Interview with Diego Pintado, Director of Projects at Grupo Lomas Verdes
Grupo Lomas Verdes cut total costs by 20% and boosted team morale by using Kommo CRM for real estate
Background
Founded in 1993, Grupo Lomas Verdes is a real estate company based in Mexico City.
Diego Pintado, the company’s Director of Projects, has worked at Grupo Lomas Verdes for four years. He joined the team to give it a different focus and modernize the company. “My goal was to change the business process of a company that for 20 years operated in a very traditional manner,” Diego explains.
“My goal was to change the business process of the company that for 20 years operated in a very traditional manner.”
In search of a CRM for real estate
With five years of experience in banking and relationship management under his belt, Diego came in with a broad understanding of the potential in eCommerce. He also knew the importance of paying increasing attention to a client’s needs. For this reason, Diego started searching for a CRM for real estate.
Diego has tried around 6 CRM systems, including Monday.com and Salesforce, but found them too complicated. Diego explains that they didn’t fit the company’s needs and purposes, adding, “After testing Kommo, I realized that it was simple and straightforward and that it fits very well with our purposes.”
“After testing Kommo, I realized that it was simple and straightforward and that it fits very well with our purposes.”
The challenge
One of the biggest obstacles that Diego faced when he joined the company was not having any analytics. At the time, the company was still operating in a more traditional model — printed newspaper ads and billboards and no database of prospects. The company had no clue how many prospects they had.
Diego says that he came in with a mission to change that. “The big thing that I’ve learned from my M.B.A. degree,” he says, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t change it.”
“The big thing that I’ve learned from my M.B.A. degree: If you can’t measure it, you can’t change it.”
Whether from the billboard ads, phone calls, or even word of mouth, the second challenge was not being able to clearly understand where customers were coming from. “We just didn’t have any of that information,” Diego explains.
Since the company had no database with information about the clients, the company didn’t know what was working and what wasn’t. Diego explains, “The lack of data made it impossible to improve sales processes, make us more effective or efficient.”
“The lack of data made it impossible to improve sales processes, make us more effective or efficient.”
Decreasing costs by 20% with a CRM for real estate
Determined to reach the potential they knew the real estate company had, Diego and the team redefined working with potential clients. Using Kommo for real estate, they decreased operating costs by 20%. Here’s how:
Step 1: Setting up business processes
Grupo Lomas Verdes designed a straightforward sales funnel for their business, divided into 5 stages:
Stage 1 – Incoming leads
Potential clients usually land in this pipeline stage from the largest real estate online database in Mexico. The team receives an email with information about the lead manually entered into the system.
Stage 2 – Contacted
Once the sales team contacts the potential client via email or WhatsApp, they go into the second stage of the pipeline — “Contacted.” Here, the sales reps fill in details about their conversation.
Stage 3 – Visits
In the “Visits” stage, they schedule a visit to the property. At present, Grupo Lomas Verdes uses virtual property visits due to COVID-19.
Stage 4 – Reserve
When the client reserves the property for 10 working days, they land in the fourth pipeline stage — “Reserve.” In this stage, the client pays the deposit.
Stage 5 – Decision
After the reservation, there’s either a sale or not. If clients decide not to buy, the sales rep contacts them to gather feedback and understand why they changed their minds.
Step 2: Customizing the lead card
Diego explains that the sales team fills out the data and customizes the lead card according to where the client comes from (Lead source) and which property or project they’re considering (Property). “By customizing your lead card,” he says, “you can understand which source and property are doing better.”
“By customizing your lead card, you can understand which source and property are doing better.”
Step 3: Merging duplicates
Regularly, the company encounters duplicates — potential clients with the same name and surname.
Diego explains that using Kommo’s duplicate detection keeps this under control. If a client has the same name and mobile number, the team knows it’s the same person. He demonstrates this below:
Example of duplicates in Kommo — CRM for real estate
Step 4: Tracking performance with the Consolidated Report
Diego says that the Consolidated Report also comes in handy. He uses it to monitor how many new prospects are created every week. Knowing what’s landing in the pipeline gives him a benchmark for what to expect at the end of the pipeline. That way, he can be ready to adapt when predicting sales.
Kommo’s Consolidated Report is an analytical report that gives information about Leads, Customers, Tasks, and Contacts. Learn more >
The Result
- Helped to resolve conflicts in the workplace.
- Cut total costs by 20%.
- Reduced advertising costs by 40%.
Salespeople — particularly real estate agents — tend to be driven, charismatic individuals who invest a little piece of themselves into every deal. They learn not to take it personally when a potential client rejects them, and they don’t get cynical. Optimism is their superpower.
And it’s for this reason that each potential client becomes theirs. It’s not just about the commission, it’s also the time and care they invest.
For a potential client, it’s perfectly natural to negotiate with one employee about a property, take some days to think, and then start talking to another employee. Behind the scenes, the perfectly innocent act of helping a colleague’s client could be seen as poaching.
Kommo helped end any misunderstandings among Grupo Lomas Verdes agents, assigning potential clients to a responsible user and logging all interactions. “Kommo helped us set up a system where communication with every client was recorded and stored,” he says.
“Kommo helped us set up a system where communication with every client was recorded and stored.”
But the icing on the cake — in using a CRM for real estate, Grupo Lomas Verdes managed to cut total costs by 20% in one year.
How’d they do it? Diego says the transparency Kommo gave them allowed them to budget more effectively. “Now, we can see all the data. We can measure it and make the right decisions,” he explains.
The biggest changes were in marketing. They completely flipped their promo strategy to invest money in better-performing lead gen sources.
Before using a CRM for their real estate company, the team invested 40% of their budget into print advertising. After understanding the conversion rates of all their lead sources, they cut low-performing marketing campaigns and reallocated the budget to more lucrative promotion sources.
“Now, we can see all the data. We can measure it and make the right decisions.”
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