Timberlake Homes Success Story

Lasso CRM Drives Sales and Marketing to Record Success Levels

Interview with Bob Rayman with Timberlake Homes

There are many different factors involved in running a successful homebuilding business, but one of the closest to the very top of the list has to be the ability to build win-win relationships with customers and prospects and then be able to convert those relationships into sales. Just ask Bob Rayman, Internet Sales Manager at Annapolis, Maryland-based Timberlake Homes.

Over the past 57 years, Timberlake has established a proud tradition in Maryland and Delaware of quality and value, both for production and design-build homes. Bob has played a role in the company’s growth for over 20 of those years and he knows firsthand just how important effective relationship building and management can be.

Lasso CRM takes customer communications from inefficient to automated

Since implementing the Lasso CRM solution from ECI in 2013, Bob and the Timberlake team have had access to a proven resource that has consistently delivered the support they need to keep those relationships strong and the company growing and profitable.

Says Bob, “With Lasso, Timberlake Homes can get its message out to the market effectively and efficiently!”

Bob still remembers those pre-Lasso days and the memories aren’t exactly pleasant. “We had to create all of our e-marketing messages on our own from scratch. When I wanted to send out follow-ups to promotions, I literally had to send them out one at time … mass e-blasts just weren’t an option.” Once Timberlake went live with Lasso, things got a whole lot better.

“Whether you’re sending out several thousand e-blasts or just 20 pieces to a target group, it’s the same either way,” says Bob. “You just click a button and they’re gone!”

And, Bob adds, Lasso’s extensive portfolio of marketing templates for e-blasts provides an invaluable starting point for just about any promotion, with flexibility and ease of use that makes getting information out so much easier.

The team tracks marketing metrics and sales activities for continual improvement

In addition, he says, Lasso also gives Timberlake the ability to track the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and identify the sources of traffic and appointments.

And all that represents just one aspect of the value Lasso brings to Timberlake Homes.

“Lasso is also a tremendous tool for our sales team to help them manage their time,” says Bob. “When I start work every day, the first thing I do is log in to Lasso to see my daily activities,” he reports. “Appointments, phone calls to make, emails to send out—they’re all there. “You don’t have to leave memos and reminders everywhere. With Lasso, all the information you need is right in front of you.”

Lasso is intuitive and enables everyone to hit the ground running

If you aren’t particularly computer-savvy, the idea of having to learn a program with all the features and functionality that Lasso offers might seem more than just a little daunting.

But, per Bob, getting up to speed is remarkably easy. “If you have any initiative whatsoever, Lasso is not hard to learn,” he contends. “Like anything else, there’s a learning curve to go through but so much training material is available online and the Lasso technical support people are truly outstanding. They
responded to every question I had cheerfully, quickly and competently. Lasso’s service overall was five-star on the day we started with them and it’s stayed that way ever since.”

Bob also gives Lasso high marks for the company’s commitment to continuous improvement. “They’re constantly tweaking existing features and adding upgrades to enhance the program to make it even better and more user friendly,” he reports. “With technology changing as fast as it does these days, that’s a big plus!”

Lasso has become even more useful for the team during the COVID-19 pandemic “The pandemic has forced us to rely so much more on our website and our online marketing for business,” Bob explains. “Not a lot of people are visiting communities or even making phone calls anymore. Instead, they’re going to our website to get what they need. Our website has basically become the company’s sales center and Lasso is the tool we use to manage and track the information that’s coming in.”

As it has for many homebuilders, business at Timberlake has been booming during the pandemic, with the company making its 2021 sales goal by June. That remarkable achievement is due, in no small part, to
a team of hard-working, experienced industry professionals. But, as Bob would be the first to admit, another
key element of the Timberlake Homes success story is the sales team’s access to tools like Lasso that can help them take full advantage of opportunities as they arise.

According to Bob, “Lasso has clearly become a critical part of what we do at Timberlake Homes. It has added
to our professional appearance in the market place, has helped our sales team become more productive and efficient and it’s given the company a very useful sales management tool. We have some pretty ambitious expansion plans and all that is only going to become even more important as we
go forward.”