A Commercial Real Estate developer in Chicago was primed to unveil a building full of office spaces available to own instead of lease. The building was located in the hottest market, and investors anticipated a fast sale, with massive returns. Initial sales conversations boomed, yet after months of being on the market, nearly all of that initial interest was stagnant and deals rarely closed. Frustrated and confused about how there could be so much interest at the onset but very few closings, the developer team turned to Inselligence to gain insights into where and how the sales process – and revenue stream – was getting derailed.
The Inselligence methodology was able to quickly build a detailed funnel with multiple granular phases and gates. The Funnel Design screen uncovered significant flaws in the sales process identifying the need to tailor the stages in the pipeline to the way prospects approached their decision making, therefore improving the flow of opportunities through the pipeline converting initial interest in successful closings. With Inselligence, company leaders could see precisely which stages started to stall out. Those insights led to the team holding a series of interviews with sales reps and prospects. The insights uncovered were game-changing: the current sales process was doomed to fail. First, the team learned that what felt like natural next steps to the developers did not meet the needs of the buyers. Buyers were accustomed to leasing, not buying, and they needed certain components in the process traditionally provided by landlords that were not being provided by the development team. That unfamiliarity caused prospects to turn away. Second, the team discovered that deals sourced from certain areas of the city moved smoothly to closing, but deals sourced from other areas and ad channels were nothing more than noise, not true interest.
The Inselligence Impact:
Inselligence uncovered sales process inefficiencies and helped the developer redesign its sales process in a way that would make better sense for the buyer. Intelligence insights helped revamped several of the key strategies, including:
- Redesigning their ad strategy: Expensive advertisements in local business magazines had generated massive amounts of early interest, but those leads never closed. The team switched to low cost billboard advertising within a block of the building which drove lower but much more targeted and successful traffic. Those prospects already worked nearby or liked the location, which led to much shorter sales cycles. The team was able to slash ad budgets to almost nothing, and bring in bigger deals with shorter close times.
- Seeing through the buyers’ eyes: Executives were stumped as to why prospects who expressed initial interest would take tours, and even get so far as to ask for a quote, start negotiations, then disappear. With the help of the Inselligence methodology, the company was able to discover that the short sales process for raw office space was starkly different from the longer leasing process prospects were accustomed to. Buyers were accustomed to seeing finished office space, not concrete and drywall. They weren’t able to visualize what the end office would look like, and they weren’t sure how to estimate the cost to architect and design the spaces. As a result, the developer team partnered with local architects and designers to add in additional steps that included providing visual renderings and cost estimates. These changes enabled prospects to visualize what the raw office spaces could potentially look like, choose an architect, and include design costs in the total deal.
- Removing roadblocks: Insights from the Inselligence platform showed that deals tended to slow after proposals were delivered. The final negotiations couldn’t get across the finish line. Why? Because commercial real estate lending can be complex, and buyers weren’t sure how to find financing to cover the costs of architecting and finishing the office spaces. To fix this, the developer team simply partnered with local preferred lenders who were able to seamlessly take care of all financing needs with the buyers. With this turnkey solution in place, deals flowed smoothly to completion.
- Executing with Visibility and Control: Once the most efficient process was designed and implemented, the leadership team was able to execute with the confidence that the team was collectively addressing the right opportunities at the right time. The Inselligence “Keep it Green” screen allowed leadership to track on a daily basis the flow of opportunities. This granular visibility gave them the ability to provide precise direction to sales teams, helping them quickly guide prospects through the new process and close the deals. The effort to implement a CRM prior to Inselligence suddenly began paying dividends when the day-to-day data started to become actionable information that made a material impact on the revenue targets of the firm.
The Results:
$55M
in revenue
100%
occupancy in 8 months
Sold the whole building of office spaces in just 8 months, bringing in $55 Million in revenue.
- Granular visibility led to revamping broken sales process, slashing time-to-close from months to weeks
- Rep and team analytics uncovered strengths and weaknesses, leading to stronger team construction and bigger deals
Predictive insights into deal performance helped prioritize deals which were most likely to close.
