Is your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program working for you? A part of what I do as a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, is helping clients streamline their processes for dealing with databases, setting up drip mail campaigns and following-up with contacts. This involves pairing clients with the right CRM. There are numerous programs available to real estate professionals these days and I have used a number of them. For this post, I want to cover one in particular.
Quite a few years ago, I was introduced to Top Producer and I have to be honest, I wasn’t overly impressed. I thought the system was cumbersome and not very user friendly so I stopped using the program with clients. Today, however I have a completely different opinion.
About a year and a half ago, I started using Top Producer again but this time it was the 8i version. Top Producer 8i is a completely different program than the one I used a few years back. The 8i version has a fabulous clean layout, it’s packed full of features, customizable action plan templates and it is by far more user friendly than previous versions. Top Producer 8i is not only a real estate CRM, but rather an all encompassing CRM, sales and marketing tool.
Top Producer Updates – May 5, 2010
This past week, Top Producer released an update for 8i that includes some exciting new enhancements that I can’t wait to try out with my clients (at least I think they are exciting).
New Contact Record Header
The contact record header has been overhauled with a new layout that includes a Contact Status indicator, Buyer Preferences and an icon, when clicked, displays all the contacts primary information. No more searching multiple screens to find important contact details. The right hand side of the header contains a set of three buttons that allow quick access to various actions you can initiate for this contact (i.e. Market Snapshot, Action Plans, Email etc.), report printing and the Things to Talk About feature (love this feature and will discuss it further in a future post).
New Contact Record Summary Tab
The contact record now has a summary tab that houses all the important information about that contact in one place and at-a-glance for easy initiation of new tasks. This includes Contact Notes, Listing Notes and Closing Notes. Along the right hand side there are another set of boxes that make it very east to see, at-a-glance, Next Call and Appointments for that contact. Incomplete and complete activities can also be viewed with a quick click of the tab.
The contact information box shows the primary contact information and by clicking the icon in the bottom right hand corner you can view the rest of the contact information in a convenient pop up window without having to switch screens and move away from the contact record.
Social Media Activity
Lastly, Top Producer has integrated Social Media Activity to 8i. In this third box you can enable your contacts Facebook and Twitter feeds within 8i to have an at-a-glance view of what’s going on in their lives and get to know them better. With this new integration, you are able to view and reply to Facebook posts (420 character limit. Option to add photos) and reply and retweet tweets from within Top Producer 8i.
When viewing a contact record it’s easy to see their social media activity which could also help with your marketing strategies. Engaging with your contacts via 8i is quick and could make a lot of difference to your contact that you’re taking the time to get to know them.
In order to enable Social Media Activity for your contacts you have to configure your own social media account in your preferences. Also at the time of writing this post, Top Producer only has Facebook working in this update, and will be adding Twitter in the next couple of weeks.
The new features added to Top Producer 8i this past week will make tracking your contact details, initiating various actions and engaging with your contacts quicker and more streamlined. I keep crossing my fingers that in future updates I’ll see an announcement that Top Producer is compatible with Mac…wishful thinking, I know. 🙂
Time is a precious thing for agents on the go, and I think these changes will allow you and your assistants more time and added benefits to engage with and market to your contacts.
Do you use Top Producer 8i? What are your thoughts on the new changes?
