Here’s a list of technology tools that won’t drain your budget and will still help you stay efficient.
Listing Websites
The first relatively budget-friendly investment to consider is to create a branded listing website or to post your properties on a listing platform. Nowadays, it just doesn’t make sense to invest in other technologies if nobody can see your listings online. Plus, not having to be physically present for the initial office viewing is what your customers appreciate the most. Specifically, a branded listing website can:
- Enable you to introduce new listings to the public faster and more efficiently.
- Reduce the time your team spends on administrative tasks.
- Capture new leads from your listings directly into your CRM or deal management system (if you have one).
- Offer user-friendly property search features to your customers.
Сhat GPT
Chat GPT is an AI-based tool that has been making waves globally with its conversation-like AI capabilities. Even though it’s not yet widely adopted in real estate, it could relieve some of your basic (but time-consuming) tasks, such as:
- Writing descriptions for property listings.
- Generating text for social media posts.
- Creating marketing emails based on the information you feed into them.
- Creating detailed guides about specific neighborhoods.
- Drafting legal documents.
- Answering frequently asked questions.
- Doing complex calculations.
If you haven’t yet seen Chat GPT, create an account now. Then, start your conversation by asking it to write a listing for a two-bedroom, three-bathroom home in Boise. You’ll be amazed how quickly the bot will spit out an elegantly worded description.
CRM
Many real estate agents use Excel as their customer relationship management (CRM) technology. Granted, Excel is good at what it does, but only for industry beginners and small agencies with limited financial and human resources.
And, because Excel was not designed primarily as a collaborative platform — an environment in which the real estate industry thrives — savvy business owners use a real estate CRM, instead.
Although a full-fledged CRM is far more costly than Excel, investing in a CRM will allow you to:
- Organize the vast amount of data that real estate agents use.
- Store data about clients, deals, assets, tenants, partners, leases, deals, inquiries and commissions securely in one place without having to worry about data leaks.
- Automate half of the repetitive task in the real estate transaction process so you can focus on more important tasks.
- Begin strategic planning of follow-up and email campaigns with a systematic cadence.
- Track relationships between clients, contacts, properties, deals and more.
Tools for Data Management
Ideally, all real estate companies should have a CRM, but making such a significant investment upfront might not always be feasible. Alternatively, you might consider leveraging your data in a more intelligent way by using data management tools, which allow you to:
- Search for properties and contacts in databases with thousands of records.
- Provide a client with a list of properties based on specific search criteria (for example, X miles from city A; budget range; or year built).
- Filter and narrow the list that you’ll send to clients quickly and easily.
- Find targeted audiences for new properties that have an abundance of availability.
- Perform advanced searches of contacts for your targeted email campaigns.
- Identify prospects who require your attention.
Flyer Generation Tools
There are template-based real estate flyer generation tools that offer great DIY functionality at moderate prices. By investing in these, you’ll:
- Have access to a library of predefined templates for any type of document or marketing collateral.
- Generate presentation-ready reports with detailed property descriptions and photos in just a few clicks.
- Avoid manual input of property information and images by syncing these tools with your current systems.
- Create marketing brochures, various activity reports, and documents quickly and without external help.
Portions of this article originally appeared on Commercial Cafe website.
The Sundance Company
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.6 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.
The Sundance Company 