AGENTS: Let's Talk CRMs - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

[Mindy Jensen]

Agents!

What does your CRM have that you love? What does it do that drives you nuts?

If you were designing a CRM from scratch, what features would you have and what is worthless?

[Logan Hartle]

I've used Chime and CINC and I love Chime!....CINC not so much

[Michael Dumler]

@Mindy Jensen I have been using Follow Up Boss for the past couple of months now and absolutely love it. 

Lead flow is one of the most exciting parts when it comes to using Follow Up Boss. This system allows you to take multiple leads from different sources and create an action plan for each one. This allows the user to set up multiple drip campaigns to which is most suitable for each lead. As far as setting up an appropriate automated action plan per lead, the system is very user friendly and provides demo videos if needed. 

Within each action plan the user can also set up tasks. These tasks can range from cycling in calls or texts on particular days that otherwise you as the agent may have forgotten. As far as I'm aware, there is no other CRM that allows you to set up action plans in such a fast past manner. 

When it comes to the cons of using Follow Up Boss, there are a couple to note. For one, they list too many features making the assumption that you as the agent understand what they do. Also, some of the email templates they provide are by no means outstanding. As far as setting up creative email templates, I would use Constant Contacts. If you're an agent that also likes to track numbers, Cosntant Contacts is very accurate in providing data on open and respone rates of sent emails. 

If a CRM could combine the proficient implementation of creating an action plan on Follow Up Boss and acquire the creative email templates and tracking service that Constant Contacts provides, that would be huge! 

[Shawn Mcenteer]

I love that I can do personal video messaging from my CRM.   Being able to show a prospective client who you are in real time is huge and authentic.   When an internet lead comes in my reply is a phone call then a video message. If no one answers then it is a video introduction. I also love the hashtag feature which allows me to categorize who ever I put into my CRM in a way to works for me.

[Jonathan Greene]

Chime and Follow Up Boss are at another level in my opinion. I would estimate that about 1% of all agents use their CRM to even 70 percent of its capacity. A CRM could be great, but for some, all the bells and whistles are too much. I think you have to decide if you need a CRM not to lose stuff or to grow your business. If the ladder, then I love Chime.

[Chinyere Orie]

I'm actually starting to convert my facebook to a CRM...using it to stay in contact with leads, prospective clients, and former clients.  I've used several different CRMs in the past and I've always felt they had features I didn't need and the features they did have, I didn't like.  I feel like facebook lets me be genuine and authentically connect with people without feeling like I'm continuously marketing to them.

[Wesley Sherow]

So this isn't a CRM (with the exception of Zen Sell), but Zendesk I find to be among the hardest hitters I've found for communication. It's ticket based communication system combined with the tons of integrations for communication streams. I've been through HubSpot, Salesforce, and I've tried using homemade systems on Monday.com and Trello, but that seems to work best for my style of communication.

[Stephanie F.]

@Chinyere Orie

I love many features of Facebook, but I personally find it unprofessional if it’s the only or primary platform a business uses. It tells me they are too cheap to invest in a private platform (one that doesn’t monetize from selling user data) and they don’t respect their clients privacy. I think it’s great if they want to use multiple venues for marketing, but official company business should be on a professional platform, such as their own website, app, or other professional platform.

[Charlie MacPherson]

@Mindy Jensen I'm now using the free version of Hubspot, but expect that I'll upgrade soon.  I really like it.

Here are the "must haves":

