Find the Best Real Estate CRM for You

Best Real Estate CRM | Top Features in 2020

Real estate agencies are constantly collecting and sending information. With even one home buyer, a real estate agent needs to collect the home buyer’s contact information, budget, wants & needs, desired community/location, school district, and so on.

In addition, the real estate professional then sends countless emails, text messages, and phone calls to the potential home buyer relaying information and updates. Add in multiple home buyers and you’ll quickly have a mountain of back and forth communication and information. So, what’s the best CRM for real estate?

With this much information, finding Real Estate CRMs that help real estate businesses collect, organize, manage, and automate interactions with current and potential home buyers becomes an essential tool. With it, you’ll have all the tools necessary to increase your own organization and efficiency, all without having to learn a complicated CRM system.

If you’re in the real estate industry and actively looking for a Real Estate CRM then this article is for you. We’ve put together an all-in-one guide to help you understand which features you should find in a Real Estate CRM and what steps you can take to find the best one for you.

Who benefits from a Real Estate CRM?

Real Estate CRM, or customer relationship management, software provides a number of benefits for both agents and brokers. By keeping track of clients, leads, and property listings in one central location, CRM software can help agents to save time and increase their productivity. In addition, CRM software can provide valuable insights into client behavior, allowing agents to better customize their services. For brokers, CRM software can be used to track agent performance and identify areas where additional training may be needed. It also helps many real estate agents track the performance of real estate teams. In today’s competitive real estate market, CRM software provides a valuable tool for both agents and brokers who are looking to stay ahead of the curve.

How a Real Estate CRM can help you.

Every CRM collects and stores information.

What makes real estate CRM tools unique is what it’s capable of doing with that information. Unfortunately, not all Real Estate CRM systems are created equal. You’ll need to pay attention to your needs and make sure they align with whichever CRM system you’re evaluating.

At a minimum, your Real Estate CRM system should offer this core functionality.

Real Estate CRM Sales Capabilities

Real Estate CRM Sales Functionality:

CRM – Information Collection

As mentioned above, the best Real Estate CRMs should be built to help you sell homes faster and easier. You’re probably asking, “so, how does it really help me?”

Well, it all begins with information and data. A Real Estate CRM will help you capture and organize all of your customer’s and potential customer’s information. This information can then be used for multiple purposes, such as nurturing potential home buyers and tracking overall sales progress.

Additionally, all of this information will do wonders for your team communication and collaboration. Since your CRM is capturing and organizing all of your information, your entire team can now share critical information with one another and even send tasks for the next person to complete.

Especially now that more teams are working from home, it’s a perfect way for your team to increase their communication and collaboration, without having multiple check-in meetings throughout the day.

Tools to Manage Online leads (A dedicated online sales counselor (OSC) package)

Nearly 100% of all real estate transactions involve an online search at some point in the buying process.

Once an online buyer contacts you, you must respond as quickly as possible, provide the information they’re looking for and establish a connection with that potential buyer. If that potential home buyer doesn’t hear from you right away or begins to feel like you can’t help them, they’ll likely do business with someone else. It’s the nature of real estate.

A good Real Estate CRM will provide all the tools an Online Sales program needs to capture, respond, nurture, and secure appointments from online marketing channels. with a qualified onsite agent – all with the right timing.

Pricing & Contracts

Negotiating pricing, contracts, and change orders is a critical and often difficult task for many real estate professionals and home builders. Providing the right tools to quickly and professionally negotiate pricing on various base models/plans and options transform an often tedious and uncomfortable process into an enjoyable, productive experience for both the buyer and the agent.

Tracking and electronic signature capabilities save time and frustration following up to ensure the process moves along as scheduled. Additionally, the entire team from agents to builders to owners/managers have access to the contracts and pricing information.

Email Integration

Any Real Estate CRM should make your day easier and reduce the need for redundant and duplicate work
By automating various sales activities, many of those things can be achieved. One major way to automate your sales activities is to have your CRM integrate with your email platform/application.

In other words, if you’re emailing a potential home buyer from Outlook, that conversation would automatically be uploaded under that contact’s history in the CRM. That way, each of your team members can see the email correspondence and know what has been said and by whom.

Additionally, this helps you keep track of multiple potential home buyers, regardless of how long the sale is taking. We all know that home buyers move at different speeds, by keeping a record of your conversations, you’ll know exactly what’s been done already with that potential home buyer, even if they are taking their time.

