Interview with Wannes Vanspranghe, Co-CEO and Erik Driehuis, CCO of Prompto - powered by Around Media.

"There was 5 Exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization and 2003, but that much information is now created every two days and the pace is rapidly increasing.” Eric Schmidt, Google chairman.

The abundance of information online as well as offline has changed customer behavior. The customer is no longer the "uneducated consumer", but somebody who educates and informs himself, mostly online, about the product he wants to purchase. That, as well as new technologies, has led to a new balance between lead generation and sales. Buyers are at least two thirds through the decision making process, most of it happening online, before they establish first contact with a sales person.

Around Media, market leaders in everything 3D and Virtual reality in Belgium, launched their new product PROMPTO in 2018. A new PropTech 3.0 sales tool, that allows real estate developers to give their customers a completely personalized experience, tailored after their needs and wishes. Wannes Vanspranghe and Erik Driehuis explain in this interview, how PROMPTO is disrupting the real estate lead generation.

PROMPTO combines a real-time visualisation software built on the leading game engine technology, with a lead generation portal which helps marketeers to qualify, engage & track leads.

1. How does PROMPTO help to catch the attention of the customer - especially in regards to the abundance of online information?

Wannes: PROMPTO allows real estate developers to give their customers a completely personalized experience. That is unique - most sales tools only show a fraction of what's possible or in other words they show you just one of the 100.000 possibilities you have. But if you could, why wouldn't you show the customer their future apartment as they see it?!

Erik: PROMPTO provides an experience by bringing VR to the masses. It gives potential customers the ability to see and walk through their future property. That is something outstanding - even in times of 5 Exabytes of information every two days.

2. Customer Centricity plays a key role at PROMPTO as well as new technologies? What is your winning recipe for mixing these two?

Erik: New technologies enable us to give potential customers an interactive, personalized experience - within moments. This in turn enables real estate developer to develop and qualify potential leads before passing them to sales.

3. How do you track and define what people are interested in?

Wannes: The PROMPTO platform has an integrated lead generation module, which enables you to track a potential lead viewing content. For example someone walking through a 360 tour. Based on that data, a real estate developer can propose personalised content for the lead. New technologies allow these processes to become more and more automated.

4. How does PROMPTO support real estate developers in nurturing leads into a sale conversion?

Erik: First, PROMPTO helps to turn leads into qualified leads by providing them with more information. Everybody who is seriously interested will seek for more information, which is for us a criterion to distinguish qualified leads. Second, PROMPTO helps the real estate developers by creating content to keep the communication with the qualified lead going and finally turn it into a personalised session.

Wannes: Let’s think for example about a big housing project. It takes real estate developers up to two or three years to sell all apartments. How do you keep the content flow going during these years? What do you post on Facebook, on LinkedIn? People want to see new images, images that also match their lifestyle, the season they are in etc. With PROMPTO your team can easily and quickly create target specific content at no cost. In the summer people want to see what the garden of their potential future house could look like. Very important fact before buying is also luminosity. Do I have direct sunlight in the winter? How does the sunlight fall in during the summer?

5. Customized content, personalized experiences - does that mean more work for sales representatives?

Erik: No, actually PROMPTO saves you time. By automatically qualifying the leads, PROMPTO reduces the time it takes to convert, and improves the conversion rates . Also it means less on-site physical visits. Normally people come several times and bring relatives and friends to get their opinion. But at a personalized session real estate developers can visually represent the apartment and go through all the available options with the customer. Once decisions are made they be can easily saved and stored. Customers get access, so that they can go through it again at home with their partners, friends or colleagues.

Wannes: I totally agree and want to add, that it is very easy to get customised with PROMPTO. We have always focused, and will continue to focus on easy ways and interfaces to make the user experience as smooth as possible, so that the on boarding of the sales team can be done easily and that you can get the most out of it for all sales professionals as well as clients.

This article is the first one of a series of interviews on lead generation and sales in the real estate sector. Stay tuned for the next ones by following our LinkedIn or Facebook pages!

Karolin, on behalf of the Around Media - Prompto team