5 tips for a successful consultation on an online platform
Quick and easy tips to improve the efficiency of your consultations on an online platform.
6 best practices for online consultation for your real estate projects.
An online consultation platform helps decision makers to:
- Develop proactive listening skills
- Make decisions informed by the needs of the community
- Obtain sound data to support their decisions
Discover the best practices that will help you achieve your real estate project goals!
1. Start Early
Involving the community early in your development process will have several benefits including- Building trust
- Conversing about sensitive issues
- Developing a sense of ownership of the project
The community will feel a real power of influence, even if you have to reject certain ideas.
Early consultation recognizes that the community has a capacity to participate and that it has valuable knowledge about its territory.
2. Plan steps
By having several stages in your consultation, you demonstrate that you are truly listening as the subsequent stage integrates the results of the previous consultation.You also have the chance to express yourself on the elements that cannot be integrated; the portions of the project that can evolve and those that are immutable. For example, you can
- Propose a preliminary concept
- Come back with an improved concept
- Finish with the refinement of some outstanding elements
3. Focus on transparency
The community can feel manipulated by the results of a survey. By using an online consultation platform, all participants see votes, comments and statistics in real time.
An online platform gives them confidence that the leader is listening and is willing to have the right conversations about a real estate project that will affect their community.
4. Listen courageously
In some cases, the project is already well developed and the consultation still needs to take place. In these cases, an online platform offers a form of open input that gives a sense that the leader is receptive to comments and responsive to arguments.
With the transparency that an online consultation allows, the community already has an overview of what will be communicated to the developer.
If you are the developer, be clear from the beginning about the room for maneuver.
5. Adopt a hybrid approach
Online consultation does not replace the need for in-person consultation and a hybrid form of consultation is often a winning solution.
Start with an in-person consultation with the community or stakeholders. Continue the conversation online and present the findings from the face-to-face meeting to reach more people and receive diverse perspectives.
All input will help build a picture of the project's acceptability and opportunities to move it forward.
6. Be present and visible
Communicating about your consultation is essential to ensure that people know about it and participate.
Reach out to the community with online marketing, but also with traditional means such as an ad in the local newspaper, a postcard in the mailbox or a poster on the site of the future building project.
Don't be afraid of numbers as the online consultation platform is built to accommodate a lot of traffic without creating confrontational discussions.
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