Running your business over the Web doesn't mean anything unless the information on the site is up-to-date and the sales leads that come in get into a salesperson's hands fast enough to convert into sales.
Mark Stahl, vice president of sales and marketing for PN Hoffman, a Washington builder that sells condos starting at $400,000, says while deploying BuildTopia's BuildTopia Complete construction management system a year ago was a positive step, managing sales leads and posting new information to the site was still time consuming and labor intensive.
And no wonder. In the past, sales leads would come into the PN Hoffman Web site at a Web hosting company and get sent to a Web development and database management company, which would then have to re-key the sales lead information and send it over to PN Hoffman's BuildTopia application.
Stahl says it was even more cumbersome before the company deployed BuildTopia. About a year ago, the database management company would print out a prospect list from the sales leads that would come in from the PN Hoffman Web site, break the leads down by project, and then fax or e-mail the prospect list to PN Hoffman's sales managers.
"The process was slow, and we were losing sales because the leads weren't getting to our salespeople fast enough," says Stahl. "Plus, I never knew when--or if--a salesperson ever followed up on a specific lead. I was always wondering where that piece of paper was or if the salesperson called that prospect."
Stahl says PN Hoffman was spending roughly $24,000 a year for the database management company to re-key the sales leads into BuildTopia and another $10,000 to the Web hosting company for it to update information, pull data off the site, or post new information.
Now, new software released by BuildTopia lets PN Hoffman integrate its Web site with the BuildTopia system. Stahl says he no longer needs the database management company to re-key all the prospect information into BuildTopia. And posting data and refreshing the site is now done in-house.
The sales leads flow right from the Web site into BuildTopia and a part-time database manager employed by PN Hoffman sorts out the leads and sends them to the right sales managers. And when units get sold and the Web site needs to be updated or new information needs to be posted, all the Web administration gets done locally by the PN Hoffman database manager as opposed to having to wait for the Web hosting company to update the site.
Learn more about markets featured in this article: Washington, DC.
