Realtor: What Contact Management Software/System Do You Use (agents, agreements, listing)

[austin-steve]

I'm not happy with Top Producer and am looking around for something that will offer a lot of the same features and functionality, but without the bloated slowness and unweildy and awful navigation.

Anything out there that's under the radar that allows Action Plans (prefab multi-step todo's), printing and email batch sending, reminders, etc?

Thanks
steve

[Sandy Nelson]

Steve,
I've never tried Top Producer. I've started with Outlook, strayed to Sharper Agent, and am now back to Outlook. It's easy, intuitive and free.

Sandy

[Gretchen B]

I'm personally using Outlook, but there are a couple of others out there that I'm looking into: Google has a whole contact management system - it's free and web based, so you can access it from any computer. I just heard about this at our company meeting yesterday, and I'm anxious to check it out.
Diverse Solutions - this is another one that agents in my office are trying.

I'm very hesitant to move away from Outlooks - you know the old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" addage.

[kevcrawford]

I love Top Producer. It's a bit slow, but I love that I can do everything in one place.

[austin-steve]

My problem is that I'm not a solo agent. My wife and I are a team and we have an assistant. Therefore, we need a common repository of contacts that can:

1) Sync with our iPhones. Top Producer doesn't do it.
2) Be editable from phones. TP doesn't do it.
3) Allow for easy sorting and segmenting of contacts for communication (email, letters) - Top Producer does this well.
4) Be fast and responsive, such that I can pull up info when a client call on the phone. TP is unacceptably slow.
5) Allow multi-step repeatable tasks. TP does this well.
6) Web based so I don't have software to load and maintain.

I've looked into WiseAgent.com. Still evaluating it.

Other products I've checked into that satisfy some but not all needs:
Small Business CRM | BatchBook
Contact Manager, Web Based CRM, Address Book for Small Business: Highrise
Big Contacts - Web Based Contact Manager + Sales Force Automation Platform
Web Timesheet, Web Contact Manager, Web Issue Tracker, Collaboration : OfficeClip
Online Business Collaboration Solutions: Intranet Software, Email Service, Online Document Manager from HyperOffice.com
...
and others.

I was hoping someone can point me to an as yet undiscovered application that serves the basic requirement.

Steve

[NORMGLO]

Now this type of exchange is what I have been looking for on this site. Top Producer is widely used here in NJ too but I am in the market for something a little more flexible (and less expensive would be nice too).

Thanks guys - I feel much better now.

[ehamill]

My New Home Sales Team uses a web-based system called OPEN (Web-Based Lead Management Application | Open Leads). It works great for them and also allows me to create marketing emails, track customer types, etc.

A few of the important features for us in making our decision was:
1.) We can upload documents (ie, signed listing agreements, pics of home, etc)
2.) Accessible from ANYWHERE because it is web-based
3.) Can have different levels of user (ie, assistant, admin, sales, marketing)
4.) We can edit from our Blackberry/Treo/IPhone (Still cant get everyone on one type of phone....)
5.) Its cheap!

I think the guy we deal with over at OPEN is named Adam.

Ed Hamill
General Manager
Palm Harbor Marketing
a Division of Palm Harbor Homes, inc.

[Brandon Hoffman]

TopProducer. I don't think there is a better universal management system out there.

[austin-steve]

I signed up for the OpenLeads demo. Looks like it has some good basic functionality and I'll check it out this week.

One thing that turns me off already though is the over selling of iPhone compatibility. They have a photo of iPhone with a "works with iPhone" claim, but there is no special iPhone integration, it's simply available by browser. I don't like that type of over-hyping of capabilities/features, but I'll check out the system nonetheless.

Steve

[ehamill]

Good Point.... I use it on my blackberry and on my TREO, but refuse to have an iphone.

I have met the team at OPEN and they are very "pro-mac" people.... I think that explains the I-Phone part.

Check out the feature on creating workflows... That has saved my team a TON of time (ie, scheduling auto replies or creating follow ups automatically based on the answer to a question...).

Good luck

Ed