So what determines which CRMs will survive? There are certainly no hard and fast rules because there are far too many variables. Issues to take into account other than the obvious, “Is it a good CRM?” are:

• How long have they been out of beta? (meaning when they finished testing and started selling it)
• How big is their user base?
• How many people are in the company?
• Are they part of a larger company that can support it for a while, or is it a mom and pop using personal funds?
• How is their support?

While the length of time a CRM has been out of beta is important, more significant is how many people are using it. If they have at least a thousand users in the first year or two and are continuing to grow, that’s a good sign. The problem is that vendors are understandably reticent to share the size of their user base. All you can do is ask. Also, speak to at least three users who are in no way affiliated or have a long standing personal relationship with the developers. Ask them how stable it is. In other words, does it do what it is supposed to do the vast majority of the time without locking up or giving you errors? Always keep in mind that it is human nature for people to not like to think that they made a bad choice, so there is a tendency to sugar coat issues. Ask probing questions. What do you like/not like about it? What do you like/not like about support? Do they know the support people by name because there are only one or two?

I personally use a CRM that has only two support people, other than the programmer who is also the owner. They also have a bookkeeper and sometimes subcontract some programming work. They have been in business for many years and only added a second support person about two years ago. Until then, they were rapidly falling into a downward spiral due to lack of support. Once they added that second person, their reputation for support has become stellar. It was touch and go for a while and they damaged their reputation by waiting too long.

Another factor to look at is whether the CRM is their only product. Some of them have other products that are already established and can support the fledgling CRM until it becomes viable on its own. That is the case with several of the CRMs. I have been more willing to recommend those companies despite the fact that they are newer, when other positive factors are in place.

Lastly, it doesn’t matter how good a Contact Manager/CRM is if you can’t get help when you need it. So how do you know you will get it?

There is no reason to purchase a CRM without trialing it first because they all provide trial periods. When you are testing the software, test the support as well.

Tech support is one of, if not the most costly expense a CRM company has. There is a tendency for CRM vendors, especially when they are newer, to try to put off the cost of hiring support people as long as possible. It’s difficult to spend money on those personnel when there is insufficient revenue coming in to support them. It’s a cart-before-the-horse situation and I have watched CRM companies go out of business fighting that battle. It’s very hard to build a good user base when people are not recommending the product because the support is lacking. If the support is lacking, the user base does not grow, the revenue does not come in, and the support doesn’t improve. It’s a vicious cycle. So how do you know if you’re jumping into that fray?

Some products are easy enough to learn and use, and stable enough that they require very little support so you don’t use it when you’re in the trial period. So when you first get the CRM, call them even for little things like how-to’s. Call them and ask them how to do something and see what the response time or wait time is. Call them at different times of the day, and different days of the week. Start tracking the names of the people with whom you speak to see how many they have. If you are talking to the same person each time, that can be a red flag. Is that the only person they have? Ask them point blank how many tech support people they have. Is the person you are talking to one of the principals or programmers? When a company starts out, that is very common. It doesn’t mean they are destined for failure at all. But it probably does mean that they are a very small company, personally funded, and that you now have to wonder if or when they start growing, will they be able to keep up with the demand.

When asking associates who use a CRM how they like the support, again ask probing questions.

Who makes the support calls, you or an assistant? Assistants tend to be available throughout the day, so they can keep trying to reach support. Additionally, if they get a call back, they are available to take it. They are often more satisfied with support for those reasons. If it is an agent on their own and they try to reach support but do not get a response quickly or are not available when support returns their call, you’ll probably get a different opinion.

It’s very difficult to determine whether any kind of company will survive in the long run, and CRM is no exception. There are no guarantees, no matter how much homework you do, but being aware of the issues discussed here should help.

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?”

Currently, there are about 40 Real Estate specific CRMs (Customer Relationship Managers) and they are surprisingly unique in many respects. Can the industry support them all? If not, how do you pick one that is most likely to survive?

Moving from one CRM to another is very costly in terms of loss of data and the investment of time in a new learning curve. If at all possible, you want to pick the right one the first time.

