Dialogues for Results

CALLING ALL SALES PROFESSIONALS! SHOW UP, THEN FOLLOW UP!

The reality is that we’re in a tough market, perhaps the toughest any of us have ever faced. At a time when salespeople should be at the top of their game, showing up to sell every day with every customer, the reality is that this is not happening in far too many sales offices. Do you want to sell more homes, more often? Or, do you want to be one of these alarming statistics?

• A Colorado marketing firm reports that of the 12 top builders' on site agents they visited in Denver, 16% never even spoke to them, only 36% followed up, and only 14% followed up with anything of relevance to the customer.
• Of the builders visited in the Washington DC area by house hunting friends of mine, 33% merely handed them a brochure and/or a key to an inventory home, and one office was locked up tight without a sign posted.
• A mystery shopping company reports that the average shop score nationally has dropped 10 points over the last 24 months. During one series of shops, only 11% even registered the shopper.
• In Orlando, one house hunting couple encountered closed offices, poor copies of price sheets and flyers, and sales counselors who did not demonstrate their models or home sites. Of the 6 communities they visited, only 1 followed up within the week following their visit.

You cannot control the fact that there are fewer buyers out there, but you can control how many buyers you get. You cannot control how buyers feel when they walk in your doors, but you can control how they feel when they walk out. If what you are doing is not getting you the results you want, change what you’re doing!

Step 1: Reconnect with your passion to help people own the homes in which their lives’ memories are created! Become an expert on everything you have to sell…your builder, your community, your homes, your features, financing….everything.

Step 2: Internalize customer focused, emotionally relevant sales techniques and planned dialogues that you execute with 100% of your customers, 100% of the time. The sales techniques and traditional critical path selling of the past are not powerful enough to overcome today's challenges.

 Greetings that differentiate you & prepare the customer to purchase
 Purposeful discovery that focuses on the ‘why’ and the ‘who’, not the ‘what’
 Proactive & reactive objection resolution techniques
 Differential demonstrations that instill the Will to Own
 Closes that begin at ‘hello’ and propel the encounter

Step 3: Follow up relentlessly. Don’t rely solely on corporate generic e blasts or template letters. They lack emotional relevance for the customer, and typically are not scheduled to go out frequently enough. Create your own schedule that can be tailored both in terms of content and delivery method to the individual customer. The ideal is a combination of customer specific letters, e blasts, and phone calls that begin the day of the customer’s visit. Have prepared letter templates and phone scripts in which you can insert personal information and calls to action. Create your own community newsletter that speaks to your owner profiles. Host parties for hot prospects, owners and pending buyers.

Customers may walk in your doors without urgency and with preconceived perceptions of low value, but the fact that they’re walking in at all, in spite of the doom & gloom, and the high price of gas that got them there, means they are potential buyers! There is so much out there over which you have no control…the media, other builders, the market, even your own company…but you can control your attitude and your behavior! And, in doing so, you will control the customer and the sales encounter! You will sell more homes more often!


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