Martin Ashkuri, General Manager of Sales at Dubai Lifestyle City, a leading Middle East developer, talks about how he and his team use Propertybase.

Martin, what problem or need in your business led you to look for software like Propertybase?

Well, I first used Propertybase when I was working with a previous development company here in Dubai. We decided to focus on customer service. Because there were so many developers in the market, and as a new developer launching new products, it was important for us to try to shout loud enough to be heard.

We really needed to differentiate ourselves from the competition, and we decided to offer customer service that was light-years ahead of our competitors.

That required a backbone. I originally started by working with Salesforce and customizing Salesforce as much as possible to attend to my property needs. And then along comes Propertybase, and they stated to give me modules I could only dream of when I was trying to customize Salesforce for property requirements. It was the perfect solution for us.

How are you primarily using Propertybase in your business today?

In my current position at Dubai Lifestyle City, we develop…well, the equivalent of palaces. Very large homes. Villa homes. Community homes that have JW Marriot backing.

And here I walked into a business with no CRM platform. Well, there was a CRM platform, but it was custom-built and you know the limitations of such a system. There were all sort of apparent problems that would have required months of programming. But I knew that the solutions were all available as modules in Propertybase. So the first decision I made was to get Propertybase for my new company. Then we customized it to suit our needs with some small changes that I was able to make myself and a bit of help of the Propertybase help desk.

I understand that you also manage your sales team with Propertybase?

Yes. Actually I use it on both ends. I manage everything post-sale, such as collections and ongoing customer relations. And I’m also responsible for managing a sales team.
When you report on your sales team in Propertybase, you can create some very, very clever KPI’s (key performance indicators). You can see exactly how many leads are under the ownership of each sales person, and then you can drill down on a report and go through these leads and determine where you are in the lead life cycle. Then you can determine what support you can provide to help close it.

I also have another great report. By recording the budget for a particular prospect—the money they have available to purchase a particular property—I create a report that basically showcases the cash value of prospects ready to buy. Then, based on experience, you can use that report to forecast your cash flow. For example, if I know that salesperson X is working on $100 million, and I know from experience that in a given month 10 percent of that will close, then I can forecast that $10 million of sales will be contributed by salesperson X this month.

Propertybase provides a lot of flexibility because it’s very user friendly, not only for the programmer but also for the end user. All you need is an idea, and those ideas can be transcribed into Propertybase and turned into reports.

Is there a particular Propertybase feature or function that is most important to you?

No. Really the whole thing is equally important. From managing the CRM team, to the collections team, to the sales team, everything that it provides is equally important to the business.