Modern Properties Actively Tracks Leads and Contacts with ACT! by Sage
Modern Properties is a fully integrated real estate firm providing comprehensive end to end solutions to developers, buyers and investors in Kolkata within a record response time. With over 14 years experience, in-depth market knowledge, transparent and ethical trade practices and comprehensive property expertise, Modern Properties is today one of the premier and most progressive names in the city’s real estate industry. Be it for buying, selling, letting or investing in property anywhere in Kolkata or West Bengal, Modern Properties provides professional, reliable and personal service through its team of highly committed professionals.
Their relentless pursuit of excellence and integrity has helped them maintain the highest quality standards in their services and uphold the trust of their clients.
Although the real estate industry is a sunshine industry which has seen unprecedented growth over the last decade, it is still primarily a one-man operation with very few operational guidelines stipulated by any industry body. “Since this industry is people-driven, with far too many pressures on a person’s time, it becomes very difficult for us to maintain regular contact with our earlier customers. As a result we are unable to tap a large customer base for new properties,” shared Mr. Amit Kochar, Managing Director, Modern Properties. “When we receive enquiries for properties we are required to provide options on the basis of various criteria such as budget, location, property type. If the property base is spread over multiple systems without the existence of a central repository, then the options provided to the client are limited. Once the enquiries are logged in there is also the need for these to be tracked actively while they pass through the various sales stages to final closure. Manual methods of tracking are prone to leakage resulting in loss of opportunity. We were therefore looking for a solution that could help us address enquiries effectively and then track these enquiries actively through a streamlined sales process, while also enabling us to maintain a sustained contact program with our earlier customers,” he concluded.
Challenge
Customer interaction is restricted to completion of a particular project without any method to maintain a consolidated customer repository with customer contact details and personal information. Sustained customer interaction is required to generate repeat business. Property master needs to be maintained with a multiple criteria based robust search engine to provide customers with updated and comprehensive information. Enquiries need to be registered and sales opportunities need to be actively tracked to provide top management view into sales pipeline. Schedule of activities is needed to ensure that no enquiry is lost.
Solution
ACT!, is a web-based system with strong property master, robust multiple criteria search engine and strong integration with MS Excel. It provides a single view of customer information and has a Swiftpage functionality that allows users to send customized emails to customers. It has a strong activity module, sales opportunity module, templates and configurable reporting features.
Result
Streamlined tracking of enquiry from start to closure creating a sales funnel. Provides real time view of sales funnel to top management with information on hot and cold leads. Activity scheduler records activities that need to be completed in the sales process and throws up reminders as pop-ups. Central customer database maintains record of customer transactions, contact and personal information and communication history in a single window. Swiftpage enables sending of regular emails to customers for sustained contact management
Customer Summary
Industry- Real Estate
Users- 20
System- ACT! By Sage Premium, Swiftpage
Modern Properties and ACT! By Sage – A Perfect Match- On home page
Explaining the decision to automate the enquiry tracking and contact management process in the company, Mr. Amit Kochar, Managing Director, Modern Properties said, “The real estate industry has grown in a highly unorganized manner without any regulations or standards being exercised by a regulatory body with single person outfits abounding in the market, even today. Second generation entrepreneurs like me are therefore looking towards adopting technology to automate various processes to improve efficiency and streamline operations. However while we are keen on implementing these innovations we do not have any resident technical know-how and expertise in the deployment of such applications. As a result we were looking at a cost effective application that is easy to use and deploy, preferably from a reputed software company. ACT from Sage fulfilled all these criteria.”
ACT! from Sage is a enquiry tracking and contact management system that offers best-in-class performance coupled with a great degree of customization, reporting and integration capabilities.
Mr. Akshay Kumar Sharma, Director, Medley Marketing stated, “ACT! as a CRM tool is flexible and very easy to configure. Once we understood the business requirements of Modern Properties, we were able to configure the application and deploy the same within a few days. ACT! is an ideal solution for the real estate vertical as it provides seamless enquiry tracking capabilities, has a powerful search tool and sustained contact management system, as well as strong integration with excel worksheets and template based personalized communication feature which is the need of the hour for the real estate industry”
Modern Properties has implemented ACT! Premium by Sage and is currently using a 20 user pack.
Robust and Multiple Criteria Property Search Mechanism
Property enquiries are normally generated either through newspaper advertisements or through the company website. When an enquiry is received, the caller’s details are obtained including name, contact details and property requirements. Based on whether the person is interested in buying, leasing or renting a property, the person’s search criteria are made note of. These could be property type, which could be residential or commercial, budget, region, city and date of occupation, to name a few. Based on these search criteria the sales executive is expected to provide options to the caller from within the company property database.
