The commercial real estate industry is highly competitive, and being connected to the right people at the right time is crucial for the success of any commercial real estate firm operating in today’s hectic real estate market.
Real estate investment deals are chaotic by nature. Your firm may follow a straightforward process to close deals, but there are multiple stakeholders, tasks, and details to manage throughout the deal lifecycle. Without the right tools and processes in place, it can be overwhelming; as a result, organizations should invest in software solutions, starting with the right type of commercial real estate CRM that solves the unique pain points faced by CRE firms.
This article explains what intelligent commercial real estate CRM software is, how it works, and why your firm would benefit from implementing this technology.
What is a Commercial Real Estate CRM?
Commercial real estate customer relationship management (CRM) software enables firms to organize their relationship networks, streamline their commercial property portfolios, manage deal pipelines, and improve prospecting, among other use cases.
Compared to a contact management system or other “sales-focused” or generic CRM providers such as a Salesforce, a commercial real estate CRM is a platform designed to manage the naturally complex deals and relationship dynamics of the commercial real estate industry. It helps investors and real estate agents keep track of individuals, deadlines, and documents while tracking the progress of their deal pipeline.
A CRM is one-way commercial real estate firms leverage technology to work efficiently and become more competitive. Depending on your firm’s needs, there are many other technologies that can be adopted for various use cases.
Intelligent commercial real estate CRMs, such as 4Degrees, are packed with powerful relationship intelligence. This feature enables users to take advantage of the power of data to nurture, grow and leverage their relationship networks. A must-have for any commercial real estate firm, where knowing the right people can mark the difference between closing and losing a deal.
You might ask, can’t you manage it all using Excel? Technically yes, but spreadsheets take a lot more work to keep updated and are prone to human errors. You might need several spreadsheets to manage all of the different kinds of data that real estate CRMs handle effortlessly in seconds. Plus, spending hours on data entry and updating systems is not the best use of your team‘s time.
Why Should You Use a Real Estate CRM?
The right type of CRM offers several powerful benefits for your commercial real estate business. From the ease of use, to saving you hundreds of hours per year by automating data entry to simplifying the deal management process, read on to discover how a CRE CRM can transform your firm.
Activate Your Firm’s Network To Close More Deals
If you are a commercial real estate investor, your network can be your best source of new opportunities. By having a large pool of property owners, realtors, brokerages, and specialized vendors, you can quickly source the right expert at the right time without spending hours looking for said person.
For example, suppose you are working on a deal involving the acquisition, remodeling, and lease of a residential apartment complex and need the services of a specialized attorney. In that case, your CRM can provide you with real-time recommendations. Instead of spending hours on Google trying to find and cold emailing an attorney you don’t know, you want a professional (or a firm) you can trust that will deliver high-quality work. Ideally, you would like to find someone from your network or leverage your network to find the right attorney for the job.
Relationships are not transactional; they must be nurtured, fostered, and developed. Having immediate visibility into your organization’s network from a central hub that provides information on their most recent updates, mentions, social media activity, and articles will help you build and grow those quality relationships. All without having to sort through your LinkedIn, email inbox, outdated spreadsheets, and other cumbersome systems.
A commercial real estate CRM stores all of your firm‘s network contact information and uses Artificial Intelligence to create a relationship strength score which helps you identify the best path to a company or expert in seconds. This allows your network to work for you instead of you spending hours working your network.
Save Time by Automating Manual Data Entry
If you still rely on manual data entry, you are falling behind the curve and should consider using automation to take care of all these back-office functions.
Commercial real estate deals involve hundreds or even thousands of touchpoints, emails, phone calls, and follow-ups with multiple parties. These stakeholders include commercial real estate brokers, clients, property management companies, etc. These touchpoints require a considerable amount of data entry to ensure your CRM is up to date and no small detail falls through the cracks. Even the best CRM is only as powerful as the data entered. Therefore keeping a high level of data integrity is crucial, but relying on manual entry is antiquated, expensive, and risky.
As an investor, your time is better spent working on client relationships, looking through property listings, working on deals, etc.
Your firm needs an intelligent CRE CRM that seamlessly syncs with your email and calendar to save every ongoing interaction and ensure the CRM accurately captures all communications. Software like 4Degrees for Commercial Real Estate gives you back the time you would spend in other CRM systems that still rely on manual data entry. In addition, 4Degrees can enrich the data about deals in your pipeline and suggest relationships to help close them and add value.
Easily Visualize and Streamline Your Deal Pipeline
Commercial real estate deals are complex projects with unique processes, milestones, and deliverables. A CRM with a pipeline management system is crucial to staying organized if your firm works on multiple deals simultaneously.
The solution is a visual representation of your firm’s pipeline and dashboards where you can see where you are in a deal’s journey, what’s holding you back, and what deserves more of your time and attention. Unlike a standard project management tool, AI-powered commercial real estate CRM is designed specifically for real estate investors, considering your industry’s unique workflows and processes.
You are probably on the road very often as a real estate investor, so having access to your deal pipeline and contacts on your phone via a mobile app is critical. The best commercial real estate CRM include a mobile application where you can manage your pipeline and networks from anywhere.
Consolidate Your Contact and Deal Data in One Location
When dealing with complex real estate transactions and multiple parties, it’s easy to lose control of all the minutia involved. This is especially true if you’re simultaneously trying to organize other areas, such as financing. There’s simply too much going on. A miscalculation or missed deadline in one place could negatively affect the return on your investment.
Issues are compounded if your data is kept in various systems. For example, you might have some data in a personal spreadsheet saved on your laptop, bank data in a client portal, documents and property data in a virtual data room or document system, and – of course – your email inbox and text messages. It can be hard to find what you need when everything is spread across multiple places.
You need a system to track your deal-related data in one centralized location. That’s where commercial real estate CRM comes in. It consolidates your workflow so you can focus on just one platform- a single source of truth.
Most CRE CRM solutions integrate with the other tools you already use, allowing you to capture data from other sources automatically. For instance, you might link it to your project management tool so you can assign tasks to your team. Or you might connect it to your website’s lead capture system, so all your leads are followed up with.
This way, you can get much value out of your CRM, and with most systems basing their pricing on the number of users, there is a high ROI.
For instance, 4Degrees integrates seamlessly with Outlook and Gmail. This integration adds precious data to the sidebar to help you compose messages, make an introduction to someone from your network and create new deals without leaving your familiar email system.
Key Takeaway
By optimizing your workflow with the right tools and processes, your firm can punch above its weight and close more high-quality deals.
A commercial real estate CRM is just one of the various tools available to increase the efficiency of commercial real estate professionals.
If you are ready to take your firm to the next level and become a more productive real estate investor, take a look at 4Degrees intelligent CRM for commercial real estate. If you would like to see how 4Degrees can empower your firm, click here to schedule a personalized demo of the platform
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