Basic contact info - name, address, phone, email
Record and display type of lead - buyer, seller, fix & flip, rehabber, non-performing notes investor, etc.
Multiple platform compatibility - IOS, Android, Mac OS, Windows, etc. A web-based app solves this, but limits functionality to locations where you have a cell or wi-fi signal.  Local (on device) storage that later syncs when web access is regained would be a slick solution.
Robust backups - both online/continuous backup plus the ability to dump a snapshot of data to an external hard drive.
Easy access via search to contact details.
What deal(s) they're a candidate for.
Ability to text through the app.
When responding via email, text or phone, auto suggest a follow-up task with a drop down for when to make contact next.
Calendar that syncs to your smart phone.
Ability to schedule appointments with fields for location and notes for the meeting.  Those sync to your preferred calendar.
Calendar can push reminders to both desktop and mobile apps.
Home screen shows number of things to do, both due today and overdue (highlighted in red).
Free-form "notes" field with the ability to pin a note to the top of the screen.  No limit on the number of characters.
Ability to merge two or more records.
Ability to email through the app and have a record of both sent emails and responses to them.
Ability to make calls through the app.  Calls are entered with contemporaneous notes in the record.
Notification when sent emails are opened and a count of how many times it was opened.
A field for lead rating, i.e., New, Qualify, Nurture, Hot, Watch, Archive, Closed, etc. 
Ability for an Admin to set up those definitions with a pop-out definition, i.e., "New - not yet contacted" or "Watch - unlikely to transact within 90 days".
A field for "lead source" - Facebook, EDDM, PPC, door knocking, cold call, etc.
A field to record prospect's website.
A field to record prospect's social media accounts.  
Ability to set up drip emails.  Several different drip libraries - buyers, sellers, closed, long term, etc.  Drip auto-pauses when a contact responds to it.
Store a library of commonly used documents - offers, disclosures, P&S.
Include the ability to fill out fields, send and e-sign those docs (i.e., Docusign)
Field to show if a lead unsubscribes from all contact.  Auto-disable outgoing emails if this field is true.
Field to show if a lead is on the Do Not Call list.  Auto-disable calls and texts through the app if this field is true.
Pop-up prompt when you close a non-archived record: "There are no future activities scheduled.  Schedule now?  Close record?"
Ability to make key fields mandatory.  Lead source, lead rating, referral fee, etc.
Ability to set "lead owner".  Useful if you have multiple agents/assistants accessing the database.
Ability to restrict who on your team can access / edit / delete particular records or sets of records.
Ability to set up custom fields, free-form text, radio buttons, drop down selections.  Option to restrict which team members can do this.
Reporting on tasks and sales by pending, completed.
Sales reporting by agent.  Allow agents to calculate their pending / closed commissions.
Management screen that compares performance between agents.  Show number of calls made, number of appointments kept, average time to 1st contact leads, value of deals in process, number of deal in process, deals closed.
Ability to select time frame for management report. Month, quarter, year, custom range.
Include a robust website for marketing and lead capture.
Website includes live chat / chatbot functionality and the ability to send a message.
Auto-populate captured leads into CRM.  Push alert to agent's app.
Include integration for video messaging, i.e., Bomb Bomb, Facebook live, You Tube, etc.  Better yet, build it right into the app.
Ability to export records as CSV, Excel, PDF (print summary of detailed record).

That's all I have for now.

[Steve Morris]

Think most of these CRMs require you to put in a lot of cleaned-up info to be useful and then a lot of messing around to get anything more that a report (like all the 3 plex owners in ZIP 97302).  I guess they can help you track history, but something like OneNote and some XLS can do that.

The other real galling thing is they all have their own format.  So if you spend 5 year putting stuff into XYZ CRM and then a really great new CRM comes along, you start from scratch since XYZ won't export in a useful format.   Plus you can spend all day long inputting/sorting info for a "better" database.  However, as my father the mechanic said: "You get paid to fix cars, not polish tools".

So you spend a lot of time on goes-in-tas and you're stuck.  

I guess if there is someone out there listening, I think some sort of AI would be real handy.  Typical broker mind stuff is when I hear: "Hey, am looking for a 40-unit in Milwaukie", then you input that and out pops a bunch of likely sellers.

[John Thedford]

I need a CRM. I just got my brokerage licensed and am starting from scratch. I have had several people pitch Chime. I am not the tech savvy guy and don't want to spend hours and hours getting up and running. I do want it to help me with marketing, managing leads, hopefully some landing pages, etc. Where do I go without spending a TON of money?
Wealth Realty And Property Management, Inc is my new company in Naples, Florida. 

[Rebecca Graziano]

So is BP getting into the CRM space? =)

[Claudio Salvatorelli]

Hubspot is great.

[Forrest Faulconer]

@Michael Dumler

Through I agree that follow up boss has some cool features, sometimes I feel like I’m a part of some tech startup experiment. The fact that you have to pay $900+ a year for a phone line so you can make outgoing calls with a follow up boss number is ridiculous. I haven’t upgraded and so all my outgoing calls are from my personal number. Hoping it continues to improve.

[Jonathan Wigan]

Hands down kvCore is the best CRM I have ever used.  My brokerage, CRT, Realtors uses it and when I was brought on to start the commercial and investment department back in June, I was very wary and frankly, slightly overwhelmed by the system.  I was used to my outlook follow ups and notes etc...  Now I can't imagine being without it I strongly recommend the system.   

[Jill F.]

ok, could someone please indulge me and explain how CRM is used. I googled it and it said customer relationship manager. It's a software app? who uses it and for what purpose?

