All Forum Posts by: Doug Price

So I've searched for a non Podio version of a real estate CRM for wholesaling and flipping for a couple of years now. In 2019 I thought the eagle had landed with the release of a much hyped CRM but once I was fully immersed in that system the many shortcomings forced us to leave almost immediately.

Then we entered the nomad's land of google spreadsheets and reminders to manage leads. Not good. Not good at all.

Enter Flip Pilot, over at flippilot.com.

I joined up with this group back in the Beta phase of their rollout and from where they started about six months ago to where they are now they have come a long way fast!

Flip Pilot is modeled after several well known CRM's that have a drag and drop whiteboard feel to the lead flow. As the admin you can create as many statuses - read whiteboards - as you need for your business. You can even designate “pipelines” that have their own collection of statuses. Do you wholesale, flip and have buy & hold. Make a pipeline for each of those so you can track the progress apart from each other.

The whiteboard also features a color coded tag (green, yellow or red) on each lead as a reminder if a lead needs worked. This is a crazy fast way of seeing if there are leads that have fallen through the cracks.

Right now the system integrates fully with CallRail (hoping for Twilio soon, fingers crossed) so you can call and text without ever leaving the CRM. This is a huge time saver and the calls can be recorded for future use if needed for internal training or review.

The “up next” section makes seeing your daily tasks quick and easy. The best part of this screen is once you are there you literally never need to leave to notate the results of a follow up, make the next call or go to the next task. Many CRM’s require clicking back and forth between various screens to complete follow up, but not within Flip Pilot. Click the task, notate the follow up on the lead and you’re back in the task view.

Automation is very easy to set up with unlimited follow up sequences that include texts, emails and task reminders. Whenever someone replies it rolls into the communication section so you know you need to follow up.

Managing all your files, pictures and contracts is accomplished via your linked google drive so you always maintain access to your files even in the event you need to shift to a different CRM in the future (but I doubt you will).

And if you like KPI’s, you’re going to love the HUGE amount of data this system breaks down. Not only can you track your individual campaign cost per lead and profits, but if you want to know outbound call counts, appointments set, offers made, projected profits, and any of about 25 more categories you can do it all in Flip Pilot.

The one knock I’ll give it right now is the lack of gmail connectivity to send and receive emails within the CRM. Automated emails in follow up sequences will go out but as for any replies you’ll need to leave Flip Pilot and go to your email. The word is, they are working on getting this in place sooner than later.

So there you have it. That’s my two cents on Flip Pilot as a CRM for wholesaling and buy & hold investing. Those are the two categories I fall into but with the customization available you should be able to use this regardless of your strategy.

I’ve been wholesaling properties for almost five years and it is wholesalers I’m about to tell you about that give wholesalers a bad name, and as you’ll see, agents too. I'll cut to the chase...

July 7th, 2020; I entered into contract with my sellers and set closing to occur by Aug 7th, 2020. It’s worth noting here that I have a clause in my contract that allows for an unspecified extension of closing as required to complete required paperwork or clear liens or encumbrances. ISSUE ONE: My attorney says this clause may be too vague, but it is clear wording so he is on the fence with how the court might view it.

July 22; As is often the case with wholesaling, title search results revealed lien issues on one of my two sellers. As we approached Aug 7th both I and the sellers were fully aware this would not close as lien settlements had not yet been reached with the lien holders. We stayed in communication through this process of several weeks of delay with no mention from them desiring to cancel.

Aug 19; Once lien payoffs were approved we prepared to close. Only to find out my buyer was using a private lender who wanted to use a different property the buyer owned as collateral, not the house I was assigning my buyer.

Between a death in the lender’s family and a vacation this caused another few weeks of delay as a new title search had to be completed on my buyer’s other house being used as collateral.

Now we’re at approx Sept 1; All along the way this information was communicated to the sellers as we moved through this entire process and they never once objected or took issue with the unforeseen delays. They actually reiterated, more than once, they were not in a hurry.

Sept 10; Sellers were scheduled by title to close the following Tuesday via remote close (one is long distance and the other is an open road truck driver who was working). Paperwork was to be emailed to the sellers, printed and signed with a notary and mailed one day air back to title. Again, all is good with sellers in our conversation.

Unbeknownst to me three days earlier, Sept 7; Enter wholesaler number two (also a real estate agent). We’ll call him Bill.

