Month: May 2016

 

Real estate is a highly competitive industry, and CRM offers a way for independent agents to gain an edge against the big companies and other local competition. Large companies can also benefit from CRM, as it can help streamline operations.

Learn More About Your Customers

Your CRM holds all kinds of customer data you can use to learn more about your customer base, discover new trends and adjust your marketing strategies. The more data you have, the better you can serve your customers. With analytics and reporting features, you can get a glance at how well your business is doing and forecast what you may be able to expect in the future. This way, you know when to increase your marketing efforts and when it’s time to bring additional agents on staff to support your workload.

Fast, Personalized Service

When you use your CRM effectively, you create detailed records of every interaction with a customer, from notes about in-person meetings and phone calls, to copies of emails. This makes following-up leads and clients more efficient, while enhancing the quality of customer service with improved attention to detail. Using notes about a client’s budget, timeline, and the type of home they’re looking for, you can quickly and easily setup your email marketing to regularly send listings that fit their needs, so you continue to provide excellent service while you’re working with other clients.

Create and Manage a Clear Email Marketing Strategy

Email is a critical part of online marketing with 63% of real estate businesses saying they use it, and 22% planning to use it in the future. Your CRM can integrate with your email platform to help you create segmented lists and targeted email campaigns for all your contacts – prospects, buyers, sellers, mortgage officers, legal professionals, and more. Integration can help you setup a system to drip content to each segment and track the effectiveness of your campaigns. Plus, you can automate an email to introduce yourself to prospects who fill out the lead capture form and begin the follow-up.

After you’ve helped your clients close on their dream home, you still have work to do. The lifeblood of your agency is referrals and repeat clients. Your real estate CRM makes it easy for you to stay in touch after the fact, so your customers think of you when someone they know is in the market to buy or sell their home, or when they’re ready to buy a second home. Simply create an email marketing campaign targeted at your past clients to stay in touch and continue building those relationships.

Organize Your Business

Since agents often receive leads from a number of places – online, past customer referrals, face-to-face meetings – it can be hard to keep track of sales opportunities. While it’s true contacts matter in every business, this is especially the case for real estate professionals. Real estate CRM software allows you to enter and track leads no matter where they come from, and centralizes all your information accessible by you, and anyone else you add to your team.

Take Advantage of Mobile Features

Real estate agents are often on-the-go, showing homes to clients, hosting open house events with larger groups of potential buyers, and meeting with clients. Meeting with a client for coffee to go over some listings? Make notes after the client leaves, before you head back to the office so everything is fresh in your memory.

Out grabbing lunch with coworkers and see a new lead come into the system? Respond to them quickly, while the lead is still hot. Research shows 50% of buyers choose the first vendor to respond, and you never know how many other agents the customer may have contacted. With mobile CRM, agents can enter the lead information right then and there, and it will sync with the system that’s accessible from the web at home, or in the office.

Are you an agent who could benefit from a real estate CRM for your office? Find out how Insightly is the ideal solution.

 

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on using Insightly CRM, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

Viewing your Insightly Calendar on Mobile

To view your own Insightly events and tasks on your mobile device, you can use the calendar in the Insightly iOS and Android apps. You can also try calendar sync or calendar subscription to display the items in another calendar app that supports these options. Note: Tasks must have start or due dates to appear on the calendar. Viewing the calendar in our iOS and Android apps To view the calendar in the apps:     Tap the Calendar icon from the menu drawer. Your Insightly mobile calendar displays all your own tasks and events. Days with scheduled events will display one dot for a single event and two dots for multiple events.     From the calendar view, you can: Swipe down from the top to switch between monthly and weekly views. Swipe the calendar left or right to move to the previous or next week or month. Tap the + symbol to add a new event. The app will use your phone’s current time zone, not the time zone in your Insightly settings. Tap the search icon to search through your events. Tap a date to view the tasks and events for that day. Swipe down on a daily agenda to refresh it. This week’s tip was provided by Tony Roma. Tony is an Insightly product expert who has been helping businesses implement software solutions for over ten years.

