If your team isn’t directly reaching out to people to try to connect with them, all the fancy AI and tools in the world aren’t going to help you turn more leads into closings.
The key tools to drive production on your team are already at your fingertips in your Smart Lists, Smart List Collections, and with Smart List Zero. Use our tools and guides to help your team to understand and utilize these tools so that they are set up to reach out to the right person at the right time, with the right information to increase your chances of winning the trust and business of those looking to buy or sell in your community.
Watch the below video for a run down of Follow Up Boss Smart Lists, suggestions on how to effectively group them into collections, and how to help your team achieve Smart List Zero!
Want a proven Smart List and accountability system that works? Check out our FUB System Builds and other services here and we will do all the heavy lifting for you!
We have three ways to help you level up your Smart List game this week!
🚀 Follow Up Boss’ Smart List Collections Follow Up Boss has made an incredible new leap in helping us organize our Smart Lists! Smart List Collections allows you to group related Smart Lists to allow you to structure your team’s work and manage your leads more efficiently.
🚀 Watch our new YouTube Playlist of our deep dives on how to use your Smart Lists to convert more leads into transactions by clicking Play All below.
🚀 Get to know our new Follow Up Boss Companion app, Smart List Zero, to identify your top performers at a glance, monitor your lead reassignments in real time, and turn your FUB data into real converting action. Watch the video below!
A well-utilized CRM is the backbone of an efficient, high-performing team. It’s one thing to have the latest tools and tech, but convincing your team to embrace it and be excited to use it is another ball game. Success starts with buy-in and getting your team excited about using a CRM is all about positioning it as a tool for them—not just the business. Show them the value, make it easy to use, and celebrate every step forward. With these strategies, your CRM will go from a “necessary evil” to the MVP of your team’s success.
Here are some steps to help you overcome resistance and get your team fully on board with using your CRM and seeing the vision of how it will benefit them.
Start with the Why: Show the Big Picture
People resist change when they don’t understand the “why” behind it. Begin by explaining how the CRM isn’t just another tool—it’s a game-changer for their productivity, lead conversion, and client relationships and be sure to ensure that you are explaining how it will benefit the individual agent, not the company as a whole. Personal benefits are much more motivating than being told to use something so that the company can make its goals.
Try this: Share success stories from other teams or agents who saw real results by using a CRM. Highlight how it can make their daily grind easier and more rewarding.
Choose or Optimize the Right CRM
If the CRM feels clunky or doesn’t align with your team’s workflow, resistance is inevitable. Make sure the platform you choose is intuitive, integrates seamlessly with existing tools, and offers mobile functionality for agents on the go. If you feel as though you are under-utilizing all that your CRM has to offer, as a trusted advisor to give you some guidance or overhaul your system for you.
Try this: Involve key team members in customizing the CRM. When they feel like they have a say in the process, they’re more likely to embrace the tool. If you need a second set of eyes on your system, we offer a free assessment of your account that can inform you of where to look to make improvements!
Make Training Practical, Regular, and Hands-On
Simply saying, “Here’s a new tool—go figure it out,” is a recipe for frustration. Provide clear, engaging training that demonstrates how to use the CRM in real-world scenarios. Training once isn’t going to be effective, ensure that you are regularly covering the various ways to use your CRM so that everyone stays fresh on the process.
Try this: Host live demos and walk through everyday tasks like adding a lead, setting reminders, or tagging contacts. Provide cheat sheets or short tutorial videos for quick reference and one place that houses all the CRM rules and training so that they are set up to help themselves should they get stuck on what to do.
Lead by Example
As a leader, your actions set the tone. If you’re actively using the CRM and showcasing its benefits, your team is more likely to follow suit. This will also help you discover challenges before they have a wide effect and discover new ways to identify the hottest leads within your CRM.
Try this: Regularly highlight wins that come from using the CRM. For instance, share how an automated follow-up helped you close a deal or how the database streamlined client outreach.
Gamify Adoption
Competition always spices things up and, for us real estate nerds, it seems to motivate a lot of us. Turn CRM adoption into a game by rewarding those who engage with the platform consistently.
Try this: Tie rewards to activities that drive results, such as completing tasks, updating contact info, or tracking follow-ups in the CRM. Offer prizes for milestones like “Most Contacts Added This Month” or “Fastest Lead Response Time.” Create a leaderboard to showcase top performers.
Address Resistance with Empathy
Some team members may feel intimidated or overwhelmed by the CRM. Instead of pushing harder, listen to their concerns and offer support.
Try this: Acknowledge the learning curve and celebrate small wins along the way. Building confidence will go a long way toward breaking down resistance. Schedule one-on-one sessions to troubleshoot challenges or answer questions as they may be reluctant to speak up in front of the group. Frame the CRM as a tool to support them, not replace them.