Bill somehow connects with my sellers and meets seller 1 in the house. Seller 1 explains to Bill they are in contract with me. Bill convinces seller 1 to provide a copy of my contract for his review. After his review he informs them it is no longer valid since the closing date had expired. ISSUE TWO: Bill - an realtor - provides them legal advice on the spot regarding their contractual obligations with me. Realtors are under a code of ethics that forbids them from providing legal advice. And not only that, he clearly did not read the contract.

Bill then advises them that he is prepared to buy their house and in seller 1’s words, “I felt very intimidated into signing Bill’s contract. It felt like I didn’t have a choice.” ISSUE THREE: According to my attorney, this is known as “undue influence.”

Bill’s contract as it turns out is less than bulletproof (as I’m sure no contract is) but hear me out: 1) Seller 2’s name is incorrect, 2) the property address is wrong, 3) the parcel ID number has been corrected as it is scribbled through, 4) there is no deposit amount on the contract, 5) the offer on the contract was only good for the day of 9/7/2020 (more on that in a minute), 6) the contract is not assignable. ISSUE FOUR: The contract has many faults and the incorrect address is, according to my attorney, the biggest fault of them all.

Oh, and back to the aforementioned date of offer expiration on Bill’s contract as 9/7/2020, ISSUE FIVE: Seller 2 (who is remote) did not sign until 9/14/2020 only after, in seller 1’s words, Bill made her feel like she had to sign it. More undue influence.

9/15/2020; With none of this being communicated to me by the sellers we closed with the buyers and mailed the sellers paperwork the same day. ISSUE SIX: Never close with your buyers before your sellers. Lesson learned.

9/21/2020; After attempting to reach the sellers for several days, Seller 2 finally replies that they are selling to Bill. I inform them it is not really that easy as we have already closed since no one had ever canceled our contract. I told them both we need to get on the phone to figure this out together. I call Bill (yep, we know each other) to inquire if he in fact has written a contract (at this point I did not yet have a copy of his). He informs me he did so with the sellers “several weeks ago” (Actually 7 days earlier!!) and he has already assigned this to a buyer that is scheduled to close. I explain our status as having already closed with my buyer. He replies that the sellers told him our contract had been canceled. And that his buyers intend to close on the house.

9/22/2020; After a review of my contract my attorney advised me to immediately file a memorandum of interest at the courthouse (which is allowed for in my contract) to freeze the other transaction from occurring and then notify Bill. Also the sellers finally begin to communicate with me and all of the above dots begin to connect. I have another conversation with Bill to notify him of the filed memorandum and he reiterates that his buyers are scheduled to close and that he really has nothing to do with it any longer. Later in the day he calls back asking, on his buyer’s behalf, what it would take to buy me and my buyer out of the deal. He also informs me the sellers provided him screenshots of messages they sent me canceling our contract and copies of emails they sent me canceling our contract. ISSUE SIX: My sellers never sent me anything requesting the cancellation of the contract. Bill’s lies are all starting to compound.

Between the delays we had encountered and the pressure applied by Bill I guess my sellers felt trapped (my words). For what reason they did not call me or even mention to title they had signed another contract I’ll never understand. Seller 1 even told me on the phone he didn’t know why he did it. And he said he didn’t know why he didn’t call me or tell me he had signed Bill’s. Other than he mentioned he felt like Bill telling them our contract was invalid was enough for him to believe we were out of contract. When I asked about Bill’s comment of them sending copies of messages to him where they had canceled our contract they said, “We never canceled with you. We should have contacted you but we didn’t. Bill asked us to send him a text saying we canceled but we didn’t send him anything.”

9/23/2020; After I had many conversations with my buyer’s attorney, my own attorney and the title agency, the sellers agreed to sign the documents based on the feedback these attorneys provided. Note, I continuously reminded them, in texts, I am not an attorney and they need to seek advice as they see fit.

9/24/2020; All the paperwork was received from the sellers and we recorded the transaction. At least the sale is done.

As I mentioned earlier, I know Bill. He has my number. I know he does because he texts me properties when he has them. All it would have taken was a phone call or a text. Something. Tell me what is up. Ask me if the contract was cancelled. Anything.

I’ve built my business around being up front with sellers and buyers to the best of my ability with the information I have available. I’m ethical to a fault and it has cost me deals more than once.

But when you run into wholesalers or agents like this you begin to understand why people have a poor opinion of what we do. Or for that matter why people have a negative opinion of agents.

For what it is worth, in an effort to improve and remain ethical, I have revised my contract to provide more precise language regarding a closing extension and the steps required for the seller to cancel a contract if it extends beyond the original closing date.

I certainly never want to be in this situation again, but more than that I never want a seller to be subjected to such intimidation tactics or lies.

Sadly the reality is this may not be over yet. This could very well result in my first court appearance as a defendant. If it does, I’m going to bat for my sellers and my buyer.

I hope you have learned something from my mistakes that you can glean from this experience. And hopefully you pursue something different than Bill’s completely unethical practices in your own business.

Epilogue: 9/28/2020; My title company followed up with Bill’s title company - they know each other - to warn them we had closed. My title company knows Bill as well and they already will not conduct business with him since they have had multiple issues previously with his transactions being, in their words, “less than ethical.” And on this one it turns out Bill didn’t have anything ready to close, had not assigned the contract and had not communicated any of the above to his title company. Bill now has at a minimum of three attorneys, two title companies, a local mortgage lender, and a broker with all this information in hand. Good luck with that Bill.

So I previously wrote this forum post about IF 2.0; 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/80/topics/679...

Since that time I have made several updates on that post but I wanted to get another post out with a more accurate title. Mainly because I want to make sure you don't make the same mistake I made.

A long story made short here (you can read the previous post for more history), as of writing this post IF 2.0 is not anywhere near ready and we have navigated away from the platform entirely. Here is a list of the shortfalls we discovered in our 30 day trial:

1) The note fields are all over the place and not visible in any consistent location. This makes it nearly impossible to find notes that have been added to the system.

2) Tagging a collaborator with "@" is not discoverable without clicking on every "Show Summary" heading within the lead. And "Show Summary" is generated for every single record entered within the lead interaction. There can be tons of them!

3) There are a lot of clicks required to see information fields throughout the system because everything is hidden behind cutesy summary headings. This means you really need to hunt to find what you're looking for. There were multiple times I just gave up and moved on without needed information. VERY FRUSTRATING.

4) Scheduled appointments are dropped from the system if a lead calls or texts back for any reason before their appointment. The only way to reschedule is to go through the entire process of entering the appointment information again. Which generates new email notifications being sent to both parties.

5) Offer process is a complete disaster. Too much to list here but it is just completely broken from the follow up, making an edit, attaching files, assigning buyers (which you can't do), etc.

6) There is no buyer section. Nada. They said there was, but there isn't. Apparently a pending update in mid March, which didn't happen, yet.

7) Finding an incoming callrail message is a process of much scrolling and paying very close attention to be able to find it. They get buried in many lines of coded information from each incoming callrail call.

8) Action steps (their tasks) are all labeled "action step 1" at every stage of the process which is very confusing at a quick glance. 

9) You cannot edit a pending action. You can only complete it and create a new one with updated information.

10) Opportunity (their properties) information comes up inconsistently depending on the action that is being performed. Sometimes visible, sometimes not.

11) After the deal is under contract the system is flat out broken! There is no process for the B-C transaction. Nothing other than a checklist you can create. But their is no way to attach files, assign buyers or automate tasks to get the deal across the finish line.

12) You have one shot to attach files to an opportunity and that is when you submit an offer. After that no attachments of files of any kind can be made. Period. No signed contract, no assignment, no addendum, no HUD.

13) Can't send attachments within emails. I mean does anyone send emails without attachments in this business? :o

14) I completed the 30 day trial and contacted their billing department for a refund after the weekend (day 32) and they said I was not eligible for a refund. So now I have a $2000 annual subscription to a big nothing ball.

Pros:

1) You cannot lose a lead so far as we can tell. The system forces you to create next actions before a lead can be lost. And that's a HUGE win in my eyes.

2) The dashboard with quick glance KPI information is a really nice feature and makes accountability of your team really easy.

My advice is look elsewhere for a CRM until they complete a major overhaul of this system. I'll stay up to date on it for at least a year since I paid for it. So I'll return here to update as I can.

After completing trials of nearly everything on the market (not even kidding, at least 10 others) we landed on followupboss.com. There are shortfalls for us wholesalers but so far we have been able to navigate it with a few workarounds. I'll get another post about this CRM at a later date.

Happy deal seeking!

@Dawn A. IF 2.0 is bad. We’re in the process of switching over to FollowUpBoss.com. We have tried literally everything on the market at this point. FUB is a till not perfect for a wholesaler but we are finding work arounds that meet our needs. 

Looking hard at other options now. Investor Fuse 2.0 was once again not ready for launch. As of this post we have requested a refund to move in a different CRM direction. Looking very hard at FlipPilot or REISimple. Possibly Pipedrive as well although there are some out of the box detractors to the latter.

