I recently came across SalesForce Research Team's 2016 State of Marketing report. This report includes studies and trends based on insight from nearly 4,000 marketing leaders worldwide – a valuable tool that can provide us with some great bits of information on how to improve our salesmanship and grow our business. In today's shot, we'll go over just a few highlights of the report we thought were most pertinent to our line of work.

The most valuable key takeaway discussed how top sales people focus heavily on the customer experience journey; essentially the journey a customer has in dealing with our organization from initial contact to close. These top performing teams go beyond the standard business or sales plan, but rather actively monitor the customer experience through every touchpoint of interaction with their business in order to assess pain points and opportunities for improving that experience in an effort to increase sales. Based on the survey, high performing sales people are 9.7x more likely to be actively mapping their customer journey then underperforming teams – clearly a differentiator worth taking into consideration in our pursuit of elite production!

The report goes on further to point out that high performing sales people surveyed also made clear that customer engagement is a top priority for the upcoming year. While brand awareness has been a goal since the days of Don Draper, customer engagement, as the report puts it, indicates a "modern marketer" – one who is focused more on creating a personalized experience for their consumers rather than merely brandishing a logo. Many high performing salespeople have found that the implementation of technology and CRM systems has made it possible to exponentially grow two-way communication streams and engagement experiences with their clients. Because while we can't physically be 10 places at once, a good technology platform can help make our presence felt in ways never before possible on a very personable level.

While the report is not necessarily real estate specific, we believe that these specific takeaways very much transcend into our line of work. Setting performance goals is good, creating a marketing strategy is better, but survey says the difference between great and elite is walking in the shoes of our customers from start to finish to better understand how to truly satisfy their needs. Thanks to technology, the ability for us to implement such a strategy and monitor the results in real time has never been easier, and never been more vital in the strategy of top producing teams.    

Interested in connecting with me? (three options)

1. Do you have a real estate topic for our next blog? Send us a message at [email protected]
2. Want to join me for lunch? E-mail [email protected] and let's get something on the calendar!
3. Looking to grow your real estate business by leveraging key mortgage concepts? Join us for our Elevate conference and RSVP to [email protected]. Our next event is October 26th, 2017 at the Marriott Courtyard in Boynton Beach!

 

The views of this blog, "Your Morning Shot" podcast, and on this site in general are solely those of the authors, Matt Weaver (NMLS-175651) and Zack Lewis, and do not express the views or opinions of Finance of America Mortgage.