Make It a Habit
The best way to ensure CRM adoption is to integrate it into your team’s daily workflow. The more you talk about how to use it, how it works, and how it benefits the agent, the better. By creating universal rules and a CRM Handbook for your agents to follow, you will help them build a strong foundation of habits to use for prospecting to grow their business and yours!
Try this: Set non-negotiables, like logging every new lead into the CRM. When the system becomes part of the routine, it feels less like “extra work.” Encourage agents to start their day by checking tasks and leads in the CRM. Build CRM updates into team meetings and one-on-ones.
Evaluate and Adjust
CRM adoption isn’t a one-and-done effort. Regularly assess how the tool is being used and gather feedback from your team. If something isn’t working, tweak it or consult with those in the know to find a better solution.
Try this: Conduct quarterly “CRM tune-ups” to ensure the system is aligned with your team’s evolving needs and goals. This will help to remind everyone of the basics and ensure that bad habits aren’t having a chance to form, leaving you with clean, reliable data that you can trust to help you find the next person to help buy or sell a home.
Data integrity isn’t just about managing a clean CRM—it’s about making better decisions, building stronger relationships, and staying competitive in a rapidly evolving market. By prioritizing your data’s accuracy, completeness, and reliability, you can confidently guide your real estate business in the right direction. Whether it’s for pricing a property, analyzing market trends, or tracking client interactions, having accurate and reliable data is crucial for leaders who want to make informed decisions. Yet, data integrity is often overlooked, leading to costly mistakes and missed opportunities.
Here’s how maintaining high data integrity can significantly impact your decision-making and ultimately your success:
Accurate Client Insights for Better Sales Strategies
A CRM filled with outdated or incorrect information can lead to ineffective client outreach and poor decision-making. Data accuracy ensures you have a clear view of client preferences, purchase histories, and interactions. This can improve targeting efforts and enable you to tailor your strategies based on reliable insights.
Improved Operational Efficiency
Whether you’re tracking listings, client requests, or marketing campaigns, a clean CRM system ensures seamless internal operations and communication, allowing many people to work on their part of a transaction, without duplicating efforts or frustrating the client with multiple requests for the same thing. When data is reliable, tasks can be automated more effectively, and team members can collaborate without worrying about misinformation.
Enhanced Client Trust
Clients rely on your expertise to guide them through critical transactions and when done successfully, you gain trust and clients for life. If they realize your recommendations are based on incorrect data, that trust will erode. By focusing on data integrity, you demonstrate professionalism and reliability, leading to stronger, long-term relationships with clients.
Accurate Forecasting and Planning
Predicting market shifts, client demands, and sales growth depends heavily on having consistent and accurate data. Data integrity plays a major role in forecasting because it provides the foundation for creating realistic, actionable plans. With faulty data, your predictions could be off, leading to ineffective strategies and financial losses.
The garbage in, garbage out saying is true in all cases, but especially so when it comes to putting information within your CRM. If you can’t rely on the information that is being put in your CRM, you can’t rely on the accuracy of reporting, insights, alerts, smart lists, or literally everything as my ten-year-old would say. Making consistent efforts to create and maintain data integrity within your organization will help you set yourself apart from the competition!
Here’s what data integrity should look like within your database.
Accurate Client Information Taking the time to collect the proper contact information, preferences, and communication history ensures that you are supplementing whatever your technology is auto-collecting from their activities. Having this allows you to ensure that you are staying timely with your services as well as personalizing the content and conversation wherever possible to build rapport, connection, and trust. Take notes and pay attention!
Efficient Transaction Management If your CRM reflects a transaction’s true status and all communications then everyone within your organization can collaborate to take action to ensure a high level of service and communication. Being able to rely on this information ensures that fewer balls get dropped and increases the chances your transaction makes it to closing.
Compliance with Regulations Data privacy and communication laws are something that should be taken seriously. If your CRM has a high level of data integrity, it helps you to stay compliant and protects sensitive client information from breaches.
Improved Decision-Making The more information you have about what your client wants, needs, and why, the better decisions you can make in advising them. Just as we rely on the data for market trends, MLS information, and property values to be correct, our own internal information needs to be accurate as well.
The June 1 mark has passed and you are likely seeing changes within your inbox with how emails are delivered and facing some challenges with your attempts to reach your audience. Never fear, Dear Reader! We have the tools and strategies to help you stay informed and confident in this new territory and keep your computer out of the dumpster. Use the links and strategies below to learn more about what is going on and how to combat those ever-evolving spam filters from blocking your valuable information from reaching its destination.
