How to Close Real Estate Deals with a CRM

As a Realtor, you are virtually always busy; you need to meet clients, be on the field, attend meetings, and help leads with different requirements.

You are always juggling between managing existing deals and getting new ones. Doing these alone isn’t enough either, you have to keep adequate documentation of every of your engagement and transaction.

Real estate is a tough business, and that’s why getting a real estate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, to streamline your business effort, is so important.

A good real estate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool will help you manage, attract, and retain clients; streamline transactions; and close deals on time.

In this guide, we will cover every aspect of real estate CRM software and most importantly how it can help you close more deals.

WHAT IS REAL ESTATE CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in real estate simply means putting all your marketing, sales, and customer communication processes into one platform. This makes it easier to find and manage customer data, send follow-up emails, set reminders, schedule appointments, etc.

Real estate CRM tools also make it possible to track and analyze valuable business data to identify strengths and weaknesses. Identifying pain points is a critical way to make your business more efficient and profitable in the long run. 

As an example, you can track the number of closed, pending, and lost deals and then use the data available in your CRM to analyze the reason(s) for losing some deals.

It is worth mentioning that most tasks in real estate CRMs can be automated to save time, energy, and resources.

WHY DO YOU NEED A REAL ESTATE CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems can help take your efficiency, as a realtor, to a new level.

A CRM can help you:

1. Personalise communication: Personalising your communication is a value that creates a bond between you and your customers, and to increase engagement, contents need to speak to each contact on an individual basis. By pulling key information from your CRM (contact, company, location, or preferred property type), you can add personalization tokens in your messaging to ensure that the content remains relevant to the audience you’re trying to target.
2. Improve collaboration among teams: Your CRM can improve and foster collaboration among the teams in your organization, especially marketing and sales. By connecting marketing and sales teams, with your CRM, you can effectively make your business communication flow more fluidly. This will improve lead handoff between them and enable you to close more deals faster. Other teams can also communicate with each other, using the CRM, to share important customer and business information.
3. Manage contracts and transactions: Real estate CRM tools allow you to upload contracts, manage transactions, and give individuals who are part of the transactions access to view the documents and make important decisions with them.
4. Manage sales pipeline: Staying on top of your real estate sales pipeline is no longer a luxury. You need to track every stage of customer engagement with your agency or brokerage. Real estate CRMs provide a unified interface to manage and track your sales pipeline. Many Real Estate CRMs track your sales pipeline using a deal. The deal outlines the current stage of a customer in your pipeline. The CRM can then list such deals in an aesthetically pleasing way and keep them organized. Deals can have multiple stages; most real estate CRMs will allow you to customize them to meet your individual needs. Common stages in a real estate CRM deal are lead, contacted, first appointment, follow up, offer negotiation, under contract, clear to close, and closed.
5. Build a one-stop information database: Real estate CRMs can help you gather vital business information digitally. You can track copious amounts of customer, business, sales, and marketing data while keeping everything organized and easy to use.

HOW TO CHOOSE REAL ESTATE CRM SOFTWARE?

Just like any other tool, there’s no single CRM software that works for every realtor. You have to choose one based on your requirements.

Every CRM comes with its merits and shortcomings, so you must have complete clarity on what types of features you need in your CRM. Just pen down your requirements and see which CRM fits the best.

No matter the CRM you choose though, make sure it is intuitive and easy to use; you will most likely never use a CRM that is rich in features but lacks intuitive ability.

Also, make sure your chosen CRM has a working, stable mobile application so you and your team can use it on the go.

Furthermore, you should consider the price of your preferred CRM – if the CRM is too expensive, it might cut down your profit margin significantly and this affects your return on investment (ROI).

These are some of the features you should look out for when choosing a CRM:

1. Contact management: You will often need to filter and segment your business contacts in your CRM. For example, filter out and group leads that need to be followed up for a marketing outreach. Your CRM of choice should allow you to segment your contacts into groups, and organize and cater to them better. With this CRM feature, you’ll also be able to gather crucial customer data and bolster your marketing strategies when introducing new properties. For example, creating look-alike audiences for Facebook ads. The feature also improves the personalization of all contacts with customers, making them feel important and catered to. This is a key factor in customer satisfaction.
2. Track engagement: many realtors try their best to make the most of their engagements with prospective clients; however, they often miss leveraging opportunities simply because they don’t have the right tool to track customer engagement. A good real estate CRM will help you track your prospect’s activities across their journey.
3. Automation: You should be able to automate certain tasks with your real estate CRM. For example, send a personalized welcome email to leads after they fill in a contact form, then alert a team member to follow the leads immediately. This will exponentially increase your chance to close more deals.
4. Lead capturing: Your Real estate CRM software should be able to retrieve leads from your website. This will help you easily capture people’s contact info into your CRM and apply the appropriate tag.
5. Sales pipeline tracking: An ideal real estate CRM software would help you easily organize and track your sales pipeline. It should also be able to display what stage your deals are in your pipeline.
6. Contract and transactions tracking: Your CRM software should be able to upload and track contracts and transactions related to deals.

BEST CRM SOFTWARE FOR REALTORS

As mentioned earlier, there is no single CRM software that meets the needs of every realtor. However, some CRMs stand out for realtors. We’ll list the ones we’ve tried in this section.

Please make sure you try them yourself too, by subscribing to their free trial or version, before making any commitment. You’ll get the best feel for their effectiveness when you try them yourself.

It is important to note that switching CRM can be a very difficult task. So, it is pertinent that you take your time in finding the right CRM for you, as you’ll most likely be sticking with any you choose for a long time.

Hubspot CRM: Hubspot’s all-in-one CRM is designed to grow with your business, making your job easier every step of the way.

With features such as contact management, email templates, and meeting scheduling, HubSpot CRM is designed to help you sell faster and better.

Its features include email templates, call-tracking tools, sales automation capabilities, and pipeline management systems. You can also automate tasks, create a personalized appointment scheduler, add live chat to your website, and integrate the CRM with your company’s apps and tools through their App Marketplace.

Pricing: Free; $45/month (Starter); $450/month (Professional); $1,200/month (Enterprise)

Bitrix 24: Bitrix24 offers advanced multimedia features within a free CRM interface. Realtors can communicate directly with leads and clients through live video chat, social media messenger, call-back forms, and phone-in chat.

Bitrix24 also has pipeline management tools that offer full project visibility, helping you keep deadlines in check.

With its sales funnel automation capability, you can remove the manual work from managing your pipeline. Another great feature is the ability to track your marketing expenses and calculate return on investment without needing to install another tool (available in the CRM+ special plan and Standard business plan).

You can access this CRM from your web browser, phone, or desktop.

Pricing: Free; $19/month (Start+); $55/month (CRM+); $79/month (Standard Business Plan); $159/month (Professional Business Plan)

Other CRMs are suitable for realtors, the ones listed above are just the ones we’ve tried. Some other real estate CRM systems include Apptivo, Contactually, Wise Agent, and Property Base.

CONCLUSION

Overall, a CRM for real estate helps improve your operational efficiency, improves communication with customers, makes marketing and sales easier, and improves your organization’s overall sales.

Now is the best time to get you and your team an effective CRM that’ll streamline your business efforts.

Don’t hesitate to drop any questions or inquiries you might have on real estate CRMs. We’d love to hear from you.

You can also reach out to us in case you find the process of setting up and using your CRM overwhelming or you are short on time and resources. We speak the real estate language and will ensure you get a CRM that meets every one of your needs.