Best-in-Class Real Estate Service Needs Customer Relationship Management
Best-in-class real estate customer experiences need Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Successful CRM implementations don’t start with software, though. The process is equally, if not more, important than the solution you choose.
CRM starts with a deep understanding of who your customers are and what they want. Each brokerage (or agent) must also understand what their value proposition is and tailor a CRM solution that leverages this value proposition AND meets customer expectations.
This is the story about how my brokerage, CondoDomain.com, investigated CRM, made decisions and then implemented a successful solution. We started the process by addressing our 5 golden rules for great customer experiences, and worked hard to identify how each specifically fit into the real estate industry, our model, our agents and our customers. These rules, and how they fit us, were the foundation for our CRM requirements:
Immediate response to inquiries – when leads come in, they have to be routed to our agents so that we can respond to them within 1 minute.
If at first you don’t succeed with contact, try again and again (but not too much) – it is important to regularly reach out to leads where we have not made contact, but equally important not to harass them. We need a system where we schedule a strategic follow up plan and keep track of all contact attempts.
Never, ever miss an appointment – it doesn’t matter if it is email, a phone call or in person meeting. If we make a commitment to a customer we can NEVER miss or even be a minute late for it.
Match up client profiles with the correct agent and/or strategy – we want to use any and all information we have about a lead to match each customer up with an agent who can best help them. Our agents and processes need to match our clients’ needs.
Analyze and optimize – data is king. Our CRM system needs to keep track of everything. Subjective guesses and sales expertise can provide valuable insight, but data doesn’t lie. Data will tell use what customers are responding to (or not) and will illuminate the path to improved customer experiences and a more optimized business.
With these rules in mind, we then developed a detailed business specification. This document (and process) identified all of the functional requirements we needed in a CRM solution. From this business document, we then developed a technical specification. This document and process basically interprets business rules and puts them into a language that coders (IT developers) understand.
With a ton of homework done, and our project scope well developed, we set about identifying a technology solution. Again, we wanted to find a CRM solution that allowed us to meet our golden rules and live up to our best-in-class service promise. We were currently using a leading out-of-the-box SaaS CRM solution, but it was not tailored for real estate. We investigated some other general solutions, as well as several that were developed specifically for real estate agents. After an extensive search we basically threw out the generic CRM software. We dug in deep to one of the industry-specific solutions, but in the end determined that it wasn’t the correct fit. We wanted a solution that was extremely streamlined – one that addressed each of our important customer touch points but without any extra features on top of this. Our philosophy was that we had to make our solution extremely easy and relevant in order for our agents to use it. A fancy and fully loaded CRM solution doesn’t do any good if none of your sales people use it (or use it correctly).
We finally determined that we had to build our own customer and agent centric solution. We set out to leverage best practices from the big solutions but also make sure our solution fit our unique style. Additionally, agents needed to buy in – and use the software – so we made sure they were a part of the planning and implementation process. Finally, all management needs to feel like they have visibility, control and ownership of the solution. We had everyone in management sign off at each step during the development and implementation. This is truly our team’s solution.
What is our final result? We have a dynamic CRM solution that incorporates key functionality and best practices like the big providers offer. We have one that doesn’t have erroneous bells and whistles that are not relevant to our agents’ process or our business goals. We have a solution that our agents and management uses. And… We have CRM that helps us optimize our business and create happy and loyal customers.
[graphic by Virtual Assistant Chick]
Dan OBrien
Posted at 19:18h, 29 SeptemberHi Hoyt,
Just being critical of your post. Is there any part of this post that isn’t just self promotion without quantification? You developed a CRM that you say responds to customer needs, yet don’t mention one specific of how it does that other than don’t miss an appointment, so it’s a task reminder?
Drew Meyers
Posted at 20:57h, 29 SeptemberAgree with you to a degree. I think what hoyt was getting at is that a CRM succeeds or fails based on it’s implementation. Not the actual technology.
But I would like to know:
what CRM were they using? why did it suck? with specifics
what CRMs did they evaluate? what were the weaknesses of those platforms?
why did you ultimately feel condodomain had to build its own?
Roland Estrada
Posted at 11:48h, 02 OctoberI went to the site. This is is just another cheesy, cash-back, discount broker. Nothing unique hear. I wish there were a way limit a selling agent commission if they intend to credit above a certain percentage back to the buyer. I find it a sleazy practice that is only fed because their is enough money available in the commission structure to do it. If there a way to cut out the cash-cow, you could cut out the practice.
Hoyt David Morgan
Posted at 05:31h, 04 OctoberHello. Thank you for your feedback. Drew is correct about my intentions – the most important part of CRM is the process a company goes through in “making it their own.” The biggest mistake companies make is that they pick a software solution and then rely on it to do the work for them. Software is only a delivery mechanism for your company’s people, ideas and hard work.
I purposely did not list specific software solutions so that readers get out of the mindset of buy it and forget it CRM. Just about any CRM solution can work well if you put the time and hard work into the process.
I understand from your comments you want reviews on specific solutions. I have done several CRM implementations each in different industries and for different companies. There is a lot of really good software out there. The point of this article is that it doesn’t matter how good or bad the software is, though, if you don’t do your planning and implementation very well.
Salesforce.com is great software and a great company. It’s work flow doesn’t work very well for Real Estate, though, which is why we dropped them and built our own PHP code based SaaS solution. There are several strong Real Estate specific options in the market, but none of of worked for us. I do not want to disparage any solution, especially because they are good solutions. It may help to summarize why none of them worked for us, though: too many bells and whistles and a lack of focus on the work flow and functionality that is most vital to drive customer service (and business) success. I would rather have 5 really good functions that all drive results verses 200 options some of which I have no idea how they really help. The truth is that agents (and any sales people) will resists using CRM. The more complicated it is the bigger the chance they will not use the system well. The more tasks they have to executive in CRM that don’t directly help them, the more they will work outside the solution (and therefore all the visibility, scheduling and control benefits of CRM will be lost).
Business have to get software off their brains and focus on process.
Geordie Romer
Posted at 08:46h, 08 OctoberI’m curious about the 5 really good functions that all drive results. I’m also curious about the work flow that you thought was missing from other CRM products. I agree with you about people often resist using CRMs, especially complicated ones. The cliche “the best CRM is the one you will use” seems to ring true.
Hoyt David Morgan
Posted at 13:18h, 10 OctoberHi Geordie. Thanks for reading. On your work flow question, it is often “too much” verses “what’s missing.” I have found that in order to one-up the competition most CRM solutions keep adding steps, fields, options, ideas and more, and these often don’t help sales perform great service and close deals. All they do is add time and frustration for agents. I’m a huge believer in addition by subtraction for CRM/lead management. Don’t leave vital process or data out, but if its not vital do strip it totally out. If you can get salespeople evangelizing their CRM solution then that will go a long way to getting the most out of said solution and really optimizing a business.