Being a real estate agent today requires more work than ever. Your daily to-dos may include generating new leads, handling property viewings, following up by call or text, managing your social media, and building long-term relationships that could lead to sales.
That’s why most agents prefer to work off their phones. They need to be on the go to meet up with prospects while staying online to handle enquiries, follow-ups, and lead-generation activities.
What do realtors today want?
Getting real estate sales today takes a lot of work, and realtors are actually shifting away from systems that add more work to their day to platforms that reduce their workload.
Instead of using tools that only let them log activities and compile their customer details, they want tools that help them make calls, send timely follow-ups, personalise their outreach for each client, and so on.
In other words, realtors are favouring tools they can use to build a system of effective actions and habits, rather than a system of records.
More importantly, realtors want their apps to work together seamlessly, which gives them a huge productivity boost. Apart from needing to be simultaneously online and offline for their job, realtors also use a lot of apps.
To generate new leads in real estate, you may use Facebook, Instagram, your website, and three different property portals. Then, to communicate with those leads, you need to transfer the details to your phone where you can WhatsApp, text, or call them.
Switching between these apps creates more work for you. And instead of checking if you received any new leads on 10 separate platforms, you may prefer a system that could automatically send them to your phone where you can follow up immediately, or even instantly assign them to the right team member.
Can AI take over?
It’s impossible to talk about new technology without mentioning AI. Some realtors are afraid that AI will eventually replace them. However, real estate still remains a high-touch industry where property buyers (and sellers) appreciate the human touch.
In fact, the rise of bulk-sending and AI-powered chatbots has raised the bar on the level of personalised service realtors need to deliver to win the sale. Realtors who spam, blast, or sound robotic will lose out to those who can do the things AI cannot – build personal relationships based on real connections.
Your success in real estate still very much depends on you, the person, making genuine connections with real people. The technology is just here to be your smart assistant that moves all your data to where you need it, tells you your next steps, and makes it simple to execute them.
The most successful realtors today use technology to find the perfect balance between automation and personalization. Your real estate CRM toolkit should mainly help you automate your internal sales processes so that you can more efficiently manage customer-facing interactions that require your personal touch to win hearts (and sales).
At the end of the day, people want to talk to people, especially in real estate where the decision to buy represents a huge life milestone. You can and should use technology to speed up your sales processes, but you will still need to inject personalization in every touchpoint with your leads.
This is the core philosophy that drives the work that we do at Privyr, a mobile CRM for realtors and salespeople to convert more leads into clients – all from their phones.
Aaron Lim is the Co-Founder & CEO of Privyr, a mobile CRM that helps over 300000 consumer facing sales professionals convert more leads into clients.from their phone.Prior to starting Privyr, he built and launched CRMs for sales and investment teams at the world's leading financial institutions, as a Vice President at GIC, and APAC CRM Lead at BlackRock. Aaron is a third-time founder across Silicon Valley and Singapore. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) from UC Berkeley
