Today, I want to introduce you to ClickUp for Real Estate and already I know what you are thinking, “Great, another tool, just what I need!” That was my reaction also; however, I have some good news for you. Their tagline is “one tool to replace them all,” and I thought, bulls**t. However, I discovered it is almost correct, at least when it comes to all things related to task management. Before we jump into it, let’s review some of the tools you may have also tried out there.
When managing my Real Estate Business, before I started outsourcing, we did not have any collaboration tools; however, once I got into outsourcing, I realised I had to use them. It was impossible to keep things on track in regard to even simple communication just using email and Skype. This is the first problem I set out to solve.
How do I bring my team together and get them all on the same page?
Introducing, Slack.com for communication. I found this tool could replace a lot of communication for our internal team and our real estate VA’s. If you have not played around with it and you are still on the clunky email system, this will really streamline things. The best part about it is you can set up channels for different parts of the business to trigger processes to start right there.
I was in an SMS group with the sales team before. We changed to this tool where we used to message results like new listings, price reductions, and sales. This was great for the camaraderie, however, it achieved very little more than that. I moved this SMS to a Sales Channel in Slack, so if they were out on the road and signed up a new listing, they would just type in the group #NewListing 123 Smith St, Wagga Wagga, and everyone would react with emojis like Facebook.
It was a great place to trigger processes for our VA’s. When they saw “Just Listed,” they simply acknowledged the comment and completed the listed process, and when finished, came back and ticked it. Pretty simple, and a few processes were solved by using Slack.
How to ensure the task is completed from end to end?
The next part of the problem was I needed another tool because there was no checklist function to standardise the way things are done that I could watch as it was in progress. My VA was using a tool to manage her own stuff that she shared with me, called Trello. When I looked at it, I was truly excited as I saw the potential. We adopted this tool, which was perfect.
We made lists based on the Sales and Property Management process, and the card would progress from one list to the other, with tasks getting completed seamlessly every time.
You can get the gist of how this would work. However, there were still cracks appearing, like when a listing was scanned and sent to the VA it was hard to read. Hmm, we are mostly all guilty with bad handwriting, haha. I had to find a solution for this. The solution was to find an online form.
Introducing JotForm to make forms and receive data easily
JotForm made it so simple to get the information over to the VA as the agent and Property Managers could just type it into the form and attach the agreement.
Problem solved, I thought, well yes and no. The agents were inconsistent with typing “Just Listed” or sometimes forgot…arghh! Back to the drawing board. How do I automate this and make sure the agent cannot get to the next step unless this form was filled. Here we go, you guessed it. Another tool!
Introducing Zapier for Automation in Real Estate
I found this amazing tool, “Zapier,” which could automate a lot of things and had filters where we could have things assigned to different directions based on what was in the form. So here is what I did to solve this problem. It ended up so simple.
Agent fills out “Just Listed Jotform”. Zapier creates a Trello card and sends it to the #JustListed channel on Slack. VA processes the “Just Listed,” and if they do not have all the info they require from the agent, they add a label on the card “Can’t Proceed.” Zapier then sends a message to Slack letting the agent know it cannot go “Live”—all from the label being added.
This was it, it really started working, and we kept introducing more and more tools, looking for the answers. There are more that keep coming onto the market, however, what we had set up was working and effective. This was only one process, there are so many things in a business you need to manage that can’t be managed just using the tools mentioned above.
Here are some more tools I have explored that can also be effective: “Grab Tools,” “Onboarding Board” (Trello), and “Layout Nicely.”
Go and have a play with those and see if any of them suits you. You will probably find they do not do what you want or can only do parts, so here it is.
One app to replace them all!
I kept seeing ads on FB for ClickUp, and I was dubious of their tagline as I have been using these types of tools for 10 years, and I had never seen one thing that does everything. I decided to sign up and had a play. At first, I was a bit overwhelmed as it had so many features that I did not even know where to start! After watching the DEMO’s, I started to get how I can use this for ShoreAgents as we have a lot of moving parts.
I will show you here how we have laid it out so you can get an idea of how you can fit everything in there, and then I will tell you what it can replace.
To explain in short, you have your spaces down the side, which can have subfolders and lists. You can then customise things as you wish. We are just getting started setup with ClickUp. This month, we will move our entire business across and close these other tools we use.
Replace Slack with ClickUp
Replace Trello with ClickUp
Replace JotForm with ClickUp
Replace Most Zapier Automations with ClickUp
There is way more that ClickUp can do. We are just learning about it and how far we can go with it. We showed a client this who hired one sales admin with us and a property management VA as well. He has set up his own way of using ClickUp, which is in beta testing currently, but it looks nuts. If you want to learn more about it, Scott Banks from Scott Banks Real Estate will be glad to have a chat with you about what he has setup.
For now, I just wanted to make you aware of this tool as I think it will change the game. I get obsessed with setting these things up and will become the expert in setting ClickUp up for Real Estate Businesses. Reach out to me if you would like to talk more.
I hope you enjoyed this article. If you have any questions, please just leave a comment here.
