PropTV Ep.3 Finding Sales Within Your Database

Video Transcript

Nik

Welcome to the Garden! Today I’m here, talking with George and we are talking about finding sales in the database. Really big topic at the moment for us, we’re getting more and more interest from clients looking to mine their database.

I think there’s more value in there for them. How does that sit with you?

George

I agree! I mean, I think over the past, five years since we’ve been in this market we’ve really seen the adoption of CRM’s and the market kind of adopts CRM’s properly, and really look to kind of get their data in order and in place which is great.

I think, when a developer is going through, it’s getting to a point in a project where it’s getting bit tougher to sort of perhaps sell product.

The tendency is to double downed on an outbound strategy and often past data is neglected. So, I think, one of the key things to think about when you get to that point in a project is looking at – how do I use the data that I’ve already got in my database and how can I extract value kind of out of the data that I’ve got?

Nik

Yeah. I mean I know from my time, back on the old call phase doing the property stuff, it was always the sales agent gets the CRM and gets the excel spreadsheet and starts just cold-calling everyone and trying to mine the database.

How does Social Garden approach that in the new digital environment we’re working in now?

George

Yeah! I think, I think the buyer’s pretty savvy today and I think everyone’s looking for a personalised experience.

So, what we’ve seen work really effectively is kind of going back to that database and whether that’s via email, whether that’s retargeting through social media, and sort of hitting them with message around personalise your experience with a call to action to update my email.

By saying that, you’re implying that you’re going to add value by being able to personalise their experience and obviously when they go through a profiling page, where they update their preferences and give you more information where they’re at in their journey and that will often trigger intent which you can pass onto your sales guys.

Nik

So let’s talk about intent because that’s really important benefit. When you say intent, what are you talking to specifically?

George

Yeah, I mean, I guess, if you look at things like timeframe to purchase, if you look at things like budget and product preferences-

Nik

Finance status.

George

Finance status, so when people update their preferences and their timeframe to purchase as you know, zero to three months we see the intent and the propensity for them and that kind of segment to buy is a lot higher than people that are 12 months away. So, I think even you can prioritise your old data based on kind of that information.

Nik

So what you are talking about there maybe is a sales qualified lead who might be ready to buy in now to three months and then maybe a marketing qualified lead. How do you treat each of those different types of leads?

George

What we’re seeing still is leads are just kind of sitting in a basket where there’s kind of not much happening, if they are not qualified and they are a marketing qualified lead essentially.

Nik

With those sales qualified leads, Social Garden obviously has a call centre. How does that work in terms so that hand-over that process with those sales qualified leads?

George

You know what we are doing is when someone is updating their preferences, we’re notifying our call centre team here in Melbourne and they are obviously following up and trying to re-engage, update their profile and then obviously book an appointment with them.

Nik

You kind of really understanding the health of your database right? Know where everyone’s at and you can personalise their journey based on what you know.

George

Correct!

Nik Sproal: So out of that in order for someone to actually act on this, what are the top three things you think people can take out of that?

George

Yeah, I think, look, starting with, I think outbound is obviously important when the going gets tough, but really looking back into your data or how do you kind of capitalise on the data you’ve already generated.

Secondly, your phone is your weapon. Use the phone, call prospects, segment your leads out based on sales qualified and marketing qualified and call the sales qualified leads.

And I think, third and finally, really make sure you are capturing information.