While thriving as a real estate business requires smooth, efficient operations, productivity is often hindered by disconnected tools, and poor communication among colleagues. And the inevitable result is frustrated clients and lost deals that occur from tons of meetings with no time to take notes, and increased pressure to close business.
Ring a bell?
If you go back to the reason you’re in real estate in the first place — to build long-lasting client relationships — it makes sense that your business phone system should help you achieve that aim. As your company’s direct line to clients and prospects, and your team’s central point of truth, an effective business phone system is the tool you need to ensure leads and customers never slip through the cracks.
We’ll highlight the top five signs that your real estate business needs to update its phone system — along with how to solve challenges that threaten your daily productivity.
Sign 1: Precious leads are slipping through the cracks
Finding, qualifying, and nurturing leads should not feel like a game of chance. It should be a scalable, repeatable process.
Business is only as good as your last closed deal, so you want to be closing every possible lead and not letting any slip through your grasp.
So, how do you currently track your leads? Some real estate professionals track their leads with spreadsheets, or by using tools that may not integrate with one another. Some agents might even be using sticky notes.
Growing revenue year over year depends on capitalizing on every single lead — no matter the size of deal. In which case, implementing a central hub for all of your leads, including a complete record of who’s been contacted and who needs a call back, ensures that no deal escapes your grasp.
How to fix it
Lead Center by CallRail features a unified inbox with every detail you could need: all calls, texts, forms, and chat messages from any lead or client that reaches out to you and when. For each client, you can review and take action on any incoming, active, and recent interactions. This makes picking up for coworkers easier if they’re occupied with other matters or out of the office.
Finally, you have visibility into missed calls and callbacks your team has been missing out on. It’s impossible to let any leads slip through the cracks with this unified inbox.
Sign 2: You lack the context needed to close leads efficiently
As an agent constantly fielding calls, you don’t want to walk into any call without context. If you find yourself racking your brain trying to recall the details of the last time you spoke with a client, what a certain prospect’s name or number was, or the answer to Mr. Smith’s question from last weekend, it’s clear you need some tactics to better manage.
Even worse than not having the answers you need readily available is to ask prospects and clients to repeat information they’ve already shared with you or a coworker. Closing deals and maintaining a reliable reputation both depend on your ability to at least seem clued in every time you pick up the phone. Context is the only way to have conversations that get results while creating pleasant experiences for your clients.
How to fix it
Lead Center’s unified inbox not only tracks calls, texts, forms, and chat messages from any lead or client that reaches out to you, it also tracks every employee’s interaction history. You and your team can use notes, tags, call transcriptions and recordings to stay in lockstep with one another — and ultimately, close more deals. In Lead Center, you have every detail you need about each prospect to close them and turn them into a happy client for life.
Sign 3: You have a growing pile of sticky notes scribbled with phone numbers you need to call back
Sticky notes, note pads, napkins — you’re getting a lot of calls and talking to a lot of people so you scribble notes wherever you can. To grow, however, you need a solid process for collecting and storing information pertinent to your business, like names, numbers, key conversation points, and action items.
If you continue on the way you have been, inevitably something will get overlooked. Your real estate business needs a single, unified place to not only keep a record of your own calls and interactions but those of your entire team.
How to fix it
Since business communication is all about context, ensuring you have that context relies on storing key information in a central location so the people who will benefit most from its use can access it easily.
Lead Center provides visibility into all your team’s communications, inbound and outbound, so you can add notes as needed to recent calls for the benefit of yourself and your team. It’s easy to see who you need to get in touch with, and who needs to be contacted by your team.
Most importantly, you’ll have a much more productive place than sticky notes to keep your pertinent information.
Sign 4: You often wonder if your coworkers ever called a client back
You don’t like admitting you don’t know the status of a client issue just as much as prospects and clients don’t like waiting on you to reach out. Either they’ll keep calling and you’ll keep missing them and they’ll get increasingly frustrated – or when you finally do reach out, they’ll already have moved on to your competitor.
Your team could really use a call log detailing who’s been reached out to and who’s still waiting.
How to fix it
Forgetting to call a client back happens. It’s human nature. That’s where Lead Center comes in handy, as it serves as a digital backup of the information you need on a daily basis. Leverage the history log for each of your prospects for the context you need to take the next step. The complete customer interaction history also tells you how a lead has interacted with your business, and in what order.
Sign 5: You need to handle a quick personal matter, but you don’t want the business to fall apart
Doctor’s appointments, school pickups, errands — we’ve all been there.
Inevitably, at one of these moments away from your desk and laptop, you get an “urgent” call or text from a client. What if you could handle business on the go just as efficiently as you do from your ideal desk set-up?
How to fix it
Enter the Lead Center mobile app — it’s basically just like being at your desk. The Lead Center mobile app connects you to everything you need as far as business communications go. You have the context you need at your fingertips to have productive conversations and you can use your business number to make phone calls and send texts. Since it’s within Lead Center, everything gets logged, so you can still add notes and tags, and it’ll all be there later for you to review from your laptop.
Just like on the Lead Center desktop app, the mobile app lets you:
- Access context and interaction history – view a list of recent calls and texts between your business and leads/clients.
- Record and transcribe calls from the field – use the app to record and transcribe your calls so you can reflect on them when you’re ready.
- Make warm and cold transfers to coworkers in the office – Not the right person to help a certain client? Transfer them using the app. Also, set yourself to unavailable so teammates don’t transfer to you while you’re out of the office.
Get a business phone system that’s as productive as your real estate business
Take your business phone system and processes from defense to offense. No more guessing, confusion, and fumbling for information. Instead employ a central point of truth that your real estate business can use to forge long-lasting relationships and ultimately, close more deals.
Try Lead Center for free or request a personalized demo today.