Relationships is an easy onboard, swiftly presenting the user with daily opportunities to build business that pulls focus from the need to simply build a giant list of third-degree contacts who have one foot in the market and the other in pending bankruptcy.
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Lone Wolf Relationships is a CRM solution for agents, teams and brokerages.
Platforms: Web; iOS; AndroidIdeal for: All agents, teams and brokerages
Top selling points:
• Business-first user experience• Focus on clean data/contact records• Communication/email integrations• Lead staging/outreach automation• Task/calendar connections
Top concern(s):
Only that individual users or smaller brokerages may perceive Lone Wolf as “too big” for use in smaller operations. Relationships is a modular/stand-alone CRM, but that’s a challenging message for local or regional-only operations to accept.
What you should know
I don’t need to discuss Lone Wolf’s reputation as a software company. Relationships isn’t an upstart application or disruption-minded lateral mover rich with gimmicks or features that try too hard to be innovative.
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Lone Wolf is bringing a great deal of user data, software design smarts and industry expertise to its new customer relationship management product. While I find the name a little pretentious, and CEO Jimmy Kelly’s praise about his product’s new direction pretty hyperbolic (more on that below), I won’t let that impact my recommendation of this very well-thought-out, simple and engaging application.
Relationships is an easy onboard, swiftly presenting the user with daily opportunities to build business that pulls focus from the need to simply build a giant list of third-degree contacts who have one foot in the market and the other in pending bankruptcy. (I see so many agents misconstrue the number of contacts they have as a sign of business acumen.) Instead, the software wants its users to carefully consider each contact and how the commission they may one day provide was well-earned.
Relationships helps agents keep track of partial contacts and duplicates, recent outreach and surfaces recent outreach context (as well as lead source) so you can add or refer to it each time you send an email. Agents are often hip-deep in multiple deals and relationships so eschewing personalization to save a minute or two is certainly tempting, but never recommended. This is a great reason to use a CRM — the true definition of business support.
The software has a slew of templated emails that use artificial intelligence to compose referral requests, testimonial asks, new buyer messages, open house promotions and other common touchpoints. The AI will also summarize and modify and the user can edit as needed, too.
I don’t love the sequence builder experience. Relationships deploys a logic-based (if this, then that) drag-and-drop interface to create triggers and response drivers.
This method has been around forever, and even years ago I found it too redundancy-prone and hard to build for the time-constrained agent. It leads to second-guessing and over-analysis, and if the setup isn’t right every time, people get missed or become subject to a message that doesn’t fit their contact status.
I’d like to see an AI surface real-time alerts on recent action with the ability to respond immediately or schedule it, and then ask if that person should be linked to or assigned to an action or campaign.
I really like how the system puts all tasks, appointments and other instances of a record within their profile. It’s all there. Notes can be added, too.
That said, Relationships connects calendars and tasks to each record and campaign, ensuring everything that impacts outreach — meetings, follow-up needs, etc. — doesn’t become fragmented. We’ve all told a person we’ll send them something or call them at a certain time, so it helps to link all of that with the actual person.
Lone Wolf made sure that its new CRM isn’t weighed down with creative content generation tools or Canva-like integrations. Managing a relationship and marketing are separate lines of business and so many CRM developers merge the two. An effective email doesn’t need a .GIF or a linked social post.
Relationships is a part of Lone Wolf Foundation, the company’s newly revamped line of business software, an initiative Kelly deemed least year would be “metamorphic” in its ability to exact change.
Yeah, not really.
What I see is a refreshing, lightweight solution for supporting communication, marketing and general business activities with zero gimmicks. I’m happy to report, too, that Relationships is modular, meaning it can be adopted as a stand-alone product to give mid-tier agents the opportunity to buy good software from a proven, stable industry vendor.
What I don’t see in Lone Wolf’s latest is anything that will bring the type of change to the industry Kelly has been talking about for more than a year.
I shared this with the team during our demo. True innovation is going to emerge when serving the consumer is the point of the product. Relationships, while a very good product, serves the agent first. Fine — but don’t tell me it’s groundbreaking. Agents need to advise and direct, the consumer should lead search, ask questions and decide who deserves their money.
After Kelly’s comments, I was truly hoping for something I hadn’t seen before, but I guess every company needs a hype man.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
