Customer success story – using Virtual Tours to sell real estate with Nick Pellucchi
Nick was awarded the Most Improved Salesperson (Income Earned) in 2019 for LJ Hooker FNQ Network while also building his loyal base of clientele.
Learn why he loves to use virtual tours for real estate in his business.
My name’s Nick Pelucchi. I work for LJ Hooker here in Trinity Beach, Palm Cove. And also our secondary office at Marlin Coast.
My position is a sales consultant in the area, and I’m predominantly working in the Palm Cove, Clifton Beach.
Yeah look, we got into virtual tours about six months ago. We needed an option that was effective for both cost-wise and time. Now, we do a lot of apartments in the Palm Cove area, and we were struggling getting into the apartments to be able to show the visitors, when they’re occupied. So we got into virtual tours, ’cause it gave us an option to be able to get our customers into the apartment without physically going into it.
The main benefit is the option of being able to get people into the properties in a virtual concept without first physically getting into ’em. It qualifies the buyer, so the buyers that we get through in inspections, either privately or through our open homes, they’re definitely a lot more qualified ’cause they’ve seen the property and they have a great understanding of the property. And winning listings has become, the virtual tours have become a great option for that. It’s, you know, in our market place marketing can be tough. A lot of vendors don’t wanna spend a great deal of money. The options that have been on the market in previous years are quite expensive.
The virtual tours that we’re using now, at $5.00 per tour, that cost to the owner is nothing compared to the other products that are on the market. You know it’s just an add-on. Everyone’s looking for those add-on val– the value add-ons these days, and at such a small cost. It means quite a lot when you package it up with all the other products that we can give to them complimentary. All of my buyers are all in estate. I can, actually both my vendors and my buyers are in estate. So, not a great deal of transactions I’ve done, especially this year, and since using this tool I’ve been with local buyers. They come in, they’re here on holidays, they fall in love with the area, and then can go back and review the property in the comfort of their own home through the link. So, you know they might only get 15 minutes in the property, but they can spend an hour at home looking through it, showing their friends, before they go and make that step and put the offer in. Look, it did come down to, what options were on the market.
Virtual Tours is approved with REA, realestate.com. so that was a big factor. Now you’ve only got Matterport as the other option, and we found Matterport being overly complicated, it took hours to get the product going, and these virtual tours, that’s not the case. You know, you can get a house done or a unit done in 10, 15 minutes. As a consultant, getting-around time is most precious, so you wanna be able to get through and get the product online as fast as you can. And that option, when we were exposed to it, through Tom and his business, was very, very attractive to us.
In fact Tom was able to get a tour online within the half an hour of meeting us, so that commitment and that showed how easy it was for us to learn the product. VTC, it’s a complete package in terms of use, cost, product, they all tick the right boxes. We can take it to vendor appraisals and vendor meetings, through our marketing process, we can show them that, we can take them through properties that we’ve done in the past.
It works perfectly for our buyers, for our time, it takes no time, you can do half a dozen of them within an hour. And it’s just a really complete package, it’s easy, it’s cost-effective and it’s great quality. Yeah, response so far has been really positive. When we are speaking to our buyers we are asking them if they’ve seen the tools online, majority of them are saying yes. Some haven’t, but, you know, that’s the same with all, that’s floor plans, you know, you’ve got to take that into account. But overall we’re finding the tool is effective for our vendors and our buyers, and everyone’s loving it. Our buyers are loving the fact that they can go through and really have a good look at the property and all the information that we cram into it, and then our buyers, sorry, our vendors are loving it in terms of its effectiveness for its cost. The ratio is perfect. We see all our competitors using products that are a lot more expensive than us, and we have a product that we can offer that does a far greater job in terms of being able to explore a property for a lower cost, so when we go in to compete for listings we’ve got a tool that will always win over the others that are on the market, so, most definitely. So we’re out there telling all our LJ Hooker franchises how good the tool is, how cost-effective it is, and I’ve slowly seen other branches come online with it, So look, it is out there working for us and I would recommend it. If you’re looking for a cost-effective tool to set yourself apart from your competitor, to be able to get your buyers more qualified, and also just win you more listings, this tool will do that for you. We think it works hand-in-hand, virtual tours with open homes work hand-in-hand. You’re getting more qualified buyers coming to your open homes. Those who have been exposed to the property prior, ’cause they’re looking at the photos and they’re trying to determine whether the property’s for them, when they see the tour and they can explore it in the leisure of their home without feeling confronted from an agent, getting a little bit anxiety, when they come to the open home there we tend to find that there are more questions, they know the property a lot better so that you’re not spending as much time exploring the property and taking them through, they know the property. Means you can meet more people. Look, I wouldn’t say that it hinders at all, not at all. We find that they do work hand-in-hand.
Yep, with the open homes, what we have actually been doing with our open homes is putting the tour on display through our iPads, and it works really well. For anyone who’s in the unit sector when doing sales and you’ve got apartments where you may not be able to get in to on the day, or you’re opening other half of the apartment like I was the other day, you can have your virtual tour sitting there and your customer can still explore areas of the property that they might not have access to on the day. All right, so it’s really quite effective. It’s just a tool that you’ve got in your pocket and you can utilize it at any point, so not even at open homes, you can be out on the street, someone wants to explore the property they don’t have to go online, you can bring it up on your phone, you can send them the link and they’re right there, wherever they are, looking through a property for, that you have for sale. There’s this tool, it works really well and I would recommend it to anybody.
