You may know that I recently went back to managing real estate offices after about an 8 year hiatus as a consultant. A lot has changed in the intervening years and I had a lot of catching up to do!
In years past I would carry a paper list of my agents with their phone numbers and email addresses. When I went looking for that at my new brokerage I was directed to our accounting system for the list! While that solution would work, it really didn’t fit my needs. I had responsibility for two offices in two different cities and the lists were in two different parts of the accounting system. When I needed a number I often had to spend precious time looking the person up which required a computer, logins, clicks and ultimately frustration!
I don’t maintain a desk in any of my office locations (Now I am up to three locations!!!) as I am constantly on the move. I do bring my laptop everywhere, but If I needed a number I still had to deal with the cumbersome process I detailed above!
I wanted a solution that I could access from my phone or my computer and if it would be cross platform (i.e. Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android) and if my assistant could also access it, that would be great. The cherry on top would be if was also FREE!
After a fairly quick search process I found Airtable on the iPhone App Store. It was free so I gave it a try. After noodling around with it for 15 minutes I realized that I hd found my solution. Next, I fired up the computer, went to airtable.com and signed in with the credentials that I had created with my phone.
Within a very short period of time I had all of my agents from all 3 locations loaded in with their photos, what office they were in, their phone numbers and email address as well as their CalBRE numbers! Once they were in the system, they magically appeared in the Airtable app on my phone. I could have done the data entry on the phone, but I like doing that kind of work on a computer.
Now I have everyone with me all of the time as I never go anywhere without my phone. I can scroll through the list to find the agent I want (Or use the search function) tap on their phone number and the phone will call them. Or tap on their email address and the Mail app opens with their address already entered! Nirvana!
I then invited my assistant to collaborate with me so she can keep the records up to date!
I think that you as agents will also find this to be a fabulous tool for keeping track of the players in an escrow, your farm, your past clients, your past transactions … pretty much anything.
From my point of view, there really is no reason to pay for a CRM that is bloated with features that you never use or is hard to learn and hard to use.
Go check this out, I strongly recommend that you do so right now!
