Why You Need A CRM Strategy For Your Real Estate Business

Introduction

The real estate industry revolves around relationships. Making effective use of a customer relationship management (CRM) system has become mission critical to achieving the desired success for your business. For any real estate sales individual, getting a clear view of the inventory, in order to manage it efficiently, is a major challenge. Overcoming this challenge will make the booking process easy and effortless.

In today’s digital world, it is imperative to understand the need to cultivate and maximize strong relationships. The company’s contact database is one of the most crucial strategic assets which should be well maintained. Losing out on any lead may result in losing out on a great business opportunity or establishing a strong presence in the real estate industry. The buying cycle is a bit unpredictable in nature and therefore have a strong connection with the prospect always plays a major role in driving revenue. CRM systems take care of such issues without putting in any major efforts and in a short span of time. Having an organized sales process can not only help in filling gaps but also help in focusing on building a strong customer base.

Following are some of the reasons for adopting a real estate CRM for your business in order to provide a better customer experience and drive revenue:

Increase Profitability

“Your ability to make money is tied up in your ability to follow up with the people that you’re ultimately trying to serve.” – Travis Robertson

If you are generating leads in any kind of capacity but are unable to actually capture them on a single platform then you are bound to lose out on opportunities to increase revenue and serve potential customers. The management of existing relations only takes care of half the process, the addition of prospects at the top of the funnel is critical for a successful business.

A real estate CRM will help in gathering prospect information like your website through web forms by collecting their contact details. Top CRMs integrate property portals and your existing marketing campaigns which help in adding leads continuously to your sales funnel and eventually gives you more opportunities to increase revenue.

Analyze & Improve Business Performance

One of the most essential aspects of using a CRM is improving ROI and measuring business performance. It is imperative to understand how many deals were closed in this month, most effective lead sources, best-performing sales personnel and analyze selling/buying trends. These metrics provide actionable insights to optimize decision making and improve ROI of your business. The objective is to have the capability to compare results and reports on a single dashboard in real time.

Getting actionable insights on your ongoing campaigns in real time will help in optimizing campaign performance. Marketers can effectively allocate their resources based on the number of qualified leads generated or site visits conducted the most from a particular campaign and source. Websites, emailers, Facebook, Google, property portals and even offline campaigns can be integrated into the CRM system. If you want referral and repeat business, then staying “top of mind” with the target audience and the people to whom you have provided your services in the past is the best possible way to move forward.

Automate Marketing Process

Automation helps in removing the administrative tasks and minimizing efforts. CRM technologies help in sending automated replies, follow-ups and set up meetings with prospects through emails/SMS to respond to customers quickly and keep them engaged.

Marketing automation plays a significant role in nurturing leads through the sales funnel. Techniques like drip marketing help in keeping leads engaged by sending them emails at every instant of lead interaction. The idea is to be “top of mind” of the lead and continue to engage by sending educative and informative content.

Seamless Sales Process Leads To Smooth Selling

Having an efficient sales process leads to providing an improved customer buying experience. In order to determine in which stage the lead is in, having a visual sales pipeline helps in making it more efficient in tracking the progress with the prospect.

Setting up meetings and property site visits and property negotiations are vital steps in the buying process of a prospect in the real estate business cycle. Sale managers should have a clear understanding and information about the hot prospects and in which stage of the buying cycle they are in. Sales and marketing individuals should be able to view each stage of the sales funnel, analyze deals won and lost, identify bottlenecks and revenue projections accordingly.

CRM systems empower the sales teams to have instant communication with their prospects with minimum efforts. Sending notifications and meeting reminders as well as sending personalized templates through the system which cater to the needs of the prospect adds value to the communication. This helps in nurturing the prospect in pushing it down the sales funnel.

Lead Prioritization

CRM tools have the ability to provide real-time business intelligence when it comes to prioritization of prospects. Lead scoring allows sales and marketing personnel to focus on leads that are more likely to convert based on their interest level. This would help in saving time and effort as the sales individuals will follow-up with the right leads rather than waste their efforts in following up with several leads at once. Sales individuals can focus on leads that have actively interacted with the brand on a regular basis and classify them as hot or warm depending on the level of engagement.

Making Post-Sale Process Effortless

Another challenge faced by the real estate industry is the long payment cycles and different payment structures. Lack of information from the customer side, during the long payment process, leads to anxiety and chaos for the property developer.  

The payment process can be streamlined with assistance from the CRM platform wherein payment cycles can be managed seamlessly giving appropriate information to the property builder at the right time and making his/her life easy. In order to do so, a CRM platform can guide the payment process by providing configurable cost sheets, customizable payment schemes, and schedules. Therefore amount and scheduling of the payment are frozen and both the buyer and the property developer are on the same page. Apart from this, real estate CRM systems have the ability to generate demand letters and invoices which simplify the booking process by saving time and minimizing the effort for the real estate company and provide complete transparency to the buyer.

Build a long-lasting relationship with your customer

Approximately 30% of the deals in the real estate industry in India are done on account of referrals. It is owing to the strong customer relationship which leads to having a high impact on the bottom-line. A CRM tool helps in tracking those relationships and managing them with the right context.  Providing enhanced customer experience and maintaining a sustainable relationship with existing customers is absolutely imperative.

For the existing clients sharing “do it yourself” tips for furnishing their homes, sharing insightful data about the area in which they have bought the house, monthly newsletters etc. helps. CRM tools will help in organizing and categorizing the information on your past clients on a single platform and get the message out to them which otherwise would take a lot of time. Sending the right message at the right time to the right person is essential in maintaining relationships. Here marketing automation plays a major role in building relationships.

Also Read :

Selling Real Estate in Collaboration With Channel Partners And Brokers

Conclusion

A strong CRM system will help in managing and streamlining your communications, maintaining relationships, tracking lead behavior, generating reports to review efforts and automating tasks, allowing the management to focus on their core competency and closing deals.