Automation has become an incredibly important tool that is helping not just the real estate industry, but all types of businesses.
While many agents assume they have a lead generation problem, in reality, they more often than not have a lead nurturing problem as they are simply unable to keep up with all the potential leads that come to them through their network.
A study by Marketo found that businesses that used automation to nurture prospects saw a 451% increase in qualified leads.
This shows just how powerful automation can be in your everyday processes.
One of the main benefits of automating your lead nurturing process is that it allows you to provide a personalised experience for your potential clients, without needing to put in the manual hours that you’ve had to in the past.
With the use of a CRM, you can schedule emails and other communications ahead of time and set up workflows to reach out to customers on autopilot. This allows your CRM to do the heavy lifting of the lead nurturing for you, saving time and resources for your entire team.
Today's consumers need numerous touchpoints before they are likely to become a client. According to research by the Sales Lead Management Association, leads need at least 5 to 8 touchpoints before they are ready to buy. This means that businesses need to invest in a lead nurturing process to keep their brand top of mind with potential clients. In real estate, this can be even longer, given the fact that homeowners typically hold onto their properties for around seven years. Automation can make this slower cycle far easier and more efficient.
Automated lead nurturing can be used to add value at each touchpoint. For example, you could send a welcome email to new leads with helpful resources related to real estate. This might be an offer for information on prices or recent sales in their suburb. Or, you could set up a series of emails that introduce your agency and its services to new leads. You could also set up automated follow-up emails to remind would-be vendors of what is happening in their location regarding the market and also, encourage them to take the next step in the process by getting an appraisal.
By the time you need to speak with a lead in person, you have already done the hard work of building that relationship, which then makes it far easier to pitch your services at a listing presentation. Discover 5 proven ways to build trusting relationships with your clients in this blog.
Another benefit of automation is that it allows you to track and analyse your lead nurturing process. With a CRM system like VaultRE or Eagle Software, you can see which emails and communications are working and which ones are not. This allows you to adjust your approach and improve your conversion rates over time. It then simply becomes a matter of improving your process of time, while reaping the benefits of having the lead nurture process running on autopilot. If your CRM doesn't have automation capabilities, it may be holding you back significantly.
The real estate sales cycle is often slower than other industries and the work you do today, might not pay off for many months or even years. The more automation that you can incorporate into your lead nurture process, the more reach you're going to be able to have, allowing you to be more consistent in your ongoing efforts.
Technology is continuing to change the way we do things in all industries and real estate is no exception, with more new tools at our disposal than ever before.
In years gone by, agents and property managers might have been concerned about losing their jobs to technology. However, as the industry evolves it’s becoming more clear that real-life interactions with people aren’t going anywhere, and that technology can never replace real estate agents. Rather, technology exists to assist agents and make them more productive and better at their jobs.
If you’re thinking about ways to improve your agency or business, here are three reasons why now might be the perfect time to invest in technology.
On any given day, an agent's attention is typically pulled in many different directions. You have to speak with leads, manage negotiations, complete the back office work, talk to buyers, plan marketing campaigns and attend open homes. The list goes on.
With so many high priority tasks needing to be done urgently, you will find that time in the day quickly escapes you.
Technology offers a means to become more efficient and maximise the limited time that real estate agents have. In order to succeed, agents need to be looking at ways they are able to remove themselves from the day-to-day runnings of their business, so they can focus on the top revenue-generating activities. To do this they must remove themselves from mundane, repetitive tasks that can be allocated to someone else, or automated by technology.
Implementing quality technology within the office not only creates efficiencies within your operations, but also within your budget. By adapting tech that helps your businesses day to day functions run smoother, you'll also be able to eliminate functions that no longer serve your business and cut costs. Discover further cost cutting tips that every real estate agent should know by reading this blog.
Creating every efficiencies is how an agency or an agent can regain their time and take their business to the next level. Start by firing yourself, and incorporating technology to remove yourself from repetitive work.
Everyone wants a piece of you as an agent and when a vendor or buyer gets in contact, they invariably want everything right away. This is to be expected as real estate is ultimately a sales and marketing job and dealing with people is a large portion of what you do.
Problems usually start occurring when an agent has grown his business to such a point that they can no longer keep up by themselves. It’s only then that they start falling away in certain areas. One of the first areas to slip is response time. A sign that you may be scaling too quickly and need extra support is that you don’t get back to people and your level of customer service begins to decrease.
Adopting great technology is one of many ways you can continue to give high-quality service and spread your time further. Being able to reach people by text message or email, as well as storing details in your CRM will immediately improve your ability to handle customer service, and better understand your customers. There are also ever-improving tools like chatbots that act as an assistant of sorts that can help direct enquiries.
