Bhavesh Ramburn, Author at Land & Architectural Survey Blog

How can a CRM Tool Help Architects Increase Their Sales

There are plenty of ways an architect may use Customer Relationship Management tools to improve his or her marketing, get clients and increase income. Improving customer relationships is a perfect way to build more sales because a lot depends on repeat business in this business. Plus, if you analyse your interaction with customers and how you turn a lead (or prospect) into a sale, then you can improve your process to convert more people in the long run.

Use it to gather data about your customers

The CRM tools have metrics that can be recorded and analysed for use later. Knowing more about your customers, their buying habits and your interaction with them will help you target them in the future. Track your leads and conversions and use the data to improve your process so you covert more and lose less. The more you know about your customers, then the higher the probability that you will be able to exploit that knowledge to increase your income.

It makes being a customer easier

When a company has got its act together, it becomes easier to be a customer. The interaction between the customer and the company becomes smoother and more pleasant for the customer. If you use the software correctly between you and your client, it helps build better relationships both now and in the future.

Maintain frequent contact with your customers

As an architect, you will probably have a smaller pool of clients, and keeping in contact with those few people on a frequent basis may be a good idea (if not vital to your success). Keeping in touch with your best customers is going to help keep your business afloat as you keep looking for more customers. Keeping the ones you have is vitally important if you want to grow your business as opposed to just treading water.

Use a loyalty program to reward loyal customers

Since you have a smaller group of clients, it could be a good idea to start a loyalty process. A relationship-marketing platform may help you do that a little more easily and professionally. Keep up with your most loyal and important customers and keep a look out for changes. You may be able to catch them in the process of being romanced by another company.

Streamline your process for increased sales productivity

Simply making your business and selling process a little faster is going to help improve sales productivity. As you move the customer from interest to the purchase, you can skip through each step easily without unneeded delays.

Streamline and lower costs

If you can use the tools at hand to improve and streamline your business, then it may help you lower your costs and your prices. Maybe it will shave a few hours per week off your customer interfacing time or sell cultivation and processing times.

Get feedback with your CRM tools

It may be a good idea to get feedback in person if you are an architect, but there is not always time for a bit of direct feedback, which is why a little bit of data collected with the help of CRM tools may be just what a professional needs.

Enable easier sharing and partnering

The whole process of working with customer relationship tools, especially online, means that file sharing and such becomes a lot easier. Partnering becomes easier too as other companies, and other people can work on your behalf, and they get access to just as many resources as your other staff.

Try softwares such as Contactually or Salesforce . They both offer customer relationship management with cloud services.

What is a provisional sum?

A provisional sum is a sum of money allocated for a particular activity that is not fully defined, but it needs to be considered for a construction project.

In the context of measured building survey and topographical survey an architect may request for a provisional sum quotation to propose to their client.

What this means is that the client or architect is not entirely aware of the extent of the construction proposal and would need a ball park figure to add in their budget. This happens because of a few reasons:

The client is not decided on the extension option of their property (i.e. roof extension or ground floor extension)
The planning application may be complicated and the outcome of the planning process may determine the option to go for
The client is just looking for a budget price to get a loan

The provisional sum on its own is not part of the scope for deliverable until the client instruct it to be included. When the client instructs the architect or surveyor they will then confirm the scope and price (if there are any changes) and it will proceed.

The client does not need to pay for the provisional sum in the contract as it is not defined as a deliverable.

Important:

Make sure the provisional sum is itemised in the quotation as it will make it easier to identify only the amount due to the contractor/surveyor/designer when they apply for their fees. It is quite common for poorly managed practices to ‘hide’ the provisional sum value within a lump sum but never deliver the item.

Remember:

The contractor/surveyor/designer will not need to deliver the provisional sum until it is instructed to proceed.

You can get a quote for a measured building or topographical survey from us by contacting us at info@icelabz.co.uk.

What is a Section Plan?

A section plan is a vertical slice drawings showing the internal features of your property. It is similar to an elevation plan. However, it shows the internal features of the property. It is common to have the section plan drawn in the middle of the property’s staircase. The section plan is to help the architect to get an idea of the height of the internal floors of the property and the features on the wall.

The section plan is usually combined with other plans on a measured building survey. This can include floor plans, elevations, topographical plans, roof plans. They are usually requested by your architect, and can also be produced from floor plans and elevations but it may take an architect or someone who has not visited the house a lot longer to produce.

Definition

A section plan is a 2D drawing of your house, showing it from all angles vertically. It’s a bird’s eye view of your home, from the side (well..through the house). It also shows the interior and exterior walls.

You can use section plans to communicate with builders or renovators so they can see what you want done in the right way. The plan is usually drawn on one sheet of paper but sometimes it will span two or three sheets if there are many rooms or views that need to be shown on it.

Some Examples

A section plan is a graphic representation of a building or object, usually in cross-section.
A section plan can be used to show the arrangement of different rooms, spaces and/or levels within an interior environment.
You can use a section plan for your own home or for any other building or vehicle you might want to see in details

Here are some examples of a section plan:

It is important to note (to avoid confusion):

The difference between an elevation and a section is that the elevation shows the external vertical plan of the building and the section shows the internal. It is quite common that we get enquiries asking for external sections, which does not exists… So if you are looking for external plan you’d need an elevation plan.

Sample Section plan in PDF:

MB-SURV-BR-SECA-001 Download

How to Draw a Section Plan

There are a few different ways to create a section plan. One common method is by hand, but it’s also possible to use software such as AutoCAD or SketchUp. To start, you’ll need to draw a 2D line drawing of your house.

You would want to start to draw up all your floor plans first so that you can get the layout and vertical dimensions (room height, door height and windows).
Once you’re done you have to draw your section line and which direction you need to draw.
then you would want to start aligning the floors against your section so that you can draw your internal of your house, then your height of each floor.
Then the hardest part is what you see from the section line. Check out the examples above to give you an idea of what features to pick

Then you can add labels and dimension lines on the house plans to indicate height, depth, and width as well as material types and construction details. Labels are useful for showing the location of rooms and other features on your building as well as giving an overview of any special structural elements that might be present in your home (such as trusses).

How to read or draw a section plan.

A section plan is a drawing that shows the cross-section of a building. It can be drawn to show all of the floors, or it can show just one floor.

A section plan is different from an elevation, which shows an outside view of your house. A section plan shows how your house looks from inside or underneath it.

A section plan can give you good information about your house

A section plan is a drawing of a house in cross-section, which means it shows how the house is built from the inside down to its foundation. A section plan can show you:

The layout of each room in your house
How materials like wood, stone and metal are used within each room
How different parts of the house connect together (like walls with floors)

Still confused?

Take a look at this article on elevations.

What is a floor plan?

A floor plan is a drawing which indicate the features of a floor for your property. In the context of a measured building survey, a floor plan consists of indicating all fixed features, as well as height information of the room, windows, doors and any beams on the ceiling.

It differs greatly from your estate agent floor plan. The floor plan produced by your estate agent is not accurate enough for planning permission and construction drawings. They do not include room, window, door height or even show indications of beams. But they are good enough when you are trying to sell your property.

Here is an example from http://virtual360.net/floor-plans-plus

In addition the floor plans produced from a measured building survey is accurate as it measures the angle of the room. To undertake a proper measured building survey plan, you will need specialist equipment which ranges from £250-1000 a week to hire. This is why a measured building survey’s floor plan is slightly more expensive and take a lot longer to produce than the estate agent’s floor plan. To better explain what a floor plan is we have included a screenshot of a floor plan below:

The above floor plan uses an equipment called FARO 3D scanner, this is fairly expensive but very accurate. There are other equipments such as a total station that can be used to create the same output. But this can result in the survey taking a lot longer to complete (roughly 2-3 hours per floor). Whereas, the use of a FARO 3D scanner we can survey a floor in roughly 1 – 1.5 hours depending on the area and the number of rooms on that floor.