Gary David Hall Joins Realvolve as CCO

Here it is! The official announcement. I will be transitioning to Realvolve over the next few months. My affiliates have graciously agreed to allow me to continue to sell their products until then. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with this in the end, but I can tell you that after 16 years it’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.  One of my affiliates said “You’re going to leave a vacuum. There’s nothing else like your site on the internet.” I would never be able to give this up unless there were truly compelling reasons. It has been suggested to me many times over the years that because I know so much about Real Estate CRMs, that I should build one. I’ve even had investor offers. But it was just more of a project than I wanted to commit to. Then came Realvolve. When I first saw it I thought wow, this is different than anything I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying something :)  But it was absolutely no surprise because Mark Stepp is at the helm for the development. Joining Realvolve will enable me to put everything I’ve learned over the years to it’s highest and best use. Obviously I believe this to be an exceptional product, but even more exciting, we’re just getting started!

Thank you all for your patronage over the years. I’ll still be here for a while so if you need any help, by all means, give me a call.

And now the official announcement:

Realvolve, LLC, a leading CRM software serving the Real Estate Industry, announced today the addition of internationally recognized Real Estate CRM guru Gary David Hall. Mr. Hall has been hired as Chief Customer Officer and will be responsible for education, community building, sales, and marketing.

Mr. Hall started in Real Estate Sales in 1987 and quickly became a top producing agent. In 1999 Mr. Hall founded GaryDavidHall.com which is considered to be the industry’s most comprehensive and well known resource for “All Things Real Estate CRM”. Mr. Hall has spent the last 16 years teaching thousands of agents and brokers all over the world how to select and integrate CRM into their business operations. He brings a long history of experience of what real estate agents need and want in a CRM.

“After 25+ years of selling, studying, and implementing over 50 Real Estate CRMs, Realvolve is the one that has intrigued me like no other. This is the one in which I wanted to play a role. A distinct advantage for me about choosing Realvolve is having the opportunity to work with the developer, Mark Stepp, for whose superlative work I have had great admiration for many years, and from whom I know great things will come”, Hall said.

“Gary brings depth and a breadth of wisdom that is unique in the CRM industry. As a company our objective is to not only out-product…we want to out-teach and help our customers build businesses that are fundamentally better and stronger. We look forward to Gary’s insights to ensure learning and using Realvolve is the best overall experience possible”, said Dave Crumby, CEO/Founder of Realvolve.

Top Producer Adds Export Features

OK not earth shattering news but for those of you using Top Producer and not noticing it, here are a couple changes made recently. Apparently ther users have been asking for some additional export options so they added them. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Top Producer export-contacts

 

Another sensible change. The Follow-Up Coach has been changed such that “Everyone Else” no longer includes Inactive Contacts.

Top Producer follow-up-coach1

 

And lastly, they’ve added Inactive to the Pipeline Report.

Top Producer pipeline-report

 

If you’re considering trialing or purchasing Top Producer or would like to learn more, just click here!

IXACT Contact adds FREE Web Sites!

Talk about great value in a CRM! IXACT Contact now includes a mobile friendly WordPress web site in your CRM subscription. These are for real customizable sites that feed the leads directly into the CRM. But it doesn’t stop with just the site. The site includes a blog and they provide blog content for you too. IDX is not included for free but can be secured through IXACT and they have several different levels of service in that regard. They have many templates to choose from and you modify them if you like. For more information or a 60 day trial of IXACT Contact – click here!

MontagnaDivano

Meet me at Buffini in Philly

I’ll be at the Brian Buffini Success Tour in Philadelphia tomorrow, Wednesday the 15th and possibly Thursday as well. I am in the process of affiliating with them as a reseller for their CRM – Referral Maker, and am looking forward to meeting their team. If you’re going to be there and would like to meet, just text me at 215.813.2495. Hope to see you there!

2015 CRM Solutions: Is Simpler Better?

I’m honored to have been one of the people interviewed in a recent article for RealtorMag Online by Michael Antoniak entitled 2015 CRM Solutions: Is Simpler Better?  Hope you enjoy it.

Top Producer Updates

Direct from Top Producer:

Market Snapshot is officially Mobile!
We’re happy to report that Market Snapshot now appears flawlessly on any device—including smartphones!

smartphone
New Pipeline “inactive” Status:
This one’s for those contacts in your database that just aren’t an opportunity—now or never—but you don’t have the ♥ to delete them from your database. Who knows what the future holds, right? These Synch over to FiveStreet too!

Importing from Market Leader is easier:
I’ll spare you the technical jargon— our fields match up with theirs a bit better.

Fivestreet can now push Social Profile data from leads to Top Producer CRM:
So now when FiveStreet sends a lead, if the lead’s social media profile can be found, here’s what you’ll get in Top Producer CRM:

  • Their picture and gender
  • The company they work for (including location and their title)
  • Links to their social media profiles & whether their phone # is valid so you’ll know a crazy amount about the lead before you even say hello!

Facebook, LinkedIn and your CRM

Facebook and LinkedIn decided to stop sharing data with many vendors, including many CRM vendors. An excerpt from an article in Small Business Trends:

“On April 30, Facebook will no longer allow third-party apps to export your data — including your Facebook contacts, profile photos and messages — into other applications.”

LinkedIn actually started doing it last July, before Facebook, so the same situation exists with that as well.

It first came to my attention yesterday when I saw it with Contactually and I’ve since determined that Top Producer and Wise Agent are affected as well. In other words unless I am misunderstanding the issue, none of the CRMs will have access to the data in Facebook and LinkedIn the way they used to. Point being don’t start running around trying to find a Real Estate CRM that pulls data from them because it will be a fruitless search. It’s not your CRM’s fault.

Contactually used to be able to gather new information like phone numbers and email addresses from Facebook and LinkedIn and no longer can. Top Producer used to display the Facebook status, and you could Like, Comment or View the Status right from within the contact record. No more. Wise Agent also interfaced with Facebook and LinkedIn but has removed them.

So the ability to interface and pull information from Facebook and LinkedIn was very handy but is probably gone for good. I saw a comment by someone who was angry with Contactually because she thought they mislead her about what it could do with regards to interaction with Facebook and LinkedIn. I responded to that post with essentially this: If you have to be angry with someone or something because you no longer have those capabilities, be angry with the Facebook and LinkedIn, not with the CRM vendor who is more upset about it than you are.

A potential upside is that from my conversations with the developers and CEO’s it sounds like the CRM vendors are working on a solution that will provide similar information. Whether they will find one remains to be seen, but it is in their best interest, because it is in your best interest. And they want to keep you happy.