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Do you use the transaction section in your CRM?

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Do you use your CRM for just contact related things, or do you also use the Property/Transaction section? There are many benefits to it so if you don’t already, you should consider using it.

It always amazes me how few people do. And far less use transaction management plans.  Most people think of these types of plans as being comprised of tasks that their office transaction coordinator or attorney, or title company or you name it, does. But what I mean by these plans encompass all of those tasks that they do, but then all the rest of the things you do as well. You may have different people taking care of a good many things for you, but they certainly don’t do everything. If they did, you would literally have nothing to do after the contract was signed. That said, although they are a major part of the Property/Transaction sections, we’re not going to talk about Transaction Management activity plans. I did that not too long ago. Check out Trans-Plans.

You have a tab or section in your CRM with a screen or screens where you track all your contact information, but what about the section that helps you keep track of your listings and closings? Do you use it? Should you be using it? The better CRMs have a section in the Property/Transaction section that helps you track the Parties to the transaction. This is the place where you are able to select a contact record of the person and add them as a party to a transaction. This is one of the great things about this section.

If you have any of the following CRMs, they all have a Parties section. Top Producer, IXACTContact, WiseAgent, TribusCRM, AllClients, MyRealEstateTools, MyRedTools, and RealFutureCRM to name a few.

As a matter of practice, aside from your past clients, prospects, sphere of influence, etc., you should also have parties affiliated with your past transactions in your CRM. That would include the loan originator/mortgage company, attorney, buyer, seller, home inspector, homeowners insurance company, termite inspector, appraiser, etc. Over the years you’ll end up with a comprehensive database for your area comprised of a significant percentage of those kinds of people and companies. The longer you do it, the less often you’ll have to key in a new one with each new transaction, and the faster and easier it will be to find their phone numbers, e-mail addresses, web sites, etc. Another benefit of having them in your database is that you will be able to see what transactions they participated in and what you thought about them at the time. Did they help, or were they a pain to work with? You should have that in your notes. If you were smart you would have made a note saying they needed to be contacted frequently or they might drop the ball. Or you might have which people were better to deal with in the company and why, or for what aspects of the deal.

The normal routine for most agents when they are working on a closing file is to bring out the paper file and look around in the file until they find the affiliated party’s information that they need, if it is even there.  Even if it only takes one minute, it’s much longer than having them in the CRMs property/transaction record. And you know full well that sometimes it takes far more than a minute. And you typically have to contact most of them more than once, which means going back to the file and finding them each time.

Once you add them as a party to a transaction, they are all right there in one place, just one or two clicks away from calling them or e-mailing them, or getting to their web site. You will save many minutes on each transaction just by having all the different information quickly available in one spot. You can’t imagine how much more you can get done in a shorter period of time when that’s the case.

That’s one advantage. Another is that when they are added to the parties tab, they become a permanent part of the record, and in some cases they can be sent out to your client for reference in a report.

You can also e-mail all or selected parties all at once, and include documents if necessary.

If you’re currently using a CRM, you know how much more quickly you can retrieve information about contacts then you could before.  So this is just an extension of that same wonderful efficiency. Check it out!

Are you using your CRMs Workflows?

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It’s a shame so few people use their CRM for Transaction Management. Many agents use the CRMs activity plan/campaign/task series capability for following up with leads or for post closing follow-up. But very few understand the value of tracking your listings and closings with that same feature.

For those of you who have ever created a prioritized checklist of tasks for the day, you know what it feels like while you are burning through that list. It is so much easier and faster to complete your tasks for the day for a couple reasons. One is that you do not have to think about whether or not you need to do them. You already decided that. That’s why it’s on the list! The other is that you don’t need to decide which task you need to do first, because you already decided that as well. These two characteristics make getting through your task list much easier, faster, and stress free. And the satisfaction when you complete it is almost palpable.

Now apply that to listings and closings. The majority of what we do for each listing and closing is the same every time. Put up a sign, put on the lockbox, put it in the MLS, send out a thank you email/letter etc. Then when it sells, send a congratulations email/letter; is the second deposit in yet; is the appraisal in yet; is the home inspection scheduled; are the home inspection results in?; has the homeowners insurance been ordered, and so on. All these tasks can be put on a list and scheduled to occur X number of days after the listing date, or before the expiration date, or after the contract date, or before the closing date, etc. What you end up with is the ability to click a button and have the CRM post what task you need to on the days that you need to do them, automatically. The end result is that you start each day with an automatically generated to-do list for that day for the majority of what you need to do for all your listings and closings.

One of the reasons this business is as stressful as it is, is because we start every day and go throughout each day making the same decisions over and over and over again. Do I need to check on the appraisal for Vine Street today? No. OK – Do I need to check on the second deposit on Tower Hill Road today? No. And I go through that every day and then the next day I ask myself the same questions until the answer is yes, and then I do those tasks. Imagine what it would be like if you didn’t have to waste time and energy every day asking yourself those questions over an over again. And you wouldn’t even have to sit down and create a new to-do list each day, because it would be done for you automatically. Well that is exactly what using plans in your CRM will do for you.

 

The end result is that it:

·         Reduces your overall stress level more than ANY other single action you can take

·         Stops the details from “falling through the cracks”

·         Keeps you in touch with automated letters or e-mails for your buyers and sellers throughout the listing and closing process

·         Dramatically improves your level of customer service both in reality, and in the client’s perceptions of you

·         Gives you a comprehensive “Action List” to present to buyers and sellers in your initial presentations with them

·         Significantly reduces the time necessary to train a new assistant, or give your assistant a comprehensive list of their responsibilities. One that you can track!

·         Enables you to create and maintain a detailed history of your transactions for future reference

·         Provides an instant to-do list for someone helping you out while you’re on vacation

·         Enables you to provide automatically generated detailed “Client Reports” for your buyers and sellers

·         Gets you FAR more paperless

·         If you have a team, everyone is automatically assigned their individual tasks for each listing and closing, which appear on their calendar – not yours!

·         If you have a team – you will stop playing “Who has the file?”

 

The point is that if you have a good CRM, you have this capability sitting right in front of your nose already. Maybe you already knew all this, but have not “had” the time to do it. If you wait until you have time, you may never get to it. You have to “make” the time. I have worked with many teams around the country helping them develop their transaction management plans. I have yet to see anyone who used them and honed them, eventually stop using them. Once they realized how much more efficient it made them and how many benefits there were, they all look back and say “How did I do this before without them?”

 

via Are you using your CRMs activity plans?.