The very first Real Estate specific CRM was Howard Sanderson’s Howard & Friends in 1982. Around 1986, another came out called Real Estate Specialist, which I used for about 5 years. Top Producer was released in 1989, followed by Online Agent (which was later renamed to Agent Office) in 1992.

Howard & Friends was a much loved product and many still speak of it fondly. I preferred Real Estate Specialist because I didn’t like having little wizards telling me to wait while Blinky gathered my database. What can I say, I was a computer operations manager in my prior life. Howard & Friends took too long to make the transition to Windows and Real Estate Specialist never did. They were both such small companies that they couldn’t afford to do some of the things necessary to remain competitive. Imagine how small the market for CRM was at that time and how difficult it was to get the word out pre-Internet. They also lacked marketing funds and expertise. When Top Producer started gaining ground, Howard & Friends and Real Estate Specialist couldn’t keep up. Top Producer has always been aggressive in their marketing and has retained the number one market share as a result. Top Producer then affiliated with Century 21 and that, as they say, is history. Agent Office was released in 1992 and very quickly affiliated with RE/MAX. Agent Office was then promoted on the RE/MAX Satellite Network featuring Jim Casey’s training videos. Thousands of agents were exposed to it and Agent Office took off, maintaining the number two market share for many years.

From 1992 through approximately 2005, the only Real Estate CRMs of which the vast majority of agents were aware were Top Producer and Agent Office. Both were good programs, but there was certainly room for improvement.

Most Real Estate specific CRMs currently available were released three to six years ago. Having personally interviewed 30 of the CEO’s and developers, I can tell you that most were developed by people with a software background who became real estate agents. When they looked for a CRM, all they could find was Top Producer and Agent Office which was insufficient for their needs. Deciding they could do better they left Real Estate sales on a mission to build a better CRM. In 2006, these entrepreneurs would have seen a market of Real Estate licensees comprised of 2.63 million according to ARELLO. It was reasonable to project that there was room in the market to compete with Top Producer and Agent Office but there were two factors that could not have been foreseen. One was that the number of agents was about to drop by 20 percent. Today there are approximately 2.1 million. The other was that the competition in the CRM business was about to increase dramatically.

There are estimates showing that only 50% of that 2.1 million agents are making a significant income. We can say that is a low estimate and for the sake of argument we’ll say 75% is a high estimate. Now guesstimate what percentage of agents are actually using or are planning on using a CRM. Based on polling about 10,000 agents over an eight year period, I found that number to be about 20%. Based on my day-to-day conversations I believe that percentage is increasing though. For the high-end let’s double that and call it 40%. Work out all these numbers and the result is a market size of between 200,000 and 900,000 agents. But remember, the 50% and the 20% are supposed to be the real numbers. The low-end.

If the high-end is more accurate that would be enough for more CRMs to survive. If the low-end is,  that is not a very large market in which to sell a software product, especially if you have competition. And what none of those developers could have known is that they were one of many working on the “new best CRM”, all at essentially the same time.

There were a few CRMs here and there that were being released over the years, such as Advantage Xi in 2002, but 2005 was when the pace started to pick up. About six were released between 2005 and 2007 including Agent360, Agent’s 1^st Choice, Busy Agent Pro, and Realty Ware. In 2008 though, the flood gates burst wide open. About 15 new CRMs came out that year! Among them were: Address Two, Agent Business Builder, CRM Real Estate, Easy Broker, Market Leader, Masterdigm, More Solds, My Real Estate Tools, Net Aspects, Plan Plus Online for Real Estate, Realty Promoter, Prospects, Sharper Agent, and Simple Remote. In the last two years, four have gone out of business, including Agent 360, 360 Agent (yes, they are two different CRMs), Simple Remote, and Real Time 2020. I think another one is about to go down as well, and it was a well known one. I have to confirm it before I can write about it. Since 2008, several more opened their doors, including IXACT Contact and Real Estate Client Management.

