How the right CRM can transform a real estate company

This blog unpacks the benefits of a CRM platform for a real estate firm, with statements by Phoebe Scott from Avison Young.

Real estate companies have their fair share of operational challenges. From employee time management to social media engagement, scheduling and check-ins with clients — finding a reliable solution to ensure efficiency while suiting your brand isn’t always easy. 

Thankfully, CRM is stepping in to assist. Customer Relationship Management systems allow you to centralise your data, and give your teams a single source of truth on your customers and prospects. But CRM is about a lot more than just a piece of software.

At our 2021 Grow With Inbound conference, Huble Digital’s Chief Customer Officer, Jess Packer, sat down with Phoebe Scott, the Global Director of CRM at Avison Young. They chatted about how the HubSpot CRM rollout has impacted the Avison Young real estate business over the past year. 

Watch the full interview in this video.

3 common CRM challenges for real estate companies

In real estate, firms often encounter challenges that seem to have no blanket solution. This can lead to a “Frankensystem” of technology and processes that may support your team in the short term, but make it difficult to scale and grow. 

Here are the top 3 challenges commonly encountered by real estate companies, and how the right CRM can assist.

1. Diverse team needs. Every team has different requirements from their tools and needs to know slightly different things about the prospect or customer to work effectively. While a CRM stores everything in one place, it also needs to be configurable and easy-to-use to cater to these diverse needs. 

2. Lack of data integration. Many firms do not store all their data on one platform, rather navigating between various platforms. This is inefficient and a security risk. According to Phoebe, “when you have data living in all of these different silos, you don’t know the quality of it.” This also means your data isn’t as useful as it can be.

3. Lack of data insights. You need to be able to use your data and the insights gained to better serve you and your customers. That’s why it’s important to store all of your customer and property information in one place, allowing you to send your customers relevant information at key points in their customer journey.

The most powerful aspect of a CRM is that it offers your business a holistic view of prospects and customers. This single-handedly works to solve many of the most common challenges that real estate companies face, but is also key to your future success. Read more in our blog post, Why a single customer view is essential in 2022.

How the HubSpot CRM has benefitted Avison Young

CRM systems come with a plethora of benefits, but some are easier to onboard than others. According to Phoebe, Avison Young chose HubSpot because it was easy to learn — boosting chances of effective adoption across teams. 

Here are some of its key benefits to their company, and how it could benefit yours:

1. Faster response time and improved customer service. With centralised data, agents can draw up a prospect or customer’s files and view their needs within a matter of seconds. This helps them respond faster and improve the quality of their response, leaving more customers happy.

2. Data-driven decisions. With the introduction of HubSpot, Avison Young now has metrics on how well they did in last year’s vertical; how fast they’re growing; and how competitive they are. This allows them to make data-driven decisions when planning their future strategies and campaigns.

3. Streamlining and scheduling. CRM systems make it easier to schedule events and make sure there aren’t any clashes. This streamlining helps employees feel in control of their day to day. 

4. Centralised database. With all your customer data on a centralised database, it's easier to manage team workloads. You can easily reassign tasks between team members while safeguarding against task duplication.

5. Enriched leads. With all resources on one hub, prospect and customer information stays up-to-date and can be passed onto the sales or customer support, if needed. 

According to Phoebe, using a CRM platform is about “building your technology to amplify your team’s expertise.” A CRM should be designed to suit your team and the requirements they need to do their day-to-day work. 

Related: Wonder if additional help for your firm is worth it as you switch to CRM? Here’s why you should hire a HubSpot Elite partner for your CRM project.

How Huble Digital can help

At the Grow with Inbound conference, Phoebe shared that Avison Young needed their partners to listen and adapt with their company and that HubSpot — in partnership with Huble Digital — was the only option that offered this. 

And we’d love to do the same with you. As with Avison Young, we specialise in helping real estate companies streamline and build strong foundations for sustainable growth, without compromising their forward momentum. 

Want to know more about how our CRM solutions could help your company take the next step? Simply set up a call with our team and we can discuss relevant case studies within your industry and how we could potentially help.