Have suggestions for products that you’d like to see reviewed by our real estate technology expert? Email Craig Rowe.
I’ve said for a long time that a lot of today’s CRM solutions can be too smart for their own good.
With a sweeping range of operational advantages and clever marketing tools, it’s common for agents and brokers to focus solely on getting and working new business.
In part, the industry is to blame. After all, as a commission-based enterprise full of independent contractors, it’s easy to get collectively caught up in the next sale, eschewing the strategic for the tactical.
But for brokers to compete for the long term and agents to eventually work only referral, there has to be some strategy involved. You can’t live and die by the hunt for monthly commissions.
Thankfully, your CRM can likely help you do that, too — provided you know how to access the right data.
Auctm launched in 2018 as SquadVoice but soon changed course from a strictly database-focused lead qualifier to a full-fledged, data-driven strategy solution for brokers and teams, and the agents they employ.
The “new” Auctm functions as CRM health enabler, a Fitbit for your business. Using a direct, one-to-one integration, the software uses existing deal and lead data to provide users with comprehensive metrics on business performance.
From rich charts to simple lists of effective lead sources, Auctm quickly diagnoses a brokerage’s performance shortcomings and offers alerts and recommendations on how they should be fixed.
Using data from transaction milestones and lead activity from within a native CRM, Auctm can report on the granular and big-picture facets of your team and brokerage. One other nice touch? Auctm alerts users to inconsistencies between it and its source CRM, which can lead to mismanaged marketing or not having the proper data available in a listing presentation, for example.
If you don’t update a closed deal, mark a lead as a buyer or seller, or fail to indicate the source of a lead, Auctm adds it to a list of reconciliation tasks to ensure the integrity of your business data.
It offers a by-agent breakdown of recent performance that peers into everything from the time it takes to react to a lead to how they produced last quarter. The root of every dollar produced can be made tangible into a series of categorized charts ideal for supporting coaching recommendations or justifying higher splits.
Auctm is about using the actionable advice embedded in between the lines of your CRM.
The company is wary of linking to just any CRM, requiring an open, flexible API so data linkages can be clean and two-way. Bridging the gap with third-parties, such as Zapier, only muddies the water.
To date, Auctm works with only Follow Up Boss, but a beta test with Chime is underway, and the full partnership is expected to be announced sometime before Q4.
Given the level of operational and financial investment brokerages are making in their lead management and marketing software, it only makes sense that vendors will emerge to support those investments.
The age of data as competitive advantage is here, and Auctm’s newest tools and approach should help you gain it.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
