Prospect-Driven Leasing: Why a CRM Alone Isn’t Enough to Manage Your Portfolio
The rental market is experiencing a Two-Year Streak of downward-trending rental prices. That means every prospect who visits your listing page or calls your leasing office is more important than ever.
Leasing agents feel the pressure to follow up with every lead and ensure each prospect has the best experience possible. When your days are spent running from showing to showing and fielding an endless stream of inquiries, that’s easier said than done.
But what if you could put prospects in the driver’s seat? By giving them control over their leasing experience, you’re making the process not only more convenient for them but also more efficient for you.
You’re probably already using customer relationship software (CRM) to manage your portfolio. But a CRM alone isn’t enough to deliver a prospect-driven leasing experience.
Here’s why property managers who want to stand out in today’s competitive market use more than just a CRM for renting their properties.
Automation Makes Communication Effortless
CRMs give you the tools to manage your prospects, but the right automation will take those tasks off your plate completely while delivering convenience for prospective renters.
Self-Scheduling
Scheduling a showing is usually the prospect’s first experience with your company. Make it a convenient one with self-scheduling.
Self-scheduling ensures each prospect receives a consistent experience, even if it’s outside of business hours. And it lets prospects do their scheduling when it’s convenient for them.
Automated Communication
Automating your communication means you…
- Never miss an opportunity to follow up with a prospect; and
- Keep them engaged in your leasing process
Take Go Gopher Rentals, a Minneapolis-based property rental agency, as an example. The Go Gopher team was struggling to find the time in their hectic days to properly nurture their leads, so they gave ShowMojo’s Dynamic Prospect Nurturing system a try.
In just two months, ShowMojo automatically notified 527 of Go Gophers’ prospects about new on-market listings and 78 about rent reductions. ShowMojo also sent automatic emails cancelling 95 showings for listings that had gone off-market and sharing details on Go Gophers’ similar listings.
All of this communication happened without Go Gopher’s agents lifting a finger. Plus, prospects received the information they needed to keep moving along in the leasing process.
Here are three ways you can nurture leads by sending automatic emails or text messages:
- New Listing Announcements: When a new listing goes live, notify prospects who have recently inquired on similar listings.
- Rent Reduction Announcements: When you reduce rent on a listing, alert prospects who have inquired on the listing.
- Off-Market Announcements: When a listing goes off market, email each prospect who inquired about the listing and notify them about your similar on-market listings.
Automation boosts your CRM’s capabilities, and it takes tasks off your to-do list.
Live Support Delivers Answers Whenever Prospects Need Them
We often hear the same feedback from customers who are interested in trying ShowMojo: They have too much work to do. If just one agent on their team is out sick, operations are upended.
Live Answer Support can save your team time by taking repetitive calls, like scheduling inquiries, off their plates. This frees your people from mundane back-and-forth communication so they can focus on the more meaningful tasks that make them critical to your business’s success.
Our Live Answer Support delivers coverage 24 / 7 / 365. You don’t have to worry about staff members leaving or retiring — there’s a team that can accommodate the workload. And that means prospects get consistent support, no matter when they reach out.
With Live Answer Support, you expand your team’s coverage without actually having to expand your team. A CRM can’t do that.
Self-Showings Capitalize on Convenience And Efficiency
Showing units is the most time-consuming part of the leasing process. Self-showings make it more efficient.
Self-showings save your team not only the time spent on the actual showing but also transportation time and fuel costs. For property managers with units across a large area, the savings are especially significant.
Self-showings also deliver convenience to prospects. They’re able to see the unit whenever it’s convenient for them — not only when your agents are available. It’s not surprising that our customers who offer self-showings have seen their no-shows decrease by up to 80%.
The benefits of self-showings go beyond saving you time. They also help you Grow Your Portfolio without needing to grow your headcount.
For example, Pan American Properties (PAP) manages 3,300 units spanning from the north side of Los Angeles all the way to San Diego. The company was struggling to staff enough agents to cover an area that large.
Self-showings made it possible for PAP’s existing team to handle all the agency’s showings. Plus, self-showings helped add more business. Property owners felt assured that PAP had the capacity to take on their units because the team had the right processes in place to accommodate an expanding portfolio.
In other words, self-showings save your team countless hours of work, reduce no-shows, and make it possible to grow your business without growing headcount. Can you say that about your CRM?
ShowMojo Can Supercharge Your CRM for Prospect-Driven Leasing
With tightening rental markets, you can’t afford not to provide the best experience to your prospects, and a lot of that comes down to the tools you use. CRMs are helpful, but they’re best used as part of a broader set of tools to manage your portfolio.
Look for solutions that connect to your CRM, whether through Zapier or a direct integration, to get the best bang for your buck. For example, when a prospect uses ShowMojo to schedule a showing, their information is automatically sent to Appfolio to be entered into a guest card. That’s one less step for your team!
Schedule a demo to learn more about how ShowMojo’s features can supercharge your CRM — and give prospects the control they want over the leasing process.