Don’t Confuse Past Practices with Best Practices

Think of how the world has changed.

• The largest retailer in the world doesn’t own a single store.
• The largest hospitality company in the world doesn’t own a single hotel room.
• The largest transportation company in the world doesn’t own a single car.

This is the new economy. E-commerce as a percentage of total commerce has increased by 33% over the last 3 years.

The sales and marketing paradigm has been forever changed by the pandemic. 75% of home sales now originate on a mobile device, yet many builders are still building brick and mortar presentation centres to launch pre-construction sales campaigns. Brick to clicks sales and marketing strategies date back to the late 90’s. Why are pre-construction builders still putting bricks before clicks?

One of the biggest challenges for new technology and business practices is the inertia of existing practices.

Simply put, many organizations are slow to change their business practices because “this is the way we’ve always done it.”

Many real estate developers have been slow to adapt new technology best practices into their pre-construction sales and marketing processes.

What they fail to see is that using PropTech best technologies and practices improves sales and project profits, benefiting everyone.

The exception was Intrawest. When I was hired to lead their sales team, my first mandate was to procure and install an automated CRM system that tracked, managed, and optimized our sales leads and improved our capture rate.

Using a state-of the art system from the US, combined with a refreshed sales team and an effective sales training, recognition, and reward program, we tripled our capture rate in less than 6 months. In economic terms, we were able to reduce our marketing by two thirds and achieve our sales goals. Those savings went straight to the bottom line.

5 years ago, construction costs were lower, land prices were lower, and the market moved more slowly. Margins were better and inflation was not a factor.

Today, skyrocketing construction costs, development charges and record inflation are putting project proformas under unprecedented pressure. Projects are being tendered prior to pricing.Once priced, they cannot afford to wait 6–12 months to construct a presentation centre.

They can’t afford to build the store before they start selling their product. Thanks to our Digital Sales Office (DSO), powered by Blackline, they don’t have to.

Our DSO enables builders to launch a sales campaign in 8 weeks and save $1 million in presentation centre construction costs and get to the market swiftly and effectively.

Our end-to-end DSO seamlessly marries the sales experience, sales process, sales management, contract writing and sales administration functions.

Don’t be confused by the claims of other PropTech solutions. The Blackline DSO is the only complete solution that can launch your sales campaign without a presentation centre.

To learn more about how a DSO can help your next project make more money, follow BLACKLINE for more tips!