Utterly filmy, but that’s how it rolls at listed real estate company Ashiana Housing. Joint Managing Director Ankur Gupta is playing Mogambo with his sales team as part of their new internal sales campaign ‘Mogambo Khush Hua’.

It’s like any other day at the Ashiana Housing sales office. One executive has just ended a call with a customer. Smiling, she springs up from her chair and rings the gong hung right in the center of the floor. As if on cue, another sales executive makes a run for the music player next to the photocopier machine. The floor suddenly erupts with activity and mysteriously everyone is pulling out a tambourine from their desks. A Bollywood mashup of the song Mehbooba and Mogambo-Gabbar dialogues starts to play in the background. Mogambo (read boss) Ankur Gupta walks out of his cabin, voicing the dialogue “Kya socha tha? Sardar khush hoga! Shabashi dega?” Responding to the boss’ jibe, the team breaks into a celebratory jig. What they are celebrating is a perfect 10 on 10 that they have just been rated by a customer after receiving possession of their unit.

Ankur explains, “If we make the customer happy then boss will be happy. And I am the boss. And I am playing Mogambo. The whole idea is to check what we promised a year or two back to the customer, are we delivering those promises and beyond? We have a Khushi-meter. We call up our customers a day after handover and we check with them on a score of 0 to 10, how they would rate our delivery experience. If they rate us 9 or 10 we consider it happy. If it is bad then we investigate why and find out the reason. And if it is good then we celebrate.”

Ankur reveals that as sales enquiries began to dry up in the property markets, their focus shifted to building a strong relationship with their existing customers. Forget phone calls or emails, the sales team is out connecting with customers on ground to resolve their anxieties.

“To convince new customers, that’s a difficult market today. What we are doing is convincing our existing customers that our markets have not got spoiled. Our customer which is the middle income group, we are telling them that we are a good developer, we deliver what we promise, and can you refer your friends and family to us.”

Apart from the ‘Khushi-meter’ flashing on an LED screen every few minutes, the team also remains motivated with the regular in-house training that Ashiana Housing conducts to educate them on best practices in sales. As a result of their customer experience getting better, Ashiana Housing claims it has seen a definite improvement in their 2nd quarter sales numbers.

Ashiana Housing’s Joint MD Ankur Gupta shares “one of the things we keep telling our sales team is that we are not just in sales. We need to be solution providers for our customers and not just sell real estate. We are looking to give them a better lifestyle at the price points we are selling to them. The sales staff is very motivated that they are not selling wrong. They feel motivated that they are selling exactly what will be delivered on ground.”

At SARE Homes, IT drives Timely Execution

At FDI-funded real estate developer SARE Homes, the mood is upbeat despite the much talked about slump in property markets. The company just posted its best sales month this year in October. And says it is ready to clock in more home-sales despite the slowdown. The turnaround in their numbers according to SARE is driven by smart new IT tools that they have institutionalized in the company.

Managing Director, Vineet Relia, a former IT man has put all the company’s finances online, on a system that tracks all payments, receivables and account books, real time. From agents to contractors to customers, every single individual or stakeholder can be isolated to check where the money is coming and going.

“When you are building a scalable business, it needs a lot of HR & IT. Coming from an IT background, it was easier for me. It’s a system where all our payments and incoming like the entire account receivables is online. And all our payments and purchase cycles are online. Which gives us the flexibility in terms of doing a ‘What if’ analysis. Like what if my sales fall by 10%, doing all kinds of sensitivities. In case the interest rates go up or down, how is it going to benefit me? There are a lot of situations that you physically cannot analyse. Somehow I have seen in India, most management is busy fighting issues. We have 35 departments to take permissions from. So for you to get that time to really analyse the situation, I think these things are very important. It gives us in depth knowledge of the business, decision making ability on a real time basis, rather than discussing an issue, waiting for reports to come in. I am able to decide real time and plan forward.”

Apart from handling their cash flows better, execution on time and in top quality is non-negotiable now at SARE Homes. Because the boss is watching like a hawk! Managing Director, Vineet Relia’s office cabin has hardly the frills of a typical developer’s office. What it does have is a giant TV screen on which Vineet Relia depends to keep all his pan-India projects running in top form.

“Yes, people do blame me about being a control freak. But it’s not about control. It’s about visibility of what is happening. We have live IPTVs on all construction sites. These are all on tall towers so we are able to view progress all across 24×7. It also gives a lot of tools to architectural and engineering team where they can zoom on cameras and look at an issue versus a site guy who will escalate a problem with the head office, who will then take a call whether we should schedule a visit or not. Then the consultants will go there. So you are talking about cutting down a 15-30 day lag about what is going on there and resolve situations.”

SARE Homes says the need of the hour from developers is to be transparent and to take their customers into confidence. Their Customer Relations Management team and sales forces today is two to three times larger than the industry average. Vineet Relia shares that because the market is not doing well, it is imperative to know what the customer is saying. And that’s why they are planning to enlarge their feet on the street.

“The plan is to have 400 people on the street pan India. They will be equipped with mobile phones so that we can track them. Management is a huge problem and we don’t want a top heavy bureaucratic hierarchical system. We can track their GPRS locations and physically we can know where the results are coming from. It gives me a flavour of the market real time. So we have a week closing now. Versus earlier we used to do a quarterly closing. And when we started out we used to do an annual closing. Today technology has enabled me to do a weekly closing. We hold a sales review every Wednesday and shortly we will be closing daily.”

Developers Invest in Talent Training

RICS India, Country Head and Managing Director Sachin Sandhir has been advocating adoption of global standards in Indian real estate. He shares that many companies today are emphasizing on training their workforce with a view to augment and build delivery capabilities.

“We’ve got all the major developers like Mahindra Lifespaces, K Raheja Corp, Tata Housing and a number of others who are actually working very closely with us to ensure that their construction staff, project management staff, estimation, tendering, contract management, procurement functions are improved. And I think this is a key step forward for the industry because the emphasis on training has gone up significantly with a view to augment and build delivery capabilities.”

It’s a tough market to crack but not an impossible one as these companies are proving. Winning the customer’s trust is everything today. And those who survive will be the ones who make delivery and transparency their top priority.