Essential Tools Sales Teams Need to Succeed in Real Estate
What tools do a real estate agent need to sell new development?
The elements of your toolset have a major impact on performance. A good realtor or agent can only be boosted by the right tools, because it gives them the power to connect with clients, manage more inventory, and operate successfully within a team.
Your sales team’s tools are weapons against mediocrity in a turning real estate market.
For your next new development project, consider these vital tools that can help your new home sales team succeed.
CRM
We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: if you only get one tool for new development sales, it should be a CRM.
Unlike resale, selling new development real estate requires a higher volume of data management. This is because there will be dozens, if not hundreds, of inventory units being put on the market, and a much higher number of prospective buyers, contracts, and agents to match.
Plus, when you have developers and investors with vested interest in sales performance, your team needs to have the ability to run reports and pull data that can be brought back to the developer to help make informed decisions.
Salesforce
As one of the powerhouses in customer relationship software, Salesforce is popular among a lot of major retailers. Because it’s a generalized CRM that requires a good amount of custom build-out, it’s a good option for those with very specialized requirements, a large budget, and manpower to support the entire process..
Spark
Built specifically to serve the new development industry, Spark started as a CRM but has since branched out into a full suite of software solutions. At its core, the CRM is comprehensive and can provide the entire team with a lot of insight into buyers at every stage of the new home sales cycle.
Scheduling
Getting face-time with clients is a big part of real estate. Particularly as the market begins to turn, it can be helpful for your sales team agents to book time with prospective buyers to get a feel for what they’re looking for, as well as make a more genuine personal connection. The best sales agents know when to take their successful buyers to dinner, for example, or check in on key holidays to maintain that relationship.
But don’t underestimate the amount of work it takes to keep appointments, and to keep your schedule organized, especially if you expect your team to put in their hours at the sales center as well.
There are plenty of scheduling software options, from the very simple to the very complicated.
Online Calendars
The benefit of online calendars — Google Calendars, Outlook, or even the one just on your mobile phone — is that your agents likely already have an account. While each appointment will have to input manually, putting the responsibility on your agents to manage their own schedules, it’s overall a simple way to keep organized.
Calendly
An appointment-keeping tool, Calendly is the more sophisticated, shareable version of your regular online calendar. It’s a bit more complex, but gives your agents options such as blocking off chunks of time, scheduling events, sending invites for appointments, and even sharing availability with the team.
Hubspot Meetings
As the marketing and sales giant, it’s not surprising that Hubspot has a scheduling tool available. It’s made for software sales, so while there are useful features — for example, Meetings syncs syncs with your Google or Office calendars so that you get all your meetings in one place — there are also ones that you might want to avoid, such as allowing buyers to automatically schedule meetings.
Digital Contracting
Whether you call it digital contracts or electronic signature, these tools accomplish the same thing: allow real estate agents to get the official close on their sales more quickly.
Efficient sales processes are a cornerstone of good buyer experience. This is especially true for the younger generation, who are increasingly becoming home buyers. Tools that help speed along the typically convoluted process of new home sales will appeal to your buyers; and tools that improve productivity will appeal to your team while boosting the developer’s bottom line.
Docusign
The simplest way to digitize contracts would be something like DocuSign, which allows everyone involved in a real estate purchase to submit electronic signatures on a document. This will still require manual compiling of those contracts — ie, someone will have to write the contract — but opening the door to digital signing will still help speed up the process.
Laserfiche
A more involved digital contract process could be a tool like Laserfiche, which manages contracts the same way that CRMs manage your prospect info. Templates make the tool useful for any industry or market, and can help organize the use of terms and references to other documents.
Spark
On top of buyer and sales management, Spark’s software suite also includes a digital contract tool. Because it hosts your buyer and inventory information, Spark allows your team to build out contracts easily and quickly, using data already in the system. This goes a long way to mitigating human error and creates a more efficient process.
Software for Your New Development Team
On a basic level, software like CRMs, scheduling, and digital contracting can do a lot to improve the overall efficiency of your team. Crucial processes of the day to day become automated, making it faster and easier to manage marketing and close sales.
With so many software tools out there, it’s important to make sure that the ones you choose will work for you and your team.
What’s the one tool your new home sales team can’t do without? Let us know in the comments!
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