Prior to implementing ACT! Excel sheets were used to maintain customer and sub broker database which proved to be a cumbersome affair because searching for the right property as per custom requirements of the customer became very difficult. Furthermore since the database was spread across multiple systems there was no centralized updated repository of property database due to which the information provided to the customers was not comprehensive and real-time. Not only could this result in embarrassment on the part of the company, it could also result in loss of clientele.
“ACT! maintains a complete property master and provides a powerful multiple criteria search mechanism. This enables the company executive to search for the most appropriate property matching the buyer needs based on metrics like property type, budget, location etc. Once this information is available, ACT! allows the user to either copy and paste this onto an email correspondence or convert it to an excel format and send as an email attachment to the customer. In this manner not only do we save time, which in our industry is crucial as we can otherwise lose our customers to competition, but also provide our customers with the most comprehensive and updated information available which gives us an edge in the market,” felt Mr. Amit Kochar, Managing Director, Modern Properties.
Streamlined and Process Centric Lead Management
Having provided the customer with the information he needs the next step would involve multiple reminder calls, site visits, personal visit between the buyer and the seller, sending of agreement copy, installment and collection. Earlier these follow up stages in the sales process were not very well defined and there was no method to ensure that each enquiry was following this sales funnel. If the follow up process is not well defined into specific steps with reminders then the customer experience hinges on the quality of the individual and can result in loss of opportunity for the company.
With ACT! each and every enquiry can be tracked from the point when it has been logged into the system till final closure. Once the enquiry is logged into the system the activity module enables users to schedule activities such as follow-up call, document submission, site visits etc. for each enquiry and set reminders through pop-ups to ensure that no enquiry is left unattended. ACT! also allows users to record the source that the enquiry has come from thereby providing precious information on the reach and conversion potential of each marketing activity. Once the enquiry has been identified as a genuine customer, the sales opportunity module defines the various stages in the sale process such as personal meetings, site visits etc. thereby helping the sales executives to build a sales funnel. As the sales executive successfully completes each stage in the sales pipeline, reports can be automatically generated by the top management to provide them with a real time view of the number of opportunities that are currently in a particular stage in the sales process. This gives them an accurate account of the number of qualified leads, expected value of business, estimated time of purchase or sale that could prove valuable in sales forecasting and business planning.
“Under normal circumstances we would have to rely on the gut feel of our sales executive to understand which stage a particular enquiry was in the sales process. Since it relied solely on the personal judgment of the sales executive, it was prone to error. Having implemented Act! from Sage we now get an accurate, real-time view of the sales funnel as well as information on hot and cold leads which was not available to us earlier. With ACT! we are able to track sales enquires seamlessly which has improved our sales conversion ratio,” stated Mr. Amit Kochar, Managing Director, Modern Properties
Comprehensive and Sustained Contact Management
“In the real estate business, since we get a host of enquiries on a daily basis our sales executives deal with a voluminous number of customers regularly. But this high degree of interaction is restricted to a particular project and gets terminated once the transaction is closed. Since these contacts were not logged in any central database we were unable to maintain a consolidated customer database that could be used in our outreach marketing activities. We were therefore looking for a system which could provide us a consolidated view of our customers, allow us to keep track of personal events of our customers like birthdays and anniversaries and send personalized communication as all this positively impacts our business,” shared Mr. Amit Kochar, Managing Director, Modern Properties
ACT! from Sage enables users to maintain a central repository of all the customers that the sales team has interacted with including information regarding their transactions and purchases, their contact details as well as personal information such as birthdays, anniversaries etc. Once an enquiry is received the Swiftpage functionality allows users to send customized emails with pertinent property information on the basis of multiple search criteria to the customer. It also allows users to stay in touch with erstwhile customers by sending regular marketing emails as per pre-designed templates to ensure structured correspondence, while also recording response to such email blasts thereby providing valuable information on the efficacy of such marketing methods. Users can also send out SMS messages to those customers who have subscribed to the using a SMS gateway.
Since ACT! is fully integrated with calendaring, it ensures that important customer events and activities are not forgotten. Act! also allows users to create templates for routine business correspondence such as thank you letters, quotations etc. so that these templates can be merged with a customer’s personal information to send out customized letters while saving time and effort, especially when the same information has to be sent out to a large number of people. ACT! being highly linked with MS Outlook, all email correspondence with a customer is recorded under the contact information in ACT!, thereby providing users with a birds-eye view of all interactions with a particular customer.