Organizing Your Opportunities

You find a property that looks promising and do a bit of research. Chances are, you’re going to continue looking at the big list of properties that were just handed to you and try to remember which one of your wholesalers sent you the information, when they sent it and all of the details that make that cute 2 bedroom Bungalow on 5th Street the best deal ever! Or was it a 3 bed Tudor? No, it was a 3 bed Craftsman. Yeah, that’s it. Shoot… Did I get that one from the MLS?

If you’re like me, one of the most difficult tasks of managing my business is organizing my opportunities. (There are a lot of articles out there on finding opportunities, so make sure you look a few of ‘em up.)

The answer to helping me be better at my business is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. A CRM system lets you store and manage prospect and customer information, like contact info, accounts, leads, and sales opportunities, in one central location. There are many systems available with countless functions. For the purpose of this article, I’ll be focusing on functionality related to managing my rehab deals.

What Can I do with a CRM system?

You can go online and find a CRM that will do almost any task. (I think I saw one last week that will create your own salsa just by clicking the right mouse button.) With my CRM setup, I can track all of the properties that I am currently or have researched. When I started looking at a tool, these were the features that were most important to me in tracking opportunities.

• Checklists and workflows

I think my “honey do” checklist has the ability to grow exponentially every day and my list of tasks on my opportunities is no different. Each time I identify a property to pursue, I create a standard task list to ensure I take the same steps each time. This way I don’t forget to submit the lead based paint disclosure or the seller’s disclosure or the contract addendum or pull comparables or…

• Pipeline Status

Each opportunity has a status. An opportunity starts out in a “Lead” status. That means I’m just doing my preliminary research on the property. The opportunity changes through the process until I have either won or lost the deal. My CRM has the ability to show me where all of my opportunities are at any point and help me not lose sight of those that are in flight.

• Team Activity Tracking

I need to be able to connect all of the players in a deal. I enter the names of all of my contacts and then associate them with the deal. I like to track activity with my brokers, wholesalers, lenders, cash buyers, sellers and contractors. By tracking the activities, I can see which members of my team are helping me reach my goals.

• Custom Data Fields

Within my CRM system, I’ve set up custom columns for tracking property data. I’m able to click on an opportunity and see the number of bedroom and baths without having to look at my property sheet or link over to the internet listing. I make sure to track the data that is most relevant to my business.

• Track deadlines

I am able to set deadlines and have the system send me reminders. Since implementing reminders, I have yet to miss a contract deadline for a deal that I’m working.

• Track Emails

With many CRM systems, you can attach emails to an opportunity. You can manually link an email or carbon copy and address and have it collect all related emails. This means you don’t have to go searching through 15,000 emails to find the one where you told your agent to request your earnest money deposit back on the crazy cat lady house.

• Track Attachments

I like to save attachments to the opportunity. The ability to attach your files can save a lot of time in finding those pesky comps from 5 months ago that you used to calculate your ARV.

• Reporting

For geeks like me, I want to know everything possible about my business. Using the data from my CRM, I am able to ask questions of the data and make sure I am doing the right things.

• Am I on track to meet my goals this year?
• Why am I winning / losing deals?
• What areas of town are working well for me?
• Which wholesalers are bringing me the best deals? (Reminder: Send cookies to favorite wholesaler.)
• Which brokers are hitting home runs?

These are, of course, just the tip of the iceberg when taking a look into how you are performing and how you can improve your business.

• Integrations

There are tons of applications out there to increase productivity, but there are a few of them crucial to my process. I use Evernote to take notes when walking through houses. The integration between my CRM and Evernote allows me to attach my notes to the opportunity. I also use the integration with Google Drive. I keep all of my important documents on Google Drive and link them to the opportunity. I have a project management tool for tracking my rehabs. I’m able to link my opportunity to my project plan and budget. Each of these integrations make my CRM the center of my world when it comes to making my latest deal a success.

How to choose a CRM system

• Form and Function

I’ve covered the most important functions for my business. Take a look at the process you have for evaluating properties and see what makes the most sense. Since I’ve just covered opportunity management here, also consider the other components of a CRM to see if they are important to your business. You can always implement them later.

• Ease of Use

All of this awesome stuff is… well really cool, but it isn’t worth it if you cannot make it work for you. Chose functionality that you can adopt in your daily life that will help you move your business forward. Leave the bells and whistles to another day. You can leave changing the background to your dog’s picture on your phone.

• Accessibility

I can use my CRM on my PC or on my phone. I’m never more than a quick tap away from my data. It helps to be able to keep working while I’m sitting in the parking lot waiting for school to let out.

• Integrating with other systems

Take a look at what other tools you use. Since a CRM is the hub of information for your business, there are integrations with almost anything you can think of. Take a look at what other applications you use each day to determine if you want to integrate your CRM with it or replace with the functionality within. I’m waiting for the first CRM that will integrate with my dry cleaners, but I’ve stopped holding my breath.

• Price

There are hundreds of CRM solutions available. They range from price from free to a lot. It’s hard to put a price tag on organization, but if you do one more deal this year because you are organized, it might be worth an investment in organization and efficiency.

If you’re new to the game, free might make the most sense and will provide the ability to dip your toe into the world of CRM. If you’re rocking your market, consider spending a few dollars to make even better use of your data.

Is this really worth the time?

After setting your goal for the number of deals you want to do this year, do the math. Assume you need to evaluate 100 properties in order to submit 10 offers to win 1 deal. That’s just one deal! If you want to do 12 deals this year, you need to (carry the one, divide by 3.25, round to the nearest multiple of 16) evaluate 100 properties each month and remember which one is which. Don’t go back and evaluate that bungalow on the corner of Main and 3rd Street every month until it sells. You can go back and look at why you don’t like it and why it’s still not a deal after a price reduction of $15,000.

The more leads you bring in, the more difficult it is to manage them. Someone else has done the hard work so that you can run your business and not have to figure out how to build your own system. It will take some time to get the initial setup complete, but in the end it will help you work smarter and close more opportunities.