As part of this series, Box+Dice Chief Executive Officer Travis Williams asks the tough questions of top performing agents. This time around he quizzes RT Edgar Mornington Peninsula Managing Director Holly Longmuir on how they get the most out of their CRM and which key metrics most help the business.
What top PropTech tools do you use to help you find deals, especially in a tight market? What are the main benefits you get from them?
Our main tool is our CRM, which is Box+Dice. We use it to manage and harvest data, manage our tasks and appraisals and manage buyers. In fact, it’s our platform for everything. As a result, we’ve been able to grow our database from 5000 to 65,000.
Do you feel that being at the cutting edge of PropTech is important for your business and why?
Gosh, yes! But we make sure we use technology to enhance and streamline the customer experience, not replace it.
What’s great about technology is that it can easily track everything, so we’re able to use Box+Dice as our single source of data and truth for our business.
We always say that if it’s not in Box+Dice, it didn’t happen.
Do you ever feel there are too many products out there that you need to juggle?
We don’t get carried away, but instead concentrate on perfecting what we’re already using to make sure everyone is using it properly, effectively and getting the most out of it.
Rather than always looking externally for opportunities, instead create a world of raving fans for your business.
What are your pain points, if any, about using PropTech?
There are a lot of apps out there to integrate with.
It’s difficult to distinguish between what’s simply the shiniest, newest thing and what’s actually best and adds the most value.
For technology to be truly effective, it needs to be easy to use and work together with everything else.
When it doesn’t, it’s frustrating.
Could you talk a little but about how you use your CRM to help you with your business, especially when the market is tight?
Number one is definitely relationship management.
It helps us bring things back to basics, such as keeping back-to-back task lists and building a pipeline of referrals and customers.
Box+Dice is our central repository for all interactions and information within our business.
What are the main metrics you rely on?
We look at the total number of contacts, as well as the number of contacts we’re actually connecting with.
We also examine the ratio of appraisals to listings.
We have a champion in our office to manage all our data and track the effectiveness of our loyalty campaigns.
What advice do you have for agents who are struggling to find listings? How can they use PropTech better to help them?
Collect open for inspection data. Make sure you get all buyer data at opens and start building a community of raving fans.
What are your top 3 CRM tips?
- Mandate the collection of data and have policies in place that support your rules around gathering and usage. Non-negotiable policies are: ‘appraisal and buyer claim’.
- Set minimum data standards such as the collection of names, phone number and email. If you add ‘context’ even better.
- Share data with your team or group. Your policies will ensure commission splits.
