Learn the universal and essential steps for setting up your customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Your Customer Relationship Management (or, CRM) is a tool that you can use to your advantage as a real estate agent. Let’s talk CRM basics and also cover the most important things to do with your CRM.
- Organize it
- Systematically reach out to people in it
- Grow it every day
- Get leads out of it
VIDEO: How to Set Up Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Your Customer Relationship Management is your most important tool
The most common thing we get asked about customer relationship management systems is which one is the best. We aren’t going to dive into that today, because at ICC we truly believe that the best CRM is the one that you use.
Instead of comparing various CRMs to each other, let’s talk about how to set up your customer relationship management system for success.
Who belongs in your CRM?
At Icenhower Coaching, we teach our coaching clients to grow, develop, and maintain a sphere of influence (SOI) database. Your SOI database should contain anyone who recognizes you and knows you by name. This is the first group of people that belong in your CRM. In your CRM, you interact with this group of people on a regular basis to maintain and grow your relationship.
The second group that belongs in your customer relationship management (CRM) system are your leads. These are people you contact immediately and with more urgency. Whether they come from online leads or open houses, any leads belong in your CRM. We use a system called our 2-Week Assault Plan, and this plan goes into your CRM so that you know exactly how and when to contact your leads.
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Types of leads in your customer relationship management (CRM) system
There are 4 categories for leads in your CRM. We call them A, B, C, and D leads.
- A Leads – someone who wants to buy a house in 0-30 days
- B Leads – someone who wants to buy a house in 30-90 days
- C Leads – someone who wants to buy a house in 3-9 months
- D Leads – someone who wants to buy a house in 9-18 months
The best CRM is the one that you use.
Brian Icenhower
Other groups of people who belong in your customer relationship management (CRM) system
You will also want to include any local vendors or business-to-business (B2B) partners that you have in your CRM.
We do coach most of our clients to keep it simple when it comes to their customer relationship management (CRM) system. For example, if I have a B2B partner, I like to put them in my CRM’s SOI group. Some clients, however, do like to have a vendor-specific client event, or they want to be able to have a list of their trusted vendors that they can download and then email to someone.
In your CRM, you would simple create a category or tag titled “Vendor” or “B2B.”
Using our Call & Text Contact Cycle System with your SOI in your customer relationship management (CRM) system
As we teach in our SOI trainings, you need to keep in touch with your SOI on a regular basis throughout the year. You need AT LEAST 4 two-way conversations every year. So, that would mean once a quarter.
We developed a Call & Text Contact Cycle that you can use and put into your customer relationship management (CRM) system to ensure that you are reaching out to everyone in your SOI database quarterly.
Since there are 13 weeks in a quarter and 26 letters of the alphabet, you can sort your SOI database by the first letter of each last name and reach out to two letters each week.
Now, as you can probably imagine, some letters will have way more contacts than others. So, we created an SOI Call & Text Contact Cycle PDF that sorts the letters based on popularity. That way, your weeks are a bit more even.
Using this PDF, set up your CRM with 13 categories or tags. Name them according to the letters of the week. For example, “SOI A&W” or “SOI B&E.”
FREE DOWNLOAD: SOI Call & Text Contact Cycle PDF
This is the PDF that we give all of our ICC clients to use in their own customer relationship management (CRM) system. Subscribe below and get the free download today!