Manage Leads and Sales Opportunities

When you’ve got tons of leads zooming by your head, it’s important to stay organized so you can maximize your conversion rate. These super simple tips will help you be efficient in following leads down the pipeline and boost sales as well. Define Activities & Campaigns at Each Stage Your lead’s needs change as she moves into your pipeline from opportunity to prospect, to customer, and hopefully, repeat customer. Make sure you’re delivering content and marketing campaigns at every stage of the pipeline to match her ever-changing requirements. When she first enters the pipeline, you can ply her with informative emails to help her make the decision to purchase from you. Once she’s become a customer, move her to a different email list based on her purchase and behavior details. She’ll need more sophisticated communication at this stage to build on the relationship you’ve established.     Track Prospect Value When you know how much a given opportunity is worth, you can allot the appropriate resources to nurturing the lead or existing customer. For example, if you have a customer who made a small one-time purchase, you might not need to spend as much time nurturing that relationship as one who signed up for $60,000 worth of services for the year. Tracking sales opportunity value allows you to prioritize your efforts and decide where your time spent will have the most impact.

The Bed That Helps You Sleep Smarter

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society say you should get seven or more hours of sleep a night.     The it bed by Sleep Number— which will retail at US$1,000 when it launches in summer 2016—uses embedded sensors to track heart rate, respiration, and movement overnight. Then it communicates that data to a phone app where daily activities are recorded, incorporating analytics to reveal how your routines affect sleep and making suggestions for sleeping more soundly. The it bed will be able to automatically communicate directly with wearables, such as fitness trackers, to include data from those devices. “People did a double take to see a bed at the Consumer Electronics Show,” says Peter Bils, vice president of Sleep Science and Research at Sleep Number, referring to the popular annual show held each January in Las Vegas, Nevada, where the bed won innovation honors. “They were intrigued that data from wearables and their bed could reveal the impact on their sleep from drinking coffee or sleeping with their pet.” Find out more at itbed.com.

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with other Insightly customers? Send them to us!
If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!

Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

And if you haven’t tried the best CRM around, check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.

About the author: Marta Bright is Insightly’s Content Manager. She’s been writing about the “business of technology” in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

 

As discussed in my last post, a well-structured CRM can pay dividends for your marketing consulting business. This can only be true, however, if you actually use it on a daily basis.

In this post, I’ll share suggestions for leveraging the “day-to-day” aspects of your CRM: contacts, tags, and organizations.

Contacts (& Tags)

The well-known axiom asserts that it’s not what you know – but rather who you know. Pause to consider the many people with whom you interact. While only a few are decision makers, there are dozens of others who support and influence your work.

Your consulting business offers a unique opportunity to make a lot of beneficial connections. Sure, some may be more valuable today than others. As any consultant knows, however, high turnover rates can change your paradigm in an instant.

A platform such as Insightly CRM helps you stay nimble as the conditions around you change. In fact, by systematically structuring your contact records, you can capitalize on the changes (instead of feeling sorry for yourself). This is precisely why I always capture my contacts’ social media profiles. This way, if a colleague decides to join another company, I can reach out at a later date. It’s possible that a departure from your current client could turn into a new lead in the future.

 

In addition to tracking social media accounts, using tags can provide excellent segmentation. As I’ve alluded to, the people within your clients’ organizations fill different roles. These roles define how you engage with the company and how much of an impact you can make. By leveraging tags, contact records can be grouped logically for your business.

For example, in my own business, most contacts fall into one (or more) of the following tags:

• Decision Maker – ultimately decides if I’m worth the money being paid
• Subject Matter Expert – knowledgeable resource who can help me
• Stakeholder – invested in / benefits from the work I do
• Influencer – has sway in the decisions being made
• Roadblock – tends to obstruct the process or work being done

To develop these tags, I asked myself the following question, “If I sold my company today, what groupings would be beneficial to the new owner?” These tags make sense for me, but I would encourage you to pause and ask yourself similar questions.

