In July 25th 2017, YEC held a talk with Bong Chandra, with the title “From student enterpreneur, to motivator and Property Developer”

Born in 1987 to a modest family, Bong Chandra started his enterpreneurship journey as early as high school. After trying out several businesses, he became a motivator in 2008, and property developer at 2009. He’s awarded the “Youngest Motivator in Asia” in 2010, and Trinity Group is developing a number of apartments around Alam Sutera and Serpong, such as The Smith, Brooklyn, Springwood Residence, and Yukata Suites.

Today, he’s the CEO of Trinity Property Group, and aims for his company to go public in 2018. In this event, Bong shared about his journey and experience.

He was very passionate in selling by value. As we can see from his projects at Yukata Suites for example, his way of selling is not hard selling to clients, but by proposing a value proposition. This is related to our earlier book discussion a few months ago on jobs to be done.

Customers buy (hire) Yukata Suites because it offers top notch facilities with real Japanese ambience. It’s not just an expensive apartment. Yukata conveys the architecture, the design, the ambience, the culture, and the experience of Japan. One interesting things he did is that every time a client buys an apartment, they are given a yukata set (Japan’s casual traditional clothing).

Same with The Smith, here, the value proposition is selling to millenials. I know there are a lot of people that is still flabbergasted with this generation and how to sell to them. In his talk, Bong shared that millenials hires The Smith because it’s affordable, it’s a great place to live in, it’s modern. He’s aiming for people that will actually live there, which is why there’s a locking period where people cannot sell the apartment after they buy it. This prevents speculators and investors that only wants to buy for profit. This is a good value proposition for millenials, after all, millenials won’t likely want to live in a place that is devoid of any human.

And he also shared a few interesting technical knowledge that he shared during the event:

1. Ratio of unit vs carpark for mid low segment is 1:4
2. If we dedicate 1 floor to facility is sacrificing 30M of sales unit
3. Adding 1 carpark ~150 jt cost

Key points to be taken away is that we need to sell with purpose, and we need to be clear on our value proposition. Don’t be stuck on the old ways of selling, customers are no longer comfortable with being forced stuff to their throat.