For every 500 customer records in a CRM, there are about 25 transactions, 50 sides. Here is how you know how many transactions happen across your customers each year.
Look At Your Transaction Records vs. Public Record
At WAV Group, we talk a lot about “Data as an Asset”. One of the projects that we run for brokerage companies is to harvest insights from their transaction data. We can take a list of your closed transactions and run them against public record data to see if that property has transacted since your last transaction. Originally, we did this for brokers to validate customer records and trigger marketing for other services like Homeowners Insurance or Mortgage Refinancing.
The odd part of the research was the realization that brokers and agents are missing out on a lot of repeat business, not to mention a lot of insurance, mortgages, and titles. NAR has done the most research on explaining this loss: the number 1 reason that is that agents did not stay in touch. Ouch! Better invest in a CRM.
Look at Your CRM Records vs. Public Record
Ever wondered how many customers across agent CRMs have done business with a competitor? It is horrible to learn that a past client has transacted with a competitor. It is inspiring to know how many customers in your CRM have transacted with a competitor. Guess what– contrasting customer records in your CRM against public records and company transaction records can get you the answer.
You can look at this data in a couple of different ways. You can see lost opportunities as a failure, or you can be thoughtful and excited about how you can leverage your CRM to make sure that you never miss a transaction opportunity again.
Most Agents have 380 Customers
Most real estate agents have about 380 customers in their CRM. Remember, quantity can be a very poor way to measure things. Out of those 380 records, many may be stale or incomplete. On the opposite of the spectrum, some agents have 10,000 records but know very few of them in any meaningful way. The best measurement in a CRM is quality relationships and quality engagements. It is not likely that your brother or your best friend is going to buy or list a property without you knowing about it.
Run Your Analytics
Once a year, it is a really good idea to create a lost sales report for your company, offices, teams, and agents. It is amazing to watch how agents will become more highly vested in using the CRM if they understand the number of lost opportunities that happen when they don’t. Office managers can coach up agents on skills to expand their customer records and deepen relationships with the people already in their CRM. Small incremental improvements in the lower half of your agent production will create dramatic payoffs in office and company performance.
Complications
You need to have the right culture in your company to operate these big data strategies effectively. Your agents need to trust you with their data. You need their permission to go into their database to develop insights. Sign an agreement with your agents that you will not reuse or repurpose the data in any way. Tell them that they only need to provide you with an address list if you need to. You are just looking at changes in the title.
- Show them the number of trades they missed in the last two years.
- Show them the number of customers in their database who have lived in the same home for more than 5 years (that is the hottest target list for future transactions).
Want Help?
Contact Victor Lund or David Gumpper to help with projects focused on data as an asset. We can work with your CRM vendor to develop this program.
Imagine what would happen in your business if you invest as much money and effort into keeping your customers as you do in finding new ones. Do you think your performance would be better helping agents do business with some stranger messing around on a website, or people that they already know?
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Hi Victor, here at HomeActions we see about 8 out of 10 agents without a clean, reliable database- After we build one for them.. on average we come up with 515 contacts which are nurtured 2x per month. NinJa Training says 15 of every 100 homeowning contacts are in some form of early stage transaction mode. Keep up the good research!