Data, Tracking, WFH and not getting 'Zucked'
Preaching to the choir: buying or selling a house means there will be data, or in your case, an entire development means a lot of data and data tracking.
Though we’re not here to talk about GDPR, it’s worth noting that a record number of businesses digitised their data sets in 2018 in the expectance of GDPR guidelines.
What’s more interesting is that many of the implemented CRM systems barely made it beyond their initial rollout, with usability and user adoption being the main culprits. In the New Build sector, the systems were not designed well enough for New Build needs.
Moving forward, the pandemic highlighted how many businesses did not see mission-critical value in their CRM system or the data stored within, meaning CRMs often became the first business software casualty.
Savvy businesses realised that their CRM was as important as their accounting software. Their CRM was the central point of data in their IT setups – a single source of truth if you will and therefore invested time and money into getting it right.
So, what does this mean for Property Developers? How can marketing teams and sales agents still effectively work with data, tracking, and CRMs in 2022?
Despite most people returning to work in offices around the country, many businesses have implemented ‘WFH’ policies giving flexibility to how their staff work. This flexibility demands a solid IT infrastructure, especially for sales and marketing teams. Without it, sales and marketing operations become inefficient but more likely come to a halt altogether.
How can your business be efficient if your data is diluted on spreadsheets, laptops, random cloud storage, inboxes, freebie notebooks, or worse, in a CRM that is not maintained? The conversation circles back around to CRM Solutions and Email Service Providers, only this time the right solutions.
Well implemented business software is the key to successful growth in 2022 as we move closer towards the post-pandemic period.
How does this relate to tracking? ‘Tracking’ conjures up the image of Three-Letter-Agencies in a basement or Mark ‘Zucking’ all of your company’s data.
We are referring to something a little simpler, less invasive, and certainly more useful; we call it ‘Activities’.
New Build Sales Agents send a lot of emails, make a lot of calls, and complete a lot of tasks. New Build Marketers send a lot of campaigns, build a lot of web pages, and consistently seek to improve ROI. How does this look day-to-day? It simply means that you get a chronological record of your team and business’ relationship with your customer or prospect – Activities. It means that one hand can always talk to the other.
In pdCRM, you can create and manage a single source of truth for your customers and prospects. Maintain a clear archive of all sales and marketing emails, keep a note of all vital website visits, monitor sales progression and ensure that no matter where your team is working from, the right people have the right access to the right data.
We’ve developed CRM and marketing automation software with the New Build industry in mind. We connect with all the key property portals, including Zoopla, Rightmove, OnTheMarket, ShareToBuy and your website.
Leads - The Challenge of Getting Them In Your CRM
Let’s cut the BS. A lead that isn’t in your CRM system is on the verge of getting lost. Dramatic? Maybe but Post-it notes with a name and number, an email in your inbox, or a notification on your property portal are all one desk clean or click away from falling through the gaps. Simply put, New Home sales are competitive, and you and your business cannot afford to lose even one lead by mistake or slow response.
Every Property Developer we speak to tells us how important an instant follow up is to their bottom line because people want immediacy, not intimacy – it’s the difference between a reservation or a ‘no thanks’. And equally important is a centralised CRM system where all of these leads arrive and live—complete transparency from enquiry to completion.
The Property Developers we talk to get their leads from many sources: Zoopla, Rightmove, newhomesforsale.co.uk, other property portals, Development micro-sites, Marketing Suite walk-ins, and calls!
The list is endless, but the challenge is clear, it’s making sure all leads and sources feed into the same system, so nothing falls through the gaps, and your team get transparency and follow-up actions.
Grapple with your desk, your team and every email in your inbox, or use pdCRM, we’ll take care of the rest.
Each lead source portal has its method of sharing lead data with you. Sometimes it’s an email, other times it’s a notification – the range is broad, and the outcome is messy. You could do this manually, but there is a far better usage of time for a problem that a robust CRM can solve with minimal effort or expense.
What’s needed is a plug-and-play solution to collecting and owning your hard-earned leads. This is where we introduce our friend the ‘API’ -you’ll have heard this acronym before, we’re sure. It’s a unified language and method of giving instructions for sending and receiving secure data in software. In this case, it’s the tool used to collect this data together to put into your CRM.
Not all software is created equally, but pdCRM, Property Developer CRM, is built entirely using an API. Why is that important? Because pdCRM connects with every UK property portal and website out-of-the-box. It’s a CRM and Marketing Platform that makes reservations and sales progression simple and transparent. Leads arrive milliseconds after they are submitted, meaning your team can jump straight on these hot leads to start a successful sales process.
We’re not the only solution that connects with property portals, but we are the best system and the only one that allows you to sell directly from your development site map.
We’re partnered with some of the UK’s most trusted and well-known property developers and housebuilders to help them achieve their optimal business operations and sales growth goals. Find out how pdCRM could help you.