From enquiry to sale: How a database can be your secret weapon

Belle Property Lane Cove sales manager, Brenton Gadsby, said agents should take a proactive approach to building their databases, helping them to generate more sales in a quieter market.

“You need to do more than just take an enquiry, and qualify it. Our agents are very much treating their best buyer’s list now as a pipeline,” he told REB.

Gadsby’s advice came as buyer sentiment has shifted following the Reserve Bank of Australia’s two rate rises this year, petrol price spikes and the war in the Middle East.

According to Gadsby, a good database helped to maintain a relationship with buyers throughout their entire property journey, so when they were ready to purchase, they trusted the agent’s advice.

“Because you’ve spoken to them every week for eight weeks, you’ve shown them four of your own properties, you’re giving them data on other properties that they’re looking to buy,” he said.

He said creating a network began with connecting with buyers at open houses and establishing where they lived, where they were looking, and how many properties they already owned.

He also said buyers were added to the database right away, with his network enabling agents within the same region to have access to the information, to provide them with the best property advice.

“Some of the best companies in the world know where their customer base is coming from and what they’re likely to buy next, and we start to put those properties in front of them.”

Each agent at his office is then responsible for overseeing a “best buyers list” in each business development area (BDA), categorised into houses and apartments, with agents calling each buyer weekly.

Gadsby said agents tend to complicate their databases with third-party platforms and multiple customer relationship management (CRM) systems, but he suggested simplifying the process with the help of more traditional methods.

“We’re just trying to work out who’s active in the marketplace right now, what do they need and can we find them something? It’s that simple.”

To streamline the process, he said his agents tended to even write the buyers’ names on a whiteboard so they were visible, and the agents remained more focused on the task.

“As a sales manager, I’m checking them daily. Who came off it? Who bought what? Who’s still on it? Why are they still on it? What can we do to sell them a property?”

Additionally, Gadsby said it was essential to keep buyer information up to date so agencies know which buyers were still searching in certain areas.

“Good data management is keeping across that on a monthly, quarterly, long-term basis. So the data’s fresh and live and constantly moving and being updated,” he said.

He said it was the responsibility of agents to prospect for data, which can include revisiting old ‘open for inspection’ lists from the last 12 months to see where the buyers purchased.

He said one common mistake was when old data was neglected and left to sit in the system, advising agents to revisit information and make use of it.

“We pay so much money as agents and agencies to have buyer enquiries come towards us, and our vendors pay a lot of that money as well,” he said.

When it came to nurturing prospective buyers, Gadsby advised agents to be mindful of their needs so as to build a rapport and sense of trust.

“We’ve got our agents asking them if they’d like us to call them every Monday afternoon until they bought. If it’s the beginning on their journey, they may not want to be contacted,” he said.

He said if buyers have made the effort to enquire and attend open houses, his agents contacted them at least four times during the campaign, or every day if they showed particular interest in the property.

“We ask, what do you need from us? How’s the search going? What did you see on the weekend? Have you seen our first to see properties before they hit the market live? We’re just treating them as a pipeline as we would with sellers,” he concluded.