Commercial Investment Real Estate is the magazine of the CCIM Institute, the leading provider of commercial real estate education. CIRE covers market trends, current developments, and business strategies within the commercial real estate field.
Issue link: http://cire.epubxp.com/i/128835
MORE ENTREPRENEUR TOOLS Project and Contact Management Asana – An online shared task list for teams. Free for teams of up to 30 people. Contactually – Categorize contacts and set follow-up reminders. Boomerang – An email client add-on that temporarily stores messages and returns them to the user's inbox at a set time and date. HighRise – A simple CRM from the company that makes Basecamp. Backup and Cloud Storage Carbonite – File backup and cloud-storage service for small businesses and individuals. SugarSync – Similar to Dropbox, but it allows users to sync any folder on their hard drives. Google Drive – View more than 30 file types, and collaborate on native Google Drive files. SkyDrive – Offers cloud storage, collaboration, and integration with Microsoft Office products. and moved into commercial real estate in 1995. His ofce is still small, but business is growing. Polson attributes the growth to economic factors. "I am getting considerable interest from investors in syndications. High-net-worth individuals had substantial cash on the sidelines and are now looking for quality investments," he says. Te fact that he spends about 30 percent of each day on marketing might have something to do with that growth too. "My blog and website are a great means of grabbing a prospect's attention," Polson says. He uses HootSuite, a social media dashboard, to share his blog posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. His content marketing strategy extends to CCIM MailBridge, where he shares his blog posts through CCIM Institute's members-only email distribution list. Polson also sends a monthly email to prospects using MailChimp, an email marketing service, which integrates with his customer relationship management system. Grout uses Emma, a MailChimp competitor, for his email marketing. Pricing for both services is based on the number of addresses on the distribution list. Measuring the return on investment in digital marketing is an elusive goal for Polson, as it is for large corporations, but he isn't too concerned. He says his blog and social media marketing supplement traditional marketing eforts. "As I market myself through other means, especially in-person contact, my online presence is used to provide additional information on who I am, how I work, and my major presence in the market," Polson says. Closing the Sales Cycle Te feature sheet of most customer relationship management systems reads like a job description for an administrative assistant, marketing coordinator, and an operations administrator. Te ability to outsource various job functions to a piece of sofware is what makes a CRM system so important to independent commercial real estate professionals. Wimberly estimates that about a quarter of his time is spent on client relationship development, and much of that time is spent using REA9, CCIM.com his CRM system. He uses it to communicate with his team, contact prospective clients, and follow up with existing clients. By having all his contacts in one place, he's able to automate processes and remember important action items. "I get a reminder of who I need to follow up with that day," Wimberly says. "And I log the conversations." Integration was an important feature for Polson when he selected his CRM, Solve360. Te cloud-based system connects to Google Apps, which Polson uses to manage contacts, documents, and email. By integrating the two systems, his client interactions, including phone calls and text messages, are automatically logged in the CRM. "I can track all communication for a particular listing in my CRM and give clients access to specifc data so they can view my progress in real-time," Polson says. Data in the Cloud With cloud-based systems, business owners don't have to worry about application hosting, troubleshooting, and development. And with a data connection, they can access business information anywhere. "Having constant access to all of your prospects, customers, and deals at all times and communicating with them as efectively and efciently as technology will allow is the key to increasing your productivity," Grout says. Te growth of cloud-based applications has coincided with the evolution in mobile hardware. Smartphones and tablets allow users to connect to project management, fle sharing, and CRM systems away from the ofce. "I use an iPhone, iPad, and laptop, but the iPad has been an extension of my life," Wimberly says. "I use it every single day to access apps like UPAD, Dropbox, and Evernote." Individual hardware and application preferences vary, but commercial real estate professionals who use these tools have the same goal: Provide outstanding client service. "Te more customer relationships you can create and manage with less time and efort, the more deals you will close more quickly," Grout says. Dennis LaMantia is interactive marketing manager at CCIM Institute. May | June | 2013 33