Let's talk about smartlists - Taking a page out of REW's playbook

[Morgan]

As we get ready to begin work on the new custom content for REW CRM, I found myself thinking about our own business @ Real Estate Webmasters

We’re a Salesforce & Pardot sales organization and recently we’ve hired several firms that specialize in marketing automation, Salesforce & Pardot setup, and sales training to help us onboard our growing sales team and set them up for success.

As I’ve gone through the REW CRM in working with my wife @Carly’s website www.carlycarey.com I realize that so many of the processes are transferrable and in fact, with what we already have in REW CRM, we can actually do almost everything we can do in salesforce (and I’ve got some great ideas as to what to add to make it even better).

Our process is simple: We have 30 days from the time a lead is “new” to close them, otherwise, we know that our chances of closing (unless they have engaged and become an opportunity) are much lower and it makes sense to work on newer leads.

But of course, we don’t want to completely throw out the 30+ day leads, so we work very hard (inside of 30 days) to engage with the customers and disposition them as either

• An Opportunity (meaning they have told use they want to do business)
• Nurture (they are interested in doing something, but not right now < and it’s not actually BS)
• Disqualify (They never really should have been a lead and we can’t do business with them)

So what do we do? (just like Realtors do) we call them immediately, and if we don’t get ahold of them we call them several more times. We send them texts, we have them on a warm leads campaign (drip emails) and we watch the site to see when they are active. There is more but that’s the gist.

It’s basically just an “action plan” (in REW CRM terms) with the goal of dispositioning the lead.

So I’ve started to work on my wife’s “Smart Lists” to see if I can’t emulate a similar workflow for her business.

I’ve set up our smart lists in a way that she can go top to bottom (as her time permits during that day) ensuring that the most important (highest intent, most likely to close) leads are addressed.

Those high intent lists are:

• New leads today (self-explanatory)
• Active Opps (opportunities active on the site the last 7 days)
• Opportunities (people she has verified are real and wanting to transact in a 90-day timeframe)
• Working Tasks Due (leads she has placed on a new “working” action plan. More on that later)
• Viewed Homes Today (anyone who has viewed homes today)
• Inquired Today (anyone who has specifically inquired on a property today)
• New this week (new leads this week)
• Active this week (anyone who has looked at properties this week)
• inquired this week (anyone who has inquired this week)

The rest of the categories are for a different part of this conversation: But what I’d like to ask the group for is feedback on the “smart lists” in terms of what groups of leads do you think are the highest value, most important to get to if you have limited time and too many leads.

Pinging @livrealestate and @DanStewartHG as I know they are going to be all over this thread

So how about it, what are your most important “lists” to get to every day?

[Morgan]

The next part is the fun bit: (This is where you get into making a playbook)

Basically this is a set of actions or tasks that you write down and follow always in terms of working your CRM.

So for example: My first smart list is “New Leads Today”

You only get to work with them for 1 day And your goal is to disposition them as either:

A: An opportunity: You get ahold of them and their are serious and in a 90 day timeframe
B: Working: You have not made contact but don’t know if they are real or not.
C: Disqualified: This is where you put all your obvious fakes and spam.

So what would a "new leads today "workflow look like?

For me, quite simply it would be:

3 calls: First a double call (if they don’t pick up, call right back, this is an @ajhazzi trick) and the third call would be later in the day (leave a VM on this one)

Send Text to verify: Something simple like “hey is this first name”?

Send intro email (looks personal but is pre-written)

If at any time I get ahold of them, I can disposition to “Opportunity, Working, Nurture or Disqualify” but if at the end of they day I have failed to get ahold of them and did not disqualify, then I must put all leads from today to “working” so that they automatically go into that action plan.

That’s it! It’s the simplest workflow around. You only have 1 day to do it! Your volume is never going to be high (per agent) and your goal is to get folks out of that category as soon as possible.

So what to do to get them “out” of new leads today and into one of the dispositions:

Opportunity: This is where you have verified they are real, and they have intent in a reasonable timeframe (call it 90 days or less). As soon as you identify them like this you go over to their lead details page and turn them from a “lead” to a “contact” (you’re starting to sort the maybe real’s from the reals)

Now that they are “contact” they should automatically move to the active opps smart list. (Since that is what that group is: Stage = Contact Last Active = 7 days.

Working: Use this at the end of they day (every day). It’s super easy, just go to your list of new leads that you have “not” made contact with but “not” disqualified and add them to the “working” action plan.

Like so: (Note I would also add them to a “group” called working so that you can automatically trigger a campaign.

