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LeBlanc
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Issue 6 Winter 1998
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The Front Porch Where are all the cheerleaders? Remember your high school and college days when we all rallied around the home team cheering squad? If your team was the Trojans, the cheerleaders encouraged us with "Give me a T"... etc. Yelling at the top of our lungs, most of us were hoarse by the end of the game. Top of page As I observe sales associates representing my builder clients, I keep asking myself, 'Where are the cheerleaders?' When I listen to audio tapes, I expect to hear agents that are proactive, professional, courteous, knowledgeable, friendly and enthusiastic! From what I mostly listen to, it is apparent that either the agent didn't get enough sleep the night before, or he/she just lacks any enthusiasm about the homes and communities they are selling. Sales agents must put themselves in the buyer's shoes. What valid reason would any prospective buyer have to get excited about your homes if the selling agent asks inspiring questions such as "What do you think?" "Do you have any questions?" "We have some nice homes." These uneventful questions/statements are said with a level of excitement that puts any listener into a snooze zone. Ho Hum. Another house. Another tract. On to the next location. Top of page The life of the new home sales associate is not an easy one. The challenge of being fresh and enthusiastic every day can be monumental at times. But enthusiasm is indispensable. The agent must present his/her product with all the excitement of that cheerleader we used to yell with at the football games. Do you yell at your buyer? Of course not. But you do need to get their attention and involvement. You do need to wake them up. (Remember, their previous encounters with other agents have put them into the snooze zone.) How does the agent wake up the buyer? With verbal skills. Their voice must be upbeat and energetic. Words must be positive and descriptive. What they say must be welcoming and inclusive. "Welcome to Westgate. If you are looking for some distinctive and quality homes, your search is over!" "Which of our residences feels like home to you?" "While you have seen many homes, I want to show you what particularly sets us apart and makes us an award winning community." "I just love these homes! Particularly the (feature)." Do any of these questions/statements sound any better than "What do you think?" Additionally, a constant smile (or pleasant look) is contagious; not to mention being good for facial muscle tone. An easy smile combined with enthusiasm is a tonic for the tedium of the often repeated portions of the agent's sales presentation. Why not have some fun with it? Being upbeat is sure to send the right message to the prospective buyer. Conversely, a deadpan and rote (I've said this a thousand times) approach is equally infectious (I've heard this a thousand times). Top of page As managers, you are charged with constantly assessing your sales teams. Do you ask them what they like about the homes they are selling? Can the sales agents offer you descriptive positives about their homes? This is what sets the superstars apart from the presenters. The presenters are the Vanna Whites of the industry. 'Here is the kitchen. We have maple cabinets. Here is the laundry. It is inside.' Do those statements grab your emotional buttons? For the buyer, the sometimes unimaginative and look alike market of new home communities, it is the agent that makes the difference. During the course of conducting our performance evaluations, these are the types of issues we like to assess. We will congratulate any agent that is technically correct. But sometimes, while scoring very high on their reports, an agent still does not create the sale. That is why managers often do not understand the disconnect with a high scoring evaluation report and the lack of sales at the site. Or, an agent can score very low on a report but be a top producer! Sales agents can cover all the Critical Path issues and look very good on paper. However, if the presentation is robotic in manner, the emotional buy-in from the prospect is never achieved. This can be one of the underlying issues for a high cancellation rate. So, why wait until the next down cycle or slow season gives cause for alarm? Make sure your whole sales team is prepared. That preparation is only achieved by an active and ongoing evaluation and learning process. This is what LeBlanc & Associates does best. So, give us a call! Top of page LeBlanc & Associates Sales
Agents Evaluations The
Home Front edited by Carol Michela
Who's Minding The Store? An area of concern lately is how the buyer is being treated by a builder's many vendors. Once the difficulty of the sale is overcome, the many challenges of buyer selections begins. So now you send them off to the design center people, the landscape company, the electrical/lighting fixture company, etc.. How sure are you that this process doesn't undermine your sale? Are the vendor associates treating your buyers with courtesy, professionalism and a high level of personal service? Are they knowledgeable? Do they help to hold the sale together? Several of our accounts call on LeBlanc & Associates to verify this half of the sales process. We will design an appropriate report to meet the unique criteria for this type of assignment. Don't let others undermine your sale. Give us a call Today's Sales Software Systems Streamline The New Home Selling Process Lynne J. Connolly special to Computers for Tracts, Inc.
