Real Estate Businesses Need to Ditch the Funnel

With customer referrals and word of mouth being the largest influence on today’s purchase process, the traditional funnel is drastically failing many real estate businesses.

If you’re a business person, sales person or involved in real estate then chances are you have heard of a funnel; a hierarchy of how a company finds, qualifies, and sells its products to buyers.

Many real estate businesses shape their company around a funnel and in the past they have proven successful, but as social media and online usage grows, a major flaw in the funnel has emerged – they produce customers but do not take into account how those customers help a company grow. In other words, they view customers as an afterthought and not as a driving force.

 

‘Think about it: What happens to customers in the funnel? They’re the outcome — nothing more, nothing less. All of the energy you spent acquiring that customer is wasted, leaving you at square one,’ says HubSpot.

Instead of putting all the focus on the end objective – closing that property deal – property specialists and real estate marketing specialists must start to take care of the customer along the way and ensure that they are developing a good relationship with them; after all, when all is said and done you will be relying on that customer to spread good positive reviews of your company, sending new customers your way…so the process can start again…and this is where the Flywheel comes in.

Invented by James Watt, the ‘Flywheel’ is a new and inventive way of thinking about your customers and how they can impact your brand and business in the future. Customers no longer rely on printed advertising or outbound sales techniques to learn about a company. They ask online for advice, search for mentions of your company on social media and read third-party review sites. This is why the customer must be treated as much more than just an ‘outcome’.

‘The flywheel model is a more comprehensive, unified way of representing the forces affecting your company’s growth’, says HubSpot. The flywheel eliminates clumsy crossovers between sales teams, admin and customer service; the onus is on every member of the company to attract, engage and delight. You use the momentum of happy customers to drive referrals and sales so the business, in essence, keeps on spinning so lead generation for real estate continues to filters through.

Share this: