The Real Estate Market seems to be cooling off, so why is CRM still essential?
Every year the real estate market experiences above-trend increases and below-trend falls in both prices and transactions.
This last real estate “hot” period witnessed a considerable rise in real estate prices. The home prices enriched sellers and keyed up buyers into frantic bidding wars. But lately, there are signs that the U.S. housing market is cooling off.
As real estate markets cool, so does marketing activities for agents. You see the ‘For Sale’ signs staying up longer and real estate advertising more present on lawns, billboards, and street benches. You don’t get as many opportunities to close active listings, and sellers don’t seem to be pressing you to get in touch immediately.
In cooler market situations where you’re not swamped with leads, using a CRM does not seem super important. However, optimizing CRM, especially in a slower market, can give you the edge in delivering an above-par customer experience.
In the previous blog, you learned how CRM is useful in the hot real estate market. In this blog, find out how you can leverage CRM even when the market is down.
How Does CRM Benefit You in a Cold Market?
1. Maintain Long-Term Relationships
If you add both buyers and sellers into the mix, a study will tell you that 82% of all real estate transactions come from referrals. So, if you use referrals to your advantage, your real estate business should grow exponentially. CRM can help you do this more effectively.
One way to earn referrals is to establish a sustained long-term relationship with your customers. While you keep in constant touch with them in the hot market, use the off-season to share market data related to the area where they’ve bought a house and to simply keep in touch with them.
Use CRM to send newsletters or create customized email campaigns. Some CRMs may also allow you to track opens, clicks, and other metrics to gain insights into how you can engage better with your clients. Nurturing your past relationships will help you maintain repeat customers and referrals.
2. Analyze Your Business Performance
Market lulls provide a favorable opportunity to reflect on your business performance and make adjustments. There are several ways to go about the analysis, including –
- Deals you close in a particular month/quarter/year
- Buying or selling trends in a particular period or market
- Customer behavior in different markets
- Agent performance
- Identification of the source of leads
- The number of cold and warm leads
These are just the tip of the iceberg. You need to draw actionable insights into every aspect of your business, and it will require simplified reporting tools and organized data spreadsheets.
An effective CRM software will provide you with ready weekly, monthly, or yearly sales reports. You can identify performance gaps and other problem areas in a periodic fashion. A real-time CRM dashboard can also help you compare different reports, saving time and effort to analyze each individually. The analysis will help you draw out better strategies and grow your business further.
Moreover, the CRM report highlights commissions on each sale. It will help you evaluate all your real estate agents and their sales within a period. You can even recognize the top earners within the team and reward them.
3. Control Your Social Media Marketing
We agree that real estate is a business all about people. But social media is changing how you reach out to those people. While you may still embrace the traditional postcard or snail-mailed newsletter method, most of your clients and competitors communicate online.
Social media integration in CRM can open a world of possibilities. You can leverage them to maximize focus on converting warm leads to hot leads in a cold real estate season.
You may start by keeping track of your clients’ birthdays, home anniversaries, and other significant events. You can automate personalized emails or messages on social media. You could even schedule posts if you want to address your clients publicly. Additionally, if your customers are reaching out to you on social media, use CRM to respond faster. It will ultimately help you retain customers.
Conclusion
Real estate seems to always be resilient from market collapses. But do not wait for the market to revive. Instead, use CRM to strengthen your relationship with your clients, improve your business operations, and gain engagement on social media.
Moreover, the utility of CRM is not determined by what is going on in the real estate market. CRM and automation software can help you manage and progress in all seasons — regardless of whether the market is making huge shifts or staying dormant.
Ready to use agile CRM software? Try ZipperAgent to automate your business operations and minimize the challenges. Book a 30-min expert session to see how a proactive approach can help you close more deals.
