How a CRM can give you the time to focus on new sales

05 October 2020

We all spend too much time chasing opportunities and leads, but there is so much else that has an impact on our ability to proactively manage your sales pipeline.

This does not just mean the time taken picking up the phone or sending an email, but the opportunity cost of not being able to show would-be purchasers around the show home because you are too busy chasing previous opportunities.

In this blog, we will explore the 5 ways that housebuilders can maximise their profitability with the implementation of an effective CRM solution. Not just saving time but adding value to a sale and even driving further house sales.

Organising your day

A good CRM will feed you with the tasks that you need to achieve in that day. Whether that is following up with new enquiries or chasing those warm opportunities to get a deal across the line.

Your CRM should be capable of creating and prioritising tasks for you, allowing you to focus on those opportunities that will add the most value.

Managing expectations

A key theme that we see with salespeople is that although the deal may be done, you remain too close to the customer, acting as their primary contact. This is particularly true for housebuilders as you remain the face of the transaction until completion, despite your job largely being over after the reservation process.

Scheduling automated communications to customers with progress updates can help to keep customer expectations managed, especially when there is a length of time between point of sale and the exchange of contracts and legal completion.

Imagine how much time you’d have if you could half the number of ‘just-checking-in’ visits from people that have already purchased?

Funnel management

Chasing is part of the process, we know. But knowing when to chase and when to give up is important. Registering customer touch points and qualifying your leads can help to track how likely it is that any deal would come off.

So, if you have not managed to engage with someone after they visited the show home two weeks ago, then don’t follow up!

It is also important to keep that momentum going, nudging the customer along the purchase journey. This is particularly true when it comes to getting from reservation to contracts exchanged.

Ensuring the customer is still engaged is vital, but these communications do not have to feature every day or even every week. Scheduling and automating these communications can create so much time in your week.

Adding value: extras and upgrades

Following on from increased visibility is the prospect of linking this to purchasing extras and upgrades. Linking these to key milestones of the build can help to increase the time-sensitivity and inspire further purchases, with people needing to choose upgrades before certain milestones are reached.

Furthermore, the power of a customer portal can truly be realised when considering extras and upgrades. With buyers wanting their dream home and able to effectively choose additional extras from their sofa, you will be able to maximise the sale potential without needing to chase a sale. You can even integrate a payment gateway and buyers can purchase upgrades online without any interaction with the sales team.

Customer portal

Beyond scheduled communications and automated chases, there is a truly automated step that you should strive for, a customer portal.

A customer portal where customers log in, upload documents, check the status, raise questions, and even progress the process themselves. You can even grant third-parties access to upload relevant documents (mortgage brokers, solicitors).

This will completely free your time managing the sales process and put the customer in control of their own fate. You can still ensure critical milestones are hit, and periodic check-ins occur, but this becomes a much less cumbersome process when the customer ultimately feels in control and can manage the process themselves.

Summary

There’s a lot that we can automate to improve our sales process and customer journey, but it’s important to remember why we’re doing this; it’s to allow us to be more effective.

If you can reduce the number of customer touchpoints and the time taken to move from reservation to exchange, how many more sales could you achieve?

We love to make businesses more efficient and ultimately enable their growth. If you’d like to talk about how an effective CRM could work for your business, get in touch.

Contact us