Best Practices: Adding properties
To add or not to add – that is the question! Do you need to record property information in your CRM? You already have to key the property info into the MLS, and probably your Web site as well. Now the CRM too? Whether or not you do is one question, and if you decide to, the next question is how much information you are going to key into it. It depends upon what information you are actually going to need and use from within the CRM.
One type of information you want in there is information that is commonly referenced by you or your team. This is information that either you now have to go into the MLS for, or for which you have to find the file. The idea is that if you fairly commonly need the information, you key it in to the CRM, because long term, it is quicker to key it in once and then reference it in the CRM, than it is to go into the MLS or find the file. Another reason is that if you have a team, and the information is in a file, you may not have access to it, or the access will take unnecessary time. The obvious fields to always complete are things like sale price, listing date, expiration date, executory agreement of sale date, closing date, etc.
Part of what you are responsible to produce are property fliers, just-listed cards, just sold cards, open house fliers, brokers open fliers, price reduction fliers or post cards, and anything else of the kind. You can either task a third party with it, or you create them in-house. If you have a staff, it is generally more cost effective and more expedient to have them do it. There are many factors involved in the decision, but creating them in-house should not be discounted out-of-hand without a significant evaluation. If the decision is to create them in-house, then they should be done from within the CRM. That defines yet another set of information that needs to be keyed into the property module, as you will be drawing on that information for merge fields required for the publisher pieces.