Episode 8 - Tech Chat: Alex Parge

Jordan Fleming joins the founder of REIvolution (and smrtPhone CFO!) Alex Parge for a chat about CRMs, the importance of visualizing your data, and how to thoughtfully calculate marketing ROI. Alex’s passion for data led to the creation of REIvolution, the first all-in-one data-driven platform that empowers real estate investors to scale their business. Alex notes that REIvolution is “more than a CRM, it’s a way to bring all the data and communication into only one place.” 

Jordan and Alex discuss the magic of data, and how to use reverse engineering to go beyond how many leads you need to reach your goals to understand the hidden efficiency of a marketing channel and unlock true ROI. What may feel like guesswork to a new entrepreneur can actually be predictable equations if you have the right CRM and use data to your advantage. 

Alex explains how pre-set drip sequences can help you follow up with clients in a methodical way, without putting in a ton of effort. 

Don’t let the math and science of it all intimidate you – it’s clear throughout the episode that Alex has put in the work behind the scenes of REIvolution so that their customers don’t have to. Listen in for more info on ROI, Data Visualization and a shocking twist for a tech podcast: print is alive and well! Plus: Jordan’s Fast Five for quick tips on how to build your real estate biz. 

About TRETG 

That Real Estate Tech Guy is the only podcast focused on helping Real Estate Investors make better technology decisions to close more deals and make more money. It is your weekly chance to explore how technology can help your real estate business explode. Informed by decades of REI and technology experience, Jordan gets into the details with seasoned tech and real estate industry leaders to bring you the lessons you need to get ahead. Learn from guest successes and failures, get the inside scoop on the next big trends, and always walk away with actionable ideas to build faster, better, and more profitably.

Interested in being a guest? Head to thatrealestatetechguy.com and let us know!

For more information about smrtPhone, the only all-in-one CRM phone system, check out: https://www.smrtphone.io

About Alex Parge & REIvolution 

Alexandru Parge is the founder of REIvolution as well as the CFO of smrtPhone. He has a passion for numbers and making things work in Podio. He's helped to drive the creation of the smrtStudio organization. A self-professed numbers geek, he's happiest when sitting in front of a big performance dashboard that shows all green.

REIvolution is a data-driven platform that empowers you to scale your real estate investment business. With REIvolution you get the best lead management system and make sure there are no leads left behind, to not just meet but exceed your goals.The entire investment process from the beginning to the end happens in the same place: lead generation, appointment creation, automatic text and email follow up, closing the contract, rehab the property and in the end sell it. On top of that, the dashboard offers you real time overview of your business and your team activity enabling you to make the quick, well-informed decisions, wherever you are.

For more information check out: www.reivolution.io

Find Alex on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandruparge/

Transcript

Jordan Fleming: 0:01

I can tell you one thing. Technology is the single most important aspect of every business that has successfully scaled.

Narrator: 0:09

It's time for That Real Estate Tech Guy. It's your Hey verybody it's Jordan Fleming here with another episode of weekly chance to explore how technology can help your real estate business explode. Each week, you'll hear from real estate investors who have been there and done that and find out their favorite technology tips. Listen in as Jordan speaks with debt companies and learns about new technologies and new ideas that will help you scale your business. And now join your host Jordan Samuel Fleming, CEO of smrtPhone for this week's episode. That Real Estate Tech Guy. And today we're gonna dive back into

Alex Parge: 0:44

Hi Jordan, thanks for having me on the show. So the CRM world with Alex Parge from REIvolution. Alex, welcome to the podcast, give a little introduction to yourself and the platform. I'm the co founder and the CEO of a platform called REIvolution, that is an all in one system built for real estate investors. It's based on Podio. And it connects other systems from the market to enhance digital signatures, email marketing, phone communications, and others.

Jordan Fleming: 1:26

Excellent. So I mean, CRM is always a hot topic. For this podcast, we get a chance to speak to a number of different kind of CRM platforms. One thing I'm always curious about when I talk about CRM is, you know, there are a lot of people say the word CRM, I don't think a lot of people really understand what it means all the time, when you guys are working or focusing on real estate investors, what are the sort of really critical parts of your system that you want to make sure you get across to new users,

Alex Parge: 2:03

We consider ourselves to be more than a CRM, we consider it to be a business system that brings together starting from the marketing efforts. Lead lead management, the entire operational part of a business and ending up with with the disposition side, where are our customers organize and sell their properties. Normally, a CRM is only a customer relationship management system, and most of the people, they focus on that, but we are more than that. And we bring all the data and the communication into only one place.

