9 ways outsourcing can improve your real estate sales

AUTHOR
Mark Engelmann
December 03, 2017 3 minute read

Coffee is for Closers

‘Coffee is for Closers’! If your sales team get rewarded for closing deals, then why would they want to do anything else? Anecdotally, Sales people are terrible at admin, organising themselves and often time management. But, give them a hot lead (lead generation is another story altogether) and they’ll kick a goal with it. So, I ask again - why have sales people doing anything but closing deals?

Here are 9 ways technology and a Philippines based outsourced staff member can make your sales people more productive.

Voice Memos
I challenge you to find a smart phone that does not have a voice recorder on it. Gone are the days when Agents have to have ‘admin’ days to catch up on their paperwork. With technology they can voice memo their meeting notes on their smart phone’s voice recording app. The fancy recording apps will also automatically convert the voice memo to text in real time. Once the memo is recorded, they can upload or copy and paste it directly into the CRM. Or, if they have a Real Estate Sales Assistant in The Philippines, they can email it to the assistant to upload and then create relevant tasks and calendar reminders for following up with the customer.
Proposal Templates
Any good sales coach will say never write a proposal for a customer, however we all know sometimes this is unavoidable (especially for larger deals mostly at the big end of town). Save time by creating an appraisal and listing template that your Philippines Virtual Assistant can easily fill out with a little guidance.
Follow up templates
How about creating templates to thank customers for their time and sharing their challenges and issues. This can be a real differentiator between you and the competition.
Marketing Automation
There’s heaps of Marketing Automation tools out there (we use Hubspot) that allow you to build custom workflows, templates and communications. Basically, you can build a workflow that certain leads (based on criteria) are automatically allocated to. The workflows keep feeding the lead with relevant content to keep you front of mind. Marketing automation applications are highly effective at fostering leads so that you or your Sales Team are only speaking to highly qualified customers. The downside? They do require resourcing to maintain them, and to build and modify workflows and content. A Philippines based Assistant is a great way to fill this resourcing gap.
End of day reporting
Salespeople are competitive. They don’t like being shown up by their colleagues. If you’re CRM is not robust enough to generate comprehensive, transparent and accurate end-of-day sales performance reporting then get your Philippines Team to do this for you… and make sure it doesn’t just get sent to your Sales Manager - it should be sent to the whole team, the daily transparency will definitely drive the right behaviours.
Daily metrics
What about managing your sales team on daily metrics? In the past, this has sometimes seemed difficult as systems were not always updated in time, or data was too hard to pull daily. But, with a Philippines based team supporting your sales function, you can practically have real time reporting at your fingertips. So set those daily metrics, make sure your sales team is constantly in communication with their sales support team, and get that real time sales reporting happening today. This alone will get your sales team cranking.
Warm up the ‘Lost Tribe’
How many leads slip through the cracks because your sales team are always chasing the hot deals and forgetting to send simple follow up emails? These leads are your lost tribe and it’s high time you go in search of them and bring them back into the fold; I guarantee if they’re not doing business with you then they’re being courted by the competition. You can easily create a process where your Philippines based team regularly pull a list of leads who have not been contacted in X number of days/months and send them an email (or better yet get on the phone and set an appointment to reconnect).
Take your calls
Who is answering your sales people’s calls when they’re at opens, or on the phone to a vendor, out door-knocking, or doing all those other things sales people are meant to be doing? How much business are you losing simply through failing to answer the phone and missing calls? Why not simply divert their phone to your Philippines team; where they can answer, take a message and diarise a call back. You’ll be amazed at what this service improvement alone can do for business.
Email Management on the go
I bet your sales people’s inboxes are ugly and out of control. Do they even know what is in there? Why not have a Philippines sales assistant monitor your sales team’s inboxes, flag what is important and summarise what else comes in there over the day? Important things can be communicated to the salesperson immediately, and the rest can be summarised in an end of day report to be actioned when appropriate.

It doesn’t take much to give you and your sales team the tools to be hyper productive and to close more deals. Remember they only have 1 brain and 2 hands - they can only close one deal and shake 2 hands at any one time, so have them doing that all the time and get a Philippines based Real Estate Virtual Assistant to do the rest.