The importance of visibility

As some of you are aware, blogging for Rex Software is secondary to my main role here in sales. I meet and speak with real estate agency Principals / Directors on a daily basis and I am frequently surprised by how many of them don't understand the importance of visibility when it comes to their real estate software. In this blog, I'm going to explain the importance of visibility with a real estate CRM as I see it.It is important to be able to easily track what your team are doing on a day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month basis (KPIs). I've met with Principals who've said "I just let my team do what they want - they get listings and sales, and I don't want to interfere". That's a great attitude to have if your sales team are selling 15 or more properties each, per month. If they're not, you need to know what they are doing. You need to see what they are doing that is getting them results, and what they are doing that's not working. Without a level of visibility on their activities, you're running your agency blind and are setting yourself up to fail! And personally, I'd be paying extra close attention to an agent selling 15 or more properties a month, so I could learn what they are doing that is making them so successful, so I could pass that information on to the rest of my team!Not only is it important for an agency Principal to track what their team is doing, it's also important for agents to be able to track their own activities - especially if their Principal takes a more "hands-off" approach to managing the team. An agent using a CRM that allows them to track their own performance will likely be more effective, as they'll be able to more easily determine the techniques that are working for them and the ones that are not. There's also a sense of accomplishment to be had when an agent can look back on their day, week, month or even year and say "I did that, and boy did it pay off!" The sense of accomplishment they feel will bring them back to work everyday with a focus and resolve to get results!To expand upon a point I brought up above - knowing what marketing / techniques / strategies are working, and which ones aren't - having visible data on what actions are converting to listings and sales is obviously important to an agency. If you're spending $5000/month on bus-stop advertising that brings in 5 enquiries, but only spending $1000/month on direct mail campaigns that bring in 10 enquiries, wouldn't you want to know that so that you could then spend your marketing budget more effectively?Hands up if you heard of the Pareto principle? (Note: I can't actually see you raising your hands!) You probably have heard of it as the "80/20 rule" - 80% of your profit will come from 20% of your customers. In real estate, this means focussing your efforts on the top 20% of your prospects, appraisals, listings and buyers. You're probably doing this already, without even knowing that you are - I bet you'd like to spend more time and effort communicating with your Hot Appraisals (those looking to list in the next 30 days) and Hot Buyers (those looking to buy in the next 30 days), than you would your Cold Appraisals and Cold Buyers. How does this relate to visibility? Well the system you're using needs to be able identify the Hot, Warm and Cold contacts so you can then focus your efforts on them appropriately.As luck would have it, the Rex CRM happens to be able to handle all of the above, efficiently, effectively and most importantly, it handles it all easily. Don't believe me? Contact me now for a demo and I will show you how Rex will improve the visibility in your agency overnight.