The ways technology can improve your business are unlimited. These days, there’s no excuse for poor customer service as any bottlenecks that you’re personally facing can usually be solved with better processes, more team members and better use of technology.
When we break down our week, no matter how smart or hard we work we always run into the same barrier in the end which is our time. After all, there is only a finite amount of time in each day.
If you’re working by yourself and selling your time for money, you will eventually hit a plateau with your earnings and also put yourself at a higher risk of burning out. That’s when we need to find ways to better leverage our time.
Technology is a great resource and with the potential to make a significant impact on the way we spend our time, allowing us to more effectively leverage the free time we do have.
A great example is the power of a quality CRM. Great real estate CRMs are custom built for the industry and tailored to suit your exact needs. Previously, real estate agents were limited by the number of leads they could contact in a day. With advancements in technology, and Prop Tech specially, agents can acquire and nurture more leads than ever before.
Utilising real estate technology allows you to do a lot more with your time, reach more people and ultimately scale your business. If you can’t scale your current operations, your business has a ceiling and is limited within its growth.
If you’re looking to move into the upper echelon of top-performing agents, then finding ways to scale your operations is essential.
Learn how adding digital inspections to your marketing campaign can elevate your sales strategy and open up new markets in this educational on-demand webinar.
With everyone expected to access property digitally this decade and 57% of consumers wanting to be able to purchase a property using a hybrid approach, now is the time to evolve your marketing strategy so you don’t get left behind.
1 in 3 Australians are digitally inspecting properties from interstate. Having a sight unseen strategy in place is what sets the high performing agents apart from the crowd. Virtual Tours are the only asset that can open up your listings to every prospect so they can digitally inspect anywhere, anytime.
This on-demand webinar is perfect for principals, sales agents, property managers or marketing managers who are wanting to learn how digital inspections can extend your marketing reach.
Discover how Little Hinges Virtual Tours can benefit your business.
A new year opens up new opportunities. At the end of last year, the real estate industry saw a downturn, illustrating the importance of planning and knowing your position. Have you invested the time to set your goals for 2023? Do you have a clear understanding of what direction you want to take?
Discover expert business planning tips from Andrew Friebe, Founder and CEO of Re-Engage Consulting. Andrew is an experienced leader in the real estate industry with specialist skills in management, leadership, growth and extensive sales experience. In this on-demand webinar, Andrew discusses the 5 key areas that business owners and top agents need to focus on in order to achieve their goals, grow their business and boost revenue.
This on-demand webinar is perfect for top sales agents looking to launch your own business in 2023, and principals or business owners who want to learn how to grow your real estate business, revenue and profit.
*Please note that the Q&A included in this on-demand webinar is not functional for on-demand viewers.
Recently PropTech Group partnered with Andrew Friebe, Founder and CEO of Re-Engage Consulting, to offer consulting services. Andrew has worked with hundreds of real estate agencies across Australia and New Zealand to help them to get the most out of their agency.
Want to learn more about our consultancy services? Please contact our team for more information.
With a lower volume of transactions and the general property market continuing to cool down compared to the heights of last year, now is the perfect time to take a closer look at your business expenses and find ways to cut your costs.
For real estate agents, there are a number of business expenses that are vital, not only to continue doing your job well, but to also save time which is equally important. The key to cost cutting is to first identify what your main costs are, and then try to improve or consolidate where you can or cut them out altogether.
Here are some key areas to focus on when cutting costs.
There’s no doubt that technology has dramatically changed the game for most real estate agents over the past few decades. In todays market, technology tools can help make you more efficient as an agent, save you time and broaden your reach further than ever before.
In the PropTech era in which we find ourselves, new technology is evolving faster than ever before and new products are being released on a frequent basis. For agency's it’s important to continually assess the tools that you’re using to make sure you’re getting the most out of them and really maximising your technology stack.
The first step is to check that you’re not doubling up on technology. Many tools can do multiple functions and it’s important to make sure that you’re not paying for the same service twice.
Secondly, all of your systems should be well-integrated. You can easily pay for more tools than you might not otherwise need, simply because your current stack doesn’t integrate well. In many cases, you can find one great piece of software such as VaultRE, or Eagle Software, that can handle all of your needs at a more cost-effective price than paying for a number of different services that don't together in a cohesive way.
By selecting a comprehensive CRM as your starting point, you’ll have the benefit of saving time as you avoid integration issues and data loss across platforms. For a full guide on auditing your tech stack, check out our comprehensive article here.
Finally, you need to identify the best value for money. Oftentimes, platforms have different levels that will offer different features depending on your requirements. You might not need all the tools a platform has to offer, so you shouldn’t have to pay for them.
Automation is one of the seven essential features of any real estate CRM.
If you can save time, you will save money. That applies to a range of different areas of your business, so you should always be on the lookout for more effective ways of doing things and ways you can automate tasks.
