The secret to CRM ROI success for housebuilders – revealed

Success isn’t achieved overnight.

It can take months, even years, to become great at something. Take, musical genius, Mozart, and basketball legend, Kobe Bryant, for example, it’s widely reported that their monumental success was the result of hours-upon-hours of training and practice. And these two infamous examples are just the tip of the iceberg, the list is endless.

Great results and success are what every housebuilder strives to achieve, but the paths they take to get there all vary to some degree in length and substance. Admittedly, there are some shortcuts that can be taken, so to speak, such as investing in technology to enhance your current offering or implement a new, pioneering way of working.

And the latter is the direction that most housebuilders are going in, although somewhat more slowly than their counterparts in other sectors, but it’s still happening all the same. Housebuilders are increasingly tapping into the benefits offered by technology, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, and many of them are starting to reap the benefits of these investments.

We say ‘many’ because some housebuilders fall into the trap of thinking they can invest in a CRM system and the leads and happy customers will automatically follow. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

As with all successes (Mozart and Bryant included), you have to continue to work at your CRM implementation and make adjustments to refine your outputs and results along the way. So, what does this involve?

Enabling housebuilders to get the best return on their CRM investment is one of the areas we specialise in and excel at. In fact, we even hold dedicated Return on Investment Reviews in which we work with senior management teams and sales and marketing staff to help them maximise the results from their projects. During these sessions, we identify, among many other things:

• If people are using the system effectively and efficiently? What savings have been made? How does it streamline operations, processes and procedures within the business?
• Who is using the system (roles review)? And who is not using the system who ought to be using it and why? For example, is there still a reliance on other systems and processes, such as spreadsheets, that will be adding cost to the business and are more prone to error. Is this through a lack of information or training or for some other reason (resistance to change)?
• Was the project implementation successful? What lessons can be learned from this? What needs tweaking or rectifying?
• What ROI does the business want to see in terms of cost reductions and savings in administrative time? If it’s used for marketing and sales, is it generating more and better quality leads? How is it being used for customer engagement?
• Are marketing and sales campaigns effective? Is there data duplication? How are web enquiries being handled?
• Do staff feel empowered? If not, this will impact productivity. Do they have the right tools? Can they access data and information offline? Are they able to use mobile devices effectively, etc?

The questions above are by no means exhaustive, but they do sit right at the heart of our Return of Investment Reviews. Our aim is to make your CRM systems work for you, and what we mean by that is enable you to experience the widespread benefits of getting your CRM right, which range from reduced marketing spend to improved productivity and revenue.

Within three hours, we can identify the areas you’ve got right and the areas that you need to work on, and we can help you make the changes that are required, if you need us to. It really is that simple and it really is that achievable.

You may not be a musical or sports legend, but we’re sure you want to get the best return on your CRM investment, which can be achieved with the right approach, insight and a little refinement. To book or find out more about our Return on Investment Reviews contact us today on 01675 466 477