The spooky fall season is here, and the holidays will be here in a flash. That leaves just a couple months to get prepped for the busy spring months, even though they might seem like eons away.
Budgeting, advertising strategies, defining your niche, and tax prep are obvious to-dos. But the one to-do that might be lurking in the shadows? Tackling the monster in your CRM.
In that spirit—and with Halloween in the air—we've outlined painless ways to ghostbust your CRM. But, ghostbust? We promise you it has nothing to do with a marshmallow man, ectoplasm, or worrying about who you’re going to call.
In this case, ghostbusting is the process of cleaning up and organizing your data in your CRM so you can focus on the leads and clients who are most likely to convert.
Here are a few types of ghosts lingering in your CRM, and how you can catch them to get your client nurture efforts full of more treats than tricks.
Type 1: Vanishing ghosts
Inactive, unresponsive real estate leads
Without a doubt, every real estate CRM has its fair share of contacts that seem to have vanished into thin air. Whether they already sold, bought, went with a different agent, or got cold feet—if they haven’t engaged with you in the last six months or more, chances are they won’t until they’re ready. Ideally, they’ll recall previous interactions with you and contact you when that happens.
Catch these ghosts: You can clear up those cobwebs in a couple ways. You can simply delete these old contacts out of your CRM and call it a day. Or if you have a bit of FOMO or want to get creative about reaching out to these older contacts later on, you can also export them as CSV files and save a spreadsheet in a different location. Now you can focus your attention on the leads who are more likely to buy or sell a home soon. And you can more easily organize the leads that are active, too.
Type 2: Ghosts that come in many forms or with unfinished business
Real estate leads with duplicate entries or incomplete contact information
What’s scarier than seeing one ghost? Seeing two or more ghosts, of course. We promise we’re not trying to be creepy, but this centers around multiple entries for the same lead or incomplete contact form data that comes through into your CRM. This might happen for a variety of reasons, including prospects filling out the same form multiple times with differing information or manual entry errors.
Either way, the repercussions are the same if either of these scenarios pop up. Clients and prospects will quickly become frustrated with repeated or inconsistent communication from you, which can dampen your brand reputation.
KPIs can be affected, too. For example, if a contact has their correct email address in one entry but the wrong email address in another, this can detrimentally increase your email bounce rates or label you as a spammer with mail providers.
Catch these ghosts: Find your duplicated or incomplete contacts. The good news is that most top-rated CRMs, like Propertybase GO CRM, have a built-in function that can identify potential duplicates in your data and merge them into one up-to-date record, including addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.
If it’s designed for real estate use, a CRM should also know to check multiple lead sources for this information and line them up for you. Then you don’t have to worry about duplicates from different listing placements.
Type 3: Scared-to-act ghosts
Low-qualified real estate leads
It’s ironic that ghosts can be afraid of you, too. Sometimes low-qualified leads roll in, which is likely the result of a contact being on the cusp of being ready to buy or sell, filling out a form anyway—and then getting cold feet. While it can be a pain point for real estate agents and brokers, unqualified leads can still be nurtured with a good CRM in place.
Catch these ghosts: Within the CRM, organize contacts using labels like sphere of influence (SOI), seller leads, buyer leads, past clients, active sellers, active buyers, FSBO, expired listings, and so on. Then choose pre-built drip campaigns to target unqualified leads to get market updates via email, text, phone, or even video, so while they conquer their fear, they can keep the broker or agent top of mind until they’re ready to buy or sell. It’s automated, so it can run in the background while you work with more active leads!
Type 4: Maybe you're the ghost
Your buyer and seller leads may feel forgotten, too
It’s not your fault. It can just naturally happen when you’re amid the daily grind of running your business. Nurturing clients—whether past, present, or potential—takes time and a different line of thought in the hustle and bustle. But most every real estate professional feels the pain of knowing that a lead escaped through the cracks. And like many of our other spooky friends, a good CRM can be the cure for all this.
Catch these ghosts: The key word here is “automation.” Our CRM software, LionDesk by Lone Wolf, can help you alleviate this all while you focus on what matters. It reaches out to leads at the right time and helps convert them faster with AI lead follow up, automates and manages drip campaigns with scheduled emails and texts, offers video email and texting, and accesses a PowerDialer to make call campaigns more efficient. These features help ensure your leads don’t feel ghosted.
Make ghostbusting your CRM a priority
Your real estate CRM can be a powerful tool for managing leads and clients, but only if you're using it to its full potential. If it’s filled with outdated or irrelevant information, it's like having a ghost town of contacts that are a time waste to keep track of.
With these CRM ghostbusting tricks in play; you can get you that much closer to scoring more sweet deals now and well into the future.
