Sharon VornholtI sent a good deal of the following message directly to another member in a private message, but i thought it would help advance the discussion here.
We have a 3 person team. I handle marketing and sales, my buyer meets with sellers and negotiates the deals, and a VA who answers the phone, takes down seller and buyer information, set appointments and handles marketing related research and everything else i can keep her busy with at the moment.
@Sharon I checked out the posts you mentioned on ACT and i like the sound of what your doing. I'm a little turned off by the price tag of the versions they have now as they stipulate a price per use that is $200+ for the basic, not web access version. For the cloud access version is $411 PER USER! That's a little steep (though i've bought course for more that simply sat on the shelf) Another software that I've been looking at has video demos at realinvestorsoftware.com. I've been swapping emails with the developer, who is an investor out of Florida, John Shroeder. He has a few posts here on Bigger pockets. Currently we are using a product called SI Lead manager which is in beta. It was created by Scott Costello, who hosts a blog called the Struggling Investor (SI). I contacted him and agree to beta test his upcoming version so it has a great deal of the functionality i'm looking for. I just wnat to make sure that before i get too many leads in the software i've made a fully informed decision to handle all the leads we get.
Given your history with ACT, I would be very interested to hear your opinion of the demo video for RealProspect http://www.realinvestorsoftware.com/
Is there anything in that video that ACT doesn't do or would appear to handle better?
I'm trying to make a very informed decision because once we decide which CRM software to go with for the long run, i don't want to regret it. SILM is free for us right now (you can check that one out at strugglinginvestor.com), RealProspect would run us about $550 for 4 installations, and ACT would run between $600-1,200 depending on which version we needed.
I guess as a wish list i want the software to:
manage different TYPES marketing lists like absentee, probate, code violations. Different ITERATIONS of those lists (March, April, May) different SCHEDULES (once a month, once a week, 4 total mailings, 8 total mailings etc) and when you combine a list with a schedule you get a CAMPAIGN (March Code Violation plus 8 mailing once a week). You can schedule campaigns on your calendar with reminders. It handles returned mail codes, change of address etc. Then you get calls from sellers leads which are matched up with prospects in the database. This removes them from future mailings, and you can take down the seller information, property information, loan/debt information, include satellite/map/street view, maybe incorporate Zillow valuation tools, places to load your own comp data, etc. Calculate seller financing terms and lets you play with the amortizations vs. expected rents.
This is all stuff before the deal is made. I don't want all this stuff to make the deal for me. I just want it to help me make a decision and it would be nice to have it in one place.
Now after the seller meeting you could upload pictures, contracts, POA's, repairs evaluations and estimate from different contractors, inspection reports and anything else you need to help arrange closing and prepare the deal for sale.
No deal with the seller? No problem put them on a follow up drip campaign. Keep notes of your conversations for future reference like @Sharon says she does in Sage ACT.
It just seems to me like of all those people who are really hitting it hard with marketing and getting lots of deals, there should be some pretty slick solutions out there that do this kind of thing...So far I've heard of Sage ACT, tested SILM, and watched some demo videos of RealProspect. Of all of them, RealProspect Seems to be the closest this to my personal ideal. What else is out there?
