What a developer's CRM has to know that a generic CRM never will
A generic CRM models a pipeline that terminates in a win. A real estate sale wins at booking and then continues for two years — through allotment, agreement, construction-linked demands, bank disbursements, possession and registration. Every one of those stages can fail, and the CRM that declared victory at booking is no help in any of them.
2 min readOadbox
The unit is the record, not the lead
In most CRMs the contact is the primary object. In real estate the unit is — a specific flat, in a specific tower, on a specific floor, with a specific facing, carpet area and price. Availability, holds, blocks and releases all attach to it.
This is not a modelling nicety. It decides whether two salespeople can sell the same flat on the same afternoon, which is the failure every developer has experienced at least once and remembers vividly.
Price is a structure, not a number
A quoted price is a stack: base rate by carpet area, floor rise, preferred location charges, parking, club and infrastructure charges, maintenance advance, statutory taxes and stamp duty, less whatever discount was approved and by whom.
When that stack lives in a spreadsheet per project, two things follow. Cost sheets go out with errors, and nobody can answer what the average realisation actually was without a week of work.
- Rate cards versioned by date, so an old booking reprints correctly.
- Discounts as approvals with an approver and a reason, not as edited cells.
- Cost sheet, demand letter and receipt generated from the same structure.
- Realisation reporting that nets out what was actually given away.
Collections are milestone-driven and mostly other people's money
Construction-linked plans mean demand letters go out when a slab is cast, not when a month ends. Much of the money then arrives from a bank rather than a buyer, on the bank's timeline, subject to the bank's documentation.
A system that cannot connect a milestone to a demand, a demand to a disbursement, and a disbursement to a specific loan file will produce an outstanding report that the sales team disputes every month.
Channel partners are a second sales force with a different contract
Most developers sell substantially through channel partners, who are paid on brokerage that depends on the deal size, the collection stage and sometimes on whether the buyer registered. Tracking that in a spreadsheet is how disputes start.
Registering the partner against the lead at first contact — and holding the brokerage terms against the booking rather than in an email — settles ninety per cent of those arguments before they happen.
Written by the Oadbox team. Something here not match how it works in your business? We would genuinely like to hear it — connect@oadbox.com.