It is significant to note that also in 2008, Emphasys Software bought Agent Office from FNRES. The last upgrade to Agent Office had come in 2007 to make it Vista compatible. When Emphasys bought it, they maintained that they were going to continue to upgrade it, but have since opted not to do so. My assumption is that they felt it was a better idea to create a new CRM than to re-write the old one converting it to a better/newer software language.  Several years ago, my contacts at FNRES had told me that was what really needed to happen for Agent Office to progress. So after 18 years, the Agent Office that many of us came to know and love will eventually be phased out. Emphasys Software has now created a completely new and different product that is an Outlook add-on and they are calling it Agent Office Personal Edition. It bears no resemblance to Agent Office other than its name.

There are now about 35-40 Real Estate CRM products competing for a probable maximum of 600,000 buyers. My best guess is that the top four or five CRMs, of which Top Producer and Agent Office are two, comprise a user base of at the very least 150,000. There have been five failures in the last two years and I would expect a good number more in the next few years.

Next time - Part 2:

What questions should you be asking when evaluating a CRM that will give you a little better idea if they are on the right track to surviving in this highly competitive market?

It's been a while since I interviewed the CEO's and developers of some of the Real Estate Contact Management and CRM programs. I've been re-interviewing them to see what kind of progress they have made since we last spoke when I developed my Contact Manager Comparison Matrix. I'll let you know what I find out right here. A trend I am already seeing is that rather than all trying to be the same thing, they are developing into their own unique niche products. it's getting interesting!

For many years Dave Beson's LetterWriter series have been arguably the best selling e-mail and snail mail follow-up programs on the market. Until recently, they were available only as a package that included the CD's and the book of letters being mailed to you. The cost was $199. Now they are available as just a download and the price is now only $99.

They are pre-formatted e-mails and/or letters, and/or drip campaigns. They automatically install into many Contact Managers like Top Producer, Agent Office, Advantage Xi. and many more. 

They consist of many different themse to include but not limited to: 10 Year Follow-up, Why Choose Me as Your Agent, Changing Market Guidance, TEAM Letters-promoting the benefits of using a team, Prospecting and Lead Follow-Up, Follow-up on Buyer Inquiries, Follow-up on Vacation/investment inquiry, Farming for Buyers & Sellers, Just sold letters, Unique Markets, Understanding Foreclosure Letters, Baby Boomers, new Lifestyle letters, Seniors, new lifestyle, Recreation/Vacation/Investment letters, Realtor-to-Realtor^® Referral letters, Designation Promotion, ePro designation promotion, CRS designation promotion, Legendary Letters, 33 Touches and Beyond, Client Testimonial Letters... 

There are 4 different packages/combinations of letters/e-mails. They are $99 each, or all four for $299.

For more information or to purchase - http://garydavidhall.com/davebeson.htm

Announcment:

"Tran-Plans" are now ready for use with IXACTContact! Trans-Plans are listing and closing plans and campaigns that save you about a month of work by using them as a template instead of you trying to create it all on your own. Previously they have been released for use with Top Producer, Agent Office, AdvantageXi, & Active Agent for Outlook. They are also being worked on for use with RealFutureCRM and RealtyPromoterSoftware. For more information, please go to http://garydavidhall.com/planslanding.htm

MyRealEstateTools is regularly priced at $49.95/mo. Until September 30th, they are offering it for only $24.95/mo.!

If you've never heard of it, you may have heard of the CRM some Keller Williams agents use called My Red Tools. MyRealEstateTools is the generic version of it. The original.

When I first got involved with MyRealEstateTools (it was actually called BrokersHelper at the time) it was arguably the best product on the market for templated content. They have over 10,000 pieces of e-mail, letter, fliers, post cards, and even magnets and calendars. To be perfectly honest, I did not often recommend it for someone who wanted a strong CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool. That was then!

For some time now they have been improving the CRM side of it in leaps and bounds.

If you are looking for a CRM that has the best marketing pieces and selection in the industry, you should definitely take a look at this one quick, before the sale price ends!