Jordan Fleming: 2:46

Excellent. And I mean, you know, when we have this sort of integration element and, and bringing all these bits into one place, you know, one of the things that I I have, or certainly I've noticed, over the time dealing with CRMs is that the more things you connect, and the more kind of information flows, the more you're potentially giving people almost too much information, you know, like they get a bit lost, what have you found, you know, across all these different parts, how have you found that people are able to stay focused, do you do you have any best practices things that you guys have learned from dealing with so many different investors,

Alex Parge: 3:32

we always recommend to our new customers to complete the onboarding process, we have a special onboarding process, that we split it into stages. First, we talk about the marketing configuration, then about the lead management and step by step we go through the through the operation process and afterwards the disposition disposition, what we always say to our customer is that whenever you start using the new system, there is a learning curve and you need to be prepared to to invest the time, but it will definitely pay off at the at the end. And as of using external resources or systems like electronic signatures or specialized email marketing platform, they only make you or make anyone improve their productivity and help by reducing time on different tasks like creating contracts and and others.

Jordan Fleming: 4:40

Now, let me ask is, you know, visibility of of data and you know, visibility is critical across an REI CRM. I mean, the whole point, a lot of times of doing this is to make sure that you are able to see what needs to happen. So if you were gonna look at both a management level and a user level, inside of your platform, what you know, what kind of what are the ways that people can focus on, on what's important and what's at hand, both from maybe an acquisitions element or like a, you know, an acquisitions manager or someone running sales? And at the higher level, if I've got a team, I want to make sure I know what's important that what's being done? Can you speak to a bit about that?

Alex Parge: 5:30

Sure. So let's start with with the people inside the business. They are split among roles, like lead manager, acquisition representative, operation, acquisition operation manager, disposition manager. And across the platform, we have special views created inside the platform, and each of them receive a dashboard, where they have their views that they need to follow. And also, there is a specialized tasks app where they have all the tasks organized so they can keep track of everything inside the platform. Besides that, the system, the core system, called Podio, where REIvolution is built, it also has a notification system. So everybody can act fast whenever they receive a call or an email. As for the management, we offer the management, the dashboard platform that takes the data from the entire system, and computes the most important numbers for for any manager. And I will say one of the most important is the return on investment, but also the entire sale funnel. So everyone can see their performance on different levels of offer lead, let's say from lead generation, to appointment setting to closing the contract, and actually by buying the house after the you close the contract, because sometimes, you know, deals get lost. And that particular cancellation ratio is very important in order to make a good forecast on future revenues and future deals. That can be closed.

Jordan Fleming: 7:21

Sure. So I then with because you're able to take all that data, and I guess visualize it, you know, that, you know, you're giving the business owner or the managers, the ability to very easily see the things that are potentially impacting them. Like, I think one of the things that I always find with CRMs, that people a lot of times people don't do, and when they don't do it, it drives me nuts, is they don't track, which of the marketing lead sources that they're investing in, is returning the best, you know, is returning the most money, right? They, they they they go out and they invest in all these different lead sources, whatever that is, whether they're buying lists, or they're investing in ads, or PPC or SEO or whatever, bandit signs, but they're not tracking that. So does, how does your system make it easy to get that fundamental issue? Because that's a bit that I think so many people don't do. And given that we're currently looking at a global economic upheaval, you know, getting the return on investment is critical. Can you speak to a bit about that and how it works in REIvolution?

Alex Parge: 8:34

Sure. So the creation of every lead, the lead is automatically tagged with the marketing information available. Let's see, it's a tracking number for from a direct mail is sent or it's a tracking number from their website, or it's a web form, or as you said, it's a phone number from a bandit sign, you have that information inside the system when the lead is created, then we take that information through the entire process, and we tag, let's say the appointment, the closing and everything we tagged with that information. And we are able to show to our customers a table of marketing campaigns, number of leads for each marketing campaign, number of appointments, number of closings, profit obtained, marketing spent because they have also the ability of putting in the system the amounts they are spending on each marketing source. And in this way, the system will automatically compute the return of investment.

