CRM or PDA? Chicken or Egg?

First, Gary, thanks for setting this up! Should generate some interesting dialogue about a whole host of products.

CRM is such a big topic for this business...and I think many/most agents don't really have a realistifc appreciation of what a CRM can do...and why which one you choose (or whether you need a CRM at all vs a basic "database" system like an Excel spreadsheet, or a Contact Manager like Outlook.

You're absolutely right, though...selecting your CRM software based on a phone (albeit a really awesome one) is simply backwords. I had the same CRM for about 10 years...during that time, I've had 7-8 different phones!

First order of business, find the best CRM for you....think about what you want the software to be able to do for you, talk to other agents to find out what they like or don't like about their systems and WHY they feel the way they do, decide whether their priorities are the same as yours or not, and then look for the most reliable software that will help you make the most of your own time and talents. Then determine whether or how to make it work with your phone. Even if a particular CRM doesn't "natively" sync with your pda/phone, there are many outstanding 3rd party products that can make it work beautifully. Personally, I highly recommend www.CompanionLink.com ...have used several versions of it over the years with outstanding functionality and reliability.

JudiB

I am personally somewhat excited about Advantage Xi. I am in the trial mode but the tech support cannot seem to import my contacts from Outlook 2007. Still waiting to hear from them. I've had many CRM programs over the years and am presently using just plain old Outlook 2007. In the early 90's I liked Act, then Top Producer, then Agent Office. I tried Respond for over a year and it always caused an error whenever it shut down. Tech support said it was my computer, although when I removed the program, the error message magically went away. I guess for me, if you are going to invest in learning a CRM (the time is more precious than the money) the tech support has to be good. Along those lines, I would rate Respond the best (at least they tried) and Agent Office the worst (rarely return requests). Top Producer, the early versions were better than the later versions. 7i is definitely better than 8i. CRM systems are so personal, it's great to have all the options we do now.

John R Rohan

John,

I too have been through the CRM maze....I think Howard & Friends was my first, had various versions of TP from 4.3 to 6i (generally a nightmare and no user support), was an Alpha, then Beta tester for Online Agent...the precursor to Agent Office (so sorry the original guys sold out fairly early on...it had great potential!), tried ACT, Respond (also crashed my system...took 4 days to get it installed on my computer...major issues...deleted it and never looked back), PREP, RealeSeller, and a few others...nest on Goldmine for the major part of 8-10 years. Great product, not real estate specific, but they've made the business decisiion to squeeze out the small user. I'm forced to make a change, if not now, in the not too distant future.

I too am pretty excited about Advantage XI. I used the demo for about a week and felt I saw enough to make a serious commitment. I purchased it 5 days ago and haven't looked back! I imported my 1950 contact records from Goldmine (certainly the import is not a "full" one...it's just the basic contact information...but the import went pretty much without a hitch...I decided to break the import into 4 compontents (I have 4 "primary'" contact types....Business, Personal, Affiliate, Contacts...so I did 4 imports, importing each contact type into its appropriate XI Contact Type....made things much easier. If you can convert your Outlook to any sort of dbf or delimited file, XI has a great "mapping" feature in the import that should really make it function nicely.

I definitely recommend you take the time to view the training modules online...there are about 120 of them...I've viewed about 40 so far...and LEARNED A HUGE AMOUNT from that, and implemented much of which I learned already!

No CRM is perfect...they all have their quirks. However, this has been by far the most robust CRM I've used (other than Goldmine), and has a lot of really fabulous real estate specific components that continue to "knock my socks off!!!" So far, even with a couple of "hickups" I'm very pleased!!!!!

JudiB

I have also tried many CRM programs. I did get a lot of error messages with RESPOND and finally deleted it from my computer, and surprise, no problems after that. I used Agent Office for a really long time but became frustrated with the email portion of the program and had problems with syncing my Palm. I now use Advantage xi and I really like it! I think it does everything that I could want (and more). The email portion is great. I no longer use Outlook. Make sure you right click on an email message to see all the options that are available!

Cyndi McFarran

Advantage Xi is worth getting excited about! Every time I turn around, I find soemthing else it can do. I was working with someone on GoToMeeting the other day, both looking at the Property screen, and he was wishing there were more fields for BPO data. He then noticed a check box that said BPO next to it. He clicked in it, and a whole new section appeared below it, specifically set up for BPO's!

I could go on and on about the things I like about it, but I wanted to comment on the support. The quality of the support is excellent. The quantity can sometimes be an issue when they get overwhelmed. Remember this is a small company. They've been around since 1991, but they are still small. Eric is the first line of support, but Mark Stepp is usually the man you speak with, and Mark is ther lead programmer, and the owner. I have been pushing for him to hire another person, and as sales increase, I'm sure he will. In the interim, I'll live with the sometime spottiness of the support, because after 5 months of using it, I've yet to need support because it died on me and I couldn't get it back running. The times I've needed support were niggling things. Nothing serious. The number of times I've needed to call support has also been reduced significantly because of the 120+ training videos.

You may also get 'Runtime Errors'. They require only that you click on 'No'. It goes away, and you go about your merry way. In 5 months, I've probably had it lock up to the point where it closed itself (didn't lose any data), and I had to restart it, maybe 5 or 10 times. Hey - it's a desktop application, not a Web based one. That stuff happens. Again - I'll live with it. If you're the type that wants your hand held all the time, this one may not be for you. But if you're willing to put up with a few burps here and there, it's one heckuva program.

Great point about right cliking on the e-mails. I love being able to easily store e-mails with other than the contact it came to.

Gary,

Thanks for starting this group. I am one of the TP 8i lovers, as I read on going posts I don't see many favorable comments. I made the transition to 8i with only minor hiccups. I was disappointed in the inability to log in from any computer and send email without downloading something but I understand they are working on that. Mostly I travel with my lap top so it isn't a huge problem. One thing you told me is absolutely true there is no perfect program, your advice was also right on, if it wins more points than it loses make it work, there is no one perfect CRM. As simple as this sounds, it really does make sense. I hope to learn lots of tips and tricks through this group.

Susan Fox

Susan,

Opinions on CRM's are like belly-buttons. Everyone has one, and they're all different. If you like 8i and what it does for you, ignore what other people say about it. Ancient Real Talk proverb: The best one is the one you use!

I need to echo Gary's comments about support. I don't have a long history with XI...downloaded the demo about 2 weeks ago, purchased the final product 5 days ago. I'm probably driving Gary and Mark (at XI) nuts with all my questions, but the more I work with it, the more I see what it can do, the more I try, the more questions I have. I've viewed about 1/3 of the training videos (which are EXCELLENT), and I'm amazed and what it's capable of.

Yes, setting up a new system takes time....but that time is not "spent"...it's invested...in your business. My system has had some "hiccups"...mostly in the report editor (which, other than the "hiccups", I absolutely love!!!! Took me a while to find it...Mark wrote me back and told me the 3 buttons to push to get to it...and VOILA!!! It's nice not to be tethered to reports the way a VENDOR thinks they should work...I can have them show me the content I WANT TO USE...that's most valuable to me! That was always something I hated about virtually all other CRMs...their reports are "one size fits all"...and frankly, NO THEY DON'T. When a hiccup appears, it appears to be a total freeze. What I THINK happens is that making too many changes at once messes something up...so I quickly save after every 3-4 changes, and the freezing up has nearly disappeared. So...I got it....SAVE YOUR WORK IN THE EDITOR OFTEN..

It's nice to FINALLY see a product that can likely give TP a real run for their money (sorry, just venting old frustrations here),. I'm eager to see what "improvements" XI brings us down the pike (though I'm hard pressed to think of anything it's lacking. Each time I THINK it's missing something, I discover something new and realize it's not missing it after all!!!

JudiB