Modern technology is transforming the real estate realm in a consequential manner.
For the longest time, real estate has remained rather untouched by the latest advancements in technologies; but now it is gearing up to finally explore the latter’s potential. From 3D virtual tours of properties to IoT-enabled smart homes, brokers are using high-tech in the most innovative ways to improve their conversion rates and buyers’ experience. One commonplace application of tech in the sector, however, is CRM software.
As per the latest report published by Grand View Research Inc., the real estate CRM software market size is expected to reach up to USD 18.66 billion by 2028. Not only that, CRM software like Propertybase is known to increase sales productivity by 34% and accuracy by 42%. CRM software in real estate is also proven to improve conversions by up to 300% and sales cycles by 14%. As such it is clear that if you’re in the properties business and have yet not invested in a dedicated CRM solution, you’re missing out on a lot of advantages, the most significant of which are mentioned in the next section.
Real Estate CRM Software and Its Benefits
Managing contacts, nurturing leads, listing sellable properties, and organizing sales have always been uphill tasks for brokers. The complexity of these processes further increases as the number of property listings and clients grows. This makes it difficult for businesses in real estate to grow to their optimal potential and this is where CRM software enters the picture.
A CRM in the real estate industry is a suite of tools to manage leads and properties most effectively. At its core, it is a database system, which through automation accomplishes many of the necessary activities with improved accuracy and turnaround time.
- A real estate CRM improves follow-ups by automating data updates and running drip campaigns to all the promising leads.
- The CRM software facilitates custom reporting on listings’ performances, commission volume, sales projections, and more, allowing the brokerage teams to manage their time better.
- The software allows consolidation of leads from various sources and enables the team to contact them directly from the platform, making it easy for them to manage the leads most effectively.
- Through integration with social media networks and email marketing service providers, the CRM simplifies the automation of digital marketing.
- The CRM also simplifies the syndication of properties on the real estate platform through 3rd party integrations.
One such real estate CRM software popular for offering such advantages is Propertybase, an end-to-end CRM platform powered by Lone Wolf Technologies. More on the platform is discussed below.
What is Propertybase?
Leading the real estate software market, the CRM platform of Propertybase comes with incredibly robust tools. Since it has been built for all the different kinds of users in a brokerage firm, it avails personalized dashboards for all of them. The firm’s owner, brokers, marketers, and even individual agents can utilize the software to centralize all their data and gather relevant insights from it. It is, in fact, these multifarious functionalities and repurposing of data that make the software indispensable for every member of the team.
How to Develop CRM Like Propertybase?
To develop a feature-rich CRM software like Propertybase, one needs to follow a sophisticated approach. Ideally, the agile methodology should be used while building such an extensive product, and here’s how you can implement the same.
1. Do Market Research
When it comes to creating software for the real estate business, market research proves to be the most effective first step. You can begin by researching the existing CRM solutions available in the market and see which all functionalities can help your business.
You should also unravel the pain points specific to your business and see what solutions does market already has for that. Once you’re clear about all the things the market can offer you, you will be in a better position to see what you need to get custom-developed.
In this stage, we recommend you start your research with Propertybase itself and uncover everything that the software has to offer. Once that’s done explore other solutions available in the market and jot down the pros and cons of all of them. That way you will also be able to decide whether even you want custom software like Propertybase or a pre-built solution would do the job.
2. Decide User Roles and Access Levels
Since a CRM like Propertybase is made to be used by different kinds of users in a brokerage firm, it is important to decide beforehand what kind of users will use your software. Ideally, the software should have features to support the jobs of brokers, agents, marketers, and the admin. However, in case your firm already has standalone software for your marketers, or if the jobs of both brokers and agents are being done by one team you can skip some of these roles.
Read More: Real Estate Web Portal Development: A Complete Guide
3. Finalize Features to Develop
Determination of features is among the most crucial step in developing a CRM for a real estate business. Since there are so many processes involved in the business from finding a property to listing, pitching, sales, the software is needed to perform multiple functionalities. This is why you must invest proper resources and time in this stage to find solutions to all your business problems and opportunities and then translate them into features.
Lead Centralizations
The CRM will consolidate leads from all the sources including 3rd party tools and legacy systems and organize them for improved conversion rates.
Contact Consolidation
Like leads, the software can also centralize contacts in one place so all your team members can easily get in touch with leads and customers as and when the opportunity arises.
Automatic Follow-Up
The software will help you create conditional playbooks to send drip campaigns to potential customers by carefully evaluating their last interaction with your business.
Listing Management
Add new properties, update and remove existing ones as per your requirements, with a single click. Such functionalities can be made into privileges as per your organization's structure.
Insights and Analytics
All the data you collect around listings, customers, leads, and even staff can be utilized to draw insights from in-built visualization tools and custom reporting.
Automate Processes
From automated email and text campaigns for whenever a lead shows an interest in a property to lead and listing status updates and reporting, the software will automate most of the daily operations of your real estate business.
Track Performance
You can track how each property is performing on your platform by getting constant updates whenever someone shows interest in them. You can also get an overview of what kept your leads from converting.
Social Advertising
Integrating the software with social networks will allow you to automate the social marketing of your listings as soon as they are posted on your platform.
Transaction Management
Manage all the transactions from the same platform under a compliance-driven environment. That way you won’t have to switch screens to monitor payment processing, leading to minimal downtime.
Custom Dashboards
From owners to brokers, all the different users of the system can have personalized dashboards with information and insights that are most relevant to their job to improve their productivity.
4. Hire a Team
Software with these many features needs a team of experienced professionals to get developed. Each element of the software needs to communicate with others seamlessly, and that can only be done via proper project planning and effective execution. This is why, when you hire a team to develop a CRM like Propertybase, you’re required to ensure that it has all the relevant professionals in it.
- Business Analysts create development tasks and uncover associated risks and delays to formulate and execute the project plan.
- DevOps to streamline operations for quicker version updates and deployments.
- Front and back-end developers write well-documented code for all the modules and perform integrations.
- QA engineers to test manually the functions of the software and automate testing of data processing modules.
- UX designers to create an intuitive interface for all the different kinds of users.
5. Build MVP
With a team ready to begin the development process, you’re all set to begin the first phase of development – MVP development. MVP or Minimum Viable Product is the most basic and deployable prototype of the software, stripped of all the advanced features. In this stage, the developers will work to create a scalable product that the first base of users can utilize to perform the primary functions and give their feedback for the future and more feature-rich version.
Here you will foremost decide which all features are necessary for the software to do its chief job, i.e., manage relationships with leads and customers with complete control over the properties’ listings. Once that’s done the first round of development can begin which QA specialists would test in real-time for timely deployments.
Read More: How can Property Management Software Solutions Benefit the Real Estate Industry?
6. UI/UX Design
Once the development of the MVP begins, UI developers can start translating the software’s functionalities into an interface using their creative ideas. Since real estate is among the last few sectors to adopt digitalization, it’s likely that not all your team members would be tech-savvy. This is why it is important that the UI developers understand your user base and their requirements clearly before they begin to develop the interface of the software. Afterward, they can leverage best design practices to develop an interface that’s edgy, modern, engaging, and functional.
7. Testing and Maintenance
Developing the first version of the software is only half of the job. Usually, it is post-deployment that you will learn what functionalities your software had been missing and how well the existing features faring with the users. At this stage, user testing plays a crucial role, and their feedback lays the groundwork for the software’s ultimate success.
Conclusion
The bottom line is – a CRM software has the potential of upscaling your real estate business with the least investments required. It can expedite your regular tasks, improve the accuracy of data, automate marketing and lead nurturing, and promote listings on varied platforms. This will eventually improve all your KPIs and help you grow your business effortlessly. And even though you can get most of these benefits from a readymade CRM solution, building one from scratch with features important to your business will bring you the benefits of customization, allowing you to reach your specific business goals most efficiently.
To build such a custom solution with features as rich and robust as Propertybase’s, you will need a team of specialists skilled and experienced in developing similar solutions for businesses in the real estate industry. That is why Matellio with its team of developers with over two decades of experience is your perfect partner. To learn more on how we can assist you with the development of a Propertybase like real estate CRM software, book a free 30-minute consultation call with our experts today!