Organizations

As your consulting business grows, the number of clients served will naturally increase. With each new client comes additional stakeholders, influencers, and other contacts. Without proper record keeping, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

An organization record in Insightly CRM creates links between the people you serve and their employers. By linking contacts and organizations, your own business becomes much more scalable. Perhaps you have aspirations of growing beyond a one-person shop. As you add new staff, the information exclusively in your head becomes less useful.

As an example, let’s imagine that you expand by hiring an account manager. This person’s job will be to coordinate the day-to-day projects for a specific client, freeing up your time to prospect for new business. Onboarding and training is a lot easier when using Insightly CRM. In addition to seeing all linked contact records, your new employee will be a click away from:

• Phone, address, web, and other company details
• Email history
• Activity history and relevant notes
• Files (such as invoices or quotes)

Compare this model to life without a CRM. You would likely spend hours (or days) forwarding countless emails, spreadsheets, and handwritten notes. Instead, your new hire can hit the ground running on day one, thus reducing friction and increasing productivity.

Next Stop, Opportunities

Contact and organization records set the groundwork for CRM success. In my next post, we’ll explore an additional record type that ties everything together:  opportunities. Stay tuned for more tips!

 

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

 

 

Matt Keener is a marketing consultant and President of Keener Marketing Solutions, LLC. Matt specializes in content marketing and strategic planning, having helped numerous Saas (software as a service) companies and other small businesses worldwide. Read more of Matt’s work, check out his book, or connect with him on Linkedin.

Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on using Insightly CRM, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

Changing a Responsible User for Multiple Leads, Opportunities, or Projects

If you need to re-assign a lead, opportunity, or project to another Insightly user, you can do this with the Change Responsible User selection in the bulk editing options. From the Leads, Opportunities, or Projects page, select your group of records using the Filter list, which includes a custom filter option. Once you’ve filtered the proper group of records: Click the checkbox in the header row above the records. This will select all visible records. Click the More button and select Change Responsible User to perform the maintenance on all the selected records.     A dropdown will then appear with a list of your Insightly users to select from. Choose the new responsible user and all selected items will be transferred. This week’s tip was provided by Tony Roma. Tony is an Insightly product expert who has been helping businesses implement software solutions for over ten years.

Know Your Prospects

Building rapport and creating connections with customers are still a key focus in today’s selling environment. It can happen in an instant. You can also blow it right at “Hi, my name is…,” and once it’s gone, you probably won’t get another chance to forge a bond. So, how do you build and instant rapport with customers? We’ve broken it down into a few, key steps:   Use Your Resources: Invest a bit of time researching who you’re going to be meeting with. Look at their Twitter account or public Facebook page for clues as to their hobbies and interests. Connect with them on LinkedIn. From their LinkedIn page, note where they worked previously, their alma mater, any articles they’ve posted, or any other relevant info you might be able to refer to during your meeting. Is there a common denominator, such as a company you both worked for at some point?   Keep an Open Mind: If your schedule doesn’t allow you to look up the prospect beforehand, just keep an open mind when meeting with that individual. Listen to what they say, what they omit, how they say what they say, her or his tone of voice, delivery, and personal style. Shoot the breeze for a bit if you get a friendly, outgoing vibe from them. If they’re reserved and “all business,” skip the weather channel chitchat—even if hail the size of soccer balls is coming down, they’re not going to want to talk about anything other than what they need and what you can do for them.   User The Customer’s Name: During the conversation, use the customer’s name often. People like to hear their own name spoken back to them. It creates instant rapport, a sense of security, and a feeling of individuality.

Bag the Smartphone

Sometimes traveling light is the way to go. If you aren’t enamored with what your preferred airline has on offer in their repertoire of entertainment, but you still need to get some work done and relax and watch a favorite show, here’s a life hack that’s sure to make your business or pleasure travel. All you need is a sandwich-size plastic bag, your tray top table in the upright position… and you’re good to go!

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with other Insightly customers? Send them to us!
If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!

Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

And if you haven’t tried the best CRM around, check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.

About the author: Marta Bright is Insightly’s Content Manager. She’s been writing about the “business of technology” in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade.