Standout - Quick Start

Standout Quick Start

This guide is for a new member of staff who needs to become productive quickly. It concentrates on the working habits that make Standout useful, rather than trying to explain every field on every screen.

1. Start the day from the Dashboard

After signing in, use the Dashboard to answer four questions:

1. What appointments do I have today?
2. Which tasks are due or overdue?
3. Are there new notifications or customer activity that needs attention?
4. Which properties or contacts have I recently been working on?

Do not use the Dashboard only as a launch page. It is intended to show the work that is waiting for you.

If your agency uses Office 365 integration, sign in to Office 365 when prompted so diary appointments can also be created in your Outlook calendar.

The Dashboard brings together the work that needs attention.

2. Work the Communications Centre

Open Communications Centre early in the day and during the day as new work arrives. It combines portal leads, website enquiries and Customer Portal conversations.

Use the queue to assign enquiries, link an existing Contact, create an applicant where necessary and record the real workflow status. Do not reply to Customer Portal notification emails; open the conversation in Standout and reply there.

See Communications Centre and Inbound Enquiries.

3. Search before you create

A large proportion of CRM problems start with duplicate contacts.

Before adding a person, search by one or more of:

• surname;
• telephone/mobile;
• email address;
• postcode.

If the person already exists, update the existing contact. A single contact can have several relationships with the agency, for example applicant, vendor and landlord.

See Contacts Overview and Registering a New Applicant.

4. Keep the contact record useful

A contact should contain enough information for another member of staff to continue the conversation without starting again.

As a minimum, keep these current:

• telephone/mobile and email;
• contact type;
• address where relevant;
• notes from meaningful conversations;
• applicant requirements;
• property-to-sell position;
• solicitor and compliance information when the transaction reaches that stage.

When somebody's circumstances change, update Standout while you are speaking to them. Do not rely on a separate notebook or inbox to become the real record.

5. Use requirements rather than memory

For an applicant, record what they actually want in Requirements. This allows Standout to match them to current properties and gives other staff a consistent picture of the search.

Customers with Customer Portal access can also maintain their own requirements. Staff and customers are editing the same underlying requirement records.

6. Put appointments in the Diary

Use the Diary for:

• valuations;
• viewings;
• inspections;
• staff visits;
• meetings and other appointments.

When a viewing or valuation is connected to a property/contact, book it through the relevant Standout workflow rather than entering an unrelated generic calendar entry. That preserves the relationship between the diary, property and customer.

7. Use Tasks for things that must happen later

If an action cannot be completed now, create a task. Good examples include:

• chase a vendor for a decision after valuation;
• call an applicant after a viewing;
• chase a solicitor;
• re-contact a landlord next week;
• follow up an Opportunity Finder lead.

A CRM is only useful if future work is captured when it is agreed.

8. Follow the property lifecycle

For sales, the normal journey is:

Valuation enquiry → valuation appointment → awaiting decision → instructed/marketing preparation → available → viewings → offers → SSTC/sale agreed → progression → exchange → completion

Use Sales Valuation to Instruction, Marketing a Property, Recording and Negotiating Offers and Sales Progression to Completion.

For lettings, use Adding a new Rental Property, Creating and Starting a Tenancy, Rental Compliance and Inspections and Managing Repairs and Maintenance.

9. Keep customers informed with Customer Portal

From a Contact record, use the prominent Send Customer Portal link button to invite the customer to Customer Portal.

Customer Portal can reduce routine chasing by allowing customers to see relevant progress, documents, viewings, repairs and requirements themselves.

See Using the Customer Portal for the recommended staff workflow.

10. Use Opportunity Finder as a daily prospecting list

Opportunity Finder identifies contacts worth speaking to, such as buyers with a property to sell, lapsed valuations, withdrawn vendors and dormant applicants.

Do not simply browse the list. Work the opportunity, then use Create follow-up task, Mark contacted, Snooze or Dismiss so the queue remains meaningful.

A good Standout habit

At the end of each conversation or activity, ask:

1. Has the contact/property information changed?
2. Is there a note or result that somebody else needs to know?
3. Is there a future action that needs a task or appointment?
4. Should the customer's requirements or transaction stage change?

If those four things are kept current, Standout becomes a useful shared operating system rather than a filing cabinet.