For more information please click here.

NEW MASS EMAIL CAMPAIGN REPORTING TAKES THE GUESSWORK OUT OF EMAIL MARKETING!

• View statistics on the overall deliverability of your email campaigns including open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate, etc.
  
• Know who’s getting your emails and opening them, and who isn’t.
  
• Know who’s clicking on hyperlinks in your emails and who’s forwarding them on to others.
  
• Identify the most interested leads in your database that are reading and clicking on your email marketing.
  
• Identify the key supporters in your database that are engaging with your email marketing and forwarding it onto family and friends.

With the release of Mass Email Campaign Reporting you can now maintain your contact database AND execute powerful email marketing campaigns, all from within a single integrated system. There’s no longer any reason to pay for and maintain two different systems; a CRM for your contact data and an e-newsletter platform such as Constant Contact for your email marketing. This means BIG savings of both time and money!

And because we’re talking about IXACT Contact, using Mass Email Campaign Reporting is easy.There’s nothing to turn on or set up on the client’s end, and all the reports are generated automatically.Here’s a quick screen shot of what you see when you click on the new Campaign Reporting tab:

With this information on your email marketing campaigns, you will be equipped to take your email marketing to a whole new level of sophistication and effectiveness.

WITH OUR NEW BULK EMAIL PURCHASING, THE SKY’S THE LIMIT WHEN IT COMES TO EMAIL MARKETING!

All IXACT clients enjoy 1,000 free mass emails every month.Now they're giving you the ability to purchase and send as many mass emails as you like without limit. You can buy as many as you like, and use them whenever you like – purchased emails never expire.

You can buy additional mass emails at any time with the click of a button, and the greater the number of emails purchased, the lower the cost per email – as low as half a penny per email!

If you attempt to send a mass email and you don’t have enough emails available, the system will let you know and give you an opportunity to purchase additional emails so that your campaign can be sent right away.

IXACT Contact already includes:  

• Email Activity Plans
• Drip email
• A library of pre-written marketing emails
• And the ability to upload or create fully customized graphical emails.

I have negotiated an extended 60 day free trial - click here!

It can all be summed up in one word – PATIENCE.

NOTE: When I write, I am opinionated, like to shoot straight and I don’t like mincing words. As a result I tend to be a little blunt. Some people like that and some people don’t. If you don’t, please take my style with a grain of salt. I am much less intense on the phone J

We live in a society that demands instant gratification, no matter what the cost. In this case the cost is making an informed decision.

Everyone seems to think that because they are a very busy person (like they are the only one) they don’t have a lot of time to spend making a CRM decision. My advice is that until you have committed to spending the proper amount of time to invest in making a good decision and implementing it, don’t do it. It will inevitably be a waste of the little time you took.

I have counseled thousands of agents since 1988 in the context of choosing and implementing a contact manager or CRM (Customer Relationship Manager).

The following is not advice for people who do not realize that a CRM is something that your entire business will revolve around. Most agents think that something that tracks their contacts and enables them to have some reminders is all they need. That is an attitude born of ignorance, just not knowing better. I can say that with confidence because when I was more active I was doing 40-50 closings per year with an assistant and a buyer agent and I know what an agent should be doing if they are smart. And then of course you can ask anyone who is running their business with one and ask them. Can you run a successful business the old fashioned way with paper checklists? Absolutely. It simply takes a great deal more time; you make many more mistakes and drop the ball more often; and it is more stressful by far.

The most common mistake people make is not giving the selection and implementation process enough time. If you want a CRM to help you grow your business as opposed to one to use as a glorified Rolodex, it is arguably one of the most important decisions you will make in your career.

Given that, should you not spend an appropriate amount of time researching and implementing that decision? Every day I counsel agents helping them pick the best CRM for them based on their aptitude, their current needs, and their future goals. Every day I see people spend an hour looking at the product I recommend based on their criteria only to hear from them again saying that the product does not do what they need. You can not make that determination in that amount of time.

