Interview: Arnaud Chevessier, the real estate agent who optimises his sales process

How do you position yourself towards innovation in real estate?

First of all, I love new technologies. At Le Clos Immobilier, we always try to be avant-garde. My goal is to differentiate myself from the competition and for the customers to see that. Nodalview gives me the opportunity to stand out in the market. The Nodalview platform lets me interact with my prospects: they get a glimpse of the property from the first HDR photos and then discover the full charm of the property through the virtual tour.

Can you tell us more about the content of your real estate ads? How do you manage to differentiate yourself online?

To publish our ads, we use our real estate portal which lets us share them on a variety of real estate websites. We have more than 50 websites on which our ads are distributed. We also communicate via Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

We always post the excerpt of a virtual tour in our ads and not the full tour, and we mention in the ad "Complete virtual tour on request". We provide interior and exterior photos as well as a plan of the house.

The video is used to make posts on Facebook and to talk about the properties that are going to be sold.

In general, for a listing, we get about 500 views. The different visual experiences (photo, video, virtual tour) that we offer and our presence on the various platforms lets us enhance our ad visibility.

With so many contacts, how do you manage to select only the best profiles?

With each phone call we receive, we do a complete discovery of the client. I know the house for that he calls me for but I don't know him, nor what he is looking for. So I ask him questions that will tell me if the property meets his expectations. If he is looking for a property with precise criteria but these don't match the property, I tell him that the house is not made for him.

And concretely, which tool allows you to save time on your in-person tours?

The tool that lets us save time on the sale of a property is the guided virtual tour. As a guided virtual tour takes much less time than an in-person tour. It is much less time consuming than an in-person tour, both for people interested in the property and for the owners. Your objective is to have at the end of this first selection people who are 80% sure they'll make an offer.

In addition to saving time, when you show a house or an apartment in person 20 times, you don't have the same behavior or the same motivation. Potential buyers notice it when I show a house for the first time of the day, and that's a good sign.

How do these guided virtual tours work?

Before each guided virtual tour, I send a connection link to my clients. On the day of the tour, they log in via their computer or tablet and then it's a bit like a real estate zoom.

At the beginning of the guided virtual tour, I take control and at the end I let them walk around the property or go to a particular place. Once the guided virtual tour is over, I send them the link so they can visit the property again.

And what is the general reaction of your clients to the guided virtual tour?

What stands out the most is that it is true to reality. The people who have taken the guided virtual tour recognise the property they visited from a distance. Some people who are really interested then ask me to do an in-person tour first.