Jordan Fleming: 9:35

That's really see that's really interesting, because I think you know what you just said there? There's two things I really liked about that. Number one, just being able to actually monitor the lead sources and being like, I've paid X I'm getting Y, where am I getting the best return? That's one and I think that's critical for any investor. But the other thing I really like is if you're tagging all these events with that same source, you're not only going to get the high level, how much money am I making, but you're also going to be able to start understanding the efficiency of different lead sources, right? Because it's not, it's, of course, the high level, the, you know, the, the money, the bottom line of how much profit am I making is a hugely important thing to track. But sometimes it's also about, you know, this, this is costing me, this lead source is making us do 10 appointments, or you know, 10 conversations per, you know, per qualified, and we have to do three appointments, and we have to do all this. So there's a, it's more than just the bottom line of cash. It's about efficiency. And what I'm hearing is it given that each of these events that happens in your system is tagged, you're able to actually show that kind of detail as well, is that correct?

Alex Parge: 10:54

Yes, it's 100%. Correct. And you can improve on specific levels of your business. But if, because you have said that I would like to talk about the reverse engineering of the business that can be made, let's say, one investor who plans to make 100k in one month, he looks on the dashboard, he sees that, in average, he has like, let's say 10k per deal. So he knows that he needs 10 deals, then he knows that he has the cancellation ratio, and he will know that applying the correct math that he needs to sign 12 contracts. And for every contract, maybe he needs three to three appointments, and for every appointment, he needs 10 leads and then he will get the total number of leads required. And because he he also has the cost per lead, that he will easily be able to compute the marketing budget required to obtain those results. Regardless that he can decide, let's say, to improve the markup on a specific transaction. And instead of 10 deals with 10k, in average, he can increase at 20k and only require five transactions. So that's that that's the magic of using the data.

Jordan Fleming: 12:10

I think that is such a good point. I think that's a point that people miss a lot around the power of why a CRM, once you go past those sort of first baby steps of just, you know, most people get into the CRM ecosystem, I think, just based on lead management, they need some place to organize and deal with their leads, right. That's, that's what I've seen historically of people stepping into it, it's like, I just need to get this shit organized. But your point is so valid. Once you get past that, I just need to organize it. The real power is in making those business decisions. And what a great example, to be able to say, I need I want, I've tracked this data. So I know it's going to take me 10 calls, to get 10 calls to qualify and have all my leads 20% are going to qualify whatever it is, I can do those numbers, and I can work out my model. And that way I can start setting expectations and driving the team in the way I need to do it to achieve the results. And you only get that, you know you can you can instinct it, but you're only really going to do it if you've got the data and a system, you know, a robust system is going to give that to you.

Alex Parge: 13:28

Exactly. And one more thing to consider is that a few years ago, everybody had a headquarters. So you could go to the headquarter and stay with your team to see exactly what they are doing to discuss with them. By now most of the teams work remotely. How can someone track and know exactly what their team is doing without the system? There is no way.

Jordan Fleming: 13:55

Yeah, the pandemic has given us has given us a whole new world and a robust system means that really people can work from anywhere because they're working inside their systems. So you can you have visibility over their activity.

Alex Parge: 14:10

Exactly. When and what

Jordan Fleming: 14:13

Now, let me ask so, you know, I again, I think that a lot of people, a lot of people get into the CRM game when it comes to real estate investment, mainly to find a way of just keeping their leads organized, right. But it's not just about organization, it's about the follow up and there's not an investor or there's not a successful investor that I've ever spoken to who doesn't preach the maxim of the, the maxim the follow up of if you let those leads if you don't follow up your leads, you are leaving money on the table. How does you know you know, A, do you agree? And B, what is your system do to assist investors on the follow up?

Alex Parge: 15:00

I totally agree that the follow up is one of the key key processes in, in the lead management and it has to be very well organized. So you don't miss anything, because any lead means money that you have already spent. And you need to maximize that. I remember one client having a task that was saying to the team, follow up until they tell you to stop following up. So go to the maximum. And I have also seen studies showing that teams that were following up more than four months were more efficient than the teams that were stopping very soon, because selling a house can be a process that can take months. And it may be it's not that easy to make a decision. And that's why it's important to keep following up following up until you get that client that specifically when he has the need of actually selling the house. And to make it sell it to you. For following up. We also have a drip sequence system. Basically any any customer of ours can preset drips of type, email, text, voicemail, test to call or even letter that can be automatically sent to the customer. And that helps continuing the conversation with a specific lead and creating that that that relationship with with the existing lead.