Last, but certainly not least, without this email integration, your team would be required to copy and paste each email into the CRM. Which, we all know, that just isn’t possible during a busy workday.

Automated Workflows

Another crucial function of any CRM is its ability to automate tasks. These are commonly referred to as workflows. Luckily, TopBuilder’s transaction management tools streamline workflows.

For example, with a proper workflow, you can automate what happens when a new lead comes in through your website.

  • 1. A potential buyer fills out a contact form for additional information on your website or third-party site. This interaction will immediately upload the potential buyer’s contact information in your Real Estate CRM.
  • 2. The CRM will note the lead source and automatically assign a status.
  • 3. The workflow will add this new lead to your business newsletter/email list.
  • 4. The potential buyer will receive an automated email notifying them that the form was completed correctly, and they’ll be contacted soon.
  • 5. A notification is sent informing the team a contact form has been completed. This automated alert can be sent to one team member or multiple team members.
  • 6. This new potential buyer is then assigned to a sales agent.
  • 7. The sales agent is then sent an automated task reminder to follow-up with the potential buyer.

It certainly doesn’t have to stop with the last step. These workflows can grow as the need arises in your company. Ideally, you would build these workflows for numerous sales and marketing activities needed by your team.

Content Management

With content management software, you can store, categorize, and manage reusable content and templates.
This functionality has the potential to save you and your team hours each week by helping you and you easily grab email templates, documents, FAQ responses, images, and more with the click of a button.

If you have multiple real estate agents, it can help reduce their time spent writing emails to commonly asked questions. Additionally, it ensures your team members are following the company’s communication standards.

Document Management & Storage

With document management and storage, you can keep all of your documentation in one place. This helps you and your team coordinate which documentation has been completed and what hasn’t.

Also, this isn’t limited to just documentation. Document management should store client documents, contracts, home photos, home specs, etc.

Reports & Analytics

As we all know, traffic is everything for selling homes. Healthy traffic into your homes leads to a steady flow of sales.

With the right sales and marketing reports, you can quickly measure the effectiveness of your sales and marketing activity. This can tell you the number of leads you’ve received, the source of those leads, and how many potential buyers have progressed through the sales process.

Powerful reports like these can tell you the health of your real estate business at a glance and give you the information you need to make better business decisions.

Real Estate CRM Marketing Capabilities

Real Estate CRM Marketing Functionality:

Email Marketing

A Real Estate CRM would not be complete without an email marketing tool. This is important because you need to promote your inventory at the right time to the right audience. Without an email marketing tool, this task can be cumbersome and time consuming for you and your team.
Real estate professionals commonly use a email marketing campaigns to announce new homes, realtor events, open houses, grand openings, buyer incentives, and more to generate more traffic. This tool alone can significantly impact your ability to push leads through the sales funnel and keep them interested in buying a new home from you.

Newsletter Package

Newsletter functionality is similar to email marketing. However, there are a few slight differences we wanted to emphasize.

A newsletter feature is commonly a monthly mass email sent to your potential buyers. This monthly email is used to update prospects on new inventory, completed specs, new lots, new pricing, and helpful content.

This newsletter functionality is a great way to keep you top of mind to all of your prospects.

Lead Capture Tools

Lead capture tools are used to automatically add new real estate leads to your Real Estate CRM. In other words, if someone completes a contact form on your website or a third-party source, your lead capture tools will automatically upload that new contact into your CRM.

This feature commonly kicks off a new lead generation workflow to notify your team and send automated email responses to the new potential home buyer.
Additionally, these tools generate leads and use popular third party integrations. For real estate professionals, these tools can help you collect, organize, and manage leads from online platforms such as Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, BDX (New Home Source), and many more.

Website Tracking

Website tracking features are used to help you and your team know which potential buyers are returning to your website.

Once a potential home buyer has filled out a contact form, you can follow their activity on your website. This functionality can tell you which pages they’ve visited, how much time they’ve spent on those pages, and which content interests them the most.

This functionality also has the ability to notify you when key prospects are visiting your website. Giving you insights into who’s the most interested and who you should be contacting.

Finding the best software.

How to find the best Real Estate CRM.

With any software purchase, we recommend you start by creating a list of your needs and wants. Once those have been documented, then write down your software budget and your timeframe for starting with your new real estate CRM software system. These few details will help your potential software provider considerably and help them customize any demonstrations.

Now, when you are in your software demonstration, we recommend have a list of questions ready. Below are a few questions to help you get started. They aren’t the only questions you should ask, but it’ll get you going in the right direction.

