When managing commercial real estate transactions, prospects and clients, a team, or certainly a whole brokerage firm, requires some combination of ringleading, shepherding, lion-taming and childrearing. It’s no easy feat.
It’s a testament to the managerial skill and sheer will of so many brokers that they perform at a high level year after year. But only so many balls can be juggled and for so long. Juggling is not sustainable over the long term!
One hallmark of top performers in commercial real estate is their use of automation to streamline critical functions, reduce friction between people or parties in a transaction, or squeeze hours, days and sometimes even weeks out of the transaction cycle time. And this pays. Consistently, according to an annual survey by a commercial real estate marketing software firm, brokers with gross annual commission income of more than $100,000 have automated key aspects of their business, including customer relationship management and email marketing, at a higher rate than the rest of the broker pack.
But what to automate in the first place?
Here’s a guide to help you think about automation before you start kicking the tires on new software and hardware for your real estate business.
Automate to Collaborate
A key goal of business automation should be to facilitate collaboration so that all team members can access data on people, properties and deals, so that information doesn’t have to be entered more than once, which wastes time and increases errors. Facilitate collaboration across your business and everyone will be empowered to play together at the top of their game.
If you’re a solo practitioner, automation is even more important — not to collaborate but to maintain a system of record where your business information lives and can be put to work by you in conjunction with various applications or other data sets. On days when it feels like you’re alone in the work world, having an automation-enabled business provides peace of mind, which can be priceless.
Automate to Valuate
On a regular basis, as part of new client pursuit or existing client support, brokers render opinions of value known as a broker’s price opinion (BPO), on property being considered for sale or purchase. There are new data-powered tools that automate BPOs. These are no substitute for full appraisals, to be sure, but they’re reliable for everyday use. Leading automated tools include Fuel Valuation for commercial real estate.
Automate to Prospect
It’s hard to keep track of leads, as brokers call likely buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants, by the hundreds if not thousands every year. At the same time, inbound leads are coming from websites and emails, which should also be tracked. Automate prospecting so call lists become dynamic. They can be generated based on select criteria, such as a prospect’s propensity to sell or invest, and in-bound leads populate the tracking system automatically.
Automate to Maintain Client Relations
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems have come far in the past five years. Electronic records on people now include complete email and phone call histories, data from LinkedIn and Facebook profiles and relationships to properties and listings that can be displayed on graphic maps. If you’re still using Excel to track people, you’re using a rock instead of a wheel to track your business’ most important asset: relationships. Apto, built for commercial real estate pros, is a leading CRM database, with prospecting tools and email integration built in.
Automate to Make Property Data Dynamic
Property data, including sale and lease comps, should be electronically stored, aggregated and automated. This way, as many of the elements as possible become dynamically updated to reflect ownership changes, associated sales and leases, and you can relate properties to people including investor-owners and property managers. Automate and maintain your own system of record and you’ll also be less dependent on third-party services for data, including data that may have originated with you! With custom programming (and sometimes even without it), data from third-party information services, including research companies and commercial exchanges, can flow directly into your in-house property database.
Automate to Propagate Listing Data
Even with no universal data standards for properties and listings, the CRE industry has come a long way in facilitating the flow of listing data from brokers to commercial listing services, exchanges and marketplaces. This is reason No. 1 to automate your listing information so you don’t have to enter it repeatedly to propagate it across platforms. Ask CoStar, LoopNet, CREXi, your local market information exchange or any other marketing platform you use how to automate the transmission of listing data to them.
Automate to Market Property
Automation lets you turn listing data into presentation-quality marketing materials, including brochures, websites and emails, faster and better than ever. There will always be times when you need custom marketing for specific situations, but leading property marketing tools allow for that, while providing streamlined solutions for 80% of the cases. PropertyCapsule, which serves the retail real estate space, is a leader in property marketing software.
Automate to Track Transactions
Winning the listing may be the hardest part, but finding buyers and tenants and then marshalling all parties through the pipeline require a series of steps; most are consistent from transaction to transaction, but not all. Purpose-driven CRE software doesn’t just track deals in a pipeline, it prompts brokers to take specific actions to advance the deals. Some software even allows you to customize the steps to reflect your own workflow. Global marketplace Real Capital Markets provides online deal rooms where brokers can share and store transaction documents, be it offering memoranda, letters of intent or purchase contracts, and track whose reviewed the documents and where a deal is in the process at any given point in time.
Automate to Close — But Stay Involved
Closings are arguably the most predictable and pro forma part of the transaction process, but they’re replete with opportunity for surprises, particularly if someone gets cold feet. Track and store documents, and set reminders of key deadlines and dates, but don’t leave the closing to automation. Make sure you are personally involved up until closing, which represents a chance to leave your imprint on the occasion in a way that the client will remember — so he or she is more likely to call you next time brokerage services are needed.
Automation isn’t an end in itself, but a means to an end — to enable you to perform better and more efficiently so you can do more deals — and so your data becomes dynamic in a way that enhances your performance. Don’t automate just because you can, but to be an even better broker!
Tanner McGraw is founder of Apto, which provides commercial real estate software for managing contacts, properties, listings and deals. Before Apto, McGraw served as vice president of Healthcare Advisory Services at Transwestern and as a senior associate at Marcus & Millichap.