Re-authenticate your custom domain. Yes, even if you’ve already done this! Small shifts have happened since the February calls to authenticate your custom domain and it may have altered the authentication without your knowledge. Pop back in and make sure that this is done properly, and our friends at Follow Up Boss have updated the process to make it even easier for you to do!
Make sure you are considering all strategies available to you to fight spam blockers. This includes reviewing your content for keywords that may be flagged and regularly reviewing your numbers to make small tweaks that improve your credibility scores. You can consult our guide here!
Segment your database to ensure that you are only sending messages to the right audience. This means to separate your contacts using stages, tags, custom fields, and Smart Lists so that you can better understand who is receiving your content and for what reason. We teamed up with Follow Up Boss to teach you how to do this during this video.
Search and learn about implementing email authentication protocols like Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) which add an extra layer of security to your emails.
Check your business registration within Follow Up Boss. Ensure all your information is up to date and you have a physical address listed. If that is missing it will also affect your deliverability rates. Use this link to learn more about this feature within FUB.
Your tech stack includes any digital tools or software that you use to power your business. There’s an offer on every corner to solve all of your problems and it can be hard to sort out what truly solves your pain point or is just an exciting new thing to try.
In addition to your budget, there are a lot of things to consider when making these decisions. In the below video, we walk you through the decision-making process and offer strategies to use to ensure that you are making the best decisions for the health of your team and your wallet.
We also offer you a list of our Tech Stack Recommendations. These are tools that our clients all across North America use to run successful teams that we have a great experience with and would recommend to others to use. Each tool is linked to their website so that you can learn more or set up a demo!
Enjoy!
⭐️ Special Note for our Amazing Clients: Please chat with your Account Manager before signing up for any new integrations or tools so that we can give you insights as to whether or not you truly need something and we can also likely save you money!
It’s the worst feeling to hear that your phone number is coming up as spam. You aren’t spam, you’re calling because you’re the best person available to help this person buy or sell their home in a 100-mile radius! How dare they do that to you?! Well, they dare and they are doing it to the best of us right and left! While there is no way to completely eliminate this challenge, and if I’m wrong please reply to this and share with me so I can learn, there are some strategies you can use to reduce your chances of getting the big S on your number.
📱 Avoid cold-texting or cold-calling leads. Ensure that they have opted in to receive these types of communications from you.
📱 If someone has opted in for texts, send them your contact information right out of the gate by way of introduction, including your phone number. Their phone’s technology will likely pick up that information to be someone they may know rather than something it should block as spam. For example: “Hey! I just received your message about my listing at 123 Beach Street. I’ll be happy to send you more information on that home and others like it! – Kris McDonagh, Amplified Real Estate, 555-555-5555”
📱 Add the number you use to prospect to your phone’s v-card, your email signature, social media, and website. By having your phone number readily available online when searched you will improve the credibility of its connection to you, a real person, and one hell of a real estate agent.
📱 Request for your new contact to save your contact information to their phone. Most will, just in case you turn out to be somebody they do need, and it will increase the chances that they will answer the phone the next time you call to help them further.
📱 Check the reporting within Follow Up Boss to check for red flags that signal to carriers that you are spam. You want to avoid having too many calls that don’t connect, unanswered texts, and a high number of opt-out responses. Reflect on your prospecting efforts and adjust so that your efforts are resulting in longer quality calls and responses to your texts. To find this: Click Reporting in the top bar, then Calls and filter from there.
📱Research and test any new phone number you get before you order anything with the number printed on it or begin using it widely in case it was used previously for something you don’t want to be associated with or it has already been marked as Spam.
📱 To clear the spam flag from your Follow Up Boss number, visit https://www.freecallerregistry.com/fcr/#submitform and fill out the form. You can include your team’s numbers on the form and submit it once for the whole team as well.
When the form asks for the “Service Provider,” type “Twilio.” Once you submit the form, the carriers will review it and reset the Spam label for any numbers that were flagged. Each carrier’s spam provider will email them as they respond to the form. It’s worth noting that numbers can be flagged as spam again after being cleared, so be sure you are following FUB’s calling and texting best practices to avoid being flagged as spam again.
Example:
Phone Number: Enter FUB number
Click Send Verification Code.
I believe my calls are: Real Estate
Contact Name: First Last
Company Phone: (555) 555-5555
Email: name@business.com
Note: the verification code will go to this email
Calling Company Name: Your Business Name, LLC
Calling Company Address: 123 Main Street, Anywhere, US 12345
Calling Company URL: www.businessname.com/
Service Provider(s): Twilio
If you have any other tips that you’d like to share with the community, reply to this email and we will add them to our guide and give you credit!
The good news is that you are having this challenge because you are doing the work and calling the leads! Keep going, continuity is the secret to success.