Jordan Fleming: 16:40

Let me let me just ask then, because you you know the drip sequence, I get the SMS, I get the email I get even the voicemail drops if you're using a system that does voicemail drops. But in terms of like the letters, so what you're saying is in your system, you can actually you can actually automate the follow up where a postcard or a letter gets physically mailed. And nobody has to do that goes through a system. Correct.

Alex Parge: 17:07

Correct. Like voicemails go through an integration is live broadcast, the text messages, we use smrtPhone. For the letters, we use a service called Lob, where you have predefined templates and our system will connect with that system and will allow them to send letters

Jordan Fleming: 17:27

I think that's an area I know that I've got, I'm currently trying to schedule a podcast with a provider of that kind of service to the real estate investor community. Because I think a huge amount of people don't realize that A, there's a real power in print, there's still a power in print, because people don't get it as much. And there's a tactile element of something right and, and B, a lot of people don't realize that you can automate a tremendous amount of that. So that once you've set up the templates, it's simply the case of we know the template, we know what we need to send, we're going to tell that system automatically to send it to these details. You don't have to do anything. And the min. And the costs are really pretty average. Like last time I looked into it, it was like 85 cents to send a really big a nice big postcard in the post automatically. I never have to do anything. It's it's it's something that I think not enough people know about.

Alex Parge: 18:32

Yeah, and if you consider that someone may already spend 100 bucks to acquire a lead? What's the extra buck to be spent in order to build that relationship.

Jordan Fleming: 18:44

And what's the extra buck compared to having someone in your office print a label? You know, do all that? Well, but I think that's the I think we don't I think people don't realize that there is that power that you can do a lot of print material based off of what we would give our API we would in the technology world call it an API. I think a lot of people don't realize that. So they they think of you know, do I send a hand letter written letter of thanks or whatever. Oh, god, that's gonna take me too much time or a reminder in the post. It doesn't have to take too much time. And it can be quite impactful if you use it sensitively. Right? If you don't overuse it, if you use it sensitively, it can be a really, you know, nice impact, I think.

Alex Parge: 19:31

Yeah, and that goes together with increasing productivity. And I will always recommend to our customers to use a power dialer for the follow up process. Most of the people out there in the market they only use a power dialer to make calls on a cold calling call list. But let's say if you're an agent, you have 50 follow ups to make in one day, comparatively if you make manual calls and you upload that list into a power dialer, your productivity will increase with at least 50%. If you use the power dialer in following up,

Jordan Fleming: 20:08

yeah, why aren't you? Why aren't you using that? I think you're right. People think so much that the power dialer is only about cold calling. But I have seen a tremendous amount of our smrtPhone customers use it for the follow up, where instead of having to go to a lead click to call, go to the next one click to call you load 'em up into a single line dialer, and you go through them incredibly efficiently. That's a really good point,

Alex Parge: 20:37

I have actually built a hack around on smrtPhone with a date field inside there and on the questionnaire when they, the agents call, and they can choose the next follow up date. And that will update in the system will remove the lead from the list. And on that particular day, it will be automatically included again

Jordan Fleming: 20:58

So you've got a Podio view set up for today's follow up. So whatever it is, and you're dynamically dropping people in and out?

Alex Parge: 21:06

Yeah, exactly, the only thing agents need to do is to resynchronize the context when they start working.

Jordan Fleming: 21:12

That's actually you know, it's a great, it's a good point that you raised as well, because I think the power of a date, field a follow up date field for things like, you know, smrtDialer, for instance, if you're going to use a power dialer, to do it, being able to just automate, you know, push this forward. And then on that day, I don't need to see everything, just give me the ones I need for today, I'm going to press play, and I'm going to get through them, I'm going to be efficient, I'm going to be, you know, be able to move on to the rest of my work. And I agree with you, a lot of people don't really think about like that. It's a good point. So listen, before we go into the Fast Five, I just have one. So your I know that your system has those dashboards. Now are those dashboards, cause having used Podio as a CRM before, many for many, many years myself, you know, the visual interaction with with with the data is limited, right? Podio has a specific user interface. And that's what you get. And that's, that's, that's all there is to it. And that's fine. That's what it is. But your dashboards then are, so you're you're visualizing the data into charts, and graphs and tables and things. And those are the sorts of things that, you know, I can just be having on a monitor over here on a wall that I can just keep track of my data in a higher level visual, or is it you know, is it a Is it refreshing all the time? Is it a spreadsheet you set? Like? What can you just explain a bit about that, because visualizing data is a huge important thing.

