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Day 5 - Set Up Your CRM

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Day 5: Set Up Your CRM

Welcome to Day 5!

Today, you will learn how to set up the basics of your CRM, so you can easily manage your contacts and keep them organized.

Getting your CRM set up will make sure you never leave a contact behind.

 

Create Tags

Now that you have a way to attract and capture leads, you need to ensure you have a way to manage the relationship with your leads, the current deals in your pipeline, and all of the other people you will come in contact with in your day to day operation.

Spreadsheets and notepads just don’t cut it these days. You need to run your business with a CRM (Client Relationship Management) tool, which is the modern day equivalent of a rolodex with a ton of bells and whistles.

A CRM is a tool that allows you to manage the relationship with your contacts. Whether they’re new leads, existing clients, tenants, cash buyers, realtors, contractors, etc.

Anyone you “do business with” needs to be in your CRM.

And REI BlackBook has the industry leading CRM built right into our platform.

If you’d like to learn more about the REI BlackBook CRM, feel free to watch this short video.

There are a few important elements of your CRM that you should understand, so you can successfully track and manage your contacts.

The first are tags and sources.

A tag is a way to identify a specific type of contact, and you can have multiple tags for any contact. For example, in the image below, three tags have been applied to this contact: Seller Lead, Absentee Owner, and PPC Lead.

Tags are also an easy way to filter through your contacts to find a specific contact, or group of contacts.

They can also help you distinguish where a contact is in your marketing funnel.

 

Below are the basic tags you should add to your account:

  • Seller Lead Offer Made
  • Appointment Scheduled Contract Signed
  • Appointment Complete Closed Deal

 

You can set up other tags to use, but those six are the ones you need to help you track your leads through the sales process.

It is important to tag every new contact as they enter your CRM. If they come through a phone call, or opt in to a web form on your website, the process of tagging contacts can be automated using callflows and workflows. You can learn more about tags by watching the videos linked in the checklist at the end of this chapter.

 

Create Sources

A source indicates the source of the lead. In the example below, this lead came from a Google Ad. You can only apply one source to a contact.

 

Create Custom Fields 

After you’ve set up your tags and sources, you will need to set up the custom contact fields.

Contact fields, simply put, are the data points you are collecting from your leads.

You can create an unlimited number of custom contact fields. The fields you create will depend on the type of leads and contacts you are working with.

For example, a probate lead, an absentee owner lead, a pre-foreclosure lead, and a cash buyer will all have different data points that will need to be collected.

 

Create Contact Tabs

Once you have all the custom fields created, you can create Contact Tabs to group the different data points together.

Contact tabs are a simple way to keep the custom contact fields organized for each contact record.

You also have the option to add any tabs to any contact record. It wouldn’t make sense for a contact that is a seller lead to have the same information as a contact who is a buyer.

So you can add a seller tab to the contact who is a seller lead, and a buyer tab to the contact who is a buyer. One thing to note is every contact record will have a default details tab with

basic information like name, phone number, email address, etc.

 

Import Contacts

Now that you have the basic foundation to keep your CRM organized, it’s time to import your existing contact list.

If you do not have any existing contacts, you can skip this section and head straight to the checklist at the end of this chapter, so you can get right to work getting acquainted with the CRM in your new REI BlackBook account.

If you are importing contacts, the contact file will need to be in a .csv format. When you start the import process, you will be prompted to map the fields from the .csv file to the corresponding contact field in your REI BlackBook CRM.

Now that you have contacts in your CRM, you have the ability to filter through your contacts based on their name, if they’re associated with a property, or by tags. That is the simple way you can search through your CRM.

You can also build and use more advanced search filters to find a more specific segment of your contact list.

There are a lot of options for advanced filters.

 

You can search by:

  • Name
  • Tags
  • Date the contact was added
  • Campaign tracking fields
  • Property filters
  • Any of the custom contact fields you’ve created

 

Create Saved Searches

You can also save the advanced filters you create, and you may want to do this if it’s a search you use often, or if you’re using the searches to find some metrics.

For example, you may want to know how many probate leads that you’ve generated in the last 30 days.

You can do this by running an advanced filter by using the date the contact was added, and the tag probate seller lead. You would then save this filter if this is a metric you track regularly.

 

Day 5 Checklist

If you need assistance accomplishing each checklist item, click on the support articles.

Thank You!

We appreciate you taking the time to accomplish Day 5 of the Getting Started Guide. If you are ready for Day 6, click here.

For questions, contact us at support@reiblackbook.com. 

 

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