We get asked almost daily, “What is the best real estate CRM”?
My response? The best CRM is the one that you use.
CRM stands for Client (or Contact/Customer) Relationship Management, but it’s mystifying just how few real estate businesses use CRM software for this purpose.
How do we know this? Well, firstly, the volume of lost opportunity sitting in the CRM’s of real estate businesses is sobering – to put it nicely.
Here’s the process for many real estate businesses:
- A contact goes in, either from a property enquiry on the portals or agency website or the agent/assistant has entered them in manually
- The contact record remains in the CRM with little to zero interaction from the business
- The contact decides to sell their property and either lists with another agency or (god forbid) they enter their details into one of the major portals whereby the lead is sold to multiple agents in their area for $199 a pop
Our good friends at Aire track lost opportunities for their clients via their artificial intelligence software (RITA) and their case studies prove this is an industry-wide problem.
Most refer to their CRM as a database and I believe this is the problem. The language we are using to describe CRM is wrong.
The people in your CRM have taken time out of their day to interact with your business somehow and calling your CRM a ‘database’ is basically saying to your clients and prospects they are simply a line item in a spreadsheet – a number if you will.
The word database itself is uninspiring.
Being told, “go out and build your database” is far less inspiring than “build as many genuine relationships as you can and don’t ever stop”. One of these requests is volume-based, the other is value-based.
We are spoiled for choice these days when it comes to services and software that can help nurture your contacts until either:
- They’re ready to speak with you about selling, or
- You engage with them belly-to-belly/face-to-face
There’s never been a more exciting time to be in real estate, in my opinion, and there are countless examples (here’s one) of agents and agencies who are using their CRM for the purpose it is intended – to build better relationships.
Are you winning the race-to-relationship with homeowners in your local market?
I certainly hope that you are, or you will.
**Shout out to my pal Dean Yeo for a fun interview – check out his YouTube channel and subscribe for insightful weekly interviews with real estate influencers.