Alex Parge: 22:56

For visualizing data, we use an external extension called Overview that transfers the data from Podio into nice graphics. The system comes automatically with the basic KPI dashboard that goes from from the beginning to the end. But we can also customize other reports for customers for more for bigger teams and for other needs. Our dashboards can be placed on a TV inside the headquarter or can be automatically sent via email on a daily, weekly or monthly frequency. Also, we have built along the way, specialized dashboards for meetings, so let's say you have an acquisition meeting each week, and you would like to look at only that portion of acquisition. We have built a special dashboard only for that so the team can meet and discuss on those specific KPIs. Of course, the CEO dashboard has the view the 10,000 foot view of the business and it contains the most important indicators.

Jordan Fleming: 24:05

Excellent. All right. Well, listen, before we end the podcast, I do want to get through the That Real Estate Tech Guy Fast Five, I asked them to all the technology partners that so we can get a little bit of a benchmark of what everyone's saying. So question number one, what feature of your technology of REIvolution has the biggest impact on your customers business in your opinion?

Alex Parge: 24:30

I would say the fact that it's a communication hub, when you along with the data for your leads, you also have the entire communication history. Either we are talking about phone calls, text messages, voicemails, emails, everything is inside there. At any given point you can see the entire history you had with a specific lead.

Jordan Fleming: 24:54

Excellent question number two, what's the biggest mistake that you see people make when it comes to CRMs in real estate

Alex Parge: 25:04

they don't allocate enough time for the onboarding process so they can understand what's the system and to actually see the benefits. Some of them get scared or some of them consider it's too complicated to, to handle.

Jordan Fleming: 25:23

Yeah, as someone who used to integrate CRMs to people in real estate all the time. I 100% agree with that one biggest frustration of my life to date. Question number three, what's your best advice on how do you start integrating CRM into your into their business, if you're just getting started out?

Alex Parge: 25:43

Hire an expert. Hire an expert, someone that knows, take advices don't try to solve everything by yourself. As I said, participate in the onboarding process, look at the videos and be open minded in order to have success with technology.

Jordan Fleming: 26:02

Question number four, what is the one thing you wish everyone knew about REIvolution?

Alex Parge: 26:06

I would like to, I wish anyone would know about the existence of the software, and how useful it can be if it's used properly.

Jordan Fleming: 26:25

Alright. And the final question. And this is this is not just about CRMs. But if someone's just in your experience, you've dealt with a lot of real estate investors, if someone's just starting out in their real estate investment career, what three bits of technology? Would you recommend that they start with? Right? Maybe it's CRM is one of them, maybe it isn't, you've seen a lot of people start, what would you say, is the best thing to do to start off with three types of technology.

Alex Parge: 26:54

So definitely, they need the CRM, I would recommend a phone system, also VoIP phone system, and the dashboard platform, you will want to look at the data from the beginning.

Jordan Fleming: 27:09

So you need a CRM to manage everything and keep everything organized and action, a phone system to make sure that all your phone calls, texts and everything are recorded directly in your CRM, presumably, and three, being able to actually see what's going on. I think that's a very, very, very fair way of looking at it. Listen, Alex, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Now, before I get to my little closing, tell everybody how you can how they can find you where they can find you. What what's going on with REIvolution. Is there any offers going on? Now's your time to plug.

Alex Parge: 27:47

So everyone can find us on our website, REIvolution.io. They can reach out to me directly at Alex at REIvolution dot IO. Currently, we don't have any promotion, but we still have a free trial. And we offer a super onboarding process. And that's our gift to any new customer, we will be there for you to have a successful onboarding.

Jordan Fleming: 28:14

I do know, I do know a number of my customers on smrtPhone who work very close with your team. And they've always raved about the support. They've always raved about the support. So please, everybody, go ahead and check it out. All the links will be in the podcast description. REIvolution will also be live on the Thatrealestatetechguy.com website. You know what you guys need to do you need to go and give it a rating. Give it a like, go to the podcast platform. You know five stars helps us out it helps us spread the gospel of all these different amazing real estate investor technology opportunities. So Alex, thanks again for joining me and everybody. Have a great week.

Narrator: 28:58

Thanks for listening to another amazing episode of that real estate tech guy. Head over to that real estate tech guy.com to check out all episodes and get special discounts on tons of awesome real estate technology platforms.