Are you maximizing your CRM database with relationship marketing?

By now I think we can all agree that developers and builders need to rethink the way they sell. The days of simply moving units and cashing in are over...at least for a while. As we continue to explore ways in which developers and builders need to position their communities to sell lifestyle and a “sense of place,” this blog is the first in a series that examines successful techniques in getting these messages to the right people and getting one step closer to closing the sale.

Besides the community website and model homes, a community sales agent’s best selling tool is a CRM database. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management which is basically a computer system that allows you to store information about a prospect and keep all information on prospects organized.

We’ve seen the standard questions on “request more information” forms such as how many bedrooms, when would like to make a purchase, price range interested, etc. These are all very relevant questions that help agents rank how interested a prospect may be. But it’s the behavioral questions that I want you to focus on here. If you’re not asking behavioral profiling questions (either through a website form or with your trained sales agents to put into your CRM database), you’re working in the dark. These questions are how you can begin to segment groups of prospects, and begin talking to them in a manner that is 1) relevant to their interests and 2) sells the lifestyle.

Once you establish behavioral profiling questions and build your CRM database, then what? Unfortunately, with the majority of developers and builders, nothing is ever done with this data! But this is a gold mine of information. The next step at this point is to go for the gold and mine the data. This is not a glamorous task but one that will be worth it in the end. Data mining can be performed by simply exporting your CRM database into Excel, using the sort function to find commonalities and analyzing the information.

So lets skip ahead and say that you’ve asked profiling questions and know – that Group A is highly interested in ceramic art, Group B is highly interested in hiking and Group C is highly interested in volunteer work. You then need to start communicating to these groups differently. By promoting each group’s interests and making the connection that their particular interest is an important aspect of your community’s lifestyle, you’ll have delivered a more relevant and compelling message to that prospect – getting you one step closer to making the sale.

This means more work. Instead of developing one direct mail piece, you need to develop three versions – one that talks about ceramic art, one that talks about hiking and one that talks about volunteer work. The same versioning applies for e-blasts and sales letters. This data can also be used for sales agents when calling on prospects to make a personal connection or to invite them to that ceramic class you planned at the Residents Club for Sunday afternoon.

Crunching numbers, behavioral profiling and developing multiple versions of marketing is a tedious process but it’s the right way to maximize your CRM database. Developing and sending these more targeted messages leads to more intelligent, cost-effective selling and ultimately a greater return on your marketing investment. You’ve always heard, “it’s all about relationship sales,” at Marketing Specifics, we strongly believe it’s all about relationship marketing.