When considering a software system or CRM for real estate investors (CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management BTW), it’s important to know if your goals for your business are aligned with the vision of the software.
If the purpose of a software system is not clearly defined, it just confuses everyone because it just feels like a system that is all over the place. This is the issue with most real estate investor CRM’s. They try to be everything to all investors. This is why you see a feature list a mile long full of features that would take a day to understand the purpose of.
Jack of All Trades, Master of None
The problem with real estate investor software that tries to do everything under the sun is that it becomes inevitable that the system sucks to use! There are a million menu options and nothing flows very well. It’s easy to get lost trying to figure out and work in the system.
Nothing sucks more than spending several weeks trying to “setup” a CRM system while you still have to run your business. You make money doing deals, not watching hours of videos and setting up software.
You have to click from one “app” (you know what I mean, Podio users ;)) or page to another constantly trying to piece together all of the information you need about a particular lead.
Vision and Direction for Forefront CRM
Forefront is the culmination of my almost 2 decades of real estate investing experience and 10 years developing software to manage leads for real estate investors.
After all these years and focus on trying to generate more and more motivated seller leads so that I could scale my business, I realized the problem didn’t really lie in the top of the funnel. It wasn’t that we weren’t generating enough leads, it’s what was happening with the leads after we got them.
We were not turning as many of those leads into deals as we could have. We needed help in the form of software and slowly growing a team to do that.
It’s all about turning more leads into deals. That’s become the focus of the Forefront CRM.
We’re on a mission to help 1,000 real estate investors double their average monthly deals.
Every feature we add to the system has to support that goal.
Number of deals done is our North Star Metric.
By helping you do more deals, you create options for your business to scale and we have a happy customer that helps us grow the system.
Real Estate Investor Journey ModelTM
Forefront is built to help investors go from feast or famine caused by deal inconsistency to smart scaling where you know your numbers and are doing consistent deals.
It’s hard to fully understand the path of this, so we created a model to represent it graphically.
The X-axis covers the spectrum of deals being done consistently. At the far left, you are experiencing low deal consistency which results in feast and famine all the damn time. Not fun!
At the far right of the X-axis, you are doing Consistent Deals. This is ideal, obviously.
The Y-axis covers the spectrum of managing your business as a hobby more than as an actual business. This is determined by how much is actually being measured so that you can make changes and understand what is always happening in your business. Without measuring KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), you don’t really know what is going on until there are big problems to deal with. Without data and measurement, you are Flying Blind.
At the far top, you are Dialed In. You measure everything and have dialed in your business so that you are efficient at generating leads and turning those leads into profitable deals. Yeah, baby!
Where Are You? Rate Yourself
Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 for the X-Axis based on your current deal consistency (whether constantly generating a lot of deals or sometimes you get one, most of the time you do not).
Then, Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 for measuring KPI’s in your business and reviewing those numbers constantly.
Which quadrant do you fall in? Let’s be honest with ourselves so we can make changes to get to where we really want to be.
If you’re not consistent with deals and you don’t measure much, you’re experiencing the lower left quadrant. You’re in what we call Chaotic Irresponsibility. That might sound harsh but the reality is you won’t be in business long operating this way.
If you are measuring KPI’s but are not able to consistently do deals, you are simply Off Course. You see where you are and know where you want to go, but you’re not there yet. Tweaking needs to happen to improve your numbers.
If you’re doing a good number of deals but are not on top of your data and KPI’s, you’re experiencing Dumb Luck. Sounds harsh, but you’re likely working WAY harder than you need to be and forcing things to happen. This is not sustainable for very long.
I was in this quadrant for far too long and I got burned out!
If you’ve managed to measure and monitor your numbers and make adjustments to meet goals, you’re likely in the top right quadrant. Congratulations!! This is where you have the ability to be Smart Scaling.
What is Smart Scaling? Smart Scaling is managing your business so that you are in a position to have the business work more for you than you work for it. This is where you are confident in your ability to operate your business so you can begin bringing on help AND KEEPING THEM.
A HUGE fear I had when I knew I could no longer do things myself was whether I was going to be able to support the people I hired (and their families). There is a lot of responsibility in doing that.
It’s possible if you operate your business in this Smart Scaling quadrant.
This is the vision for Forefront CRM. Our system is designed to help you live in that top right quadrant.
The Smart Scaling FrameworkTM
Forefront helps you to move into that top right corner of the model above by leveraging our Smart Scaling FrameworkTM.
The framework involves the 3 C’s that can transform your business.
- Calculate
- Communicate
- Coordinate
Forefront is built with KPI’s baked in so you can track your data and always know exactly what is happening. You will always know what areas of your business need improvement.
Forefront integrates with CallRail to track where your leads are coming from, keep communication logs with sellers so you and your team always know who said what and when, and to allow for automated follow up so you land more deals.
Forefront allows you to create columns to represent your workflow steps and create automations to create tasks, assign leads, assign tasks, change statuses, send text messages, and much, much more.
Check out our features here (opens in a new tab)
Forefront Might Not Be Right For You
We’re not loading down Forefront with a million and one features just to sign up as many investors as possible. We’re focused on truly helping those real estate investors that are in a position to leverage the platform to turn more of their leads into deals.
We’re definitely not for everybody.
If you are not currently generating leads that you can turn into deals (we’re not talking about a list of absentee owners, we’re talking about sellers that are asking you to make an offer), you will need to get that figured out first.
If you are swamped with working in your business and don’t feel you are ready to review the KPI’s that Forefront provides AND to make the necessary changes in your business to improve those numbers, we don’t recommend you join just yet.
We’re here when you’re ready for us.
What’s Next
If you feel like you meet the criteria of who this system is for, why not Try It Free for 14 days? Click here to try Forefront CRM Now
If you want to learn more about how to turn more of your leads into deals, download our free No Lead Left Behind FrameworkTM.
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