“The best CRM is the one an agent will use,” says Michael Minard, CEO and owner of Delta Media. Michael said this in an announcement last week about Delta giving individual agents and teams access to its platform for the first time.

After spending the greater part of the last 25 years working directly with real estate agents, few words resonate more truth with me about the decades-long battle to get all real estate agents to use a CRM actively.

That’s what makes the Delta Media announcement exciting to those who have seen the DeltaNET 6 platform. Its most outstanding value is its built-in CRM. More importantly, it does the heavy-lifting that prevents many agents from ever using a CRM.

Agents and CRMs

If you’ve read about the DeltaNET 6 platform, or work for one of the leading brand name brokerages that use it, you know how robust it is. DeltaNET 6 delivers a full Website, digital marketing, and even back-office capabilities. These systems are usually independent, but all are combined in Delta’s all-in-one platform.
With all its capabilities, then why is DeltaNET 6 all about the CRM? It’s pretty simple to understand when you know how most agents work. Agents are typically “task-oriented” when it comes to marketing and promotional planning and execution.

Many agents have a one-hit-wonder they rely on for marketing. They focus primarily on one marketing tactic or tool almost exclusively: a newsletter, customer letter, postcards, holiday mailings, and social media are some examples.

Agents commit to executing this one marketing task. Sometimes it’s monthly, sometimes quarterly, occasionally it is only annually.

And I’m not talking about part-time agents or top producers. I am talking mostly about middle-producing agents, the ones that make their brokerage firms profitable.

What has never fitted in very well within agent workflow for many agents is the CRM. It’s typically seen as an extra step to use, and it is not always integrated with the marketing tool that agents use most.

But Delta’s approach addresses that. Delta has focused on things agents are not very good at when it comes to marketing. Delta delivers an entire real estate marketing and promotion ecosystem that’s based on content creation and automation.

Everything DeltaNet 6 offers an agent – from his or her website to all of the marketing they want or need – connects to one thing: its CRM.

The trouble with CRMs

The most recent NAR Member Profile shows that CRMs rank among the top five business software “rarely or never” used by agents. CRMs are at No. 4, with 36 percent saying they “rarely or never” use a CRM. That’s more than one-in-three agents who don’t use a CRM.

Many agents are automatically hesitant to use CRM software because they want to control their client lists. Control is part of their “independent contractor” DNA. Agents created these relationships. They may have brought an established book of business to their broker with client relationships they made and maintained well before joining their current shop.

So, when they enter their clients into a CRM provided by their current broker, they see this as giving their clients to their broker. If they leave the brokerage, agents fear their broker will assign their clients to other agents.

But the more likely reason agents are not using CRMs is less complicated. Many agents don’t have their client lists all in one place. They do not have a centralized database. They have clients on mailing labels for Holiday cards, phone numbers on post-it notes, and addresses stuck in Outlook, having no idea how to export.

These agents may claim that they don’t want to use a CRM because they don’t want to give their broker their clients, but the truth is, they don’t have time and won’t make time to pull all of the clients into one list. They are stuck, and a CRM solution looks like a daunting task and not worth the effort.

Delta’s unique approach

Delta is coming into the CRM space from a different direction with a different approach. Delta is creating a reason and an incredibly attractive opportunity for agents to take the time and centralize their contacts in one place: DeltaNET 6.

The agent’s offer is: you take the time upfront to get your clients into our CRM, and the payoff is enormous afterward. One example: Agents can set up automated email campaigns in 5 minutes or less.

That’s just one of the dozens of digital marketing tools – including social media – that is now available to individual agents for the first time. Do you know how long it takes an agent to write all of the content and then set up Mail Chimp or Constant Contact an entire email campaign?

This feature is huge for the average agent. And there are dozens of more features and content opportunities, all created and ready to go.

The best part is the price. For $99 a month, the agent gets all the digital marketing and social marketing tools they need and a complete modern website designed to capture leads, which are then automatically populated into – you guessed it – the DeltaNET 6 CRM.

Delta’s introductory offer is pretty sweet as well: any agent can a brand-new website and try all the digital marketing features that DeltaNET 6 offers for free for 30 days – no credit card required. More info is at http://deltamediagroup.com/free. A recording explaining what DeltaNet 6 has to offer to agents, click here.

With an approach like this to a CRM for agents, Delta may finally give many middle-producing agents still sitting on the CRM sidelines a reason to dive in.

# # #