The Science of Flipping - What Is The Best CRM for Real Estate Investors?

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

What Is The Best CRM for Real Estate Investors?

What is up, everybody? What is up? Welcome back to the Science of Flipping podcast. I am your host, Justin Colby. And if you have not yet jumped over to YouTube, make sure to get over to YouTube, youtube.com forward slash Justin Colby. I am dropping fire right now every single day, a video a day over on YouTube, go to YouTube forward slash Justin Colby. With that said, this podcast is all about the right tools, systems, strategies, implementation for your real estate investing business. And so you want to chime in here each and every day. Also, as I am bringing the heat here on iTunes, Spotify, and all the other podcast platforms. Today, I'm going over what is your best CRM. First of all, for those maybe that are just getting into the space and unfamiliar with what a CRM is, it simply is a customer relationship manager. This is where you house all your leads and all your notes. And it is in large part, one of the most important parts of your business. Everything that I talk about in terms of tracking KPIs, understanding your numbers,

all comes from your CRM. If you are doing texting, if you're doing calling, direct mail, PPC, band of signs, door knocking, you name it. You need to make sure you have a great CRM for yourself. Now, here's the answer for the best CRM for you. The one that you use. And I know you're like, Justin, thanks for the tip. Now, I'm going to tell you what I use. And I use it for a very specific reason. There are a ton of CRMs out there. I still use Podio. Podio is a blank format. You can create it for yourself, what works for your business. And honestly, you can continue to adapt and adjust it for what you're looking for in your business. This is why I find it so useful is because I can continue to either remove or add things as needed.

Now, Podio, again, like I said, it's a free platform, but you do need to build it out. I found a Podio licensed developer. I pay him, I think, $45 an hour to build it out. It only cost me a couple hundred dollars total, and I still use it today. And I have for the last three or four years. So for a couple hundred dollars, I've continued to use the CRM. Now, is there a usefulness for something huge and robust? And I know there's ones out there called beast mode and investor fuse and all these other bigger, huger platforms that are built off of Podio, by the way. In my opinion, I think people fall down in the follow-up of their leads and it's because they're trying to automate that. If you just look the previous podcast episodes,

I talked heavily about your follow-up and your CRM is really pivotal in your follow-up. So can all these other really massively built out CRMs do it for you? A hundred percent. That's kind of why they sell them, right? This, this automated emails and automated texts and automated and automated. I don't believe in that. I believe in sales should be a person to person business. I believe there should be some level of follow-up that can absolutely be automated, but that automation shouldn't be utilized until that lead is further down the road in the pipeline and not like in the first 90 days. I believe the first 90 days needs to heavily be the person calling or text messaging that seller. Now, again, what's right for you is the one you use. There's another one called REI Blackbook,

and there's another, you know, Salesforce is a massive, you know, tool. I know realtors, you guys have your own like Boomtown. And there's other ones. What's the other realtor one I was thinking of? Anyways, irrelevant. So what's most important is the CRM you're actually going to use. Again, not trying to be, you know, I don't know, not trying to joking about it. It literally is that's the most important one. So if you choose Podio, awesome. In fact, I have training videos on YouTube. You need to get over to YouTube. Look me up, subscribe to me because I do all things business, real estate and entrepreneurship over on YouTube. So get over to YouTube, check it out, subscribe and make sure you're smashing those like buttons, but there is a podio training on YouTube. That being said, if you do elect to

get a bigger, more expensive platform, I was just dealing with a student of mine who was asking me about Salesforce. And he said, it really isn't that expensive when you compare it to some of these other built out CRMs that other investors are using. And at the end of the day, I've used Salesforce, by the way. It is so robust and so big and does so much. I just think you're going down a rabbit hole. I think there's too much to it. And again, it kind of brings it back to the point. You know, most of us are, you know, small businesses, right? You have anywhere from two to seven people on your team, maybe 10. You don't need something as robust as Salesforce, in my opinion. It's just too much. Now, some of these other platforms that are built by real estate investors, I do like them. I just don't get them because I don't personally utilize their features that much

because I stick to the people in the business. So I'll keep that short. Are they all great? Yes. Do I, I know the developers of all of them. They're all friends of mine. Can they all work? And maybe someday I'll choose one and I'll go with it. But as a moment in time, the best CRM is the one that you use. I stick to the original Podio. There are plenty options out there. Do your due diligence. Figure out how you want to build your business. But use your CRM.

That is the secret sauce. That's how they're so valuable. So hopefully this finds you well. If you have any further questions that you want to ask me or any of my team members, go to thescienceofflipping.com. And there's just a little tab that you can apply to talk to us. And, and I'll do a Q and a with you and answer your questions, see if I can help you out again, the science flipping.com. Hopefully this finds you well,

and I'll see you on the next episode. Peace.