Customer Relationships in a Tough Market

We've all embraced the fact that we are in a tough real estate market. The Tallahassee Real Estate Market is no different. That being said we have to be cognoscente of the fact that our clients are probably a little ‘touchier' than usual as their homes sit on the market for months on end, the seller won't contribute toward closer costs, or their realtor didn't answer their phone for the 12^th time today..... 

So the basic evolution of emotion goes something like this...

Mad.

Madder.

HulkoManaic Mad.

In the beginning of 2007 I invested a ton of time and resources to implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. While I could dedicate a whole blog to this painful experience (we evaluated 20 different applications, but then ended up building one ourselves...) I think the overall concept of such a system is paramount in the challenging market we currently face.

The following excerpt from Connect the Dots From Product to User Experience

By Jeanne Bliss, CustomerBLISS is a great synopsis of building a REAL customer centric business philosophy. 

1.  Stay with what you know naturally to build traction. Find a way to build a very strong pipeline from customers to the researchers, developers and builders of your products.

This "feed" says to the power core, "we know we're about the product, so let's make sure we're getting all the counsel we can from our customers." For example, software companies can benefit directly when they have an Internet feed that sends real-time information on product usage, success and failures directly from customers to the developers.

2.    Expand the customer feedback system. Once you've proven the value of product-development specific feedback, you'll have earned the right, and also expanded the appetite to, hear about processes and other parts of the experience that require improvements.

3.    Trend and track issues that come from your customer feedback system and begin to drive accountability. Work on the top 10 customer issues by doing the rigorous (un-natural, perhaps) process work of mapping the execution of the customer experience. From this, you should identify the current performance and the standards of performance for delivering the experience. Make a date and attach people's names to the accountability for resolving the issues.

4.    Gain traction through process and review. The customer work typically fails because there is a lack of regularity and commonality to how the problems are dissected and reported on. Create monthly experience review sessions where teams report on the work they are doing to resolve the customer issues. This takes the customer work from the vague ("we don't know what to work on") and reactive ("our scores just came out") to a reliable repeatable process that people anticipate and prepare for.

5.    Begin to incorporate the language of managing your customers as the asset of your business into how you define your business success. I call these "Guerrilla Metrics." Work with your CEO and executive team to keep asking for this information. Guerrilla Metrics give leadership five questions for commanding customer accountability inside their organizations:

1. What are our new customers: volume and value?
2. What are our lost customers: volume and value and reasons?
3. What customers renewed, at what rate and why?
4. What is our revenue and profitability by customer group?
5. What is our referral rate by customer segment?

Since the implementation of our in-house CRM system my Quality Service Department has identified 74 ‘Lost Sales' year to date.  Let me say that again...74 of our leads bought or sold real estate in 2007 with another real estate company.  OUCH! doesn't even begin to do that justice.

Although painful to except...at least I know. 

Do you know how many sales you've lost this year? 

Do you know why you lost them? 

Managing the experience of your customers in this market will undoubtedly tip the scales between Sales and Lost Sales.  If you are not measuring you should be.