've seen or used the majority of the most popular crm solutions for real estate over the past 29 years my goal in this video is to demystify crms and help you realize it can be the foundational system of your business if you let it my wish for you is that you learn to love and use your damn crm i really mean this if you will learn your crm it can be your first virtual assistant automating key tasks saving you valuable time while nurturing and converting more business so let's get to it real estate crms come in three basic varieties i'm going to talk about standalone crms the crm plus the website and the all-in-one lead generation platforms before i explain these three types and give you some examples i recommend you explore any free crm options you might have already so start with your company or your brokerage they may have a branded crm solution or may have partnered with one of the software providers next you can check your mls or your state association of realtors i'm currently checking out using prospect crm that comes with stellar mls also matrix in my flora association it's also available in the nevada association however our team in las vegas is using a program called go high level with unique website that we're using so let's talk about some popular standalone crms i've used lion desk and like it it has one of the features i'm going to talk about around video texting that i think is important follow up boss i have a ton of clients who like follow up boss we've used realvolve i found realvolve to be a great standalone crm a lot of people use wise agent that's also a great and affordable solution and as i mentioned go high level really love the modern interface of go high level as we're using that right now okay then you have the crm plus the website option so before i go further all those ones i just mentioned they can connect to most real estate websites okay because i think that's important you need a real estate idx website in my opinion and obviously you need a crm so that's why i'm going through these three different types it is a little bit confusing but i think it's most important that you really decide the features and what you want in a crm which is what this video is all about and then you definitely also need a consumer facing website all right so let's carry on with the combos so there's a ton of them out there these are three or four actually that i'm going to recommend that you take a look at i exact contact a great back office crm and and really decent front end website top producer has is one of those standards that's been around forever i really like the inclusivity of of top producer meaning that it has more than just a crm it was really designed to help real estate agents however i i sometimes find top producers not always up to the latest and greatest and i'm not a huge fan of the website but you can connect top producer to a different website if you wanted to for example another one is ihome finder you can check that out and i know several people that are using easy agent pro and they like it easy to use and a website with a crm okay the last type you know types of crms if you will is the all-in-one solutions that are the lead gen platforms that have an idx website crm tons of marketing options lead routing and more now these solutions are great for teams and they have a ton of bells and whistles and they have a much higher price tag so be prepared to spend 500 to 1500 dollars a month or more based on the system you choose and the number of users now our team previously was using kb core i loved kb core it gave as a team leader it gives you the opportunity to provide or even as a small broker to provide a value to your agents because you're able to provide them all with a complete system a website plus a crm that's why it costs so much so kb core sync real geeks boomtown and new on the scene is chime a lot of people are liking chime so you can check those out again higher price tag but if you are a team leader or plan on building a team then you definitely have to choose a crm slash website solution that has a team version so you don't have to jump into the lead gen platforms unless you're really all about lead generation online that's where i feel those those platforms if you will really thrive they really stand out but you can also find all those things in the real estate website plus crm options that i just talked about all right here are the must have features in your real estate serum this is what i recommend that you make a list of and then you sort it out and figure out what's important to you but these are the things i think you need in today's crm obviously a robust contact management system right where you can get all your contacts key information from birthdays and anniversary fields and reminders you want to be able to have tasks and notes and the ability to schedule a next caller task so that the crm will remind you some of them have a great built-in auto dialer which i think is useful next you want to have real estate email and text campaigns ready to use and customize now this is important why you should choose a real estate crm is because you don't want to sit and you're not going to sit and spend time writing email campaigns in text campaigns so the really good crms already have these they're tested and they usually are the ones that work best for their users now you need the ability to track um email ops opens i think is a huge bonus kbcore had this feature and i liked it you could see if you sent out 500 emails who opened it which gives you an opportunity to do some follow-up a texting manager some ability to do texting within the crm is really important in my mind because more people prefer a text then they do an email so can you add text messages as part of your follow-up campaign do you have mass texting capabilities for things like invitations to an open house or an event maybe your new listing or even just a holiday message an option to send a video text is also a bonus that's something that you can do in lion desk you'll have to see the crm features are always changing as they're all competitive the next most important feature to me is the html ability meaning that you can create emails that are beyond text that you can bring in images and links and build a nice newsletter so i definitely think it's important to have that that way you don't have to go use a third-party software like mailchimp or constant contact to send out a newsletter that has a little more function than just text all right you also need the ability to integrate with third-party software so whatever this is important whatever software you're already using make sure the crm you're going to use or select or you know has the ability to connect with it so most of them are going to be able to import lead sources from like zillow and realtor.com and those type of things but maybe you're using google or outlook does it sync with that do you do you want to be able to have one calendar these things are important most of them will have something for zapier zapier is the third party integration tool that that most are going to help you with being able to connect other things that might not be on their integrations list all right what else do we need a mobile app version i think this is critically important as well because you want your crm on your desktop on your computer is going to be more robust but a great real estate crm is going to be have a mobile app version so you can download it when you're out in the field you'll be able to you know get your contacts be able to make your calls look at your notes and so forth when you're out in the field alright next easily connects to your idx website or as i mentioned it comes with the website already i also feel that a great real estate crm should have transaction workflows being able to get have pipelines for example taking people from a prospect to a lead to an active client to a listing or a sale to post closing activities and that will help you manage all that also it'll be able to track your production and show how much business that you have this is why it's so important because if you're using it properly a great crm is helping you manage your business does your crm have an ability to manage your listings will it pull in your listings can you feature your listings on your website can you do any additional marketing to social and so forth for your listing now i mentioned it already but i want to come back to it the ability to embed a video into or an integration with bombbomb or another video marketing source i think is is really important and lastly but not least great customer support uh and knowledge based training and tutorials can you get help okay right so that's the list of all the key features that i believe are important for today's modern real estate agent so again here's my recommendation rate the importance of these based on your business model and put it into categories of i have to have critical features and then maybe some nice to have features this will help you not be so overwhelmed in the selection process let's talk next about keys to setting up your crm it goes without saying but i have to say it please learn how to use your crm take the training that comes with every crm solution just do this no excuses schedule time to get it done and or hire someone to help you get the setup but it doesn't mean you don't learn how to use it get through the pain of that learn the basics and when you start doing this and you see what a great crm is going to be able to do for you because you put the time in to get it set up the way you want it to work for you you're going to thank me alright so how does a dashboard board work go look it into the contact interface and learn every key feature and all the benefits of of your crm next you're going to import or add all your existing contacts and either make your initial connection if you're new or agent or reconnect with leads in your sphere of influence and past clients if you haven't done that in a while the next important area to tackle is your setup to customize the follow-up campaigns so as i mentioned you must have a way to follow up with your leads and we love to coach it this way before during and after so before is from lead capture to active client during is everything you're going to do from accepted contract to the closing and then after is your after the sale campaign your client apprecia appreciation connections so here's some must have before campaigns you need an initial buyer and a seller lead connection plan i believe that needs to be about 30 days of connections then you need a nurture campaign when somebody finally connects with you from lead generation then you want to take them off that lead connection campaign and put them into a nurture where you can send them a monthly market update newsletter maybe weekly video email something of value as you're developing trust and rapport with them and then finally during think of not finally actually during is next so during is you put them into contract and think of all the things that you could put into a template that are common connections like congratulations you're under contract what's next then for buyers you may be recommending home inspectors and home warranties you can have all of these already done in your crm and just have them sent out you know when you get somebody under contract so you don't have to stop and write that email another idea what not to do before you have the keys right letting buyers not to go out and do crazy things like buy a car useful resources for moving utility information preparing for the closing appointment you get the idea and then finally after includes your initial follow-up for a buyer and seller including getting those client reviews which you're going to have to remind them three to five times and then anything you're doing in your client appreciation program like birthdays and home anniversaries always ensure all your contacts are on your newsletter campaign [Music] okay in this part of the video i'm going to demo best practices in your crm after you've got everything all set up and imported and this should be a daily activity that you schedule if you watched that previous video right the link's right up here for you on how to have a perfect week and day your daily agent schedule and one of those things is very important to spend at least an hour to two hours prospecting lead follow-up and when you need to use your crm for that so most crms will have something that if you are engaging with it and you've learned it and you're following these practices that i'm going to take you