IN THIS ISSUE: Learn how commercial brokers recently added tens of thousands of commission dollars to their pipeline with the smart application of CRM technology

We’ve all been there--you leave your Outlook open all day and just react to inbound email messages. Pretty soon, you’re living inside of Outlook and beginning to neglect the daily activities that guarantee the continued success of your business. Outlook is great for simply managing email but is notoriously weak at managing relationships with your clients, prospecting for new clients and tracking valuable property information. For this task you need to use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in conjunction with Outlook because, after all, commercial real estate is a relationship business.

CRM systems allow you to gather and retain detailed information about your clients (or just as important, prospects who will later become your clients) in order to help you build meaningful relationships with them so they want to do business with you in the future. A good CRM system allows you to use information collected for marketing and relationship building on a single contact basis or by grouping contacts based on a common interest such as a tenant space requirement. Commercial real estate specific CRM systems go a step further by storing commercial property data which gives you the ability to link people to the properties that they own, sold, lease, lend to or manage. This type of organization helps you make sense of the deluge of information that crosses your desk every single day. “I switched to Realhound’s CRM in April. It has increased my efficiency by a factor of five and I am on target to boost my income by 25%”, said Alex Johnson, CCIM® and incoming president of the North Texas CCIM Chapter.

Outlook lacks any features specific to commercial real estate. All good commercial real estate specific CRM systems contain features that incorporate some of the most laborious tasks found in your business which makes your job easier. Wouldn’t you like to create a listing marketing report for your client in under two minutes or manage electronic documents such as letters, proposals, spreadsheets and LOI’s? What about creating a lease vs. buy, property valuation, rent & sold or available/lease comparison report? Even the simplest real estate tasks are far beyond the capabilities of Outlook. “I used Outlook because it was convenient but I knew that I needed something more to grow my business. I bought RealHound at the beginning of June and, thirty days later, I am comfortable telling you that this program will add at least twenty-five thousand dollars to my bottom line just from the deals that I have recently added to my pipeline”, added David Hall, managing broker at Fursee & Hall Realty in Seattle, WA.

Microsoft intentionally designed Outlook as an email tool with a personal calendar and simple address book. It was never intended to be used in a real business environment as an all encompassing CRM system. A true CRM system greatly enhances Outlook’s capabilities by only utilizing it as an email management tool while housing the rest of your data within one seamlessly integrated application that is available in any form, from any device and at any time. “RealHound Live!” is the best choice for a commercial real estate CRM system because it was designed by some of the best commercial real estate brokers in the business and it will help you make money. Learn more at http://www.realhound.com/Pages/RealhoundInfo.aspx