5 Minutes with Maddy Darby
Any company is only as strong as the people that comprise it. Our team's dedication and hard work is what allows us to keep serving our customers to the degree we can. As a result, we want to showcase them and their incredible talents.
Maddy Darby, Customer Success Manager at Spark, is our latest team member to be featured in our ‘5 Minutes with’ segment. Learn about Maddy’s journey into the New Development space, her thoughts on the one thing every project marketing and sales program needs to succeed, and more below.
How did you end up in New Development?
So I actually went to university at UBC and graduated with a degree in pysch and econ, which is definitely quite removed from New Development (laughs). Out of university, my first job was working in a support role at an HR software company and customer success was something I realized I had a passion for. Eventually, I came upon Spark - I was always interested in real estate but had little prior experience. The team at Spark really helped me get up to speed within the world of real estate, and I’m really grateful to Richard, Matt and Ali for everything they taught me. Now it’s been almost 4 years since joining Spark and the industry!
What is a current or upcoming project that you have onboarded that you’re excited about?
One that’s really incredible is the Mercedes-Benz Places Residence, which is being built by JDS Developments and sold by Serhant. It’s a 68 storey, 791 unit development in the Brickell neighbourhood of Miami. It’s also Mercedes-Benz’s first branded development in North America and second worldwide to their Dubai project. There’s been so much buzz around this project and it's been exciting to be a part of such a successful launch. They had to set up a call centre just to manage the sheer volume of inquiries (laughs). I’m a big fan of the Netflix series “Owning Manhattan” that features the Serhant team and being able to work with them on this launch has been really cool.
From your perspective, what is one thing that every project marketing and sales program needs to do in order to be successful?
In my opinion, the most important step is getting registration forms set up as early as possible. Setting this up early in the process allows you to begin capturing leads earlier. Being proactive on this when time is on your side is really important, otherwise it can fall by the wayside. I've seen some projects miss out on a bunch of leads because they’ve been “too busy” to set their sales site connected to Spark at the outset.
What do you enjoy most about working at Spark?
I like working with people, both internally with the Spark team and our outside clients! Internally, our CS team brings so much experience from different backgrounds, from real estate to customer success to tech. As a team, there’s no problem we haven’t seen before and can’t solve. When I go on vacation, I have the utmost confidence that my clients are being taken care of by the rest of the team. We have such a great workplace culture at Spark, it’s easy to work together and enjoyable to be around everyone. Then externally, we have so many successful and driven customers who want to do great work. It’s such a privilege to work together and set project launches in motion.
What’s the most valuable feature or work flow that clients need to be using to get the most out of Spark?
It’s definitely Spark’s digital contracts tool. A lot of teams have told me horror stories about the consequences of using pen and paper, or other software platforms that aren’t optimized for New Development sales and contract writing. Those same teams are shocked at how easy and effective Spark is, such as how simple it is to write multiple contracts or how to connect an addendum. The biggest thing I hear from our users is how much time our digital contracts tool frees up for them. It really allows them to focus on selling, which is their ultimate goal and what they’re best at doing.
You’re getting married soon! Can you share some details about the upcoming wedding?
Yes! I’m getting married next summer in the Okanagan at a family member’s house. Because it’s not a formal venue, we are setting everything up from scratch, on top of planning everything else that comes with getting married. You wouldn’t believe how many different rentals are needed to run a typical wedding!
What would you say is harder: Planning a wedding or planning a project launch?
No disrespect to our customers but I think planning a wedding is 10 times harder! There are tons of moving pieces, as well as coordination among several teams preparing for the big day. You never know how things are going to go, there’s lots of preparing for different scenarios. In both weddings and project launches, you have to give yourself as much time as possible. Either way, you don’t want any unnecessary stress!
