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All Forum Posts by: Danny Johnson

Danny Johnson has started 27 posts and replied 310 times.

Post: Best CRM for mobile/tablet use?

Danny JohnsonPosted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Posts 328
  • Votes 182

That's pretty difficult to find for sure.  We've built out a mobile version that focuses on ease of use while out and about.  I'd be willing to hop on a zoom call to show you around the system if you'd like.  Feel free to message me.

Post: Business Blueprint and CRM Help for 100+ Deals/Year

Danny JohnsonPosted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Posts 328
  • Votes 182

@Matthew Watson If you're not wanting to have to configure a general purpose system, there are REI specific CRMs that operate very well for what you are trying to do. Rather than tons of time trying to configure a system to work for REI, you can get one of these systems that are mostly ready to go. You can just make necessary changes to fit your business and then you're spending your time on high return activities again.

The key is having a system that prevents ANY leads from slipping through the cracks.  Some systems just show you lists of records.  It's better to know what's where along with automations to make sure something is always happening.  

[Solicitation Removed by Moderators]


Great website by the way! After scrolling for 2 seconds I knew immediately who you were working with on it.  He's good people. :)
  

Post: RESimpli CRM Pros & Cons

Danny JohnsonPosted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Posts 328
  • Votes 182

@Luke Grogan I'd love to talk strategy with you regarding the systems you've been looking at.  I've been in the CRM business for years and real estate investor since 2003.  It'd be helpful to know what you're looking to accomplish with a system as that dictates choice of which one to go with as they are all a little different.  Anyway, I'd be glad to talk.  DM me if interested. 

Post: CRM for Email & Text Drip Campaigns

Danny JohnsonPosted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Posts 328
  • Votes 182

@Brandon Stock This is a really good idea!  So you're asking for ability to have follow up sequences run for multiple contacts associated with a given lead? 

We will be adding this to our development roadmap.  Love the idea. :) Thanks.

Post: What CRM software do you think is the best

Danny JohnsonPosted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Posts 328
  • Votes 182

If you're on a budget, podio (or if you need a ton of customization for very specific situations) custom built podio setups is a good place to start. 

The problem so many investors run into with this kind of setup for their real estate investor CRM is it can become a pain to use.  When everything has to be in different "apps" to get stuff done, you introduce a ton of clicks into your repetitive tasks...and that gets annoying fast!

When it gets to where things break and you're not sure why or you find you're not recording some information because you don't have the time for it, it might be a good time to look at the CRM's built specifically for real estate investors.  There are many out there now and the best real estate investor crm's are the ones that don't try to be everything to everybody (that's what Podio is for!).  

The best CRM's, in my opinion, keep things simple so that you can get work done fast and automate a lot of it.   

I know I've spent more than my share of time trying to configure software to work the way I needed it to and that distracted me from my business of flipping houses.  

The best CRM is the one you will enjoy using and actually use.  If it's clunky or confusing, you probably won't use it to it's full ability.

Just my .02   

Post: What is your favorite CRM? Any good free ones for starting out?

Danny JohnsonPosted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Posts 328
  • Votes 182

@Peter Forrest I'd be willing to get on a call with you to discuss options.  Please message me to book a time.

Post: What is your favorite CRM? Any good free ones for starting out?

Danny JohnsonPosted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Posts 328
  • Votes 182

Hello @Cameron Mello! Not sure if you've already found a system to use.  There are a lot out there that do a lot of different things.  It'd be helpful to know what you're looking for in a system.  

Is your priority to have a ton of features or would you rather have super simple to setup and use so that you can focus on doing deals rather than configuring software?  

Are you looking to get lead lists or do you already have a source for those?  

Is your desire to simply make sure no leads that you generate ever slip through the cracks and have a system that allows you to automate follow up? 

If you're still looking, knowing the answers to these questions will help guide recommendations.  :)

Post: RESimpli CRM Pros & Cons

Danny JohnsonPosted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Posts 328
  • Votes 182

@Josh Chapman Sorry to see nobody has responded here.  It would be helpful to let us know what you are looking to do with the system.  What problem are you trying to solve?  That could help get some answers. Cheers.

Post: Flip Pilot CRM Has Been A Great Addition To My Company

Danny JohnsonPosted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Posts 328
  • Votes 182

Great question, @Ramon Vazquez!

Both systems at the end of the day do a great job of helping you keep track of your leads and convert them into deals.  So I don't think you could go wrong with either.

The biggest difference is FlipPilot was developed from the ground up with user experience in mind.  One of our core values is Simple.  Not just simple in terms of good design but simple in terms of how to innovate so that usability from the perspective of actual real estate investors and their team using the system makes complete sense.  This came from having built a couple CRMs in the past that were not this way.  Specific example being having to click around to too many pages and "apps" in podio speak to get information you need.  Super frustrating and time consuming. 

We were determined to build something new.  This led us to think about moving away from the old "list-style" management of leads so prevalent in all other systems. They don't really show you visually where everything is at the moment.  

We got to thinking about how almost all investors have a whiteboard where they track what deals are where in their pipeline.  Why not create software that mimics that as that's how we like to view the data?  We did.

This is why we chose to focus on the Pipeline style interface rather than a table.  This way you can build out your custom workflow for how YOUR business operates.  Then you can specify what needs to happen at each stage and automate the creation of tasks.  You can easily determine what happens when in your system because the workflow is visual!  Not to mention how enjoyable it is to drag and drop properties as they progress through your business.  

