ACT! for Real Estate 2008 10.0 FAQ

One Realtors’ Wish List for a Real Estate Contact Management Database

John H., a long-time real estate agent sent me his real estate database wish list and asked me to comment on each of his wish-list items. Here are his questions and my reply

Lori, will ACT! Software 2009 or ACT! for Real Estate 2008 (Sage AFRE 10.0) do the following:

Q – Track expenses? Set up a budget for expenses that is kept within % range of income?

A – Not really. ACT! for Real Estate is not designed for this. You could “force fit” a solution, but there’s an add-on for expense tracking. Or you could attach a spreadsheet to ACT! in your ACT! My Record. ACT! for Real Estate 10.0 is really a contact manager to help you manage your sellers and buyers better–to make you a higher performing real estate star. Accounting functions are best left to accounting programs and spreadsheets.

Q – Can ACT! for RE run multiple campaigns at a time? Set up campaigns with built in letters and templates for email and letters to run automatically for 1 month or 100 years?

A – Yes. Swiftpage is an easy to use email marketing and drip marketing ACT! add-on tool that integrates beautifully with ACT! for Real Estate 2008 and lets you put your prospecting and customer nurturing programs on auto-pilot. Q – Is it easy to send emails and letters and batch emails and letters in AFRE using Microsoft Word and Outlook? Can I track all letters and emails sent and received?

Q – Can I synchronize ACT! for RE with Outlook Calendar?

A – Ditto.

Q – Can I receive emails on my Blackberry? Can I dial a phone number by clicking on the contact record? Then log calls with predefined results?

A – Ditto, but this is really a function of your Blackberry feature set. ACT! for Real Estate will also synchronize to iPhone, Treo and Windows CE phones as well using the Companionlink PDA sync software.

Q – Can ACT! for Real Estate schedule appointments for sales, follow-ups and annual reviews?

A – Ditto

Q – Is AFRE searchable on dates for birthdays, anniversaries, purchase dates, last contacts, etc.?

A – Ditto

Q – Does the ACT! for Real Estate software have a dashboard that has an easy to navigate daily activity list?

A - Yes, and you can customize other dashboard views as well, such as tracking open contracts, open listings and other key performance indicators for your business

Q – Will ACT! for RE 2008 track daily calls, letters, emails, appointments in a daily, monthly, yearly report.

A – Yes, this is the point of the software.

Q – Will AFRE set up goals for daily activities? Will ACT! Software track and maintain daily goals and activity numbers for myself and others?

A – There is a Task List in ACT! for Real Estate and it has a low, medium, high priority setting. You can view your own or other team members’ open and closed tasks. You can also create a report to document completed daily, weekly, monthly activities to compare them to goals you set for yourself or your company.

Q – Is there a special section for daily lessons learned?

A – Ick; this kind of stuff creeps me out, but I guess you can put that in there if you want

Q – Can Iimit other team members on the ACT! Software network to certain zip codes or group of clients?

A – Yes, ACT! for Real Estate 2008 10.0 has built-in security settings so agents only see authorized sets of data or are restricted from seeing contacts they’re not supposed to see.

Q – Can ACT! for Real Estate track general Real Estate info, such as type, size, number of bedrooms, number of baths, areas, dates bought and sold, etc? Can it track general mortgage info, Credit score, loan amount, type, length, LTV, DTI, etc? Can ACT! for Real Estate track general life insurance amounts, retirement assets, other assets, net worth, etc.?

A – Yes

Q – Can ACT! for Real Estate create a pipeline for sales and then calculate a percentage of probability that a sale will occur?

A -Yes, this is exactly what ACT is good at. In its Opportunities feature, there are detailed ways to track your listings and prospects. There are many canned reports and you can always custom create a specific report.

Q – Can you click on an address and have it go to the web for driving directions from my office?

A – Yes, exactly what ACT! for Real Estate is good at. In fact, if you synchronize your PDA to ACT! for Real Estate, and your PDA has GPS, you can get driving directions on your phone from your ACT! scheduled appointment!

Q – Will ACT! for Real Estate let me import and export of contacts easily? Will it always search for duplicates before importing the same record?

A – Yes, you can pick the matching criteria you want to use before importing. The AFRE default for deduplicating is contact name, company name and phone number.

Q – Can you perform an easy database backup with AFRE?

A – Yes, a manual backup takes 3 mouseclicks. You can also set up automatic backups on your Windows services.

Q – I want to store the AFRE Database on my own computer but access my information when I’m on the road or out of the office. What are my options?

A – If you take a laptop on the road with you, but use a PC at the office or at home, you can sync the two machines together using ACT!’s synchronization feature that comes with the program. This just needs to be set up. You can also set up a web-access version of ACT! that you can log onto from any Internet connection. Finally, you can synchronize your PDA phone to ACT! for Real Estate using Companionlink. (We have a Companionlink discount code on our website to save $5.)

Q – Do you offer online training for ACT! for Real Estate?

A – Yes, you can schedule training on the date and time of your choice with a 2-hour online ACT! for RE training course.

Q – Do you offer free ACT! technical support?

A – Ha ha, no. But we do offer “per incident” support for a mere $3/minute or via an annual technical support plan at significant savings.

ACT! for Real Estate 2008 10.0 Summary:

RE is like other sales occupations: making calls and contacts, tracking them and following up with them. ACT for Real Estate 2008 does this better than any other program because it’s intuitive to use and has so many built-in ways to slice and dice the info you capture. The drip marketing component is awesome. It’s a very pragmatic program, which is why I like it. AFRE is not going to send you little motivational messages or assign you busy work goal mastery. It just helps you sell and integrates with all the Microsoft Office programs and PDAs you use to do that. And it’s such a popular program (4 million users worldwide), that you’ll always be able to get ACT! help when you have a problem or need training.

Do Real Estate Agents need their own version of ACT!? Read one Real Estate Agent’s opinion.