Thanks for reading this series on best practices on real estate CRM. We hope that you enjoyed our previous article in this series on how to manage listings and properties within a CRM solution. Serious buyers send out an enquiry to your real estate firm. It is of utmost importance that the buyer information reaches the right agent in a timely manner. It is also important to track the enquiries as property transactions take time and iteration. In this article, we will explain how the Enquiry module within our Real Estate Solution combines best of the breed feature to streamline your lead information.
Discover how technology is playing a crucial role in the Realty Industry.
There are certain crucial aspects of enquiries which must be captured within the CRM. Apart from the general details of the prospect and his contact details, it is important to know budget of the buyer, his needs and whether the enquiry is with respect to any specific listing. It may also help in the long run to understand where the enquiry has originated from, i.e., the source of the enquiry. Some of the sources could be real estate portals such as Zillow, Trulia or may be hoardings or any third party source.
Getting new enquiries from various sources
Real estate company can get new enquires from various sources like from their website, real estate brokers (direct contact or indirect contact), advertising in social media, Getting referrals from other agents, email campaigns, SMS campaigns etc.
Enquiry module having a field called “source” where a real estate agent can maintain the data of source generation of every enquiry record created, which will help the real estate agents to do marketing based on the source field to get new enquiries and increase their revenue.
Assignment of enquiry
Assigning of enquiry is one of the most crucial part as an enquiry should assign to the user who is responsible for dealing with the customer. In our solution, we have taken the following assignment rules for assigning the record to a specific realtor.
If the contact already exists, and it was previous assigned to lets say Jake, the new enquiry will also be assigned to Jake. This is so because Jake has talked to the prospect and knows more about him than any other realtor in the system.
If it is a new contact but with respect to a listing which is assigned to Peter, then since Peter knows about the property that the prospect is interested in, it will be assigned to Peter.
Any enquiry not meeting the above criteria, is assigned to realtors on a round robin basis. They can also be manually assigned to specific user.
Steps for Creating an Enquiry
- .Navigate to Enquiry module,
- Click on Create Enquiry,
![Click on Create Enquiry]()
- Enter the details of enquiry and click on save.
![Enter the details of enquiry and click on save]()
- Detail view of Enquiry
In detail view based on Assignment process discussed above, enquiry will assign to the specific user and “Assigned to” field will display in the detail view of a record, and some other fields like property city, state, zip code, property type and property sub-type will also be displayed in detail view automatically.
Preventing duplication of contact
“Contact” field in Enquiry module is relate field of contacts module, here we can select a contact by clicking on button “select contact”. If contact is selected then the fields of enquiry module “contact first name”, “contact last name”, “phone number”, “email Id” would auto-populate in edit view. If specific contact is not present in contact module then we can manually enter contact details in enquiry module and click on save, enquiry module will check whether the contact with entered details of contact first name, last name, phone number, and email address exists or not, if the contact does not exist then it will create a contact, if a contact exists with same details then it will not create a duplicate contact again.
Listing specific versus general enquiry
Enquiries can be created with or without listings. Listing specific enquiries are created when a customer is interested in buying or renting a specific listing property. Whereas a general listing can be created any time when a customer wants to know the details or enquiry about already listed listings with the real estate agent. Listing specific enquiries can be converted to contracts whereas general enquiries cannot be converted to contracts.
Converting an Enquiry into Contract
We can convert enquiry to listing whenever an enquiry is listing specific. Steps for converting a enquiry to contract
- Navigate to enquiry record detail view,
- Click on the button “Actions” and
- Click on the button “create contract”
Clicking on button “create contract” will navigate to Contract edit view with contract details contact name, listing, and contract name which is a combination of contact first name + listing Id auto-populated, Commission, sales stage, probability and expected closed date, are entered manually and click on save.
Note: “create contract” button is displayed only for listing specific enquiry records.
In this way, a real estate agent can create and maintain the details of enquiries and convert them to contracts, which will help a real estate agent to communicate with the customer about the enquiries and track the status of enquiries.
Your Real Estate CRM journey along with us
We can help implement an optimized CRM solution for your real estate business. Read about how our real estate solution built on popular platforms can help your business to grow and reach new boundaries. Also discover, how it helps automate property search and takes care of your typical needs. Built on popular platforms, it inherits the reliability and robustness of the mentioned platforms.
Contact us for a free assessment of your business needs. This comes without any obligations and can save you a lot of time and effort.