All Forum Posts by: Rohan Karunakaran

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency." -Bill Gates

I love the above quote because it highlights the importance of first building an efficient and repeatable process, THEN adding automation. In other words - nail it, then scale it.

That said, once you’re ready to invest in a CRM & Marketing solution, I’d recommend Podio.

I haven’t found another platform that offers the level of flexibility and customizability as Podio. Add to that the project management, team collaboration, integration friendliness etc., and it’s hard to find a more complete solution on the market.

Given its customizability, it can be a costly and daunting task to setup a Podio workspace and 3rd party integrations from scratch. So unless you’re a software developer, I’d recommend going with a turnkey solution built on Podio. A bonus is that most solutions on the market are geared towards a Wholesaler's workflow.

This will allow you to: manage leads > schedule appointments > create offers > close deals > market to cash buyers all from one system.

A few highlights of Podio’s functionality, based on your needs:

System of Record: Create a single source of truth for all leads, centralized in one location

Automated Follow-Up: Put your follow-up on autopilot and stop worrying about leads going cold or falling through the cracks.

1-Click Comps Reports

Customizable Commands: Create 1-click commands based on your unique business needs

Hope this is helpful and happy investing!

@Kebron Girma

Great to hear that you’re looking to invest in a lead management solution to organize and streamline your business. Podio is a great choice. I haven’t found another platform that offers the level of flexibility and customizability as Podio. Add to that the project management, team collaboration, integrations and mobile app functionality and it’s hard to find a more complete platform on the market.

Here’s a good post on why Podio is a great CRM & Marketing platform for REIs, so I won’t belabor the point:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/80/topics/438874-project-management-software---how-do-you-manage-your-projects?page=1#p2733457

There are a few turnkey Podio based solutions designed for wholesalers on the market that don’t require an upfront investment of $1-2K. They have everything you need to get up and running, from seller leads management, automated follow-up sequences, 1-click contracts and marketing to cash buyers. Basically everything you need to manage leads from origination to signed contract. 

From my experience working with different CRMs (Zoho, Podio, etc), I haven’t found a platform that offers the same level of functionality and customizability as Podio. @Bill Carovano who worked at Citrix/Podio for 15+ years has a great summary of the functionality of Podio in another thread:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/80/topics/438...

That said, it can be a costly and daunting task to setup a Podio workspace and 3rd party integrations from scratch. Based on our experience, here's what it costs to setup a turnkey Podio system from scratch for Investors:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/80/topics/120...

If you share some more information about the business problems you’re looking to solve, you’ll get more specific advice. For example, are you:

1. Looking for a lead management solution to process and follow-up with leads in a consistent and scalable, yet personalized manner?
2. Looking to streamline your operations so you can send follow-ups (via text, voicemail, email, postcards), set appointments and create & send contracts all from one system?
3. Looking to measure the effectiveness of your marketing so you can allocate spend to what’s working best?
4. Etc...

Let us know what business problems you’re looking to solve and I’m sure someone will provide a helpful response :-)

@Carlos O. - we've found Click2Mail and Lob to be good solutions to deploy mailer campaigns from Podio - either as one-offs or as part of a multi-channel drip campaign (mailer > text message > ringless voicemail, etc) . We've set this up about 20+ times for custom Podio workspaces we've build for investors over the past year. Let me know if you have any specific questions around the implementation.  

Hey @Account Closed, to your point, the task assignment & management functionality in Podio is helpful so employees can stay organized and prioritize their work - i.e. call back leads, schedule appointments, create sales comps reports, etc. We’ve found it also provides transparency and accountability for the whole team, and oversight to business owners.

In terms of automated workflows, a good example of this is automated follow-up sequences. As an example,  have different follow-up sequences for Hot Leads (motivated sellers), Long-Term Leads, Cold Leads, etc.

For hot leads, we automate a personalized text message and ringless voicemail (via Slybroadcast) every day for the first 10days, then move to a bi-weekly cadence for the next 6months. For long term leads, we'll alternate email and text message on a monthly cadence for one year. The key is to stay top of mind with Sellers so they'll contact you when they're ready to sell. We've found the ROI of text and ringless voicemail is phenomenal as well. At the end of the day, you're spending a couple bucks per lead. Even if just 1% convert to an offer, you're making money hand over fist.

One of our customers has taken this a step further. He has four sales people and has setup personalized follow-up sequences for each sales person. So all of the voicemails are recorded in the salesperson’s own voice and come from their own Google Voice numbers and the text messages are personalized as well.

And this is just for one of the five markets he operates in. He just manages the system and inserts himself as needed to provide some coaching or help close a deal.

You can think of follow-up sequences as your army of robots that are following up on your behalf.

Hope this is helpful and happy investing!

Rohan

When researching a platform to build a lead management & marketing solution for REIs, Podio was a no-brainer for us.

We haven’t found another platform that offers the level of flexibility and customizability as Podio. Add to that the project management, team collaboration, integrations and mobile app functionality and it’s hard to find a more complete solution on the market.

That said, it can be a costly and daunting task to setup a Podio workspace and 3rd party integrations from scratch. And to @Geo K.’s point, it’s important that you have the right process in place before you apply any systems automation.

You want to nail it before you scale it.

@Justin S.- to your point, we often see REIs track offers, manage leads and deploy marketing campaigns through different tools. However, once they adopt a centralized system of record to manage the entire process end to end, they can’t imagine going back to their old cobbled together systems.

Based on our experience building 30+ custom Podio workspaces for REI businesses, this is what you need in order to get a turnkey Podio workspace up and running:

Tools:

- Podio + Globiflow ($24/mo/user with Premium Podio Plan)

- Call tracking software like CallRail ($30+/mo)

- Call answering service like PatLive ($99+/mo)

- Text messaging service like Twilio ($15-30/mo)

- SlyBroadcast for ringless voicemail (pay as you go. ~$25-50/mo)

- RightSignature for document management ($15/mo)

- Lob (mail system)

Labor:

- Option 1: Hire a Podio Technical Consultant at $100+/hr

- Option 2: Do it yourself

On average, we've seen REI businesses spend about $250/mo on tools alone and about $4,000 on labor (40 hours) just to get their systems up and running. After that, they usually keep a Podio consultant on retainer for bug fixes and updates.

If anyone wants to chat about the benefits/tradeoffs of Podio vs. other solutions or DIY vs. out-of-the-box solutions, shoot me a DM.

Happy investing,

Rohan

Hello BP Community,

Wanted to run a quick poll to see what the most popular CRMs are for REIs. There are a few different threads, so hoping to consolidate information/learnings here.

I've added a few questions below to keep responses organized. Feel free to add additional context that you think will be helpful to the group, and include any other questions you'd like answered.

Looking forward to the responses!

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Please answer these questions in your response:

- Full-time or part-time REI:

- CRM you're currently using:

- Strengths and weaknesses of your current CRM:

- Other CRMs you've considered:

- Anything else you'd like to share: