WHY WE ARE ROCKING THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY WITH A FREE CRM?

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Hi, my name is Matt Jones.

I am a broker, author of 10+ books on real estate marketing, and one of the co-founders of Pipeline.

I was fortunate to make a lot of money from real estate in the first half of my career. Now I am spending the second half of my career helping other agents build successful careers in real estate.

First, let me establish a little credibility. If you’re anything like me, you’re wondering why the heck you should listen to this old gray-haired author.

Giving away Pipeline is not the first time I’ve rocked the real estate industry.

When I got my real estate license in 2002 I listed 114 houses as a rookie – all at 8% commission or more in a market where 6% or less was the norm.

That turned some heads and got me invited to speak at some national conferences.

Soon agents were tracking me down and asking me to teach them my listing presentation. However, my secret wasn’t just having the best listing presentation.

(And I do believe that I have the most innovative, most powerful listing presentation in the world. Click here and I’ll send it to you to judge for yourself.)

My secret was that I had discovered how to capture a limitless supply of new customers on demand. One month I captured over 1200 new customer leads.

I did this using a lead capture tool that I had built myself. However, the was such an incredible demand for the tool that I began sharing it with agents all over the country.

First it was free. Then the fees associated with hosting and maintenance and upkeep became too much and I started charging for it.

I didn’t realize it at the time but I was helping solve the #1 problem facing virtually every REALTOR on earth…not having enough customers.

CNN profiled my company that year saying that we were “changing the face of real estate in America”.

Since then I’ve developed tons of new technologies. Many of them free. Some I only include in our paid system.

One of the technologies we spent the most time and money developing was a CRM (now called Pipeline). 

Let’s face it. As a group, REALTORS are not very organized. In fact, that’s probably the understatement of the decade.

Why? Primarily it is a matter of gifting. And agents tend to be very “social” and not very “administrative” in terms of gifting. That’s OK. That social gifting is what makes them great with people. That’s why clients like you!

But with every strength (like that social gifting) there is a dark side. The very thing that makes you good with people, tends to also make you not-so-good with organization. Again, that’s OK. But it’s not OK if you don’t put in place a good work-around. I am not naturally very organized, but yet I’m very organized because I don’t rely on my gifting but rather on my systems to stay organized.

Let me explain what I mean. I use my contact manager to stay organized.

Nothing is worse than that feeling that you are supposed to be doing something or meeting somebody, and yet you can’t remember who or what it is. By using this simple tool to stay organized, you can literally forget about all those nagging details and relax and do what you do best — work with people.

And then you can just let the contact manager tell you exactly what to do, when to do it, and even send you reminders so you don’t miss any deadlines!

There are lots of contact managers available today, and quite a few just for real estate. The most popular applications are Top Producer ($40/month and up), Agent Office ($40/month and up), Market Leader ($50/month and up), and Pipeline (100% free). Most of the better contact managers will save and organize your customers, allow you to retrieve and update them, schedule activities and keep detailed customer history notes, and maintain your calendar and task lists of activities.

I recommend Pipeline for several reasons. One, because our company created it. Why did we create it? Because I am an agent, and I used to manage a large company of agents. My company used all of the major contact managers (all of those already mentioned as well as Outlook, ACT, Goldmine, dBase, Filemaker Pro, and Salesforce, to name a few).

Believe me, had I been able to find the features I needed for my agents, we never would have created Pipeline. We created it for ourselves, first and foremost.

Here are some of the features that make it stand out from the others:

First, and most importantly, it has a 5-minute learning curve. Saul Kline, creator of the e-Pro designation, said it like this — “The best database is the one you use.” One of the biggest challenges I faced trying to get my agents to use our contact manager, was just that — getting them to use it. Every single application we tried was too difficult for the agents to learn.

I’ll be willing to bet money that many of you reading or listening to this training will identify with this story. I have a friend who runs a local real estate company.

When I was looking for a contact manager for my team I asked him for advice. He went to his shelf and showed me three different versions of Top Producer. He’d actually bought it three times! But he’d never used it, because it was too difficult to get comfortable with.

With a thousand dollars in software on the shelf, he was using a collection of three paper calendars and missing appointments right and left!

If the application is too difficult to learn, it doesn’t matter how good it is. You’ll never use it. I have another agent friend who’s been using Top Producer for four years and still isn’t proficient at it.

The problem with many of those applications is they were designed by geeks and not agents. When our team finally got tired of shopping for a contact manager and decided to build our own, our number one priority was simplicity.

Agents have to learn it to use it. And most agents have about a 10-minute attention span. That’s why Pipeline has a 5-minute learning curve! And it has tons of really cool features.

Another reason I recommend Pipeline is it’s free. Why spend money when you don’t have to? Your email is free. You browser software is free. Your anti-virus software is free. Why would you pay for a contact manager? Today’s Internet economy is the economy of free. Look at the best apps out there: Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, Facebook, and now – Pipeline.

Here are the other features that were important to us when we created Pipeline

You should be able to have your new leads automatically pop into your database. Our database will auto-insert your leads in real time. We accept any leads that follow industry standard lead format and even a few that don’t!

Followup should be a snap. A click of two or three keys. When I get a new lead, I click it once and the detail page pops up. I give the customer a quick call and just offer customer service. I type a quick note and it is saved in the customer history, forever. 

After a couple of minutes on the phone I can determine when I should follow up with them next, click the appropriate “timing” in Pipeline, and then forget about them. Pipeline will add them back to my smart queue at precisely the right moment. 

Every day when I log in, I can see exactly the activities that I need to do that day. When I work my way through that list, I’m done. Anything else I do is a bonus!

If I have an appointment, I’ll know because Pipeline syncs with my phone. Actually it syncs with any calendar system. So you’ll get reminders the same way you currently do.

But how can I know what I need to do to hit my financial goals? Easy! Remember when we covered planning? Pipeline has a very cool business planner. Type in a few things, like your company split, your income goal, the average sale price in your market, and what you would like your buyer/seller mix to be. Push a button and BAM! You have a business plan.

Pipeline tells you exactly how many leads you need to make, and how much you can afford to spend on each lead. It tells you how many hours a day you need to spend on prospecting calls, listing activity, selling activity, and administration to meet your stated goals.

No more wondering if you’re focusing on the right things. With Pipeline, your business is on autopilot. I can’t begin to tell you how relaxing and refreshing it is to know that I’m on track to hit my goals, or that I need to focus more on this or that. 

I don’t know if you’re using a contact manager to stay organized and to leverage your time, but if you’re not, you absolutely need to start right now.

Try Pipeline — just like 99% of the technologies we develop, it’s free. I don’t know of a single top producing agent who doesn’t use a contact manager.

Think about it this way: Old school real estate methods attracted customers during Phase 2 of the buying cycle so you only had to keep up with the customer for 2-3 weeks at the most.

Today, you need to keep up with them for 2-3 months! And for every deal you want to close, you’re working 24 leads. Two closings a month means keeping up with 144 contacts at one time — their entire history, their contact information, their needs and wants — you get the idea! That’s a lot of organization for a social person like you or me. So take the plunge and get organized. You can learn a great system in 5 minutes, and it will change your practice forever!

I hope you enjoy it.

Sincerely,

Matt Jones