The real estate business is not just location, amenities, and neighborhood. It’s more about the person- the technical knowledge of pertinent banking and state property laws, tons of paperwork, and client and seller relations.

With so many personal interactions and background details, you must be organized. Otherwise, you may be deemed unprofessional and lose the deals.

Your trusty planner may seem enough but losing it spells disaster. Spreadsheets are good upgrades, only that it can be tedious to update. Let’s face it, it’s not a breeze to work on those databases on your limited screen size phone.

Contact management (CM) is the process of storing, organizing, and tracking data on your prospects, customers, and even property sellers to make it easy to access. This is done preferably on cloud-based applications for the convenience of use. Moreover, it is known that backups would not be a problem while using the cloud.

Types of Contact Management

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM manages the company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential clients. It helps companies stay connected with customers and streamline processes. CRM is designed to gather customer interactions in one central place. The aim is to improve customer experience and satisfaction.

This complex system that focuses on marketing and sales operations takes significant time and costs for your team to be acquainted with. Most CRMs have hundreds of features to learn. To add, the CRM license and individual seats can be a significant expense as well.

Stand Alone Contact Management Apps

If you do not need periodic metrics or automated billing, CM apps can be enough. Find one that integrates with hundreds of existing communication platforms. Some CM apps can be used offline as well. Hence, lack of data coverage will not hamper your communication with clients and other stakeholders.

Moreover, the price range of CM apps falls around 10% of CRM. This is because it often only offers the basics of contact management - a centralized directory within the company. Plus, having the ability to write notes about the clients appended on their contact details.

Contact Management by Fields of Real Estate 

The real estate industry encompasses several fields. Each area has its ways of using either of the CM tools mentioned above. Selecting the optimal CM platform for your branch of real estate will lead to cost-effectiveness and resource efficiency.

Development

Converting vacant land into a residential subdivision or an industrial complex requires lots of scheduling and coordination meetings. A proper CM app would help a lot in the collaboration.

This stage doesn’t require customer interactions yet so contact-sharing apps will be enough. Having the ability to access the contact information of project managers from different contractors, consultants, and owner representatives without the need of going through your business cards or searching for email signatures will save you a lot of time.

Communication will be swifter if you don’t need to go through your document controllers, especially for urgent matters. Let’s say you are the owner’s representative and you need to reply to the new consultant about his query during his first huddle earlier. You said you would get back to him but as you check your email, he is still not in your contacts.

There will only be one-time entry of the contact details of an employee by the HR. After that, there’ll be no need to ask around who has contact with who. This is possible when your project utilizes a CM system.

Sales and Marketing

CRM is advisable for this department, especially when prospects and clients are by the thousands. Consolidating voluminous documents, messages, and other tasks associated with the client or prospect can be daunting without a dedicated system for such.

However, a standalone CM app may be enough for a more personalized approach. This is true for small to medium companies. Just make sure that you get the one where you can add notes and customized fields for each contact.

More importantly, you can also do a hybrid. If your brokerage firm has a CRM and you only need to access the centralized contact database, no need to spend on a CRM seat for each agent. If the contact management app integrates with the company’s CRM, then it would be a good proxy. More importantly, you save training time and cost for using CRM.

Property Management

Property management firms help real estate owners maintain their buildings or rent out the units. Their scope includes collecting rent, showing units, fixing deficiencies, performing repairs, and managing tenants.

The choice of CM software here depends on the volume of tenants, the size of the property, and the complexity of the needed documentation.

CRM is best suitable for commercial properties as you might be dealing with various people even from one unit. Business-to-business transactions require stringent paperwork and precise deadlines. CRM offers scheduling and reminders plus automation of invoices.

Contact management apps would be sufficient for residential condominiums as it has a more lenient atmosphere. Just make certain you choose the CM software that works with as many messaging apps as possible to give convenience to your diverse tenants.

Professionals

There are a variety of real estate professionals who work in the industry to make it function. Aside from real estate agents, there are engineers, accountants, lawyers, interior designers, construction workers, and tradespeople.

Establishing a good rapport with everyone you meet in each project or property hones your people skills and expands your network. With a cloud-based CM system, you can transform those business cards into a database that you can use as a business tool.

For example, you can share your compiled list of interior designers with your home buyer. Your buyer can enjoy a wide selection of services from your recommendation. He no longer has to risk hiring an unknown contractor as you can suggest who among your contacts delivers quality work.

Conclusion

Sometimes, we think we’re functioning well with the current tools on hand. Learning about new systems helps us improve the status quo. In this example, learning about contact management paves way for better collaboration. Additionally, it even gives you an idea about the contact-sharing opportunities. All of that adds up to faster revenue and company growth.