Real estate CRM’s are a tricky business. I’ve spoken to numerous entrepreneurs over the past year who aim to solve the CRM problem that’s existed forever.

My gut? None of them will, and here’s why…

First of all, it has absolutely nothing to do with their competency. I struggle to figure out how anyone, short of someone with massive distribution like Zillow or Trulia, is going to win the CRM race.

Trust

Customer relationship management is the core of most businesses. If that data is lost or corrupted (or goes offline), that’s a major, major problem that will hit the bottom line extremely quickly. Trying to get someone to rip up the pipes that hold their business together? That’s no easy sale. A startup, with no pre-established trust, trying to rip up those pipes — that’s an even harder sale.

It’s the same challenge those selling websites to agents/brokers (or anyone, for that matter) face on a daily basis. It’s not a spur of the moment decision to switch your website to a new provider, because the switching costs/pain are high. If agent X doesn’t trust you, you will never get their money no matter how great your product is.

The same goes for CRM’s.

Bloated Software

Unfortunately, most agents/brokers THINK they want a lot of complex features in a CRM.

If a startup tries to deliver all those features in one go — you end up with a huge bloated piece of software that no one understands (or buys). For instance, I watched a bit of the product video HERE: it’s bloated, like virtually every other CRM on the market.

But if you build the most simple product on the planet, people won’t think it’s worth money or can help them. What they forget, is everything that doesn’t get used is worthless — but something that is used and does one simple thing is worth every penny.

Technical Complexity

Added on top of that, a successful CRM needs to be integrated into a vast array of technologies and systems.

Summary

In short, if I were an entrepreneur trying to enter the real estate industry, I would stay away from the CRM business. Instead, I would build a very simple product that doesn’t require such a high degree of trust to get agents/brokers to test it (you’ll never win anyone over if they never try it), and then back my way into the CRM game using the (satisfied) customer base I built with that other simple offering.

With that, happy memorial day.

PS: If you are designing and building a CRM that is NOT mobile centric, please please just stop now.