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An NSW agency explains how building a client database of their preferences and matching them to properties yielded results in the past year.
Cunninghams Real Estate secured a place in the REB Top 50 Sales Offices 2022 rankings after recording an increase across several metrics, including sales volume, settlements, and office listings.
Indeed, the agency’s sales volumes increased by 28.1 per cent between 2020 and 2021 to over $886.9 million (volumes have exceeded $1 billion to date).
The annual Top 50 Sales Offices rankings identify Australia’s top-performing offices and recognise the hard work and achievements of teams that pursue sales excellence.
Powered by Momentum Intelligence, the report, which is now in its 10th year, uses a range of indicators to determine rankings, including sales volumes and efficiency levels and the number of properties sold.
Speaking to REB, managing director John Cunningham attributed the rise in settlements to a combination of a bubbling property market and tailoring strategies to meet individual buyer and vendor requirements.
“The market was a huge contributor,” Mr Cunningham said.
“In addition to that, we did a lot of creative sales with people who maybe weren’t sure if they wanted to sell. We did something called ‘on the quiet’, where we sold properties off market. Moreover, we provided very bespoke services, which involved matching buyers with properties that might suit them, out of which we created a lot of sales.”
Due to ongoing and changing restrictions amid the COVID-19 crisis, the agency had to craft efficient methods to meet their clients’ requirements. As such, it created detailed questionnaires for both vendors and buyers to collect data that could be used to cross-reference to match buyers with properties.
The agency’s team began collecting vast amounts of data and used their CRM system to record strong notes about the buyer’s motivations to purchase a property as well as their requirements, recorded it in their CRM system and team meetings to discuss vendor and buyers’ needs in detail.
“A buyer’s motivations are usually based on emotions. If a property meets some of their criteria but not all, they’re going to go for it. For example, if they want a pool and a property has it, everything else will become secondary,” Mr Cunningham said.
As such, creating sales on the quiet by matching buyers with properties meant the agency capitalised on sales opportunities that would have otherwise been lost, he added.
“It proved how critical this data around buyer preferences and requirements really are. Good notes are also vital because without them, a database is useless. You want to make sure that you’re updating it constantly and providing substantial detail about the buyer.”
Mr Cunningham noted that around three-quarters of the agency’s sales consisted of buyers who purchased the property before they sold their own due to market conditions. This meant the agency had a potential seller at the end of the purchase who needed to sell their home.
“So, this was a way of getting the best outcomes for the buyers and sellers while building our business,” he said.
Transitioning to a paperless, digitised business during the COVID-19 pandemic and using tools such as point-of-sale platform Real Time Agent during the sales process or tools to improve communication between team members and customers also enhanced the agency’s performance.
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