The Importance of a Database & How to Use It
When we advise new real estate agents, we stress that creating and beginning to populate one’s database should happen within the first month of being licensed. Your database will be your primary tool for organizing the leads you gather throughout your career in real estate. It will serve as your central hub for keeping track of the details you learn about each prospect and client, as well as for engaging your leads.
A well-organized database will track the emails you exchange with your prospects, too, which will reduce the time required to access relevant communications with the precise client you’re working with at any given moment.
Why You Need to Use a CRM Software
A real estate CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is just as essential as your cell phone and your social media presence. REAL Trends partnered with Boston Logic to study whether outcomes varied between brokers and agents who use a CRM system and those who don’t. As it turns out, brokers who do use a CRM tool close over 25% more transaction sides!
Stay on Top of the Details
You already know that using a real estate database will help you keep your office’s records organized and accurate, but the benefits of immaculate record-keeping go much further than that.
As a realtor or real estate broker, attention to detail is a primary job requirement. Still, with the sheer volume of information you’ll encounter in a single week, it’s not reasonable for you to attempt to store each prospect’s home criteria, family details, occupation, date you last spoke with them, what you discussed, and how you connected (and more) in your head.
Your database guarantees that you don’t have to.
Instead, your only job will be entering this information into your database promptly.
Organize Contacts by Category
Your CRM system will allow you to organize your contacts by the type of relationship you’ve established with them. Prospects, clients, and personal acquaintances can be tagged as separate groups, which makes it a breeze to send targeted marketing emails to each.
The Best Way to Contact Prospects
Understandably, new agents frequently want to know which methods are the best way to reach out to their new prospects. While leads are always essential to an agent, they are perhaps never more valuable and important than in the first 3 – 6 months of one’s career.
The precise method or software you choose isn’t what matters most. Instead, it’s crucial that you choose something that you like using, because nothing is as important as consistent effort.
Studies have repeatedly shown that there are two key skills required to achieve success in real estate:
Consistent effort
Personalized communication
The evidence also demonstrates the following:
Personalized communication will generate up to 600% more income than will the generic alternative.
Nearly eight out of every ten marketing leads fail to result in sales. The primary culprit seems to be lackluster lead nurturing.
Consistent brand exposure results in 33% more revenue compared to brands that do not achieve exposure.
How to Use Your Database to Achieve Success
Your information tags, lists, and filters are the first step in prioritizing your leads in a way that streamlines your workflow. Your goal is to reach out to as many of the right leads in as little time as possible.
Call Your Best Leads First
Don’t invest time circling back to stale leads when you have a fresh, interested lead to pursue. Use your tags and filters to track which clients in your database are hottest today.
Dial With Lightning Speed
The California Association of Realtors (CAR) surveyed prospects and reported that nearly 95% want to hear back from their realtor in less than an hour. The bad news is that only about one in three real estate agents met this expectation.
It’s indisputable how quickly we can work when we know we’ve got a sizzling, brand-new lead! Using a smart dialer will allow you to reach out to all active leads with the same impressive speed.
A smart dialer is commonplace post-pandemic because they give agents the ideal tool for reaching out to a prioritized list of leads efficiently and rapidly without introducing novel distractions or requiring rapid context shifts.
You will also be able to see who has called you back, which automatically prioritizes leads who are eager to talk to you right away.
Create the Perfect Script
When you connect with a prospect, what you say matters a great deal. We recommend that all agents create several versions of a cold call script based on the goal of your outreach. The main heft of your script can remain the same with small changes for different call lists (FSBO, expired listing sellers, prospect circling, Open House invites, online query call backs, etc).
Once you’re happy with the overall feel, add your script(s) into your database for easy access.
Focus your script on questions that yield pertinent information rather than launching into a speech about yourself and your business. Your goal is to draw your prospect out, encouraging them to talk as much as possible.
A prospect who shares information with you and spends time talking to you is far more likely to work with you than a prospect who spends thirty seconds listening to your elevator pitch.
Stay relaxed throughout the call. You want to remain engaging, but you don’t want to sound overly intense. Don’t speak using industry jargon; instead, use terms most adults already know.
Regardless of the type of call list you’re reaching out to on any given day, make it your goal to learn the following:
What your prospect does and doesn’t want
What they are willing to do to get what they want
What they hope to gain or avoid by their answer to question 2
Keep at it, and the strategies and tips we’ve shared today will form a strong foundation for your database usage. Nothing worth having can be achieved without effort invested skillfully and consistently over time, and your successful real estate career is no exception.