In the 388th episode of the Mail Right Show, Jonathan Denwood and Robert Newman discuss using Follow Up Boss and why it’s a good choice as CRM software for your real estate business. Robert Newman, the founder, and CEO of the inbound marketing agency Inbound REM, has had tremendous experience in the real estate search engine optimization field for over a decade. The founder and CEO of Mail Right, a platform combining various digital tools into one convenient, user-friendly package, is Jonathan Denwood, on the other hand. The episode highlights the advantages and disadvantages of Follow Up Boss and when it would be more suitable to use.
What is Follow Up Boss?
Follow up Boss is a stand-alone customer relationship management (CRM) not directly connected to any particular website. They have a stand-alone product that integrates with many other products. It is also a native product. Thus, you can plug and play with over 200 different programs and services. One of those programs and services is Ylopo, which uses Follow Up Boss as its core CRM tool connected to all its other technology.
Advantages of Using Follow Up Boss
1. Inexpensive. One of the pros of Follow Up Boss is its starting price for what it offers. You will get cheaper line desks, wise agents, and similar types of lower-priced competitors who try to do much more.
2. Clean UX design. Follow Up Boss might be complicated, but considering what you can do with it, they’ve done an excellent job making the complexity reasonably accessible and can do a lot.
3. More than 200 native integrations. Follow Up Boss is way ahead of other CRM because you can integrate whatever tools you want, like Happy Grasshopper, a postcard-sending program. So, regarding what you can automatically send from Follow Up Boss to your customers, they are very flexible.
4. All leads come into one place. The typical broker commonly relies on at least three to four sources to acquire leads. Nevertheless, some Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems follow a different approach. These systems prefer to prioritize their lead generation system rather than accommodating external sources. They might completely shut down external integrations or make the process considerably challenging. Consequently, brokers often have to hire dedicated team members at big salaries to keep track of all the tools they use.
In contrast, Follow Up Boss streamlines this process by consolidating all lead sources into a unified platform. Follow Up Boss integrates with many lead sources, eliminating the need for brokers to juggle various tools. Follow Up Boss prioritizes integration and cooperation, ensuring all leads are efficiently managed in one place. For instance, brokers can utilize the IDX Broker system in Follow Up Boss system, just one among the 200 vendors Follow Up Boss work with. Additionally, they deal with KV Core, Sync, and more.
Cons of Using Follow Up Boss
1. Less effective in integrations with backend processes. When you require highly complex communication involving specific integrations with backend processes, FollowUp Boss is less effective.
2. Limit text messages to one. Follow Up Boss has been utilizing text messaging for a while, though they have been restricting it to one text message. If Follow Up Boss intends to transform into a mass text messaging system, it will face the challenges of managing compliance and advisory issues. This is due to the potential misuse by some clients who might exploit the feature to send multiple text messages to numerous customers.
Furthermore, Follow Up Boss has recently integrated with Bomb Bomb to incorporate text messaging into its system. While this integration might be welcomed by many, as it eliminates the need to pay separately for Bomb Bomb, a concern arises. The more functionalities directly incorporated into the core system, the greater the complexity within the system becomes.
3. Manual Handling of Back Office Tasks. You can’t perform back-office tasks integrated into a single platform when using Follow Up Boss. Instead, you need to handle all the work manually. In contrast, other platforms like Sync offer automated features built-in for back-office management. Sync allows users to utilize various automated functions, such as lead distribution and finance distribution, which can be configured in a detailed manner, unlike Follow Up Boss.
Should You Use Follow Up Boss in 2023?
The most important thing companies that build CRM tools should focus on is that users can use their tools. For every tab inside Follow Up Boss’ system, they have made a one-minute video likely aimed to help users understand and navigate through their system easily and efficiently.
They also have built-in features such as lead distribution and lead storage ponds. The system includes round-robin functionality and offers numerous choices. However, the available options might be considered basic or mid-tier compared to other systems. But Follow Up Boss has an impressive capability to gather leads from a greater variety of sources than most others can. Whether you are an individual, a small business team, a midsize broker, or anyone managing six different types of advertising and numerous referral sites like HomeLite or similar platforms, if you are tired of trying to figure out lead sources as part of your evaluation of marketing campaign efficiencies, then Follow Up Boss stands as the preferred solution.
Furthermore, utilizing Follow Up Boss depends on what type of agent you are. It might not suit one agent, but it is an excellent choice for a small-medium team. For instance, if you have a master agent and a reasonably large team and want to supervise what your team is doing, Follow Up Boss can be an ideal tool. Or, suppose you are a power agent that has built your business, and you’re really into digital marketing, and you’re really into CRMs, and have the time. In that case, you can benefit from Follow Up Boss as a sole agent.
