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Remixing Your Sales Strategy for 2020 in a COVID-19 World

Written by Heather Park | 2:45 PM on April 28, 2020

The 2020 property management sales landscape is something that most of us couldn't imagine in 2019. Terms like 'social distancing' weren't even a blip on the radar for most people—and certainly not something we thought we'd actually be doing! Sales trends have also changed to reflect this new normal as March brought with it this unexpected storm.

As a billion-dollar company, HubSpot has a unique opportunity to measure consumer trends from the many users of it's CRM and COS. What they're finding so far is fewer people are spending money right now—while at the same time, they are spending more time than ever on the websites of the companies they are interested in.

With sales slowing—but experts predicting a sharp uptick for property management businesses after this is over—now is a good time to do a little spring cleaning of your sales processes and documentation before things start moving faster.

Here are some actionable steps all property management companies can do right now to prepare for increased sales as states work to reopen their doors.

Document Your Sales Process

Seriously, do it. If you don't document your sales process, how will you measure which elements are working and not working? Geekly Media is going through this process right now.

  • We're looking at which steps of the sales process are creating interest and which aren't.
  • We're reviewing our messaging to ensure it is on point with sales.
  • We're creating playbooks to help our sales team deliver consistent messaging at the right point in the process so we can increase our closing rate.

If you have a documented process, you can track when people drop out. If they almost always drop out after the third call, it is time to look at what might be going wrong during that call.

Refresh Your Content

Every click right now is vital, which means your sales content needs to be converting. Take time to look at your open and clickthrough rates and address content that isn't getting results. We're assessing which emails are complete failures and looking for trends and then creating new content to replace what is essentially broken. 

  • When it comes to property management marketing and sales strategy, if you can measure results, you can continually improve your results through small measured changes over time.
  • Be sure to make strategy-based changes and track the change in results, so you learn what works and what does not.
  • If you're not sure how to go about this, try split testing sales emails.
The same marketing tools that work to improve your leads can be applied to the sales process as well.

Make Strategy-Based Marketing Changes

Your property management marketing and sales messaging should be in alignment. If you change your sales messaging, you need to be sure that your marketing message is similarly updated—or you risk confusing and frustrating your leads when they get to the sales team. If your marketing is focused on the benefits of a property manager during COVID-19, make sure this is translated to your sales team to seal the deal.

In fact, your sales and marketing team should regularly touch base. The sales team is where leads are passed off to, and they should be tracking why leads fail out of the sales process and end up lost. By tracking this data and giving it to marketing, your marketing team can help to address these issues either by changing who they are targeting or changing what constitutes a qualified lead.

Get High Tech

Finally:

  • How much of your sales process (if you already have it documented) lives in binders or a Microsoft Word document from 2002?
  • Is your team still using outdated property management tools to close sales—or are they actually costing you leads?
  • What if there was a better way (think tech) to store your processes and make them easy to use while on sales calls?

HubSpot thought the same thing and has some really great tools such as online sales playbooks and knowledge bases that you can use. These property management tools make it easy for a member of your team to find the right answer in seconds while on a call with someone. Make it easy for your sales team to eliminate the "I'll have to get back to you" response when they have full access to the tools they need to succeed in an easy-to-use and access format. 

In addition to playbooks and knowledge bases, it might be time to make some simple upgrades and implement video into your sales strategy with a tool like Vidyard that allows users to track opens and engagement on their videos quickly, so you have near-instant feedback on what's working for your video content.

'Forward-Thinking' Meets 'Lead-Finding'

If these tips have been helpful, you'll find even more to apply to your current sales strategy when you download your copy of the Business Development Handbook for Selling During Social Distancing. These tips are designed to give you the insight you need to hit the ground running and navigate a newly-remote sales landscape. Help yourself close the property management leads coming in right now: every lead counts!

You may even find that this new way of selling isn't something you want to move away from when our nation is officially back open for business. Many property management companies have learned to successfully sell without contact to keep their employees safe well before this. Give our guide a read and contact us if you'd like to learn how we can help you automate your sales process!