What is the on-boarding process?

Each software provider will have their own unique on-boarding process. This process can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. The length of this onboarding process can change based on a variety of factors.

However, be cautious if the software provider expects you to do most of the work during this process. This can be a sign that the software provider is more hands-off with new customers, which can also be an indicator of a slow onboarding process. This is important to note because the longer it takes to learn the software, the longer it will take for you to see a positive return on your investment.

How is individual & company data protected?

A great Real Estate CRM system will collect your company information and your contact’s information. With your software provider storing this much sensitive information, it’s important for you to know how your data is protected.

Additionally, it’s important for you to know how your data is backed-up in the event of a system failure. Be sure to ask:
How do you protect my data?

  • If there is a system failure, what would happen to my information?
  • Do you share information with any other business entities?
  • Do you sell information with any other business entities?
  • If you feel uncertain about any answers to these questions, you can ask for their privacy policy and their terms of service. This documentation should outline exactly what they can do with your information and data.

What are your training & support policies?

You and your team will need multiple training and support sessions to learn the new Real Estate CRM. It’s important the training and support system offered by your software provider is structured and documented.

This will help you and your team learn the system quickly, lower confusion, and increase technology adoption by your team. So, when you are evaluating a software provider’s training and support structure, be sure to ask:

  • How does my team receive the training they need to learn the software system?

    • Is this in-person, video conference, online courses, documentation?
  • When will training be available to me and my team?

    • Is this daily, weekly, monthly training?
  • Which training comes at an expense to me?

    • You should receive some form of free training.

Additionally, be sure to ask them how they handle support tickets. Your new software provider should have a system built to handle critical issues, important issues, and moderate issues.

Again, these are just a few questions you should be asking when evaluating any real estate and new home sales software system. If you want to see our full list of recommended questions, you can access our free download here.

Advanced Features

  • Client management
  • Task management
  • Online sales management (OSC)
  • Lead management
  • Contact management
  • User interface
  • Lead generation services
  • Model, Elevation, and Option management
  • Inventory management

Final Comments

A Real Estate CRM is a versatile software system. One that provides numerous capabilities to help you sell more homes quickly.
If you’re actively looking for a Real Estate CRM, use this article to help you document which features are critical to you and your real estate business.

Again, the goal of any Real Estate CRM is to increase home sales. Actively look for features that help you collect, nurture, and convert prospects into new home buyers.

If you’re looking for a software system to utilize all of the features listed above, we invite you to explore our Real Estate CRM system. You can review TopBuilder’s software by going here.

 

Find the best software.

New Filtering Options in TopBuilder 2.0

As many of you have already seen, we’ve updated the user interface with the launch of TopBuilder 2.0. One of the largest changes we made was increasing the amount of information you could see on your screen at one time.

We accomplished this task by building a collapsible menu system. This collapsible menu system includes settings and filter options for the page you’re viewing.

Not only did this change increase the amount of information you can see, but it also increased the number of filter options available. These changes give you even more flexibility and control over your information.

Below we’ll walk-through how to access the new collapsible menu system and how you can edit the filter options inside.

New Filtering Options

1. Accessing the Collapsible Menu

You can access these new collapsible menu systems by clicking on the hamburger menu in the upper left-hand corner of your screen.

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Example One:

On the main Dashboard, if you click the hamburger button in the left-hand corner, you’ll see the widget options available for your dashboard. By clicking on the options available, you can customize the information you see when you sign-in to TopBuilder.

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Example Two:

If you are on the Manage Leads screen, by clicking the hamburger button in the upper left-hand corner, you’ll see Filter Leads options available for this page.

This gives you the option to change or adjust multiple variables for your lead information. Additionally, this menu includes keyword search options for this screen. This gives you even more functionality for finding the information you need when you need it.–

Refreshing Filter Options

2. Editing Filter Options

Each page has its own filter options available. For each page, please go through the Accessing the Collapsible Menu option above.

Once the menu has been opened, you’ll be able to select options by clicking checkboxes, selecting drop-down menus, and/or typing in text boxes. Regardless of the filtering option you select, they can only be applied to the page once you click the Refresh button or press Enter/Return on your computer’s keyboard.

The Refresh button can be found by looking in the upper right-hand corner of the filter panel. Once you’ve clicked Refresh, the filter menu will slide away and the page will load your new filter options.