Disqualified: Needs no introduction, basically clearly garbage (if you’re a super admin you could just delete them too, but for “agents” who can’t delete leads, this is the bin) - to put them here, just add them to the group “disqualified”

And finally “Nurture” this is if you get ahold of them, but they are low intent (not inside of 90 days, verified not serious etc) - if you can find out of they are buy, sell or both. If you can’t find out, then I suggest creating a “general nurture” group as well. Also note, anyone who you had set to “working” that you did not ever get ahold of in 30 days, put them in the general nurture as well.

[Morgan]

Now let’s talk about how to set these dispositions up for success (and this is where I’d love your input as well)

For each disposition, there is going to be a serious of tasks you are likely wanting your agents to do. You’re also likely going to want to have some level of automation as well.

Here’s what I would suggest:

Create BOTH an action plan AND a campaign for each disposition.

The reason why is they have different functions:

An “action plan” is a series of “tasks” that the agent is supposed to do.
A “campaign” is an automated drip of emails that is setup after x days, on certain dates, or based on custom CRM inputs.

Let’s think about “Opportunity” for a moment.

If I have verified that my potential customer has high intent what actions might I want to take and when? (this is my action plan)

For instance, I might want to:

• List item Capture their search preferences and ensure they are on a saved search
• List item Review their CRM profile for completeness (making sure I had the right cell phone, email, social media profiles etc
• List item setup a twice a week reminder to review their search and “recommend” properties including a personalized message along with it.
• List item call them on a set schedule a few times a week (or as per their request)
• List item text them on a set schedule a few times a week (or as per their request)

Now for the “campaign” part, this is the part that can be more automated.

These are emails like:

• List item Your bio and why they would be crazy not to work with you
• List item The importance of being pre-qualified
• List item Customer safety and COVID protocols
• List item Identification before showing (Realtor Safety) policy
• List item How to use the website to never miss a deal!
• List item Check out our sold listings feature (if you have one)

That sort of thing

The idea is with the combo of the action plan tasks you have “prescribed” to the agent for the lead and the automation of the campaigns you should be touching your opportunities many times per week.

[Morgan]

Question 1: for the group: What are the most important actions your agents should be taking when they identify a “real person” with “high intent” to make sure they use that Realtor for their transaction?

Question 2: What emails (and on what cadence) would you send this new opportunity?

[livrealestate]

This is really well explained, thank you @morgan. You tagged me, so I’ll say you know we’re all about inquiries. I’d want to know who inquired today (how did you set that up?), and who has inquired in the past week. Then maybe we could filter by people who have inquired in the past 6 months AND visited the site today/this week as that would suggest a renewed interest after being away for a while. It would be great to be able to toggle “contacted today yes/no” so you could work through the list.

[Morgan]

@livrealestate

This is really well explained, thank you @morgan. You tagged me, so I’ll say you know we’re all about inquiries. I’d want to know who inquired today (how did you set that up?)

Hey Sara, I use this filter. I’ll have to check with @REW.Michael though and see if it’s an “and” or an “or” (would be cool to be able to do both) also a “but not”

[jswhite]

@Morgan This is great content. Thank you. For someone that is creating these processes, this is a great jumpstart!

[DanStewartHG]

Thanks for the tag, Morgan. There’s a lot here to consider.

In my experience, leads fall into roughly three categories:

1. Near-term intent
2. Future intent
3. No intent

Most of us are pretty good at converting leads with near-term intent. What they need/want is easily understood by us, and we respond well to people with clear objectives.

Where we tend to get fuzzy is when we don’t understand their intent, which is why I like to observe what recipients do with content over time. For example, I recently interviewed a client of mine who runs a small team in Houston. He told me that while he may not speak to a past client or lead for months at a time, he can tell by our Daily Hot Sheet who’s getting ready to do something.

@Morgan - is there a comparable function in the REW CRM? Our members have found it useful to get a daily report showing them who’s opening messages on a daily basis. For example, my client explained seeing a member of his SOI open six of his messages yesterday was a strong indicator they were getting ready to do something. Thoughts?

[livrealestate]

Also love getting notified if a user looked at a certain listing 5 or more times, or has clicked on a listing in a saved search after zero activity for a few weeks or has returned to the site after a few weeks.

[Morgan]

We should get a thread specifically going on “notify when” see what ideas shake out

[aaviles]

Need an exclude option in smartlists. If I want to see all my people who are NOT in a certain group, I need to go through everyone versus filtering the people out.

[Morgan]

It’s in the new CRM