[Taylor L.]

Originally posted by @Jill F.:

ok, could someone please indulge me and explain how CRM is used. I googled it and it said customer relationship manager. It's a software app? who uses it and for what purpose?

I think everyone should have a CRM. They track communications, run DRIP marketing campaigns, give nudge reminders to either you or your prospective client, and so much more. We all have different needs, and there are a lot of CRM options out there. I know very successful people who use Microsoft Excel as a CRM tool, and it works for them. 

For my purposes, I need my CRM to track communications, remind me to follow up, run onboarding automations, and all kinds of other tasks.

[Ernest Partin]

I use ZOHO. It works great for me. I have no complaints there. 

[David Pere]

@Mindy Jensen i like where this question is going! 

I just paid for Nutshell, but I'm not doing the agent side, just need basic pipelines and email sequencing?

[Jake Knight]

We use Hubpsot and it's perfect for what we are trying to do. We utilize the pipelines, video, tasks, reminders, etc...

[Samuel Sorinwa]

@Mindy Jensen

I can’t but agree more that KVCore is the best that I have ever used. To me there is always something to learn to boost your listing. That’s the best thing my brokerage did for us. Anyway, an open to others.

[Jimmy C.]

We use Freedomsoft in my investment company and Follow Up Boss in our brokerage.

[Justin Bullock]

@Mindy Jensen

We use HighLevel CRM for our retail real estate sales and investor customers, for our acquisitions company, and even for our real estate nonprofit as well.

It has some great features with built in calendar integration, allows us to easily categorize our prospects and customers, and we can build automated text and email campaigns with rather minimal effort. It’s all super user friendly overall and rarely do we need our tech guy to help us out.

Since we use the platform to keep track and to stay automated, those are all truly the most important features we could ask for in regards to running our real estate operations, even if we did choose to build out our own CRM.

[Jacob O'Connor]

@Jill F. It’s software used by real estate professionals to track their relationships with contacts. For example, I use my CRM to track all of my communications with clients and log notes based on our conversations. I can then set to do’s so that I dont forget to follow up or complete a task for each one. Many CRMS can also store documents and provide next steps. It creates one space to store everything you touch a client with.

[Chad Martin]

@Mindy Jensen

Chime

CINC

Liondesk

Boomtown

IXact

Follow Up Boss

Hubspot

Brightdoor - new home/developer crm

And...

Sierra Interactive - fairly off the radar, very impressive tech by strong founder. Suspecting they maybe lesser known to this audience.

Since I own a digital marketing company focused on the real estate industry, we are in a situation where we end up supporting integrations etc with all of these crm’s.

Having personally trained and supported 100’s of agents on using a variety of crm’s and I can confidently say the best one’s is the one that will get used the most. It’s only as good as the information you put in, update and track.

The best features for any of them will be the automated nurturing. Additionally, web tracking to an individual is important too. I heard a NAR speaker the other day say that only 10% of agent actually follow up long term with clients after closing > hence the huge nurturing marketing opportunity to capitalize on.

Cheers!

[Chris Levarek]

CRMs are powerful for maintaining contacts, automating processes and having a singular central storage for a variety of data. 

One of the more common ones we hear about in business are Salesforce for example which owns the market in the corporate world.

However some of the ones I've used in my Real Estate business include :

Podio, Airtable, Monday.com, Pipedrive and now I've moved to ActiveCampaign. 

I like ActiveCampaign as there is alot of focus on automating the communication aspect with customers and this is a very useful element. Additionally they've done a good job of mirroring other aspects of other crms by implementing sales pipelines, customer tags, app integrations with Google Sheets for example, etc.

When choosing software however, it's always based on your specific needs, the cost you can afford to achieve the job and the ability to which you will understand the product. So Need, Cost and Understandable.

If you or your team don't understand it, the cost is outside your comfort or you don't need the features, you will regret your purchase and ultimately dislike insert your CRM name here.

This is why so many people have so many mixed reviews on the exact same CRM. 

@Mindy Jensen

If BiggerPockets is looking to do a CRM, I'd would recommend centering around providing a tool that allows an investor or real estate professional to 

1. Maintain a contact database
2. Tag, sort or filter contacts based on type
3. Build Pipelines or workflows to allow a checklist type process ie. Deal Analysis to Property Closing
4. Allow notifications to email or communication app

If ultimately pieces are then automated and other apps(Google Drive, Slack, Calendly, etc) are integrated, then the more the merrier!

Hope that helps!