Yeah, yeah… we know, it should be ‘Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Quick.’ But if you’re Jack, and you’re a real estate investor, which would you rather be?
Yeah, us too.
To become rich in real estate requires deals. Great deals. Preferably, lots of great deals. Deals require contacts and relationships. People need to bring you great deals, and you need to bring other people great deals.
Finding and selling great deals does not happen overnight. You need to nurture relationships with others. It’s what all great sales people do. There’s even a whole industry dedicated to helping you keep track of these relationships. It’s called Customer (or Contact) Relationship Management (CRM).
From Contact Management to Contact Insight
We could fill up a ton of tech-related lessons with all the CRM software available. We’re sure you can just Google ‘CRM software’ or something similar and come up with a whole lot on your own.
Many CRM platforms can just be glorified spreadsheets. Sure, they can import contact information such as name, email, phone number, etc. But then they ask you to manually enter data to keep track of your interactions with buyers, motivated sellers and other real estate people.
We thought we’d show you a website that is a little different...
It’s called Nimble. (See what we did there? With the title? Yea, we’re good.) The folks at Nimble understand how difficult it can be to keep track of your contacts across so many different types of communications: email, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc. So, they thought they would do it for you.
Nimble compiles all the information you need to understand your contacts but not in a creepy, Big Brother kind of way. Nimble is also web-based. You don’t have to download any of their software to take up memory on your machine.
Everything You Need to Know – In Several Different Formats
The menu bar across the top of the Nimble website has several different ways to manage your contacts and learn about them.
The ‘Today’ selection is one you might want to check at the start of each day. The page provides:
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Links to your top contacts (as you define them)
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Engagement opportunities such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
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A To-Do List of reminders and meetings with your contacts
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Upcoming deals that you have percolating
‘Contacts’ shows a list or grid of all your contacts. It pulls all your contacts in from the big websites such as email, social media, LinkedIn, and possibly others. Nimble will also pull all kinds of information on your contacts from the web and add it to their profile.
From that information, you can then sort your contacts based on companies, names, recently viewed or other categories. For real estate investing, you may want to sort them according to ‘Buyers,’ ‘Sellers,’ ‘Contractors’ or whatever other categories you want.
When you select a particular contact, they will come up on their own webpage. Besides all the data Nimble imports, the individual contact page will also show:
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When was the last time you contacted them
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Your history of contacts you made with the person
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Any notes you took about the contact
The next menu item is the ‘Signals’ page. Signals pulls together – on one screen – everything your contact posts or says in emails to you and across social media in general. You will see what really interests and motivates your contact. Imagine talking to a motivated seller armed with this kind of information.
Signals will also allow you to search through social media for people that could turn into hot leads. You can put certain keywords into Nimble and it will search for potential new contacts. If you like what you see, you can add those new contacts to your list and start reaching out to them.
The ‘Messages’ page consolidates all your email accounts on to one page. Sure, you can do this in Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple’s Mail program, but it’s kind of nice to have the email messages in the same program as all your other CRM information.
Another feature the Messages page gives you that other email programs don’t offer is the ability to see who has been reaching out to your contact on Twitter. Is it your competition for a good deal? Realtors looking for their next commission? Or possibly friends of the contact who can give you insight into what motivates them.
All of this information is useless if you don’t take action on it. That’s what the ‘Activities’ tab is for. Based on how you want to stay in touch with your buyer’s list or other contacts, the Activities tab will show you what is coming up in the near future. Whether it’s meetings, tasks or other calendar events, they will all be laid out in the Activities area.
Probably the most important tab is the ‘Deals’ tab – at least for real estate investors. Here you can keep track of individual deals and their progress.
All the information for each deal can be consolidated into one place. Once the deal is complete, you can file them under ‘Closed Deals.’ That doesn’t mean they trash the information. Some of the information from one deal can provide lessons learned or contacts for another potential deal.
The Reports tab might be used more by corporate sales folks than real estate entrepreneurs. You can see at a high level the deals that are in the works, and forecast how many deals might be coming up.
Nimble provides quite a capability for building a complete picture of your contacts. Real estate investors who are armed with this information can really take their relationships to the next level.
Care to Share?
What’s your favorite CRM and why? Share below.
Manage Your Contacts – Take care of the people who will take care of you. Let them know they are important to you.
Stay in Touch – Don’t contact people only when you need something. Send them a birthday card. Take them to lunch sometimes without asking for anything in return.
Keep Prospecting – Even though you might have one or two deals that you’re currently working, don’t let the marketing go. The pipeline can run dry very quickly.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.