WHAT IS REAL ESTATE SALES ENABLEMENT?
For the real estate industry, sales enablement is the process of providing your brokers, negotiators and agents with the vital information and tools they need to market, sell and rent out property more effectively to their clients.
This important process involves creating internal systems and branding materials that will empower your property sales teams to take advantage of the data, tools and information available to them. This results in your team operating in a more time and cost effective approach.
In the present, in many real estate agencies, agents, negotiators and brokers have relied on a small team of admin staff or graphic designers (either internal or outsourced) who struggle to produce mass creative requests as quickly as needed. This creates a severe bottleneck, where overworked admin staff and designers build up a large backlog and leave desperate property agents waiting for the right materials.
At the same time, many property agents end up creating their own branded content, often misusing the logos, colours and imagery that makeup the property agency’s brand. This practice is simply poor brand management, and it’s becoming harder for real estate agency principle and managers to monitor and manage.
With agency internal staff and property agents using a range of different software, from professional graphic software like Photoshop to something with basic design capabilities like Microsoft Word, consistency become totally impossible. Also with so many different files stored across the agency office network, keeping track of the various documents/content and their many versions is a difficult challenge.
But with today’s technology and software, it shouldn’t be so difficult to manage. There are web-based platforms that can serve as a graphic design tool, a central template library, and an easy-to-use designer all in one. But switching to such a system would likely be a drastic change to the way your agents and teams are used to working, and as with all big changes, it requires an internal advocate to lead the way for the teams.
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If you’re prepared to be that advocate for your agency, here is how you can help them.
GIVE PROPERTY AGENTS & TEAMS TEMPLATES THAT LOCK DOWN THE BRAND ASSETS
In the previous article, we discussed real estate brand consistency, and it’s important you keep that in mind when you’re looking for online software that will power your sales enablement program .
The key is to find a piece of online software that will let you (or your designers) create lockable branded templates. These brand templates will be customisable to a certain degree, but they will also have certain elements locked down (like logos, agency details, key data and messaging).
With sales templates that are already on-brand, you’re making the internal compliance much easier for your property agents. They can access these brand templates on-demand and easily personalise them to meet their needs. But most importantly you are still retaining total control over the way the agency brand is presented.
DECREASE DEPENDENCY ON INTERNAL ADMIN STAFF & GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
By introducing an effective sales enablement process and you will be giving your property agents the autonomy they need to produce good content themselves. With a smarter content system that involves lockable templates, you’ll be able to decrease the dependency on your internal staff and designers.
An internal real estate agency system that depends on design requests being submitted at least two weeks in advance is a failing system . In a fast-paced property environment where things need to move quickly, this kind of timeline just doesn’t work. Rather than failing to provide each property agent with the right content materials, at the right time, and in the right format, your goal should be to put internal processes in place that will allow them to act independently.
If you switch to an internal system where designers, and admin staff can create branded templates with locked brand assets, you will be reducing the amount of time each design task takes. No longer will they have to coordinate with teams of property agents to gather the specifics of a property, event or promotion. Instead, they can simply create the branded property template and make it available to the property agents who will fill in those details themselves.
Here is the thing: your property agents are likely already creating content anyway, but it’s probably taking them a lot longer than they would like. By providing them with branded templates and an easy-to-use internal system that lets them make customisations, you’re letting them keep their independence they’ve become accustomed to, while also speeding up the design process for content.
STREAMLINE THE PROPERTY SALES PIPELINE
In taking the right steps to implement lockable content templates and decrease dependency on internal admin staff and graphic designers, it is worthwhile to consider other ways to maximise a change like this and stream line other real estate processes for better efficiency.
An empowered and supported property agent is a productive one, so by giving your team a quick and easy access to the tools they need, you are increasing their overall chances of success in making sales.
You can also further reduce internal bottlenecks by implementing a sales enablement system that includes one online central content library. Consider how much time is wasted each day, week, month or even year across an entire team of property agents who are constantly having to search through email chains or unorganised file folders for the latest version of a document or content.
Now instead imagine one central online library where the latest version of a document or content can be updated, automatically saved and then accessed by all property agent teams. That’s much better, correct?
Similarly, another great feature you should build into your sales enablement program is a cloud-based storage system . Storing files online in the cloud means they can be accessed from any device at any time, as long as the property agent has access to the internet and the correct login credentials, a valuable feature for all property agents who are always on the move.
Overall, a successful real estate sales enablement strategy that uses templates held in one central online, cloud-based library will both reduce dependency on your internal staff and designers and empower your property agent teams. Ultimately, it will mean your property agents and brokers will have what they need, when and where they need it.
Please stay tuned to the next part of the series where will explore in detail on how to properly manage your real estate brand consistency. Here are the next topics in the series:
- Print Collateral
- Digital Collateral
