A good commercial real estate CRM is crucial to success in the business.  Yet according to an executive survey by Merkle, up to 60% of CRM systems will fail. After surveying 352 senior level executives in organizations worth one billion dollars or more, Merkle reported that companies that fail to see the importance of CRM are consistently low-growth.  Additionally, high-growth companies were 50% more likely to recognize the strategic value of CRM system implementation.  One could conclude that a CRM system for CRE is one of the top resources that drive growth in a successful brokerage.

Yet, CRMs repeatedly fail to be successfully adopted.  In our experience, this is usually caused by a few simple factors: lack of organization, lack of adaptability, and lack of technical support.

One way to avoid these potential pitfalls is by choosing a CRM system for CRE using a strategy first laid out by Fred Thiel, former CEO of local.com, with his 6 key dimensions of innovation framework.

To be implemented successfully into a commercial real estate business, a CRM system should:

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Cold calling voicemails: to leave, or not to leave. That is the question.  There’s been a growing debate about the value of voicemails in the modern commercial real estate sales world of seo’s, emails, and tweets.  

Both schools of thought have their own reasons but today let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of leaving a cold calling voicemail.

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Working in the commercial real estate industry can be time consuming. There are many things that a broker has to do – from prospecting to maintaining relationships with active clients to documenting everything. It can get overwhelming and exhausting!

We’ve come up with a list of essential commercial real estate productivity tools that will make brokers more efficient and help prevent smalls things from slipping through the cracks.

Here are a few tools that every broker should be using to work productively:

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If you are in commercial real estate, you are aware of the importance of having up-to-date contacts in your CRM system. If anything, your commercial real estate business runs on contacts. Unfortunately, new contacts often come to you in the form of a business card, and business cards mean data entry.

Luckily, many solutions exist to allow you to scan business cards efficiently. The use of these software solutions allows you time to concentrate on other tasks, such as cold calling and client meetings. As a plus, some apps are so efficient that the contacts can be scanned directly into your CRM system.

Here are a few solutions to easily scan business cards into your commercial real estate CRM:

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Identifying hot tenant leads in commercial real estate can be tricky. This is especially true when you are casting a very wide net with your prospecting efforts.

To save you time and effort, here’s a foolproof step-by-step to be sure your tenant leads are actually looking for commercial real estate before you ever call them.

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