"Faster, newer sales tools take all the mystery out of the process," said Bob Edwards, Vice President of Marketing for Computers for Tracts, a California-based software systems designer. "They are easier to use, more intuitive, and less confusing for the sales person and the prospective buyer. They help guide prospects through the entire home buying process, allowing them to browse through lots, pick options, show multiple financing alternatives, and even print out contracts." According to Edwards, for new homebuilders this means that options and unique pricing for options can be now easily be defined and fully customized. Builders can even track which options are available for each floor plan, and the high-quality graphics of today's newer software tracking systems allow buyers to see detailed color photographs of various options. Top of page "With the tabular design of today's systems, the process has become even more user-friendly," said Edwards. "Easy to identify icons that instantly 'pop-up' on the computer screen allow users to easily move around from screen to screen. By clicking a button, buyers can view a complete site plan with lot options, selling price and floor plan design. One more click will show an entire community map complete with schools and shopping malls, streets and even the location of key community venues like parks and libraries. The program can be completely customized to fit the needs of each community." Sounds great, but what about tracking financial information? Well, today's newer sales software systems like CFT's "Visual Sales Track" program manages that portion of the selling process too! At the push of a button, a potential buyer can be pre-qualified using customized financing plans that include creative mortgage options. The buyer can instantly examine exactly how much they've spent on options such as cabinetry, flooring, appliances and other types of options. They know exactly what they've purchased, what it looks like, and how it impacts the total cost of the home. When they're all done, a detailed purchase contract can be instantly printed. Top of page And that's not all ... today's sales tracking systems can be interfaced with other software applications to support all functional areas of the builder's business so centralizing management of operations becomes much easier. Lots, plans, options, community and buyer information and other sales information can be entered directly into one system and shared throughout the organization. When a sales manager arrives at the sales office in the morning all of the critical sales information from the prior day has been downloaded and updated from the main office overnight. Demographic and purchasing information is also entered into the system and is transferred to the main office from multiple locations. It's this master-database of client information that gives a wealth of marketing information concerning their customers. Top of page In addition, the options coordinator can update options selections and prices, while the marketing director can easily analyze updated demographic and traffic reports. The entire process makes everyone's job more efficient because loan tracking can be handled at either the sales office or the main office and transferred back and forth between departments and site locations. According to Edwards, today's systems streamline the process, centralize sales and marketing operations, and can even improve conversion ratios. "In today's fast-paced, technology driven marketplace, new homebuyers expect this level of service-no, they demand it," concluded Edwards. CFT has installed a user base that exceeds 3,000 systems in over 31 states. For more information regarding purchasing or leasing Computer's for Tracts systems, please contact: Bob
Edwards at
A Sales Manager's Resource Library by David Harding Your library should be current, varied and effective. A good library will be an asset to your entire company. Other managers may use it. Lenders, partners and vendors will be impressed at how serious you take these duties. A good library can show your own commitment and thereby be an aid to recruiting. Do you demand excellence from your own efforts as well as your sales team? The following article may help you. Top of page Recently, I asked a few industry leaders to help me build for you a top-notch library. Mike Hennessy at Lennar Homes' Arizona operations in Phoenix, includes the following in his recommendations: Dave Stone, New Home Sales Dave Stone, New Home Marketing Top of page Stephen
R. Covey Zig Ziglar, Secrets of Closing the Sale Bill "World Wide" Webb, MIRM, of Amelia Island, Florida is a national trainer of salespeople. He regularly leads the Institute of Residential Marketing ("IRM") seminars. He is also a part of NAHB's Super Bowl Sales Rally program. His suggestions:
This book inspired the foundation thought [for] my Super Bowl Sales Rally presentation at the NAHB Convention in Dallas [in January 1998]: the Eastern approach of respecting customers, flowing with the them to identify and meet their needs, rather than our Western approach of overwhelming them with manipulative closing techniques. Check out the article I wrote on this subject in the November/December issue of Sales and Marketing Ideas magazine, from NSMC. Chris Seung, Sales Manager with Harbour Homes, based in Seattle shows the following requirements of a good library: Bob
Schultz, Selling in the 90's . . . Salespeople John Naisbett, Megatrends Michael
J. Weiss, The Clustering of America My own favorites, in addition to all of Dave Stone's books, tapes and articles are: Joel
Arthur Baker, Paradigms, The Business Richard
Marcinko, The Rogue Warrior's James Champy, Reengineering Management Angi Ma Wong, Target: the U.S. Asian Market Lillian Too, The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui Top of page Additionally, I recommend we learn the best and worst of selling techniques by watching the video Glengary Glen Ross. I find audiotapes invaluable. They add value to our drive time and can be useful during quiet periods on site. I especially recommend Marcinko for your own use. Richard is former leader of the Navy SEALS' Team Six and has a message of great value for managers. Not surprising, his language is sometimes coarse, but no worse than some of our job sites. His advice is pointed and helpful. All the recommendations fall into one of three categories: Understanding
and Motivating Our Own Company Understanding
and Motivating Our Customer Understanding
and Motivating Our Sales Force . . . and how we can help them excel? Top of page The goal of creating a strong resource library should be to improve the quantity and quality of sales. Most of your materials will be relevant to the sales team. Some could be instructive to your colleagues in finance, customer care, construction, site acquisition or land development. All the materials should be valuable to you. If a book, tape, magazine or article does not benefit you- if you never refer to it- make a gift to your local builder's association. Then acquire something, perhaps from the lists above, to help you. You are ultimately responsible to achieve one hundred percent of your firm, or division's income. This is a serious challenge. With perhaps ten percent of the budget you must feed the hungry machine that consumes the other ninety percent. Make good use of all your resources. Your library. Your colleagues. Call any of us who suggested your library's contents. Network. Grow. Succeed. Good Hunting. by
David Harding, Exchequer Consulting Corporation Market Cool Down? Many geographic markets have experienced a slow down in their sales rate. Is it seasonal, temporary, or a harbinger of 1999? Be sure your sales teams are fully prepared to handle any market change. In conjunction with our performance evaluations, LeBlanc & Associates offers our clients the time and cost effective advantage of our Sales Tutorial® program. After generating a base evaluation report, we add on a personalized training guide for the sales agent. Specific to the encounter, the agent's private Sales Tutorial® will give them targeted tools to include in their sales presentation. What is appealing to our clients, is that they now have immediate back up to the evaluation report. Everything is combined in one package for the agent. There is no lag time (which reinforces the bad selling traits) until the trainer comes in to present a seminar. The Sales Tutorial® becomes the training continuum for both management and the agent. Call us for a sample report. Dear The Home Front: by Bob Schultz After reading your article, "Orders 'R' Us" in the last issue of The Home Front, I was inspired to respond. Your timely and important article addresses an increasingly widespread complacency problem that I have been seeing the last few years. Yet, it doesn't surprise me one bit. Why? Because, in the kind of markets we've been experiencing nationwide - low interest rates and the perception of a strong economy - success can be the biggest breeder of complacency. And complacency fosters mediocrity. Top of page As Woody Allen once said, 90% of life is just showing up. Likewise, almost any builder in this market with a decent model and a reasonable price will sell a number of homes - even without, or despite, the salesperson. In other words, there are some sales that are going to happen anyway. Thus, the order-taking mentality of many of our industry's salespeople. An alarming number are showing in shopping evaluations that they do not have a selling process, yet many of them have actually won awards from their local or national associations for their sales volumes. We can hope that the hot market lasts forever, but in reality, we know it won't. In fact, it could change overnight. A middle east crisis . . . oil prices . . . instability in the Pacific Rim . . . Now the question becomes, when the party's over, where will all these "superstars" be? Zig Ziglar once said that sales is one of the few professions where you can be mediocre and still look good. I don't hold the lackadaisical salespeople solely responsible for this; I hold their builders and sales managers accountable. If management does not train its sales team to practice a selling process, and tolerates a salesperson not rising, greeting, qualifying, demonstrating and closing, they are encouraging - in fact, condoning - order-taking complacency. Top of page Two things must happen. Management must train their sales teams to think like the underdog team going into the game. New home salespeople must ask themselves: What would I be doing differently today if the market was reduced by 70% and interest rates were 12%? Then, they should be doing those things now while the market is good. Secondly, builders should start structuring their compensation programs differently. If a salesperson makes two sales early in a month, he or she may have already earned what they expected to earn or have reached their financial comfort zone. That means that salesperson won't be trying very hard to make a third sale. Why reward the salesperson as much for the first or second sale as the third sale, when the first two would probably have been made anyway? The great NBA coach Pat Riley said in his book, The Winner Within, "There is no such thing as the status quo. On any given day you are getting better or getting worse." Are your salespeople getting better or worse? Which one are you encouraging? Top of page Bob Schultz, MIRM, CSP, is North America's foremost new home sales and management expert. He is the author of two best-selling books, The Official Handbook for New Home Salespeople and Smart Selling™ Techniques. His company, New Home Specialist Inc., a full-service management consulting and sales training program, produces books, manuals and systems for home builders, developers and Realtors. For information about how to increase your profits, contact New
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