So wish I could take this thread down. Finding more holes in the IF 2.0 platform everyday now that we are really starting to pound it. Highly recommend you go elsewhere for CRM.

So I need to borrow a term from Larry David and curb my enthusiasm. After spending a few weeks in IF 2.0 I will say that there is a great deal left to be desired. That overall above review remains true from the perspective that you cannot leave a lead behind because the system will not let you. But the glitches are many right now and the workflow is very limited in how you can interact with the leads. The biggest issue right now is that once a contract is written the whole thing just stops. There is no where to import the associated pdf docs, no ability to create tasks for continuing follow up to closing, no way to edit detail of the transaction numbers if something changes from the offer, and no way to attach buyer information.

I'll maintain, better than dealing with the endless complexities of Podio, but there are other CRM's out there that are already up and running with a proven track record for the REI world. I will be exploring those other providers before the week is out.

There is some negative buzz in the REI world about Investor Fuse. So long story short I wanted to make sure the record is set straight on Investor Fuse 2.0. So let me start with a brief summary.

Investor Fuse started out as, what I’ll call, a Podio management company. They did all the trickery to make Podio an automated CRM machine and their setup was so good several other companies have emerged to compete with them in this space. As the user, all you had to do was pay the monthly subscription and work your leads. All the hoodoo of keeping the Podio gears turning were covered in their subscription fee and it was worth it!

And then everyone, including Investor Fuse, started to realize that the complexities of Podio were a limiting factor for many deals getting across the finish line. There were always holes for leads to fall through no matter how it was setup because Podio is not designed to be a CRM in the first place. Enter Investor Fuse 2.0. Also enter the root of the negative buzz.

Back in the spring of 2018 they quietly announced the launch of 2.0 to their existing clients - of which I was one. And let me just say, it was not ready to launch. Not ready at all. Not even in limited fashion to their clients. Not ready. Did I mention it wasn’t ready?

After trying it for months as they worked out the bugs. I left Investor Fuse. I had no more time to devote to waiting.

I went to another Podio provider. And became equally frustrated with the complexities of their setup. So the search was on for a longterm solution to my CRM dilemma.

Then I get an email from Dan Schwartz over at Investor Fuse informing me the launch for 2.0 is on! And he promises this time it is fully functional.

A week later I'm on their webcast launch and Dan wasn’t kidding. This time it was ready. So ready they’re blazing a trail with calling it what all of the REI space is craving, a Lead Conversion System (LCS). Their focus is not managing clients like a CRM, their focus is on moving leads through your pipeline to close deals.

Unlike Podio the leads CANNOT get lost. Every time you are in the system working a lead the LCS requires you to select a next step before you go to the next lead. And what if you close your browser on your phone to take that all important incoming call before selecting the next step? Your unfinished business on that lead is going to pop up on your Actions list.

Concern of a lead being left behind is a thing of the past because you can’t leave it behind. Investor Fuse 2.0 won’t let you. I don’t know any person active in the REI space that can’t use a system like this in their business.

It’s worth noting, I am not an affiliate in anyway. This is an unsolicited post to help out my new LCS provider. Glad to be back in the Investor Fuse family.

Ok BP community got one for you...

I’ve been wholesaling for about two years now and the scaling process has begun.

I’ve taken steps to automate my marketing, incoming lead qualification and lead follow up via the group at REIvault (so far all is good).

My next target is on the transaction to streamline the process. Here are my ideas, your thoughts and input are valued:

1. Email/snail mail the offers. Cash, sandwich lease and seller finance/subject to.
2. Hire wegolook.com or equivalent to take specific pictures of the property only after we have a contract signed.
3. Qualified buyers will be staged in a cue. Once a property is made available, via assignment, the buyer in the cue gets the deal. If they pass, on to the next buyer. Buyers would need to be in specific cue categories; buy/hold, flip, comm, and multifamily.

My hope is that by doing this I can increase my volume of offers by cutting the onsite visit with a seller. And the corresponding evaluation with the buyers. (The other strategies would still require me to go out and see the property.)

I realize at times I will leave money on the table by teeing up a single buyer on each deal, but frankly my time is getting stretched to the point I’m not worried about it. Especially considering the increase in potential transaction volume.

What say you BP deal makers?

@Pat Heidingsfelder I would possibly continue the RVM experiment if I was in a larger market but I literally loaded every possible motivated lead source into their skip tracing software to get all the numbers I can get. I suppose I could just upload every property on my local GIS and see what happens but that would be a huge shotgun blast to a vast majority of unmotivated sellers.