Real estate automation software to succeed in buyer management
For many areas across Australia, the property commentary has now shifted to what is now described as a “Buyers Market”.
Buyers now have more properties to choose from and will take decidedly longer to make their decision to purchase.
What does this mean for agents?
Agents will now need to improve their services and communication with buyers and provide a more efficient and professional service, so improve their “Buyer Management”.
More time and effort will need to be spent trying to get buyers to inspect properties, submit offers, ensure finance is approved and follow up the transaction through to settlement for their vendors.
How can automation assist in this “buyers market”?
Below is an example workflow sequence to make buyer management easier and ensure you are doing everything you can to best promote your vendor’s property.
What is outlined can all be done manually, but if you can automate some or all of the ten strategies, this will allow more time for direct contact with motivated and qualified buyers.
For principals, setting up this workflow ensures that every buyer that makes contact with your office receives a minimum level of service. These automations also support your sales team so they spent more time “on the phones” – something everyone wants.
For agents, you have a duty to your vendors (especially in this tough market) to promote their property as best and as often as you can. When you implement the automated strategies, you will save time and be able to perform more “dollar productive activities”.
The automations listed below are relying on the system to perform the communications and not an individual who can forget, be too busy, call in sick or just not do the work. Furthermore, the automations free up valuable time so we can spend more time talking to buyers and sellers.
1. New Listing Alert based – Pre Launch – Matched on Buyer Preferences
Once your property is Live and ready to go to market, try holding off sending to the major portals for a day or two and let your Automated Property Alerts do their work.
Your real estate CRM should be automatically sending your property to all buyers who previously enquired on similar properties. You never know, you might have the “right “buyer already in your database and you can save your Vendor and you the expense of advertising on the major portals. Just make sure you read the email reports to identify those who clicked on the property.
2. Enquiry Capture with Auto Response
Your CRM provider should be able to capture all your incoming enquiries from the portals and your website straight into your database.
Once your enquiry is captured, setup an auto response email with a “Thank You” for your enquiry message along with answers to all the standard questions you receive in those emails. Your auto email content can include the Price Guide, Next Open Time, Rental Expectation and a link back to the listing on your website.
3 – Group Management – moving Buyers to Hot, Warm, Cold Groups
Once you have qualified your buyers motivation and likely purchase time frame you can add them to a an appropriate contact group. Example, Hot, Warm & Cold Buyers. The next automation is a series of “follow ups” or “trails” of touch points.
Hot Buyers might receive an automated weekly TXT message seeing if they have found the right property yet and a few days later a follow up phone call.
Warm Buyers might only receive your Weekly Property Update which is automatically sent – see next point.
Cold Buyers might only receive your monthly email newsletter.
First Home Buyers might receive a weekly series of Hints & Tips on what to expect when going through the buying process. Your automated emails can help educate this group and become the trusted adviser during the biggest purchase of their life.
4. Weekly Buyer Update including OFI Times
On most weeks, would you agree that you have at least 1 property to sell? If so, then you should be letting all your buyers know that the property is available.
Setup your CRM software to automatically send a weekly email to your buyer groups with all properties available for sale and include any properties that will be Open For Inspection. You could also include recently sold properties that help educate today’s buyers on price expectations.
5. Open For Inspection TXT reminder
Buyers that have been captured in your CRM are normally allocated to the property they enquired on. Once you add an Open Time, your CRM can then automatically Send a TXT reminder 2 days prior to the Open Time to all buyers who have enquired or recently inspected the property.
There is nothing worse than sitting at an open home with no-one coming through. However, setting up this automation will ensure you’ve explored every opportunity to get your buyers to the open.
6. Inspection Follow Up Sequence
Once you have recorded your inspection attendees, setup an automated workflow of follow ups. The sequence could be as follows;
- Step 1 – 2 hours after adding the inspection. An automated “thank you TXT”, is sent. This goes a long way to building your relationship with the buyers.
- Step 2 – The buyer is automatically added to Auto Property Alerts + Hot Buyer + Weekly Buyer Email Group.
- Step 3 – 2 days later. A Reminder Phone Call Task to follow up (unfortunately the call can’t be automated) to see if the property is of interest is added.
- Step 4 – 1 day later. Another automatic email asking for thoughts or feedback on the property is sent.
7. Auction Reminder – 5 days prior
If you are running Auctions, setup your CRM to automatically send an Auction Reminder TXT to all people who have enquired or inspected the property. This TXT can help ensure that you have a good attendance at the Auction.
8. Price Reduction Alert
In this market Price Reductions will become more common. Buyers who weren’t interested at one price level start to become more interested as the price is reduced. Setup an automated email and TXT to be sent to all people who enquired or inspected the property. Any response to these messages will identify those who are now interested at this new price point.
9. Offer Received Alert
When an offer is received, send a automated courtesy TXT to all people who have inspected the property. The message only needs to say you have an offer on the property and if you are also interested in submitting an offer to let you know.
This keeps interested parties informed and saves you time having to ring them all and have the same conversation. The TXT will draw out of your inspections only those that are serious about the purchase.
10. Buyer Alert – Property Sold
Once you have successfully negotiated a sale, as a courtesy, send an automated email to all buyers who enquired or inspected the property. This helps inform the market of what prices are being achieved and highlights your success at achieving the sale.
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