How to Get Support

Looking for additional training & support?

If you’re looking for additional support, please click on the Help Center tab located in the dark blue navigation menu at the top of the page.

Once clicked, you’ll be directed to the Help Center. Once you are in the Help Center, please click on the menu option How to Get Support in the dark blue menu at the top of the page.

From this page, you’ll find a variety of options to help you get the support you need.

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Thanks for reading!

– 5 Email Marketing Tips for Contractors

New Report | Sales Cycle Trending Analysis

Sales Cycle Trending Analysis

With the introduction of TopBuilder 2.0, the team at TopBuilder added a new report. We’ve named this new report the Sales Cycle Trending Analysis.

This new report helps you monitor the trends in your sales and marketing statistics. In other words, you can track your sales and marketing performance week-over-week, month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter, and year-over-year.

Below we’ll highlight who should use this new report and how you can access it.

Sales Cycle Trending Analysis

Highlights of the Sales Cycle Trending Analysis

Who can use it?

We’ve built this report to benefit each of our clients. However, each customer type does receive unique benefits from using the report.

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Contractors

As a contractor, you can easily track RFQs, Bids Submitted, and Win/Loss trends by Job Type, Lead Source, and even Division/Territory.

With this new capability, you can quickly measure company progress over any desired time period. Additionally, you can also measure your sales progress per individual. This means you can measure sales activity for each sales member to see how their numbers are trending.

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Home Builders & Real Estate Professionals

As you all know, traffic is everything for selling new homes. Healthy traffic into your models and community is how you maintain a steady flow of new home sales.

With this new report, you can quickly measure and monitor online leads and onsite traffic trends. This gives you the capability to measure your marketing effectiveness.

It’s important to note, you can filter this report by lead source. As an example, if you’ve launched a new digital marketing campaign, you’ll be able to measure progress for that digital marketing campaign specifically.

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Owners & Investors

It’s quite common for business owners and investors to measure company progress each week. With the sales cycle trending analysis, you’ll be able to make better business decisions by quickly reviewing important business statistics at a glance.

Of course, if you report these weekly sales and marketing statistics to your business owner or investor, this report is your next best friend.

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How do you access this report?

The sales cycle analysis report can be found in two different locations. Regardless of the path you take, it’s the same report.

Sales Cycle Trending Analysis

Location #1

Begin by visiting the TopBuilder CRM Dashboard. Once you are on the dashboard, look for the menu item Reports & Analytics in the dark blue navigation menu.

Once you’ve scrolled over the Reports & Analytics tab, you’ll see a drop-down menu appear. Look in this drop-down menu for the section title Advanced Analysis.

Underneath the section titled Advanced Analysis, you’ll find text that reads Sales Cycle Trending Analysis. Once you find that text, use your mouse to click on that menu option. Once clicked, you’ll be taken directly to the Sales Cycle Trending Analysis report.

Sales Cycle Trending Analysis

Location #2

Begin by visiting the TopBuilder CRM Dashboard. Once you are on the dashboard, look for the menu item CRM in the dark blue navigation menu.

Once you scroll over the menu item CRM, you’ll see a drop-down menu appear. Look in this drop-down menu to find the text that reads Sales Cycle Trending Analysis. Once you find that text, use your mouse to click on that menu option. Once clicked, you’ll be taken directly to the Sales Cycle Trending Analysis report.

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How to edit your Sales Cycle Trending Analysis Report:

Once you’ve reached your sales cycle trending analysis report, you can edit the variables in that chart by clicking on the hamburger button in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. It’s located to the left of the TopBuilder logo.

Once clicked, the Settings panel will open. From here, you can select and edit all of the variables displayed in the report. Once you are done changing the filter options, click the Refresh button located at the top of the Settings panel or you can press Enter/Return on your keyboard.

By following this step, you’ll be able to edit and change your sales cycle trending analysis report to your liking.

How to Get Support

Need additional training & support for this report?

If you’re looking for additional support, please click on the Help Center tab located in the dark blue navigation menu at the top of the page.

Once clicked, you’ll be directed to the Help Center. Once you are in the Help Center, please click on the menu option How to Get Support in the dark blue menu at the top of the page.

From this page, you’ll find a variety of options to help you get the support you need.

Thanks for reading!

–

5 Email Marketing Tips for Contractors

3 Reasons Why Contractors Should Segment Their Email Lists.

3 Reasons Why Contractors Should Segment Their Email Lists

Ever get an email and think, “Why did I get this?”

Who hasn’t? You likely received a dozen this morning.

Not only does this waste your time, it tells you to take the sender less seriously next time they email you. That’s if you haven’t already unsubscribed.

If a company sent it, then there’s likely a group of people all working towards high open rates, interactions, and conversions. So, what went wrong? For many, they skipped one crucial step. They didn’t segment their email list. They took a generic message and sent it to everyone in their contact list. Sound familiar?

Below we are going to highlight the 3 main reasons why contractors should segment their email lists. That’s if you weren’t already convinced by the introduction.

 

What exactly is email segmentation?

If you aren’t familiar with this process, think of a deck of cards.

You can separate the deck of cards into different colors, suits, low cards, high cards, face cards, etc. They’re all the same cards, but you can separate them into groups based on one or multiple variables.

Example:

  • One variable: I want all the red cards in one group.
  • Multiple variables: I want all the red cards, that are diamonds, minus the face cards in one group.

However, this does mean you need more than just an email address to segment your list. You’ll need additional information to make proper groups.

Example:

  • One variable: I want to email all existing customers.
  • Multiple variables: I want to email all existing customers, that we worked with this past year, minus the contacts that live outside our zip code.

As you can see from the above example, you need the contact’s name, email, project date, and location to create the list with multiple variables.

If you don’t have multiple variables or the ability to store those variables, then email segmentation will be much more difficult to complete. If you’re looking for tools that can help you manage that information, we invite you to review our email marketing tools here.

 

Why should contractors segment their email lists?

Today, we are going to cover the three main reasons why you want to segment your email lists.

  1. Better open rates
  2. Send laser-focused email campaigns
  3. Lower unsubscribes

We’ll begin with email open rates. Obviously, without this step, the other reasons really don’t matter. We will then cover how the content is interacted with. Hopefully, leading to some sort of conversion. Lastly, we’ll focus on reader retention. Making your readers eager to see more emails from you.

Let’s get started…

 

1. Better Open Rates

So, how does segmentation lead to better email open rates?

Email segmentation naturally helps you build smaller more defined groups. Instead of trying to find a message that speaks to everyone, you can send more targeted emails.

Let’s start with an example. Imagine you’re a roofing company. A hailstorm has passed by a neighboring town and it’s a good opportunity to re-engage previous customers. You decide to quickly email your entire email list to offer a free hail damage assessment. By emailing your entire list, it includes other towns, cities, and territories that weren’t involved in the storm. To those readers, your email doesn’t make sense, and they’ll likely pass right over it.

Now, in that same example, you could segment your email list to the town that was hit directly, possibly, the surrounding towns and cities just to be safe. It’s the same message, offer, and subject line, but it’s sent to a specific group. A group that was directly affected by the hailstorm. The result… higher open rates because it excludes the groups that weren’t affected.

Of course, this was a simple example, but it demonstrates how incorporating this step can drastically increase your open rates.

 

2. Send Laser-Focused Email Campaigns

With segmentation, you can send tailored promotions, discounts, and offers.

  • Want to increase business in a specific territory?
    • Send a promotional email to just that territory.
  • Want to reward previous customers?
    • Send a loyalty voucher to your previous customers.
  • Want to cross-sell services?
    • Send a promotional email to current active customers.

Again, these are simplified examples, but it shows how segmentation can help you specialize your promotional emails.

Of course, you’ll never get every single person who opens an email to convert, but segmentation will help you increase your conversion averages.

 

3. Lower Unsubscribes

The goal of email segmentation is to increase your chance to send the right message to the right person at the right time.

Without email segmentation, you run the risk of sending an email that:

  • Doesn’t apply to your reader
  • Doesn’t make sense to them
  • Doesn’t add value to their day
  • Doesn’t engage them
  • Doesn’t interest them
  • Or worse, annoys them

Whenever any of the above happen, you run the risk of getting an unsubscribe. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll get a couple unsubscribes here and there, but you don’t want a bunch.

If you get too many, it’ll lower your email reputation. If your email reputation score falls too low, it’ll start putting your emails in a spam folder.  This is the last thing you want.

 

Conclusion

Today, we reviewed the top three reasons why a contractor should segment their email lists.

To begin, it helps you increase your open rates. Once your emails are opened, it helps keep your readers engaged and more interested in the promotion, offer, and/or discount. With continued effort, it’ll lower your unsubscribe counts and keep your readers wanting more.

However, email segmentation isn’t the only step in making an effective email campaign. If you’re wanting to read our full list of email marketing tips, you can find them here.

If you’re a contractor or home builder who needs help segmenting their email lists, please view our email marketing tools. These tools are built specifically to help contractors and home builders get the most out of their email campaigns. You can find more information here.

 

5 Email Marketing Tips for Contractors

Launching TopBuilder 2.0 This Week!

TopBuilder 2.0

We’re proud to announce TopBuilder 2.0 is being launched this week!

At the end of January, I announced my desire to raise the industry standard. To be more proactive on releasing new upgrades, updates, and additions to TopBuilder. It’s been a long couple of months, but we’ve finally made it! At the end of this week, we’ll be releasing TopBuilder 2.0!

Of course, we are overjoyed to be sharing this huge step forward with all of you. There are a number of changes we’ve made to our system, but many of them fell into three distinct buckets. Below I will be outlining those three buckets and a few of the major changes you can expect to see.

 

3 Major Changes with the Launch of TopBuilder 2.0

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1. New Look & Feel

TopBuilder New Look

As many of you have already seen, we’ve updated our logo, colors, and fonts to look more modern and crisp. It only made sense to carry that over to our software. With the launch of TopBuilder 2.0 you’ll see the same software structure you’ve grown to love, but with a brand new look. Here are a few changes you can expect to see:

  1. New Logo & Colors
  2. Improved Navigation & Menus
  3. Cleaner Page Layout

If you are wanting to read more about these changes, you can read more here or you can watch the video below.

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2. New Customizable Dashboard

New Customizable Dashboard

With the new look and feel, we wanted to give you additional control over your dashboard. This added functionality gives you the ability to organize the dashboard based on your own individual preferences.

With the launch of TopBuilder 2.0, you’ll see a standard dashboard created for you. From there, you can immediately start adjusting and tweaking the dashboard to your liking. Here are a few new dashboard features you can expect to see.

  1. Add, Remove, and Organize Widgets
  2. New Widget Settings and Preferences
  3. Quickly Collapse Widget Panels
  4. New Dashboard Adjusts to Different Screen Sizes

If you are wanting to read more about these changes, you can read more here.

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3. New Reports & Widgets

Now that TopBuilder 2.0 offers a customizable dashboard, I felt it necessary to upgrades the items (called widgets) in that dashboard.

These widgets show you information like active leads, tasks, alerts, agenda items, sales pipeline, etc.

With the launch of TopBuilder 2.0, you’ll see each of these widgets have been updated to mirror our new look and feel. Additionally, my team and I have decided to upgrade a few of these to be more efficient. Also, we added a report that I know you’ll all love.

Here are a few changes you can expect to see:

  1. New Sales Funnel Trend Report (Count & Revenue)
  2. Upgraded Key Statistics Widget
  3. Upgraded Daily Agenda Widget
  4. New What’s New Widget
  5. New Feature Highlight Widget
  6. New News & Events Widget

Again, we are so excited to finally be making these changes live. Over the next month, we’ll be offering training sessions to review TopBuilder 2.0. We’ll be sending out announcements next week for those training dates and times.

Thank you for all the support!

Sincerely,

Dave Knowles
President & Founder

 

Looking at construction software?

TopBuilder Customizable Dashboard

TopBuilder Customizable Dashboard

With the launch of TopBuilder 2.0, we’ve focused on efficiency items.

In other words, what can help you find important information quicker and easier. To make this happen, we’ve introduced some navigation changes, some page layout upgrades, and the customizable dashboard.

The new customizable dashboard is unique to each user and gives you the ability to display information that matters most to you. Do you want to log in and see just your daily tasks? Not a problem, go ahead and make that front and center. Want to see your leads, tasks, alerts, and agenda? Also, not a problem, organize your widgets however you like, it’s entirely up to you.

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4 Key Features of the Customizable Dashboard

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1. Add/Remove and Organize Widgets 

New Customizable Dashboard

TopBuilder 2.0 provides the ability to add, remove, and reorganize dashboard items (called Widgets). 

In other words, each user can select the widgets they want to include in their dashboard. Additionally, if there is a dashboard item you don’t want to see, simply clicking the (X) in the upper right corner of each widget will remove it from your dashboard.

Don’t like where your information is placed? You can reorganize the widgets in each column by clicking and dragging the widget panel. It will automatically click into place once it’s near an available slot on the dashboard. Again, these are all based on individual preferences, so don’t worry about tinkering with it.

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2. Widget Settings 

New Widget Settings & Preferences

Your individual dashboard now includes settings and preferences.

These additional settings and preferences give your more even more customization over each widget. For example, you can decide to see lead information for your entire team or just yourself. Once you’ve changed the user preferences, simply click the refresh button in the widget header and new information will display for you.

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3. Adjusts to Different Screen Sizes 

The new TopBuilder 2.0 Customizable Dashboard is now responsive.

This means the dashboard items will adjust and align based on your screen size or the device being used. The image above shows the customizable dashboard on a smaller screen. Since it’s on a smaller screen, the dashboard items automatically line up vertically. In other words, this feature make it easier for you to see all the items on your screen, regardless of the device.

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4. Collapse Widgets/Panels 

New Widgets Collapse

Each dashboard item is collapsible.

With TopBuilder 2.0 you can collapse each widget panel to only display the header. This is useful for those who want to hide content without completely removing it. To collapse a widget panel, simply click the (⌃) icon located in the widget panel header. Once clicked, the widget panel will immediately collapse.

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Final Comments

Today we’ve reviewed our new Customizable Dashboard.

  1. You can now add, remove, and reorganize your dashboard items.
  2. Your individual dashboard now includes settings and preferences.
  3. The new TopBuilder 2.0 Customizable Dashboard is now responsive.
  4. Each dashboard item is now collapsible.

We are proud to be incorporating new updates to our system that improve efficiency. TopBuilder 2.0 is only the beginning. We are working hard to continually make improvements across the system. Have an idea for an upgrade or update to the TopBuilder system? Please fill out the contact form on our contact us page and leave your suggestions there. We’ll gladly review them!

 

Looking at construction software?

TopBuilder New Look & Feel

TopBuilder New Look & Feel

As many of you have already noticed, we’ve updated our logo, colors, and fonts.

The updates to our brand image have been occurring slowly over the past few months. It started with our logo, next was the website, and now, we’re changing our software. Launching this week, the TopBuilder software will receive a variety of updates, upgrades, and additions. One of those major changes is our new look.

We want to emphasize, it’s still the same software you have grown to love, but with a brand new look. Below we will be outlining a few of the major changes you can expect to see with the launch of TopBuilder 2.0.

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3 New Look & Feel Updates to TopBuilder 2.0

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1. New Logo & Colors

TopBuilder New Look

Yes, the old TopBuilder logo has been replaced. With this logo change, we also updated the colors seen throughout the software.

This change is most obvious with the removal of all powder blue backgrounds. These powder blue backgrounds have been replaced with the new TopBuilder color palette. Additionally, many of the old icons have been completely removed or replaced with simpler, cleaner looking icons.

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2. Improved Navigation

With the launch of TopBuilder 2.0, we wanted to make it easier for you to find the information you needed.

To help accomplish this, we’ve adjusted our menu systems. Our first cosmetic change was to make the top header a contrasting color from the information below. Additionally, we’ve adjusted our sub-headers to display buttons. That way you can quickly see where to save, delete, and/or create new.

Additionally, we’ve decided to add a new menu system. This can be found by clicking the hamburger menu to the left of the TopBuilder logo. This will give you additional functionality over the page you’re viewing. We’ll be highlighting this information more in this week’s Feature Highlight.

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3. Cleaner Page Layout

This was one of the largest changes we implemented with the new look and feel of TopBuilder 2.0.

It was our decision to make every page look less cluttered. In other words, we wanted to simplify the viewing experience and make it easier to find information that’s been added to each page. To begin, we’ve moved the titles for each input field above the form, rather than next to it. Additionally, we’ve been working on making each input field the same width. Lastly, we made the forms with text added highlighted, that way your eyes are naturally drawn to fields with information. Making it easier for your team to quickly see the most important information for each contact.

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Final Comments

Our team at Topbuilder is excited and proud to share all of these updates and changes. Of course, our work is never fully complete as we are always working to make TopBuilder the best sales and marketing software for you, but this is a huge step forward.

As we proceed with our launch of TopBuilder 2.0. We will be holding dedicated training sessions for anyone wanting a deeper dive into each major change. Stay tuned, we’ll be announcing these training sessions next week.

 

Looking at construction software?

5 Tips for Managing a Remote Office Staff as a Construction Company

5 Tips for Managing a Remote Office Staff

5 Tips for Managing a Remote Office Staff as a Construction Company

As the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to grow, more and more construction companies are being affected. Whether you have a few employees working from home or your whole office staff, your projects must continue. However, as many have experienced, maintaining a high level of communication and collaboration for these projects is a growing challenge. That’s why our team developed 5 tips to successfully manage a remote office staff, particularly for construction companies. If managing a remote office staff is a growing concern for you, it’s okay, you’re not alone. Below you’ll find our top recommendations to help you navigate these uncharted waters.

Top 5 Tips for Managing a Remote Office Staff

1. Create New Communication Channels

For many construction companies having remote employees is an entirely new experience. Building new communication channels for your team is important. If you don’t, you can experience a severe loss in communication and collaboration, both necessary when handling projects.

Implement a Chat Tool

To begin, we recommend you implement a chat system for your team. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, and Discord are just a few options that help your team stay connected as if they were in the office. In other words, it’s best used for quick questions and/or comments, similar to shouting over a cubicle wall. These tools give your team the ability to create groups, like a finance group, marketing group, leadership group, etc. That way each department can quickly communicate with each other without cluttering their email inbox.

Implement a Video Conference Tool

Next, your team will need a video conference tool. Skype, Join.me, GoToMeeting, and Google Hangouts give your team the ability to meet virtually. As long as your device has a camera, you’ll be given the opportunity to see each other. These video conference calls are similar to an in-person meeting. Meaning you can see who is speaking, read facial expressions, and feel more connected than a traditional phone call. Additionally, it gives your team the opportunity to share their screen. This can be exceptionally useful if the team needs to review something together.

Implement a Construction CRM

Lastly, we recommend you implement a construction CRM. Now that your team isn’t collaborating in person, they’ll need to collaborate through a different channel. A construction CRM will give you the ability to share client and project information in one location. In other words, all job specifications, customer details, project documents, labor requirements, photos, and emails can be stored in your construction CRM. Additionally, it’ll give you the ability to set up automated tasks and alerts when each task has been completed, keeping each team member in the loop. If you are looking for a construction CRM, you can find more information here.

2. Create New Meeting Schedules

Creating a new team meeting schedule is next. You likely already have a meeting schedule in place throughout the week. However, you’ll need to schedule more meetings throughout the week to account for impromptu office meetings. As a manager, we recommend you speak with your team and ask them if they need more time to meet as a team and with you. If they do, even a fifteen-minute meeting at the beginning and the end of the day could be enough to keep everyone aligned and on the same page.

Pro Tip:

If you do schedule more meetings, be sure to create an agenda for these extra meetings. Have a clear plan for each meeting. If not, those fifteen-minute meetings can quickly grow in thirty-minutes or longer.

3. Communicate Consistently

It’s easy for fear and panic to spread throughout a company if employees are left in the dark. Create a communication schedule to notify employees, contacts, partners, and shareholders how the company is doing and company next steps. It’s important to be as honest and consistent with your notifications as possible. Going dark in a time of crisis can make panic escalate quickly. Additionally, make sure to inform your employees, contacts, partners, and shareholders when they will hear from you again. This will help keep everyone aligned and on the same page.

4. Create an Open-Door Schedule

Throughout the workday, in-office employees have the ability to speak with you. This can be through a structured meeting or just stopping by your office space. Once everyone is working remotely, they can lose that ability to speak with you and ask questions. This can quickly create a disconnect between you and your team. We recommend creating a virtual open-door policy. Throughout the week, explain to your team you’ll be waiting on a virtual conference call during designated times of the day. If someone needs to speak with you, they can join the virtual conference and speak with you. If not, you’ll continue with your workday.

5. Be Flexible & Communicate Results

All new distractions can form once an employee is working from home. Yes, they aren’t meeting in the break room anymore, but they now have family members, children, and/or pets that can interrupt their day. With these new distractions, a whole new level of flexibility must be given to your employees. It’s now up to the managers to explain to each employee their weekly goals and objectives. That way, if there is a family crisis, they can deal with it and come back to work later that day. This gives your employees a new sense of responsibility and keeps them from calling you each time they need to step away from their computer.

Final Thoughts

As a manager, it’s common to feel uneasy with a remote work force. You are now trusting them to work without supervision. However, by following these five recommendations for successfully managing a remote workforce, we are positive it’ll be easier. If at any point you need help navigating your remote workforce, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team at TopBuilder. We been working with remote employees for over ten years. We’ll gladly help you and your team increase communication and collaboration.