A real estate professional’s job can be quite challenging. Customers can get cold feet midway or delay their purchase decision due to the financial commitment involved. Long sales cycles, high lead-to-customer ratios, and the near absence of repeat purchases are some other challenges.

Real estate professionals must, therefore, be tenacious in their pursuit to convert leads into customers while simultaneously scouting for new opportunities. Customer relationship management (CRM) software designed for the real estate businesses can help with contact management, automation, lead generation, and storage, and can also track client interactions, manage workflows, improve the sales process, and create personalized marketing campaigns.

Choosing software that best meets the needs of your real estate company and integrates with your existing software tools can be time-consuming. To help you, we’ve created a buyers guide that discusses the key factors you should keep in mind when evaluating any real estate CRM tool.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What is real estate CRM software?

Real estate CRM software is a tool that helps real estate professionals with lead generation and storage. It also helps manage leads, client inquiries, customer contacts with any potential client, marketing campaigns, and sales processes. It provides a complete picture of the sales pipeline, opportunity pipeline, and inventory, all of which are managed through a single, centralized platform.

The software assists a real estate agent in collecting customer and leads data from multiple sources, tracking client interactions, assigning leads to sales representatives, and managing tasks such as client meetings and site tours.

Lead management in Firepoint (Source)

Common features of real estate CRM software

In this section, we’ve listed some of the common features buyers seek when purchasing a real estate CRM solution.

What type of buyer are you?

Real estate professionals can be divided into the following categories based on the type of real estate properties you deal in:

• Residential real estate firms: A residential real estate agency sells residential properties, such as condominiums, duplexes, and vacation homes. They primarily cater to the needs of families and individuals. The chances of repeat sales are low for these businesses, and thus, they focus more on lead generation. If you’re in this real estate industry, you should opt for real estate CRM software that offers a wide range of marketing and lead management features, such as customizable campaign templates, lead qualification, and personalized email marketing.

• Commercial real estate firms: Commercial real estate firms sell commercial properties, such as shopping centers, malls, hospitals, and office space. They mostly cater to businesses rather than individuals. They have higher chances of repeat sales and seek ways to engage customers even after closing a deal. Commercial real estate CRM solutions with contact management, list management, inventory management, invoicing, reporting, and email and text message campaign management are features to look out for if you’re this type of real estate agent.

Benefits of real estate CRM software

Here are some ways in which real estate CRM software can benefit your business:

• Automates data collection: Leads are sourced from various channels, such as web forms, emails, social media platforms, phone calls, text messages, and word-of-mouth referrals. Collecting this data manually or using spreadsheets is a tedious task that’s prone to human errors. A CRM system uses automation to capture leads data from multiple sources, and sorts and stores it in a centralized repository that can be accessed by all authorized users. This makes it easier to track and manage leads as well as identify your best lead generation sources.

• Improves business efficiency: A CRM system helps improve a real estate agent’s client follow-ups and close deals faster. It automatically sorts leads, creates daily planners/calendars, and sets reminders to assist agents with follow-ups, marketing initiatives, and after-sales services. This saves time and effort, allowing agents to focus more on converting leads and improving profitability.

• Reduces pre- and post-sales activity costs: With features such as data collection automation, lead generation and scoring, and tracking of client interactions, real estate CRM software helps businesses reduce the human costs involved in real estate sales activities, such as lead nurturing, lead qualification, and customer communication about project updates.

Key considerations when buying real estate CRM software

Besides software features and benefits, here are some factors you should consider before buying a real estate CRM platform:

• Availability as a mobile application: Real estate agents, brokers, and sales representatives travel to client or site locations for a large part of their day. They need to be able to access project information, customer details, leads data, and marketing materials from anywhere. Real estate CRM software that’s available as a mobile application will allow your agents to access all the information they require on the go.

• System integration: The real estate CRM solution you choose should integrate well with not only your existing software tools (such as accounting software) but also other productivity, file sharing, collaboration, or social media tools that you use. This will ensure seamless data transfer across systems so that all users have access to the same data.

• Ease of use: It’s recommended to choose software that’s easy to use, even for newly joined agents, and requires minimum to no training. If the software interface is messy, difficult to handle, or requires long training hours, it can prevent your workforce from using it effectively. Opt for free trials to test different products and find the one that’s the easiest to onboard.

Market trends to understand

In this section, we discuss some key trends impacting the real estate CRM software market.

• Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to help improve CRM outcomes: CRM software powered by automation and AI technologies can help businesses automate routine tasks and personalize marketing campaigns by generating better insights. Some vendors are already offering real estate CRM software with built-in AI and automation capabilities. In the near future, others are expected to follow suit.

• Integration with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies: The real estate industry is embracing AR and VR to improve customer experience by providing virtual property tours and allowing customers to visualize how a property will look upon completion. These tours offer cost as well as time-saving benefits for agents.