through when you log in it's going to tell you calls that you need to make today any tasks that you have you might even have any past due things that are due today and then for example upcoming calls which you could get ahead on a lot of them will allow you to do things like snooze and then you're going to be able to jump in and take a look at anybody you know come into the contact and then make your notes and everything from that as well and that is what i want to be able to to show you right now i want to show you how powerful a lot of these real estate crms are in kb core whether you're using this or sync or real geeks are all very similar but any good real estate crm that has the features that we talked about are going to have these features in it and once you're in here you're going to be able to do everything from uh see what you've done one of the features i love in kb core is you can see if people have viewed any of your alerts or emails and this is a past uh the client who is is still on a drip it is not well opened up this one looked at he opened up our newsletter but not and not necessarily opening up all of the uh email alerts that are going out but i do find that the alerts just like being on zillow or realtor.com that is what gets prospects coming back to your website is an email or a text alert that said here's another property that you might be interested in i'm going to show you a thing for an opportunity to call in just a moment but if you're if i was going to be making a call to this person you can see that i can do things like initiate a call right here i can send an email i can add a note which is a best practice every time you reach out even if you're just trying to reach out make a note update your crm and your if i'm going to send a text if i i can even do a video in here they have a thing called a voicemail drop these are all the tools i can do within this crm all these ways to reach out and try to follow up with this prospect to see if i can be of service or is he ready to to talk to me yet and then the thing that i want to show you is that if you finish speaking or i could dial right from here and make a phone call for example kbcor is going to connect i can from right here it can call me on my phone and then call my client and then it will record the call for me which is a very cool feature i don't have to necessarily do that but what i do want to do is when i'm done i want to log the call every crm has some kind of feature like this where i'll say it'll date time stamp it i left a voicemail then this is the most important part you need to schedule the next action whether that's a call or a text put your note in there about what you might want to do you can choose a date and if i want to go i'm going to give give him a call on september 10th i can even choose the time and it will now go in to my crm and remind me that i'm going to call this client or this past client or this lead on that particular date that's what makes your crm work and you have to just get into the habit of doing this now last thing i'm going to show you is what you can do with opportunity calls if your crm is connected to a great idx website you're going to be able to do something like this so i'm in here and i'm going to come into all my contacts for example and i can sort and filter my data my contacts by a whole bunch of different ways this top column by name activity but the most important thing here and what i want to show you here is the last visit so if i come and sort who has been on my website in the last uh you know just within my own database three months ago nine months ago but i'm gonna go to all contacts this is our team site so there's more activity with some folks that are out working in las vegas so here's carlos two days ago here's what he's looking for we've had three calls you know 87 emails since he's been on the site since a year ago and he was just on the site two days ago and these are what i call your opportunity calls all the websites that are tied to your idx search are going to have this feature or you're going to have it in your idx so now i can come in and i can open up carlos but i what i can do here is i can see a hundred percent what's he been looking at what kind of a property alert is he set up on did he open up this email look he's open he just got that email and he opened it he opened it he didn't open up that one and now i can have a reason to call or text right from here this is what's great within kb core i can email or text and say hey you took a look at this bethel cove court would you like to go take a look at or how can i be of service this is what is super important this is katie and john our team they're actively using it and they're saying hey thanks for visiting our site are you focused on any specific areas property types so trying to get the client to re-engage and it's all done because the crm that you're choosing to use is doing the heavy lifting it's nurturing it's doing its thing mainly if it's a buyer because they want to look at houses it's doing all that automatically but what you've got to do is come in every day and follow these best practices so that you can consistently over time talk to the people that you know you need to speak to this could also be with your sphere of influence and you leverage the power of a great crm to be your virtual assistant and all you got to do is book the time and make it happen that does it for this coaching video i can't stress enough how critical selecting and mastering a real estate crm is for the success of your business when you really love your crm and use it daily it's like having a digital assistant keeping you focused on who to contact and why while it does the heavy lifting with ongoing nurturing and connections with your customers and clients if you have any questions or you want to share what crm you love and why please just drop us a comment below at wbnl coaching we have several free training courses and a ton of free downloads to help you with your business links are in the description below and if you're enjoying our content please subscribe like share our videos you know the drill our goal is to provide new training and coaching videos every week to support your real estate goals and dreams until next time make it a productive and great day [Music]