There's a lot more innovations regarding color coding of the properties in the pipeline to know what needs attention now, team communications, graphical KPI funnel,  etc.  If you'd like talk more about it I'd love to setup a call with you.  Just message me. 

Post: Website for lead generation

Danny JohnsonPosted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Posts 328
  • Votes 182

Full Disclosure: I'm the founder of LeadPropeller

In order to help make a decision (whichever way you go, you won't really be wrong as both choices are great), I wanted to share more information about online strategy and what's most important.  This is intended to help regardless of the platform you use or even if you decide to have a site custom built.  

Things change pretty fast when it comes to online lead generation. There is more competition than ever and we've been focused on figuring out how to beat the competition. Here's what we found that works.

1. Automated Communication. Starting the conversation as soon as possible with the motivated seller. To do this we worked on automations and focused on making sure they didn't seem like automations. Let me explain. When a motivated seller searches online for a solution to a real estate related problem, they will see search results containing lots of real estate investor websites.

If you've worked hard to rank your site to be seen by these motivated seller searchers or are paying for pay per click ads, they will likely see your site in the results. They then click onto your site (if your title and description are enticing enough) and find out if what you offer is what will help them with their problem. They will also most likely make decisions about how credible your site appears. If your site has done well to convince them you are the right company to contact, they will either submit the form with their information or give you a call. The majority of sellers submit the form.

What happens next is where many people fail with online lead gen.

The seller then clicks the back button on the browser and goes to your competitors' websites. Not cool. But it's what they do. I do it too when I'm searching for things on Google.

So we focused our energy on making sure we did as much as we could to prevent this from happening. It's why even from the very beginning our websites had automated texting.

After the seller submits their phone number on the first form of our 2-step forms, they get a text message that you can customize. This automated text message can include the address that they entered into the form as well so that it is personalized and seems like someone really did type it out to them. It used to be that these text messages would go out as soon as the form was submitted. Not good. They came off as undeniably automated :( 

They now have a time delay of roughly 30 seconds to make it plausible that you actually typed the quick text to them. How cool is that? Your autoresponder text should say something that tells them who you are and that you received their information and you will be calling them in a minute. This way they are anticipating your call rather than going to other websites. Since this goes out after the short time delay after the first form submission, they usually are still on your website filling out the second form.

We've found that the majority of sellers that you can get in touch with right away will not go to any more websites. We've found that they feel satisfied that they have done what they set out to do and want to see what you will offer them. 

This is also why I always recommend calling a seller IMMEDIATELY when you get a website form submission. 

The first person to speak to the seller usually has a much better chance of getting the deal. 

If you've got an answering service handling calls, I suggest you find a way to have someone live answer it for you. This is where rapport needs to be built. Over the years, I've countless times been told that a seller called X amount of other investors and that I was the first to answer my phone. If they felt that special enough to tell me, you know it meant something very important to them....and I usually end up with the deal.

One issue many people have with trying to set this up is that the phone number the texts come from don't have their local area code. This isn't a huge problem but can be perceived by some sellers as slightly undesirable (because you might not seem local).

We put in the development time to allow you to purchase local phone numbers through LeadPropeller so that your automated texts can come from a local number. This is also perfect for tracking your marketing....which I hope you are doing. Using automated texts and emails (which are perfect for sending credibility information including testimonials) helps to make sure you have a much better chance at being the person that gets the deal. And when you look at what ALL of this online lead gen boils down to, that is really all that matters.

2. Content Marketing. My website used to only rank for a handful of keywords. Then I started blogging. Now my site ranks for roughly 2,000 keywords. Now granted, all of those keywords I'm ranking for won't be highly targeted for motivated sellers and many don't get much search volume, but when you add up all of the small search volume over that many keywords, it really does add up. Plus, most of those keywords are not what most investors are targeting...which means they're easier to rank for!

I highly recommend adding SEO blog posts to your website. You can use the free Yoast SEO plugin for wordpress to make sure your blog posts are optimized correctly. This is the tool that shows the traffic signal showing green if your blog post is optimized sufficiently and yellow or red or enough factors are not met. We've included this plugin in one-click blog install's for LeadPropeller websites.

You can hire writers on Upwork.com to write these articles for you. Good writers will typically cost about $.02 per word. Each article should be at least 1,000 words. Try to keep your site fresh with these articles. I recommend one per week but every two weeks or per month is better than nothing and will still give you tons of benefit over time. We've automated much of this as well with our content packs that are automatically personalized with your information and location so that they are SEO’d for your website's target city. It's much easier to rank locally.

3. The correct strategy. So many investors go into online lead generation with the wrong expectations. Having the right strategy built from the correct expectations greatly ensures success. We've found that, even with having professional SEO done monthly for your website, it can take as long as 8 months or more to get to the first page let alone the top of the first page for the best keywords. This in and of itself isn't a problem but a blessing. If you know this you will be more willing to work at it from the perspective of it being an investment. Most won't. Therefore, most people will never challenge you once you get to the top. It's much easier to stay at the top than to get to the top. So what do you do while waiting for this long term investment in SEO to pay off? Pay per click and posting ads on Craigslist is what I recommend. This advertising enables you to send highly targeted traffic to your site immediately. 

We also have something big in the works that will be coming first quarter of 2021.  Online lead generation is a passion of ours and we won't stop innovating.  

 If you have questions about strategy for online lead generation, feel free to contact me. I'd love to help.