The Science of Flipping - Automations with Your CRM

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Your CRM (Customer relations management) is vital to keep your follow up in tact with your leads, but there are ways to make it more efficient by automating things!

Yo, yo, welcome back. Welcome back to the Science of Flipping podcast. I am your host, Justin Colby. If you are the first time listener, please check out thescienceofflipping.com for any and all free resources that you would need. Also, this is all about the systems, tools, subject matters, processes that you possibly could want in your real estate investing business to either get started or start scaling your business and become massively profitable. Because to be honest, that's what we're all doing it for. We're not here to make just a couple bucks. Let's go get the money and create wealth a good CRM. Yesterday, I was answering some questions for some students I have about what's the right CRM and what do I use and what does

it do for me and why do we need it? I'll just shoot you guys straight. My CRM is Podio. So first, I keep it simple. I have a very simplistic version of Podio. I paid someone to build it out for me. I do not go huge on it. It does not automate everything. It is very simplistic. Now, let me tell you why I keep it that way. I have plenty of friends in this space that have built out massive CRMs and it does everything for you and it emails and it texts and it calls and it automates and all this other great stuff. Now, it's not for me and here's why. In my opinion, the real estate investing space will always be a people person business. So if I start to rely on technology,

specifically my CRM to automate a certain level of follow-up, I lose that connectivity I have with the seller. So if you are a solopreneur, you should be doing all of that follow-up work and or outsource it to some level of a VA. If you have a business like myself, I have my team do that. So I do have a CRM. We utilize it very, very heavily, but we do not utilize it in the space of making it a all-in-one inclusive business tool to manage the leads, follow up with the leads, send contracts out to the leads, et cetera, et cetera. There are those out there. I don't believe

in an all-in-one business machine. I don't believe it exists. I don't believe you are functioning at your highest level, not in the space of real estate investing. Your follow-up primarily should be over the phone by calls or at minimum text messages. Now, the question becomes, if you have a lead and you've been following up for six months, do you keep calling? Do you keep blowing their phone up with text messaging? At that point, I would say you can start to utilize emails, right? But even then, I would personally want to send that person an email. I don't love a full-blown automated system. If your system can email out of it and you can put a trigger in your CRM that says, once you have a lead that has been in the database for six months to send out an email,

I'm okay with that. That's fine. And then to have an automated email, maybe go out once a month to that individual based around the length they've been in there and it not moving through, like it not going from cold lead to warm lead, then fine. I'm okay with that. But the second that that person contacts back replies, I'm personally engaging with them. I'm not allowing my CRM to be that level of communication, right? So even if I automated an email because they've been in my database for six months, which by the way, I don't do this. I just know those resources are out there. Even if that's the case and they reply to my email, I promise you one thing, you need to get on the phone and call them. I don't care if they simply say, hey, we're still not thinking about selling. Thanks for the follow-up. I will call them and

text them and say, hey, thank you for replying. I just wanted to let you know we're still here. How's life going? What's going on? Has anything been changing with all the things that are going on in the world? And you need to continue to build the rapport. The piece that a lot of people are missing is they build the rapport on the front end. They can't come to terms with the seller or maybe the seller doesn't have the motivation. Maybe they want to kick the can down the road. And then they stop building rapport. If you want to be successful in this space and you want to make a lot of money, it is a people business. Now, like I said, I have all the friends that have built these incredible CRMs. I'm happy to suggest what one you might want whenever you are thinking about buying a CRM.

Some can be very expensive, just full disclosure. But I personally tailor down my CRM and leverage people to communicate and continue to build a rapport with these sellers. I just am a firm believer in sales. I'm a firm believer in this is salesmanship. And follow up, the fortunes in a follow up is a cheesy sales. I'm a firm believer in this is salesmanship and follow up the fortunes in a follow-up. It's a cheesy saying. I know it. However, this is why I do so well. This is why I've been around for 13 years is because I use the connectivity of the people and not just automation. Now, let me clarify here. I do absolutely use a text message software. I do absolutely use a call, a triple line dialer. Actually, what we use is like an eight line dialer. But I, my team is the resource that is going to talk to them.

My team is going to be the resource that follows up with them, builds rapport, finds out why they're looking to sell, how we can be of help. Has anything changed in the near future? Do you see anything changing in the near future? Has anything changed in the past? I want those answers so I can have better conversion. So with this episode, I did actually do a really incredible podcast, or I'm sorry, YouTube.

If you have not yet gone over to my YouTube channel, I do a video YouTube every single day. So just go to YouTube, look me up, Justin Colby, youtube.com forward slash Justin Colby. Start watching those YouTubes. Obviously, if you like them, smash the like button. It really helps the YouTube gods promote my videos and always subscribe as a subscriber to my YouTube. So I just did a great video there as well. But the reality with all this, CRMs are massively important. You do need something, but I'm even

okay if someone starts to utilize like a Google Doc or a Google Sheet to manage their leads as long as they're managing them. So the idea of a CRM is to manage your customers, right? Customer relationship manager. I'm indifferent how you want to do that as long as you do it. What I do care about is I'm not a firm believer in sending out just mass automation for leads that have contacted you or you have contacted them and you just now put them on some automated system. I think that's total BS. I think you're dropping the ball. And if you're in my market, let me switch my tone. You should keep doing that. Keep going and doing the automation. If you're in my markets, right? If you're anywhere in Oklahoma city, if you're anywhere, if you're anywhere in Arizona, keep doing it. I would love you to keep the automation. Now I'm

going to keep my guys working, my gals working, right? So hopefully this finds you well. Hopefully this was helpful. As I've said, I have all the friends. I've built all the fancy CRMs. I myself have a very simplified version of Podio. I love it because the automation on your phone, I can task myself and obviously my team can task themselves to make those follow-ups. And then the last thing I'll say about this before I jump off is other people are also trying to use CRM as a way to manage their KPIs.

I just think that is another massive mistake. Managing KPIs while your CRM can give you the numbers of how many leads came in, all of the other data needs to be manually imprinted into a spreadsheet because I even know CRMs make a mistake. You can't count a lead if that same person said F you. And you have to do that manually, right? And by the way, if you bring in 10 leads and one person says F you and your CRM says 10 new leads, that is a 10% difference. That is massively needle moving. If you're not accounting for that one F you and taking it off the amount of leads that you brought in, follow me. So again, my point is

keep it simple, keep on top of it, keep it managed, but it takes personnel to do so on a high level. I'm a firm believer in that. I don't love automation for everything. So again, hopefully this finds you well. Go check out my YouTube videos. There's a YouTube video every single day all about real estate business entrepreneurship.

Just look me up on YouTube, Justin Colby. Hopefully this finds you well and I will talk to you soon on the next podcast. Peace.