5 Strategies to Sell 60 Homes in 2024 – Strategy #5: It’s All in the System
We’re finally here. The last strategy that’s going to help you sell 60 homes in 2024. So far, we covered everything from mindset to consistency to training to understanding your focus. Now it’s time to talk about a tool that you need to be successful in real estate. It makes your life significantly easier and will help you skyrocket your lead generation and conversion numbers.
That tool is a real estate CRM.
What Is a CRM?
I won’t say that this strategy is the most important. After all, it’s #5 for a reason. But once you have those other strategies down, effectively using a CRM will help streamline your lead generation and communication processes, improve your follow up, free up your time, and remove a lot of stress from your life.
C-R-M stands for “customer relationship management”. As you can guess by the name, your real estate CRM sits at the center and crossroads of your real estate business. From tracking leads and prospects, to lead nurturing, to communicating with leads and current customers, to drip campaigns, to uploading contracts, to booking and managing appointments, and everything in between, customer relationship management (CRM) is a critical system and tool for your business.
Without a CRM system, agents end up spending much more time than they need to on using multiple separate tools, manually updating lead information, and continuously juggling a mountain of data and information.
Why Use a Real Estate CRM
When I first started out in real estate, I didn’t have a CRM. Real estate CRMs at that time couldn’t even do half the things they do now. I manually sent out messages and followed up with leads, had to manually keep track of who I talked to and when, and things inevitably fell through the cracks from time to time.
But once we started building a team, we realized we had to implement a real estate CRM to be successful. Once we did, we were able to double the number deals we made. That’s how much of a difference it made.
Here’s how a real estate CRM can help you:
- Save your time for revenue generation – According to Follow Up Boss, a leading CRM platform, 65% of a sales rep’s time is spent on non-revenue generating activities and only 36% of their time is actually spent on selling. Whether for real estate agents or other types of sales people, that translates into missed opportunities. By using a real estate CRM and keeping everything in a centralized location, you can nurture leads more effectively and boost your sales, all while saving time and effort.
- Respond to leads faster – As any successful agent knows, how fast you respond to new leads plays a large role on whether or not they’ll become clients. Most leading CRMs will have apps and/or cloud functionality, allowing you to respond to new leads fast. Plus, they’ll allow you to set up automated custom responses, so leads can hear from you immediately.
- Nurture real estate leads more effectively – According to a report completed by Hubspot, only 27% of leads (across all industries) that come into a company’s sales funnel are actually “sale ready”. Moving those leads closer to the point where you can close the sale requires consistently sending them the right messaging at the right time. Top real estate CRMs make it easy send specific messages to certain leads, based on where they are in the sales process.
- Stay in contact with leads – Closing the sale should not be the last time you talk to your existing clients. Sending reminders on special occasions and just simply keeping in contact with your past clients will help ensure you get business from them in the future, either a future sale or referral. CRMs help you to avoid losing track of past clients and let you send automated holiday and birthday messages.
How to Effectively Use Your Real Estate CRM
Arguably the most important part of your real estate CRM is how it helps you with your lead follow up and nurture. Through its automated messaging functionality, you can send out text messages, video emails, listing packets, pre-listing packets, and more on autopilot. They allow you to segment your list of prospects and clients, pre-schedule messaging series, and keep track of when you sent specific touchpoints and to whom.
It makes staying in contact with leads easy and greatly improves your generation and conversion capabilities. Real estate CRMs are essential tools, but only if you use them correctly, send out the right messaging, and keep your lists clean and up to date.
Here are some best practices for sending out effective messages through your CRM system:
- Mix up fancy formatting with basic, unformatted “I just wrote this” text – it teaches the prospect what your automated looks like vs real communication (even if that real communication is sometimes automated)
- Error on the side of informal language…most people don’t want formal business speak if they aren’t already engaged with you or inquiring about your services – you need to appear as a real person and not a sales drone
- Keep it simple. Text/email messaging that elicits too much information from the lead prevents them from having a phone call or video chat with you
- Follow a two business-casual, then three non-business & casual messaging cadence when trying to get a prospect to re-engage
- Share fun videos/memes/articles with your prospects/past clients/nurturing leads as you would with a friend or significant other (no politics or religion)
You CAN Sell 60 Homes in 2024
Selling 60 homes next year is all about putting the right pieces in place. This article series has been to introduce you to the five primary areas you need to focus on. From your mindset to your CRM system, each of these areas is crucial. But you’re not in it alone!
At Smart Sales Coaching, we have training that can help. Our Conversion University Bootcamp program covers all of these key areas and more, allowing you to learn more about what these articles covered and actually implement what you learn with the help of a coach.
It’s your ticket to significantly increasing your lead conversion rate and selling 60 homes next year.