The real estate CRM is the main tool in the management of the daily activity of the real estate agent. It gathers all the tools, whose aim is to optimize the quality of the customer relationship and to enhance the performance of the agency. It is therefore an essential tool to accompany your growth, one that should be selected with care.
The main mistake to avoid is not to clearly define the essential functionalities that your software must have in order to meet your business needs. This preliminary work will allow you to get the right tool so that your teams no longer waste time looking for information or documents but concentrate their energy on their job: selling or renting real estate. In this article, we list the essential features of a real estate CRM.
1 - The management of your database: :
A good real estate software must offer you an easy-to-use interface, which allows you to manage, in real time, the data related to your real estate but also to your contacts (prospects, customers, partners).
On the side of your products, you must easily manage the properties, prices, descriptions, media, documents, etc.
On the side of your contacts, you should be able to create, manage and update an address book, or check the opportunities linked to these contacts.
The essential functionality in the management of your database and the one specific to your field of activity, is obviously the cross-referencing between your available properties and the searches of your buyer contacts.
2 - Accessibility and rights management:
The real estate agent is daily on the field in a fluid situation. As such, his smartphone has become his main work support. It is therefore essential that he can access his software on all the devices he uses: computer, tablet and smartphone.
On the other hand, it is important to be able to manage all of the levels of access rights of the different users, especially the users of your own agency.
3 - Real estate monitoring:
Real estate monitoring is essential for all real estate professionals. It allows you to contact sellers in order to obtain a mandate, to monitor the offer on your sector, to monitor the activities on your current mandates etc...
Having a monitoring solution integrated to your real estate CRM allows you to rationalize the number of tools by centralizing all the tasks of your teams within a single work environment. In addition, this component of your software will promote synergy with other tasks in your daily life, such as the editing of valuable notices.
4 - Publishing gateways:
The publishing of ads is an important step in the promotion of a property. To make the difference with your competitors, it is essential that your CRM allows you to publish your ads on a maximum of channels (real estate portals, website, social networks...), in the shortest possible time. On the other hand, the number of available gateways is a criterion to consider, indeed, because apart from the large generic portals, access to niche real estate advertising sites (luxury, foreign, offices and shops ... etc.) can prove to be a decisive advantage over your competitors in the advertising of a property.
5 - Real-time publishing updates:
What could be more frustrating than being asked for a property that is no longer part of your portfolio? The automatic update of properties on your website and your online ads in real time is simply an indispensable feature of any good real estate software.
6 - Lead integration:
Your real estate CRM must imperatively be connected, and centralize the leads you receive from all your contact points (your website, real estate portals, your social networks etc..).
You find then, in one place, all your leads so that you’ll easily set up a commercial approach, and also monitor the performance of your sources of contacts.
7 - Automatic alerts:
Thanks to all the information entered in your customer database, you benefit from precise data on their current needs. Your real estate CRM software will perform automatic matchings, and automatic alerts will be sent to you (and to your buyer base) according to the defined criteria. Your agency will propose properties that match your clients' expectations as soon as they are included in your database. You will not miss any opportunity.
You can also program personalized alerts such as appointment reminders and thus offer your customers a better quality follow-up.
8 - Email and calendar synchronization:
Always in the interest of simplification and efficiency, the ability of your software to synchronize with your mailbox and calendar is a point not to be neglected. You must ensure that you will be able to manage all your communications and the planning of your appointments without leaving your CRM interface.
9 - Activity tracking and reporting:
A good CRM should be able to keep track of all the customer actions performed by your agents and give you the ability to view the different tasks performed. You can therefore check the emails they’ve sent, the properties they’ve offered, the visits they carried out and any accomplished transaction. This information should allow you to react and adapt your strategy to manage and optimize your performance.
10 - A library of official documents:
The legislation related to the real estate activity is ever changing and in constant evolution. Whether it is the legal criteria of a property, the legal information of an agency or the data protection policy, the software must allow you to comply to the new texts in order to be always in perfect conformity with the law. You must be able to rely on your real estate software to free yourself from these legal constraints. You must have a library containing all of the documents that you need for your activity (visit forms, mandates, information notices etc...) and be sure that they are regularly updated. On the other hand, the integration of these documents in your CRM will allow you to fill them in dynamically with information about your agency, the property and your contacts
You will have understood by now that your real estate CRM is the main tool in the management of your activity and that of your employees. It has a direct impact on the performance of your agency and therefore needs to be chosen with care. You must make sure that it offers at least these functionalities if you want to be sure that it takes care of the whole chain of tasks which are specific to your job, as well as the follow-up of your customers.