How to Prioritize Your Real Estate CRM Database
There’s this huge push for real estate agents to acquire as much information as possible. More leads, more data, more referrals, and on and on. These are all important avenues for success. In fact, you’ll find us advocating for these methods in order to get clients and build your career as a Realtor. But there is such a thing as information overload.
Information overload for real estate agents commonly looks something like this: you’re on the ball, calling each new lead that comes is, providing them with the best possible service you can muster, and running full steam ahead. Meanwhile, your personal network, and the leads you paid top dollar for a few years ago are sitting pretty in your real estate CRM. You might send them an e-mail blast when you remember to. Sound familiar? If you ever find yourself in such a situation, we have some tips to help you out.
I have a bunch of clients in my database, how do I know who to focus on?
1. Sort your database by last-contacted.
We all live through a housing lifecycle at each place we reside. We choose a home based on a set of criteria, then life happens. Perhaps you welcome a new baby, or have a parent who needs extra care move in. Whatever it is, all of the sudden your criteria changes, and your new home may no longer supply your needs. As your dissatisfaction increases, you may find yourself browsing different neighbourhoods and updating your budget to see what might work well for your current needs.
This cycle happens at different speeds for everyone, making it really important you don’t just sit on information in your CRM. So any time you find yourself wondering how to prioritize your contacts, start with this.
We’ve written elsewhere about the real estate agents who will dominate the field in the years to come being the ones who can anticipate the needs of their clients. Contacting individuals you haven’t spoken to for a while - even if you think they wouldn’t be interested in a home right now - is one way you can do that.
2. Take advantage of your real estate CRM’s tagging or grouping ability
Most real estate CRM’s will allow you to tag or group individuals using custom tags. Look up the tags and groups you’ve used in the past, and reach out to those folks with something specific to that group.
For example, if you tag individuals by the type of property they’re interested in, this gives you a great opening when you get a new listing that fits the bill to contact them. Send out an e-mail with an opening along the lines of, “I saw this listing and I remember you saying you were interested in X when we last spoke”, then transition into asking them how they’re liking their current place, neighbourhood, how they’re currently doing, etc. Even if they are happy in their current home, this opener demonstrates you remembered key components of your last interaction.
If you haven’t been leveraging your CRM’s groups ability in quite this manner, now is a great time to start! This allows you to be able to conduct even better searches and get the exact list of clients you need at any given moment.
3. Just start somewhere
Don’t get too caught up with optimizing the timing of when you’re reaching out to different groups of people, or worrying about who you “should” be talking to. The important thing is that you have some sort of contact with everyone in your real estate database. If you find yourself overthinking it, don’t. It can be as simple as “this week I’m e-mailing everyone in my database who’s name starts with the letter A”. Work your way through the alphabet, then begin at A again. It might sound silly, but this way you’ll reach out to everyone twice in one year. So pick a system that works for you, and consistently follow through with contacting individuals and working your database.
A Word of Caution
Mass e-mails and drip campaigns are huge time-savers, and can certainly be employed to stay in touch with all of the individuals you come across in your work as a real estate agent. However, be wary of an over-reliance on these methods. Make sure you use language that feels personal. Refrain from sending mass e-mails to the same recipients too often. Perhaps most importantly of all, don’t underestimate the impact of a quick phone or video call!
Conclusion
New leads come with a sense of urgency to them. After all, contained in them could be a deal you can close here and now. While that is absolutely the case, it’s important not to get so stuck in this constant chase that you neglect the others in your real estate database. Use your real estate CRM’s sorting capabilities to help you pinpoint rotating groups of preexisting contacts to reach out to. This is a critical way to keep your sales pipeline full in a sustainable manner. Happy selling!
Between marketing your business, juggling showings, and staying on top of your leads, you need a system to manage your workload in a stress-free and intuitive way. RealOffice360 is an unbelievably simple CRM, business tracker, and daily planner for real estate agents and Realtors®. Rather being just a data dump for client information, RealOffice360 helps you visually build your business plan, cultivate your real estate database towards your goals, and ultimately keeps you focused on what matters most: your clients and your deals. Get started for free - no credit card required!