Setting up CRM for a Seller Agent model (like in real estate)

[swissventures]

New to hubspot - looking for some best practices/guidance specific to a Seller Agent model (such as they are prevalent in Real Estate).

My goal is to set up a (simple) Sales process for a (kind of a) Real Estate Seller Agent model, i.e. our Customer is the Seller of a Property (which (we assume) would be our "Deal") and we provide match-making services to the Seller to find (multiple) Buyers. If one (or multiple) Buyer(s) buy(s), we get a commission.

I'm looking for a maximum simple solution for the setup of the CRM and Sales process set up. (I'm not (yet) concerned with the Marketing process.)

I am unclear about how to set up Sellers and Buyers in terms of Lifecycle, Lead Status, and Deal Stages (i.e. the inter-connection between the two different processes/journeys of Sellers & Buyers). What I feel is tricky is that while the process of a Buyer on a particular (property) deal is limited to the Opportunity (Deal) Stage, we also want to manage the relationships with the Buyers over time (as they could be prospect buyers for other/future property deals).

In general, how would you best set this up in Hubspot? Is there a "seller agent model" blueprint available somewhere (e.g. for "real estate")?

In specific:

1. How do I best distinguish between the 2 contact / company types (Sellers / Buyers)?
   1. via the "Types" field (e.g. "Prospect Seller" / "Prospect Buyer"?
   2. via a custom property?
   3. do I need to establish a custom object for "Sellers" or "Buyers"?
2. How can I make the lifecycle stages and lead status specific to the type of contact (Seller / Buyer) (i.e. conditional to the "contact / company type" from 1. above), given they each go through different lifecycles, lead statuses, and deal stages?

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

Hi @swissventures there are a few different ways HubSpot can be configured to work with a a Seller Agent model in real estate - it depends greatly on your subscription, are you using Starter, Pro or Enterprise?

@RQuinn9 has built a framework for real estate using HubSpot (he's also a licensed real estate agent) and could share insights to the questions you have about how to best configure the properties.

[swissventures]

@Jnix284 - you can replace "home" with "startup" and "buyer" with "investor". We're simply matching startups looking for funding from investors instead of homes and buyers. The mechanics are pretty much identical with the difference that multiple investors can invest into the same startup. They are both seller-agent models with a match-making process between a seller and multiple buyers for one single unit of an object (like a house or a startup) which is quite different from a regular sales process where you sell multiple units of an object (like products such as machines or bicycles).

And to avoid misunderstanding: it's not 1000 combinations per startup, rather 50 to 250 per startup. My math was that if you have 5 (or more) running (= fundraising), and a sale runs for 6-9 months (i.e. we have deals running overlappingly), then you easily have 1000 combinations (= deals) in that single pipeline you suggested.

In my logic, a startup comes to me and wants to raise money from one or multiple investor, we open a new pipeline with the stages of our fundraising process (hence the requirement to clone pipelines), populate it with the investors that are a potential match for the startup, drive those potential "deals" through the process (i.e. pipeline), make some matches (i.e. an investor invests in the startup), and then close the pipeline again because the deal is done (hence the requirement to archive pipelines).

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@swissventures thanks for sharing, the startup investing model is very similar, but different in one key aspect - that you can have multiple investors that are CLOSE WON for each startup, whereas a home would only ever have one deal/buyer that can win the deal.

With custom properties and deal tags, properly configured with filtered views, I still think you could have all of your deals in a single pipeline. You could then create a dashboard for each startup and that could be pre-filtered using the custom properties so that all of your reporting is per startup rather than per pipeline.

All of the capabilities exist that you would need to make this work successfully, and while I understand the desire to have a single pipeline per startup out of "ease" it makes it more difficult in the long run to aggregate your results.

During the 6-9 months, if every startup goes through the same process/steps, then using a single pipeline with the right properties/filters would give you more advanced reporting than creating a new pipeline every time.

I don't disagree that pipelines should be able to be cloned or archived, those are critical functionalities HubSpot needs to solve for, but I'm also not sure that your use case dictates the need to build it the way that you have outlined.

A process flow diagram would help to validate the best way to build it out based on the functional requirements and data needed.

[swissventures]

Hi @Jnix284 , thank you for your quick reply and the connect to @RQuinn9 !

We don't have a subscription yet but would consider getting whatever is necessary if a certain functionality requires it. (In any case, we would want to avoid premature optimization.) What functionality would you have in mind?

I may need to clarify that while I described our model as "a kind of a real estate model", we do not actually work in real estate. But we do have a seller agent model and I believe the mechanics are at least very similar if not the same as in real estate. (Real estate just seemed to be a simple example.)

 @RQuinn9  - anything you may share is appreciated and certainly helps at this stage.

[Jnix284]

You're welcome @swissventures, and thank you for the additional background, happy to help!

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

Hi @swissventures there are a few different ways HubSpot can be configured to work with a a Seller Agent model in real estate - it depends greatly on your subscription, are you using Starter, Pro or Enterprise?

@RQuinn9 has built a framework for real estate using HubSpot (he's also a licensed real estate agent) and could share insights to the questions you have about how to best configure the properties.

[swissventures]

Hi @Jnix284 , thanks for the reply. I've reached out to @RQuinn9 via DM. I've also submitted an idea on how the seller-agent model could work (or actually, what functionality would be needed to make it work in a scaleable way): https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Archive-amp-clone-Pipelines-for-Seller-Agent-Models-s...

There's been little to no feedback so far, even though the topic seems to be quite popular: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Clone-Deal-Pipelines/idc-p/1053456#M195556

[Jnix284]

@swissventures I reviewed your idea and while I can understand the use case for having a pipeline per house, that seems like overkill based on my experience. 

Most real estate companies have a pipeline with the stages the buyer would go through (proposal, contract, loan approval, etc.) and each deal is a buyer/home combo - where the home is usually a custom object that is also associated to the deal in the same way the contact is.

[swissventures]

@Jnix284 - thanks! I believe I understand what you mean. I'm unsure about how practical it is to have all the "Buyer/Home" combos on 1 pipeline for several reasons. (Bear in mind that I'm using the Real Estate model only for a proxy of our actual business model because it's easier to relate to.)

What functionality would you recommend for your way of using Hubspot in order to keep the different "Homes" apart in the pipeline, from both a technical (filtering, views, performance tracking, etc.) and a pragmatic perspective (reviewing pipeline, discussing individual "Home" sales, sharing screen, etc.)?

My concerns would be that:

a) The pipeline becomes way too cluttered. We have between 50 and 250 "Buyer/Home" combos per "Home". One sales cycle for one "Home" is between six to nine months. If we sell 5 "Homes" per year, we easily have 1000 "Buyer/Home combos" in the pipeline. 

b) We use a separate pipeline per "Home" because that seemed the most practical way to use Hubspot in our day-to-day work. We usually talk about the progress we are making about 1 specific "Home" (e.g. Home A) at a time, going through that specific pipeline (of Home A) and then talking through each "Buyer/Home A" combo.

c) Also, from a confidentiality perspective we'd like at least some "Chinese walls" between the different "Home" sales processes. With "Seller A", we would want to share a list of all potential "Buyers" for his home or even talk him through the pipeline in a one-on-one meeting via screen share. Or we have a subcontractor that helps us find Buyers but we need to make that no Buyer is approached 2x by different subcontractors. We cannot afford showing Seller A the "Buyer/Home" combos of Seller B (by accident).

d) Lastly, what about statistics per pipeline? How can we evaluate the performance per "Home" sale despite everything being in 1 pipeline? 

PS: We use the regular deal object as "Buyer/Home" combo as we were adviced against a custom object with the reasoning that we would lose some of the deal object specific functionalites with custom objects. So far, that hasn't been an issue, though.

[Jnix284]

@swissventures this is really interesting insight, but since real estate isn't your use case, it would probably be a lot easier to understand and assist with a viable solution to know what your actual use case is. Most real estate transactions don't have 1000 combinations per home, they would typically sell/be under contract long before reaching that volume.

Can you share a high level summary of your use case and industry specifically? Maybe that will help all of this make a little more sense.