If there is the option of replacing a tedious task that is done by a human, with technology, then that is a great starting point to save significant costs and the hassles that go with hiring and managing employees. However, the real estate industry includes a number of roles that thrive with the human touch, so it then becomes important to create ways to help your employees to become more efficient in their day to day tasks.
If you’re trying to cut down on costs, nothing beats great planning. The better you plan your overall business from the top down, the more effective and cost-efficient you can be.
That starts with your overall business plan and goals, down to the way you plan your day. You should be regularly doing planning sessions where you set both high-level long-term goals and short-term goals and work out how you’re going to achieve them. Learn you can effectively plan ahead and create realistic goals for yourself and your agency by reading our recent planning article.
Detailed planning and strategising makes you more goal focussed and efficient as a business and in the process will save you and your business both time and money.
As the property market begins to slow, building relationships and keeping your ‘finger on the pulse’ of market trends will be key to gaining client trust and driving business growth.
While property technology and applications offer real estate agents and property professionals a treasure trove of insights, often time pressures limit how the technology is used, leading to real estate agents underutilising the data at their fingertips.
Here, we explore new ways property professionals can do more with data to benefit clients, sales, and business overall.
Grappling with multiple applications and CRM platforms to access useful data has long been a sore point for property professionals. It’s time to break down the silos and create solutions that give agents and property professionals the tools to seamlessly and strategically use data to create opportunities and drive growth.
A new partnership between Australian owned data provider, National Property Group and PropTech Group is taking data insights to the next level.
The integration will deliver National Property Group’s data services into PropTech Group’s CRMs Eagle Software and VaultRE, the websites provided by PropTech Group subsidiary Website Blue, and the vendor proposals created in PropTech Group’s Designly, giving real estate agents access to market data for vendor proposal creation, their sales and PM CRMs, and automatic valuation models – all with one log in.
With a focus on addressing the core business needs of real estate agents and property professionals, the new National Property Group and PropTech Group data integration simplifies the functions of ‘finding, listing, selling and nurturing’ into one application.
Having access to a wealth of data insights in one application, that previously required one or more application logins, provides significant business benefits. Time efficiencies and productivity will be improved, proposals and AVMs will be presented with enhanced customer targeting and strategic insight, and customer conversations will be backed by meaningful, reliable data insights.
Being able to identify data trends such as recent sales, tenure and hot spots within the CRM data creates better prospecting conversions. National Property Group’s heat map searches integrated directly into the VaultRE platform provides simple visual representations of where opportunities lie for real estate agents.
When listing, property professionals build trust and confidence by having in-depth knowledge and understanding of current market conditions. Having detailed access within the VaultRE platform of property data and market activity, improves agent conversations by giving them the insights to react and answer any enquiries. Agents can generate key reports directly from VaultRE to improve the customer experience. Moving into ‘sell’ mode, the VaultRE and National Property Group integration is vital in communicating current market information that gives sellers and buyers confidence to make decisions.
Real estate has long been a competitive industry. For National Property Group customers, the partnership with PropTech Group delivers a best-in-class experience for their digital marketing presence by providing a seamless update to “Website Blue” for all digital requirements, in addition to website management with the leading real estate web provider, and simple listing upload to key listing portal providers.
Leading real estate experts speak to ‘touch points’ in driving business success. There are the usual standard touch points such as email, text, and newsletter distribution etc, but the most important touch points are conversations that add value. To make customer conversations valuable they need to be relevant, local, and current.
The advantage of the VaultRE and National Property Group integration is that VaultRE presents the customer who is due the touchpoint and National Property Group provides the rich information that adds value to the conversation. Utilising one platform, agents are empowered to serve and resend more information within the one platform rather than several, making it easy and consistent which improves productivity and ultimately leads to more listings and sales.
Real estate is a long game and keeping track of reports over time can be difficult. National Property Group and PropTech Group’s integration helps solve reporting inefficiencies by seamlessly recording reports in an agent’s VaultRE file cabinet, ensuring consistent conversations over time that build trust.
Data used strategically and effectively can be the most valuable asset property professionals hold. For real estate agencies, accessing, deciphering and utilising data is the single most important function that will be the key to winning more business.
Let me give you a typical example: the agent is speaking with a client around the market, the client is not ready, but requests a report as an update. The agent obliges and jumps into their data platform, runs the report, and sends it as a PDF via an email. If we are lucky, they may record the interaction, but due time and other pressures they don’t, and so much valuable data is lost.
Now let’s look at VaultRE and National Property Group integration scenario: the agent makes the call within VaultRE, the conversation results in a report request, they generate the report directly from VaultRE they send within the platform and all that golden information is captured - waiting to be used for the next touchpoint, improving customer experience, building trust so that they list with the agent.