An example of how quickly people want to make the decision is that I follow up with an e-mail detailing what they need to do to properly evaluate their choice, including how to get answers from the vendor, and the best way to get that help. Many agents later call back with questions that were answered in that e-mail. A very small percentage of agents actually read that e-mail because “It is a lengthy e-mail”. That e-mail is about two pages long!

The vast majority of CRM developers spend a great deal of time, money, and effort promoting their product as being “easy to learn and use”. Why? Because that’s what agents want to hear. The irony is that the industry is trending to making CRMs that do not do as much as is needed so that they can sell it as such.

Many agents do not want to hear the truth. But the truth is that I can and do recommend CRMs that are the easiest to learn and use to those agents whom I can tell do not understand that using a more powerful one is a wiser choice. I know they will not make the time to implement a more powerful product. But the more powerful product is the one they need if they want to truly grow their business, while having more of a life, with less stress, with less mistakes, with better service, with less staff, with more compliments, with more referrals.

One of the most common comments I hear is “I don’t want something that does a lot of things I don’t want or need.” There are two problems with that statement. One is that you probably eventually will want and need them if you want to grow your business and be more efficient and effective. The other is that if you want to do more than just track your contact’s names and addresses, the CRM will undoubtedly also do things that you don’t need. It’s like saying “I want a Mercedes but I don’t want cruise control because I don’t use it.” If you want the Mercedes, you get the cruise control. Just don’t use it.

The amount of time it takes to learn a good CRM is analogous to learning a good word processor like Microsoft Word. How many of us know how to use MS Word to create a letter? How long did it take you to learn how to do that? Very little. Now consider how much more it is capable of. If you want to master many more of its capabilities, it takes more time. A good CRM is no different. Is running your business a simple process? No. It is a complex process that involves a great deal of detail with respect to prospecting, marketing, follow-up, e-mail, document management, managing the myriad of details associated with taking and maintaining a listing, advertising, financial management, managing a closing, tracking showings and following up with them, keeping the client  informed about the transaction, maintaining a history of the transaction for risk reduction, and post closing follow-up. And you know that doesn’t cover nearly all of it. If you really want to run your business with a good CRM, there are many aspects you should be using. It takes time to implement that. A lot of time. To use an over used phrase – How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

So why is it that we expect to be able to spend an hour looking at a CRM and determine that it is, or is not, what will do the job? It is literally impossible to properly evaluate a CRM in that amount of time. What ends up happening is that in short order you determine that it does not do this, that, or the other thing that you want it to do. The reality is that in many cases, if I recommended it to you it does do those things. It is simply not readily apparent that it does because you did not spend enough time or ask enough questions to ascertain that.

So what happens next, you move on to evaluating another product that may fit your needs, only to find it unsatisfactory as well. The end result is analysis paralysis, and never making the decision.

This is going to sound egotistical but it needs to be said. There is irony in that people routinely call me and say “I never realized how many different choices of CRM there until I saw your site. I don’t have the time to research all these different ones and I keep hearing that you are the guru on this subject so can I pick your brain about what would be the best one for me?” I then ask many detailed questions to determine which product best suits their needs, and recommend a product accordingly. Many then spend a short amount of time reviewing that product, determining that it doesn’t do what they need, and rejecting it. If it did not do what they needed it to, I would not have recommended it in the first place. They called me because (and here is the part that sounds egotistical) after seeing my site all over the Internet at the top of the search engines, or being recommended by an associate, coach, or instructor, or after spending hours on my site, or because I wrote the book on Real Estate CRM, they determined that I know more about the topic than they do. They then determine in a very short period of time that what I recommended is not right for them. I am certainly not saying that I am never wrong. I am simply saying that it is impossible to determine that it is the wrong one without giving it the appropriate amount of time.

So without taking too much time to say it, I know – too late, you need to allot a significant amount of time to evaluate, choose, and then implement a good CRM. If you want it to do a lot for you, you have to spend a lot of time implementing it. There are no shortcuts.

Happy searching! Please make the time to make a good decision.