CRM or PDA? Chicken or Egg?

Very interesting comments about Xi.

What about importing leads from you website or 800#? Does it do that?

And what about follow up action sequences - can it do those too?

Thanks,

Sean Goerss
Keller Williams
Vadnais Heights, Minnesota
www.BarbGoerss.com
www.RealEstateTechnologyExperts.com

Regarding importing of leads, I'll say "yes and no". It depends on the format of the lead content. Some of my onlne systems import just fine, others do not...but it's because of the format of the content. Html can reap havoc in how XI "sees" the fields.

On the ones I CAN get to import...it's very cool. You just set up a rule that tells XI what field identifiers to look for, and what content you want filled in. What I really like is that this can be conent beyond just what is in the email itself. For example, XI has a "referrals" tab which I use to identify source of lead generated. I use one of the fields on that tab to identify which website the lead is from, which property or information the request is about, the contact gets "classifications" added to the contact record as it is being created, etc. Heck, if you wanted to, you could also have the system automatically send the contact a "thank you for your inquiry" email, or whatever, just to let them know you'd received their inquiry and are looking forward to being of help.

Regarding follow-up action sequences...ABSOLUTELY! As a matter of fact, Gary even has quite a few "predesigned" plans (XI calls them "series") that you can purchase and use as is, or modify to your liking. They are both easy to set up and powerful. When I first set mine up, they were very "simplistic"...all were based on a "start date". Then Gary clued me in....the activities can be scheduled based on many things ... like list date, contract date, expiration date, completion of certain other activies, etc. It's pretty powerful.

HTH...

JudiB

I wasn't aware if the issue with HTML leads, but I guess it makes sense. Fortunately, most leads come in in plain text.

With regards to 'follow-up' action series', yes it does them better than anything else I've seen, and you can have it automatically launch a specific plan, based on what kind of lead it is.

The 'Event Series' as they call them, can change the classification(category) of a contact automatically upon completion. ie: A closing plan changing the contact from Seller: Pending - to Seller: Past. It can also launch a new plan upon completion of a specific event in a series.

My Trans-Plans work more robustly in Xi than in TP, AO, or AA for Outlook.

RE contact record auto-create from html...definitely are issues with SOME providers. Sometimes content can be stripped from the code to use in creating the record using the email rules. Others are a LOT more challenging. I guess the problem is that the sites are all SO different. Recently I've created some of my own lead forms to be used with my Point2 site. I can't wait to implement them with XI!

But when I cannot get the system to create records automatically, it's still SO easy...I copy the content of the email into a new, blank contact record's "notes" and basically cut/paste the info into the record. It still generally takes about a minute, including adding the category/ies and lead source info. When I get proficient enough with this, I'll have plans set up to launch with those new records. I'm just not that far along.

All things considered, I'm now about 2.5-3 months along in using this product and I'm still THRILLED! Still discovering new "goodies" I can do with it!