For this reason, the National Property Group and PropTech Group integration project creates an environment that:
Social Media is a key pillar when it comes to building success in the real estate landscape, yet it is often an afterthought for many. Take the opportunity to showcase your brand through social media, transforming your communication channels into lead generation tools.
Watch our on-demand webinar, lead by Peter Karanicolas, Head of Social Media for PropTech Group, and learn how to gain a deeper understanding of your brand, your audience, and your goals. You'll also get a sneak peek into PropTech Group's most recent offering, Social Eazie, a tool that allows you to enjoy the benefits of a well-structured social media plan with targeted advertising, without the time intensive investment.
By watching this insightful webinar, you'll learn:
Discover Propps, a simple, time-saving, cost-efficient and extremely effective way for agents to collect offers for your vendors, while creating a clear and consistent platform for buyers to make offers.
Watch our on-demand webinar where our presenters Daniel Bignold, Founder and CEO of Propps, and Luke Paverd, COO PropTech Group, will explore everything you need to know about how to optimise your results with Propps.
By watching this on-demand webinar, you will learn how to:
The real estate industry has come a very long way in a short space of time as technology has changed and enhanced the way agents and businesses go about their day.
Technology has been able to assist agents and free up their time so they can get more done and focus on higher-value activities. It's also allowed them to have more reach than ever before and get themselves and their listings in front of more people, more often.
This has had the effect of transforming a single agent or a small team into a very powerful commodity that can handle hundreds of deals every single year. Watch this short video as PropTech Group CEO, Joe Hanna, explains how PropTech Groups helps those in the real estate agency through new technology.
PropTech is the merging of technology with the property industry. Today, there are a myriad of technological tools that work to assist agents, property managers, conveyancers, valuers and mortgage brokers, just to name a few. PropTech effectively looks to use technology to help solve real-world problems that people in the industry face. When those problems can be solved with technology, it saves time and money, and importantly makes agents more efficient and better at what they do.
Good technology acts as a way to free up agents, so they can focus on things like building real-world relationships, negotiating deals, and handling many of the in-person conversations that technology can't replace.
Up until very recently, the real estate industry hadn't seen any big changes in the way it operated for decades. Listings were posted on agency windows or in the newspaper, people were communicated with over the phone or in person. Data was hard to come by or non-existent. Records were kept on paper, or on a PC at best.
As technology improved, many aspects of real estate changed for the better. Data became widely available. The ability to communicate improved dramatically. Suddenly, you could reach more people and manage your connections through things like CRMs. Everything moved online and now even the sales process is done with technology.
By using technology, agents are able to spend more time doing what they do best - which is forming real-life connections and helping people navigate what is normally the largest financial transaction of their lives. Real-life connections with people and being able to negotiate complex deals are some things that technology can assist with, but can never replace. Technology acts as a way to free up time, become more productive, and help you reach more people, so that you can do your job better.
One way that technology has really revolutionised the way all agents operate is through automation. Automation can be as simple as sending a bulk email or SMS, or a more complex task like identifying would-be vendors from your database. Whatever it is, by using automation, you can reach more people faster and more effectively.
Another area where automation takes another big leap forward is through artificial intelligence. AI allows you to manage all the data that has been collected, sift through it to find important information. For example, being able to better identify a vendor that is getting really to sell their property based on their habits and interactions with your communications. It could be the difference between winning a listing, versus the listing not even making it to your radar.
Data is also a big game changer in recent times. These days, there is so much access to data that if you're not utilising it, you are being left behind. There is so much data on homes, market conditions, vendors and would-be buyers, that you need to be making the most of all the tools that utilise this data to stay competitive.
In years gone by, agents were trying to get in front of as many people as they could and somehow keep track of all the contacts they came in touch with. This proved to be a difficult task and many vendors got lost in the process. Today, mobile apps and 24/7 cloud access make it easier than ever to access your database wherever you are, at any time.
Finally, one of the most powerful game-changers in real estate has been the ability to customise marketing pipelines into different segments. This way, you can put your time and energy into marketing, and allow the leads and contacts to be filtered through various pipelines. This means that your leads are getting information that's relevant to them and suited their stage of the buying and/or selling journey. That way, you're able to offer more value, creating a better reputation for yourself and your business.
PropTech has revolutionised the real estate industry in ground breaking ways. As technology continues to improve, it's vital that agents and agencies continue to stay on top of the latest tools and trends to make sure they not only stay competitive, but actually create a competitive advantage.
Discover 5 quick methods for generating a surplus of qualified prospects, to put you in the best position possible by watching this on-demand webinar.
Watch as our presenters Trevor Bragg and Ally Jacobs provide tips and tricks on how you can open new avenues, identify the perfect target audience, so that you can boost your leads and generate revenue.
By watching this on-demand webinar, you will learn how to:
