Christina Scannapiego
Director, Content Marketing
The secret to real estate success (hint: It’s communication)
Want to know the secret to long-term success in real estate? Sure, virtual walkthroughs, mobile apps and an eye for minimal staging are all important. But the real secret for a thriving real estate business is superb team communication.
Whether you’re a real estate agency looking to expand, or a brokerage firm hoping to recruit and retain talent, effective internal communication is key, and a real estate CRM can help.
Here’s our take on getting internal communications right in the real estate biz.
You can’t put a price on communication
Your real estate game is only as strong as your internal communication. This is especially true for brokerages and agencies with multiple locations and dozens of agents. Even though real estate has historically been a lone-wolf industry, the number of real estate teams is growing.
- 26% of Realtors are now part of a team
- 39% of Realtors who aren’t on a team have considered joining one
Teams just make sense because today’s consumers expect their real estate agents to have a wide range of knowledge and specialties.
Working as a team allows agents to keep up with the changing landscape and emerging technology and meet consumer demand for constant support throughout the transactions. Plus, when it comes to growing outside of a geographic area, expansion teams are the way to go.
Communication is a critical component to making these teams work, and studies show the industry hasn’t quite figured it out yet.
- It takes the average real estate company 15 hours to respond to a lead. But today’s consumers expect a response within five minutes!
- Companies that follow up with leads within that five-minute window are 21X more effective than those who reach out after 30 minutes
- The chances of qualifying a lead after five minutes drop by 80%
Even more shocking, 48% of leads were never responded to at all. So, almost half of all real estate leads slip through the cracks due to a lack of communication and expediency.
What’s happening here? How can leaders improve the communication within their teams to make sure things like this don’t happen?
4 tips for better communication in real estate teams
As a leader of a real estate team, there are a few ways to improve internal communication:
1. Encourage active communication: No more passive listening or exchanging monologues! For a team to communicate effectively, everyone has to be able to talk, listen, and feel heard and understood. If no one’s ever really listening, then things are bound to fall through the cracks. Encourage team members to take notes, and, if possible, consider implementing a no cell phone rule during important meetings (have an assistant cover phones in the other room for any burning issues).
2. Focus on clarity and transparency: There can’t be any beating around the bush in a team. Speak clearly and be transparent about why you’re doing things. Trust is critical in a team environment, and clarity and transparency are how to build it. Give constructive feedback in the moment instead of waiting to talk to an agent about an issue at the “right” time – which often ends up being never.
3. Create an environment that allows for failure: No one wants to make a mistake. But if failure isn’t allowed in a team environment, everyone will switch into self-preservation mode really quickly. Before you know it, you’re all pointing fingers, and no problems are ever actually solved by blaming others. Instead, make it okay to fail, so the team can pick each other up, fix any issues, and move forward quickly.
4. Streamline the communication: It’s important to clearly define action plans and internal processes to keep everyone on the same page. These processes should build in regular team communication through meetings (when necessary) and quick check-in calls in between. Make sure everyone knows how to easily access each other, the partners, the clients, and the corresponding information. This is where a real estate CRM comes in handy, but which one is the best?
Keep your team smart with integrated solutions
Well, we might be a little biased, but we think Copper is a fantastic CRM for real estate businesses to help streamline communication.
One of our real estate clients, Reali, faced challenges tracking their internal communications. Before integrating a CRM, they used several different technologies and communication channels to manage deals and talk to each other.
Using Copper as their real estate CRM has transformed their internal communications and helped their processes run more smoothly. (Learn more about Reali’s results here).
And it’s not just Reali; real estate agents who use Copper:
- Save 13 hours every week
- Sell 2 additional listings every month
- Increase their response time by 40%
- And land 4 additional clients per agent every single month
Copper offers immediate and complete visibility across team collaborations. Plus, it works well on-the-go, helping teams communicate to keep deals moving smoothly and leads from slipping through the cracks.
Ready to start enhancing your real estate team’s internal communication? Try out our 4 tips above and give Copper a free spin for 14 days to see how streamlined communication transforms your real estate business.
