The Real estate business involves selling properties to buyers. The entire sales process is complex and involves many steps, including legal processes. Therefore, most real estate companies make use of a Real Estate CRM software to automate processes and make work easy. Using a CRM helps to automate routine tasks, helps in recording data, preparing reports and managing all the documentation work that is involved in real estate business. This documentation is a time-consuming process and takes up a lot of time. Using software would help to save a lot of time, which can be used to focus more on customers and selling.
A CRM for Real Estate is supposed to give many benefits to users and make work simpler and increase efficiency. Realistically, using a CRM would help to improve business prospects, leading to more commissions. For the real estate business, the commission is their main income source. But what instead of increasing your commission, you start to lose out on the commission you are getting?
Can a CRM Software used by real estate businesses kill the commission they are getting? Why would this happen and what should be done? Read on to know more.
Firstly, let us make it clear that software is just a piece of code, it is not magic. If the software is poor, then the results would also be poor. Therein lies the problem – if the software you use is not a good one and is poorly designed, then naturally it would affect your work, leading to your business getting affected and your commissions coming down.
A good CRM for real estate would automate your entire workflow and make work faster. This is why people invest money and time in software. However, if your software is not good, then it would complicate matters and the automation process may actually slow down your work having a direct negative impact on your business. Good software should help you record all your lead details and use that data to create reports and manage interaction. But if the software is poorly designed, then you could face lots of problems with the reports. Incorrect reports generated by software would spell disaster for you.
Let us again highlight that software is just a tool, you need to use it effectively. Many times users may not know how to use the software effectively. This could be because they are not familiar with the usage of software applications. It could also be because your vendor has not trained your staff on using the software. One more issue is that generic sales CRM would be given to real estate CRM, which will not give you the right results. This needs to be customized for your business and your workflow, if this is not done then you will face trouble at all stages.
A practical issue real estate businesses face is when they do not want to enter the data in the software manually, but want to use the excel file or other application files and upload it to the CRM. If your CRM tool does not give you the option of uploading certain file formats or the process of importing is problematic, you may face serious problems with managing data, which can create problems.
If your CRM vendor makes use of cloud computing and saves your data on a cloud server, then your internet connectivity, as well as his server capability, needs to be good. Any problem in these areas could slow down your CRM. A slow software affects workflow and can cripple your business.
Most real estate sales staff are on the move and may not be able to carry a laptop everywhere. They would need to use the CRM on their mobiles. If your vendor has not given a mobile version or if the mobile version is not user-friendly or is not fast enough, you could face major problems. When a salesperson in the field is not able to access data fast, it can seriously affect your business prospects.
So, a bad Real estate CRM can kill your commission by slowing down business. What then is the solution to avoid such a situation?
When you buy a CRM software, make sure that you talk to the vendor and demand a demonstration of all the features of the software for you and your key salespeople. You should go ahead and buy the software, only if it meets all your needs. You should keep the following points in mind, when you are deciding on a CRM tool:
- The software should be easy to use and not complicated.
- The design must be user-friendly.
- A mobile version must be available and must be easy to use.
- The software should be customized for your workflow processes.
- Report generation, uploading of data through other formats must be easy to use.
- The vendor should compulsorily train your staff on software usage.
- The vendor must offer support services to help you solve any problems you face.
A CRM software can help a real estate business improve its performance. But if the software is not as per your needs, it could slow business and kill your commission. So make sure you get the right software that meets your needs and help you improve your business performance.