Collaboration means more than just working together. It’s determining the strengths and needs of every person on your team to make a cohesive plan for success.
In this episode, Alesha Strycharz, director of marketing operations at Bozzuto, shares her insights into reducing friction for client-facing interactions and how to recognize and maintain a growth period for your business.
Join us as Glenn and Alesha discuss:
Across real estate and most industries in business, leaders are pushing to automate everything possible. When done effectively, automation can cut down on time investment in simple processes and allow team members to better invest in tasks that properly utilize their skillsets and serve their interests.
However, a process must be thoroughly developed and efficient before it can be automated. According to Alesha, the secret to creating polished processes is collaboration.
“When you have everyone at the table in those initial steps, you're then able to make a tighter feedback loop.” — Alesha Strycharz
When team members use their strengths and interests to work together and build processes, they are connected to each step of the construction. According to Alesha, this allows foundational team members to be champions of the processes and become tied to the work.
Collaboration enables you to reduce the time it takes to create processes and create engagement and collaboration across an organization. Then, once automation is established, teams can move forward, having influenced how the business functions, which eases transitions and fosters adoption.
“Having collaboration is key to having adoption through the process.” — Alesha Strycharz
Alesha has found that when employees have worked with you through each process iteration and understand why things are being implemented, they are more likely to be on board.
Alesha offers several suggestions for tech tools and systems that she has found necessary for managing multiple brands. While some are more applicable within the real estate industry, each can be adapted across most organizations, regardless of industry.
Alesha emphasizes the importance of a great user-friendly CRM. Employees should be comfortable and confident working with your chosen CRM without having to jump between tabs and apps.
“It's important that the CRM that you're creating and building for your teams is something they want to use, that you can really drive engagement in,” Alesha explains.
When an organization uses a strong CRM, its employees can focus on customer relationships and needs rather than balancing the demands and functionality flaws of an inadequate customer management system.
Alesha also recommends having a strong syndication service out to local directories, particularly when managing multiple brands. Without one, simple changes made to one directory or website must manually be changed across all platforms and locations where that brand is housed or posted. Utilizing a well-developed service saves employees endless hours and safeguards them from lost data and expired listings.
Modern prospects require flexibility, and growth relies on it. Therefore, people should be able to book a viewing whenever they want, whether or not your office is open.
When prospects can book a viewing for a listing they stumble upon while scrolling in bed, it brings them one step closer to closing. Giving prospects the agency to book their own appointments also takes some administrative bloat off of employees, allowing them to invest their time and skills elsewhere.
Managing several brands across multiple platforms demands greater reputation management. This is because there are more opportunities for people to leave reviews, send inquiries, and submit reports. Therefore, having a robust reputation management system where you are enabled to interact across each website and platform is essential.
Businesses can thrive when employees are provided with the right tools and pushed toward collaboration. But, in times of growth, developing front-end services, tools, and teams on the front end can often overshadow the needs of back-end teams and processes.
It’s crucial to balance the needs of front-end and back-end teams, stakeholders, and prospects. While each party holds great importance in the overall processes of a company, the customer and front-end teams often receive the greatest attention and investment.
“It's very important to look in these periods of growth, not only those forward-facing client services, team members or sales or marketing team members but also equipping your back end teams with the tools that they need to really close those leads,” — Alesha Strycharz
Employees cannot do their jobs or serve customers without the right tools, training, and support. Building collaborative processes and tools should be done with scalability in mind.
In the end, focusing on what prospects need is essential. But, leaders should also consider what each of their teams and employees require to meet prospects' needs.