by Susan Hyland
National Sales Manager, Toll Brothers
“Prepare for success in the recovery”
Brought to you by the Builder Realtor Relations Committee of the Sales and Marketing Council of the Northeast Florida Builders Association and LENNAR
Q. Are today’s buyers killing your sales with requests for discounts and incentives?
A. Make sure your sales team knows how to use CPR (Critical Path Resuscitation). These are difficult times and our prospective buyers need crisis care to move them through the selling process to the purchase. While building relationships are great in the long-term care of your customers, results-driven salespeople know “connectivity” with savvy prospects cannot happen without CPR. More than going back to basics-throw your prospects the lifeline they need to make that buying decision.
Q. What are the Steps to Practicing Effective CPR?
1. Make people more important than paperwork. Emotionally engage your prospects. Ask and say their names often. Remember to register the prospects. Do a thorough job of moving through the proven process, and ask them for a decision every time, even if it means an appointment for a return visit.
2. Observe, listen to, and read your prospects within the first 60 seconds. When they are restless, shift them forward to the demonstration and site. When they get quiet, take their temperature by asking questions designed to give you the information you need to progress toward a successful close.
3. Go back to the grassroots of selling. Become the recognized expert in your homes, community and surrounding area. Discover the prospects’ vital signs, and then link their needs to the specific features and options that make your builder distinctive. Study your competition so you can prescribe an effective sales strategy that positively positions you and your builder.
4. Make your presentations memorable and remarkable. Dare to be different-do what your competitors wouldn’t dream of doing! Develop a marketing plan to attract Realtors and their clients, contact renters in the area who are ready to make a move, ask existing buyers’ for referrals and entice them into the community, and participate in community events and educational projects that keep you in the public eye.
5. Begin with the end in mind. Cure your prospects from “just looking” to “just purchased”. Celebrate the Year of Recovery and mend their mindset from price to value.
6. Follow up - follow through - follow CPR. Rescue your prospects if they do not purchase within a reasonable time frame. Prepare your people to establish viable reasons to follow up. Then, practice a variety of contact methods to entice them to pay a be-back visit. Always follow through by delivering what you promise. Make it a habit of exceeding the prospect’s expectations.
Q. How can you go beyond the basics and deliver your presentations with precision and care?
A. While being professional you still have to connect. Welcome your people with appreciation, a show of knowledge, a touch of humor and a healthy measure of curiosity and concern. To make that quick connectivity, focus on what your prospects are showing and telling you they need now. Help them advance beyond today’s symptoms of incentives and deals, back to their own genuine wants and needs.
CPR requires a practical application of the Critical Path, a thorough knowledge of you and your competitor’s homes, communities and surrounding area, a unique and remarkable way to deliver that information in a way that keeps your prospects emotionally engaged, and an ability to attend to the details of the sale in order to move your prospects from conversation to close.
Ask yourself-did you work as hard as your builder to bring new prospects through your doors? Did you approach each prospect with enthusiasm and appreciation? Did you show them you were interested by asking questions throughout the presentation? Did you tour the models and available home sites with your people and help them create a vision of ownership? Did you successfully address their objections before they became obstacles to the sale? Did you diagnose and summarize the prospects’ wants and needs and ask for the business-more than once? Did you build in a reason to follow up, and then follow up with them that very same day? Did you follow through by practicing repeated follow up using a variety of methods? Did you practice CPR-Critical Path Resuscitation? If so, congratulations-you are now a certified practitioner of CPR.