A GUIDE TO CRM FOR THE TITLE INDUSRY

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CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

A GUIDE TO CRM FOR THE TITLE INDUSRY

 

Customer relationship management, (CRM) refers to platform that helps companies track, manage and analyze interactions with contacts, whether they’re prospective or current customers. A catchall term for the software as a whole, CRM software is generally designed to compile information across the organization and is a critical tool to help users gain insight into what drives business.

For the title industry in particular, the technology helps you keep track of contacts, orders, marketing events, customer service request and more. Because CRMs provide a relational database, you have flexibility in looking at what channels drive your business.

Why we set out to solve title industry CRM problems

TitleInsight was born out of our client’s frustration with existing technology. The title industry is all about relationships, so why couldn’t we find an existing customer relationship management (CRM) system that fit our needs?

We ran through the gamut of existing products, but nothing was right; either the application was too bulky, needed constant administration internally or was too expensive. The functionality and design we needed seemed to be something any CRM should have.

What we wanted in a CRE CRM

Flexibility. No boxed CRM fit our business process. What we realized was that while there were numerous generic examples in the marketplace, none were laser focused on our issues.

Simplicity and design. There is clearly a trend toward simplicity in the software world, which is to be expected after a decade of software design in which aesthetics and ease of use were overlooked in favor of over-the-top bells and whistles, most of which added little value to overall functionality. The title industry CRM space fared no differently.

Mobility. We knew desktop tools were becoming obsolete. We are a mobile society and mobility is a must.

CRM and pipeline management. What do you do about customer focus prior to an order? Are you spending 80% of your sales focus on 20% of those customers actually bringing you an order? Most CRMs aren’t designed for this specific sales cycle. Other examples abound. How about tracking your pipeline, sales expenses and your client’s requests? Spreadsheets, sticky notes, legal pads? We used them all. The existing options in the marketplace were too limited.

Niche product type. Let’s face it, CRM software for the title industry is a narrow vertical, specialty product. Without major software companies designing products in the space, the technology has been in many cases difficult to implement, clumsy, admin-heavy and short-lived.

How Do You Solve the Issues?

We started by researching a platform to leverage. There are plenty of options —Zoho, Sugar, Google Apps—but we decided to create our platform from scratch for a variety of reasons solving a list of deficiencies.

The result is a simple yet functional CRM specifically for the title industry that solved the market problems. And after using it ourselves and hearing great feedback from our industry development partners, we realized what a game changer TitleInsight was.

SIX PERFORMANCE INDICATORS EVERY TITLE & ESCROW COMPANY SHOULD MONITOR

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Do you have enough information to truly understand your customers? Do you have quick and easy access to that information? Many things vie for your attention every day – from budget projections and important client meetings, to driving the sales and marketing efforts. All of these areas have one thing in common: you need accurate information about your business to make good decisions. Accurate data about your customers in particular can give you a better understanding of your market, customer satisfaction, and customer preferences and buying habits.

Most Title and escrow companies possess customer data that could be extremely beneficial, but in many companies, that data is not being used to assist management. If that information is difficult to access or hidden away in spreadsheets or outdated systems, managers and decision makers are not afforded the opportunity to really understand the business and make changes to increase revenue, reduce expenses or improve operations.

Does your company harbor information that could make you more effective and improve your decision-making? With this in mind, here are six areas where you may be able to uncover a gold mine of data in your company.

  1. Are clients taking advantage of non-revenue bearing products from customer service or marketing, without bringing any revenue-bearing orders to our company? If so, which ones? If you have accurate information from customer service, you can have a good conversation with an agent about bringing more business your way. Here are the KPI’s to track:
  • # of customer service touches per month
  • # of property profiles/deeds ordered per month and by whom
  • Monthly customer service orders ranked by agent
  1. How are your marketing dollars being spent – are you getting a return on that investment? Which customers do you spend the most on, and how many orders do they bring you? Some KPI’s to pay attention to:
  • Marketing expenses MTD/YTD by agent
  • Expenses vs closed orders by agent
  • Expenses vs revenue by agent
  1. Open vs closed orders by percentage. Which agents are opening orders (causing the upfront expense on your end) vs closing orders?
  • Agent Closing Percentage year to date
  • Rank agents by closing %, highest to lowest
  • Best/worst performers
  1. Who are my best/worst performing clients? Sometimes it can be surprising to find out who your best/worst performing clients are. This is important information to know, especially if you can track this over time to develop a performance history. This data can alert you to problems early, when you still have time to resolve them.
  • Open/closed orders year to date/month to date
  • YTD customer orders compared to previous year
  1. Ranking agents by category: prospects, new customers, existing customers
  • How many new customers did you acquire this month, last month?
  • Is the sales/marketing team reaching out to prospects, or only current/existing clients?
  1. 360 degree customer view: if your CRM system (customer relationship management), or Escrow software allows you to graphically display multiple metrics about one client on the same screen, you can use this in many ways. If you have a meeting with a key client, use this to prepare yourself with the client’s recent order history. How are the orders trending for the year to date? If all of the orders were placed many months ago, is there a reason they haven’t brought any new business your way, are they unhappy for some reason?

TitleInsight – Success Stories

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Once you uncover information, the insights can be surprising, and surprisingly useful. One of our customers, after deploying the TitleInsight CRM system, made several valuable discoveries. Customer performance reports uncovered that a longstanding customer’s order count had recently dropped to almost zero. Some quick research and a phone call confirmed that orders had
recently been directed to a competitor, because of an unsatisfactory experience.
Management was able to intervene with the client, restoring their faith in the company
(and assuring future orders).

Commercial Real Estate Prospecting

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LandPoint for Commercial Brokers

In commercial real estate, analyzing the stream of market activity daily to find qualified listing leads is challenging. Often, requiring time-intensive research across multiple platforms and information sources. Because this market is highly competitive and fast-paced; brokers need to act quickly and decisively to win listings ahead of the competition. Finding the right solution that streamlines market analysis and helps brokers easily identify, evaluate, and understand insights about commercial property opportunities is critical to success. Recent advances in real estate research and GIS mapping technologies make it easier to discover potential deals, and allows brokers to quickly move from a notice of market activity to conducting focused due diligence on relevant property opportunities. Thus, brokers are empowered to take confident action in order to obtain their next listing.

Our LandPoint application is the most up-to-date technology platform for commercial property research and analysis in the Treasure Valley with advanced mapping and presentation capabilities that solves these key issues. Designed for commercial real estate brokers, analysts, researchers, and retailers, LandPoint helps users to discover, understand and capitalize on opportunities. Leverage the aggregated real estate data and tools available in LandPoint to move from surface level market noise to drill down into robust data to derive actionable insight and take action with sellers to win listings.

Winning Valuable Listings in a Dynamic Market

Brokers rely on daily market activity to tip them off about potential listings opportunities. A deeper analysis is necessary to evaluate properties in order to present a credible value to potential buyers and sellers and enable the broker to close the deal.  If you are interested in winning more listings, we have the premier application to reach this goal – Contact Us for a Demo on how we can help.

What’s it worth

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CORE BENEFITS FOR THE TITLE INDUSTRY

For the title industry, CRM software allows the segmentation of customer contact data and activity according to specific criteria and automate frequent activities like customer touches and follow-ups.

It helps make sure the sales staff is prioritizing the right leads, and allows both sales and escrow to see the history of a client or potential client. Gone are the days of hunting through different programs to figure out who to call or how to keep track of the status of a client.

Many title companies have already churned through a CRM or two since the technology achieved mainstream popularity, but continued investment in the space and improved systems are ensuring that the functionality is only getting more focused and the return on investment is increasing. With the availability of a targeted, cost-effective, cloud-based CRM designed specifically for the title industry, even the skeptical have more reasons than ever to give it a try.

The more CRM software applications become targeted and simple, the more time the user has to focus on high-value tasks. CRM technology in the cloud can make you more productive, organized, visible and aware. You get all the data and information you need wherever you are.

Here are some core benefits

COST

Don’t let the monthly fee fool you, cloud-based software is less expensive than desktop tools. When you consider the initial cost of desktop software, as well as the added costs for annual upgrades, internal IT management and customer support this is apparent. Let’s not forget the time and trouble of reinstalling a desktop program (and transferring your data) whenever you get a new computer. In the long term, desktop applications are considerably more expensive.

ACCESS

With software platforms residing in the cloud, you have access to all the data and functionality no matter the location or device you’re using. This means you’re never without vital contact information, reports or other statistics and materials you might need throughout the day. Information can be added from multiple teams, from multiple locations, real time; no more entering data later “back at the office.”

Cloud-based software also helps you collaborate efficiently with everyone on your team. Each vested partner can have access to common information that’s updated real time — so you can move the business goals forward together.

SECURITY

Your data is more secure in the cloud than on your personal computer. Because security is a vital consideration we employ very sophisticated security measures. Information that’s on your desktop is more vulnerable, and paper copies are more likely to be misplaced or picked up by someone else.

FLEXIBILITY

There’s typically no up-front installation cost with cloud-based software. This means you can try out a new application with a minimal financial commitment. You’re not putting any storage-gobbling software on your desktop, and if you decide the program is not what you’re looking for, you can drop it.

RECOVERY

Cloud-based software allows you to dismiss worries about a hard drive crashing or a laptop being stolen. With desktop applications, these incidents can be true disasters, costing weeks of recovery time and wreaking havoc on client relationships. Data stored in the cloud is automatically backed up and isn’t going anywhere, even if your iPad ends up at the bottom of a lake.

SAVE THE TREES

Speaking of paper, you’ll use much less of it when you rely on cloud-based tools. Naturally, we’re big believers in cloud-based software; it’s at the core of our product. But we truly believe the cloud will make your life easier however you use it, and you need to understand its advantages.

Get Focused

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Get Focused

ROI’s ARE 1.5x HIGHER THAN 3 YEARS AGO

According to Nucleus Research, a firm that specializes in case-based technology research, the ROI for a CRM implementation — in the form of increased revenues and improved operational efficiency — is substantial. Furthermore, it continues to grow due to efficiencies in software design and fierce pricing competition.

As we’ve outlined in previous articles, customer relationship management software is crucial to any Title Company in the business of selling. CRM applications provide one platform to track every interaction with existing and target customers, helping your marketing and escrow departments improve client relationships as well as prospect more efficiently. CRM platforms have been implemented by companies across many sectors since the mid-90’s however they continue to become broad based generic elephants, encompassing more bells and whistles and less focused on industry specific needs.

There are a few reasons why CRM investments continue to yield increasing returns.

 

The Cloud

 

Cloud-based technology is the fore of software innovation, enabling companies to store data and access it across platforms from multiple devices. Switching to the cloud increases the return on investment. According to Nucleus research, cloud technology for CRM delivers 1.7 times greater return on investment than a desktop or server-based software implementation.

What is the cloud? It’s technically a network of remote servers linked to the Internet utilized to store, manage and process data. If you use Gmail, Spotify, or any streaming service, you’ve used the cloud.

Take the Burden away from Traditional IT

Historically, CRM software was administered through a company’s in-house IT department, often supported by expensive technology consultants. Knowledge of how to use and get the most out of the software was several steps removed from the employees who actually interacted with clients and prospects.

With TitleInsight, the cloud based technology was framed and driven by Title Industry Executives — relieving the burden on internal resources, ensuring a smooth and successful implementation process. Finally a CRM software that can be used by employees from all departments, empowering them to collaborate seamlessly and make key business decisions with detailed information. The emergence of this user-friendly platform has allowed the Title Industry to adopt a systematic process for tracking and managing existing and prospective customer relations.