While you’re busy generating new leads and facilitating transactions , every real estate business needs its CRM to be in its best shape — all the time.

It’s important that commercial real estate professionals are updating their CRMs every year to make sure that they’re organized, updated, and ready to do business. 

Why Cleaning Out Your CRM Annually is a Must for Agents 

The biggest benefit to performing a spring clean-up on your CRM is that you will streamline the way you use your CRM. 

You won’t have to worry about digging through outdated contacts to find information or spend time on manual outreach and follow-up. Investing time to spruce up your CRM can save you time and energy later — while boosting your overall productivity. 

Since it’s easier for you to stay top of mind with prospects and leads, a strong CRM strategy allows you to improve the experience that clients have when working with you. After all, your business relies on relationships — so you need a market-beating CRM to manage those essential connections. 

Ready to reap the benefits of a freshly cleaned CRM? Here are three steps you should take to make sure that your CRM is operating at its peak in 2022. 

#1. Make Sure All Contacts Are Up to Date

The first task to address when spring cleaning your CRM is to review your contacts. You should make sure that all of your contacts are up to date and current, reflecting any new information that may have changed since the last time you organized your CRM. 

You’ll want to make sure that all of the phone numbers, emails, and addresses of your contacts are current for the new year. 

While reviewing your contact information, you can tag your contacts to further organize your CRM by separating contacts according to their position in your sales funnel. For example, you can create tags identifying contacts that are: 

• Not yet ready for business
• Conversion-ready 
• Previous clients
• Current clients
• Industry connections 

If you’re working in various markets, you may also want to tag your contacts based on location.

Finally, you can also include relevant notes for your contacts, including information about their property portfolio, investment interests, leasing requirements, as well as personal and lifestyle information. Doing so will allow you to customize your conversations after a quick glance at their CRM contact. For example, you may be able to mention the client’s weekly golf hobby or the latest corporate announcements from the institutions you’re working with. 

#2. Implement Follow-Up Plans

Once you’ve tagged and organized your contacts, it’s a great idea to set up follow-up plans to automate lead outreach. 

Creating tags can streamline automated outreach and lead follow-up, helping you create custom content for a specific group. With RealNex CRM you can even set Timelines to automate follow up schedules and actions for various type of prospects. You can also take advantage of:

• Email marketing integration 
• Deal management portals
• Content generation for flyers, proposals, and reports

Leveraging follow-up strategies within your CRM can help ensure that all of your prospects are getting the attention they deserve — no matter how busy you are. 

#3. Check That You’re Up to Date on the Latest Features 

Technology evolves fast. When spring cleaning your CRM, take a moment to make sure that you’re up to date on the latest software features. If the system you're using has developed an upgrade or now offers different packages, you’ll want to compare your current CRM product to the new options. RealNex holds a regular series of webinars and product demos to keep prospective users up to speed on all their latest advancements and enhancements.

Since CRMs are not necessarily one-size-fits-all, think about how your CRM is able to support and achieve your production goals for 2022 by asking:

• Are there any features or tools that I need, but currently don’t have? 
• What will the onboarding process look like if I do decide to upgrade my current CRM solution? 
• Is there anything that I have, but am not using? And if so, how can I integrate that into my workflows? 

These questions can help you identify specific areas where your CRM can grow to better fit your business. 

You may even want to explore your current offering and take note of all of the tools you currently have available. Is there anything you missed and have not been using, like a goal-setting tool to benchmark progress or an automated outreach tool? Performing a quick CRM audit can help you find the hidden potentials in your CRM, especially if you’re working with a market-leading all-in-one solution.

Remember, the efficiency of your CRM will reflect how much time you put into working with it. To see the maximum results from your CRM, take it step-by-step and soon enough you’ll be able to use it to its fullest potential. 

Don’t forget to explore the RealNex Blog for more commercial real estate tips.