By Carole Hawkins, Staff Writer
As home buyers get savvier to real estate's marketing tactics, Jacksonville Realtors have to continually sharpen their skills to stay ahead in the game.
About 150 did so in April, attending the NEFBA Sales and Marketing Council's 3 Elements Sales and Marketing Rally. There, three internationally known real estate sales gurus coached Jacksonville Realtors on how to get more leads, manage sales agents better, and close more deals.
Get more leads
The moment of truth — when a customer is either hooked on a house or not — used to be when he walked through the door and said, wow.
With today's customers using the Internet to prescreen homes, that isn't enough, said Meredith Oliver.
"Their first wow has to happen online, or you're already out," she said. "They don't have time to visit 15 homes in person."
The second "wow" happens with the customer onsite, she said, and it's the marriage of the two that creates a buyer's moment of truth.
Not all builder websites drive customers to visit houses, though. Common mistakes are:
• Lack of content. Builders are missing opportunities on their website's community page, Oliver said. Keep them there longer by adding virtual tours, interactive floor plans and community videos. If that content is controlled by a corporate office, local agents can still report on an award winning school principal or a new neighborhood store. "The more you increase your chance of driving traffic to your web site, the better chance you have of getting leads," Oliver said. "It's as important as signage on a road."
• Passive "brochure" web sites that don't ask customers for their information. One builder increased its web traffic two-fold by adding eight different calls to action to its website, Oliver said. People responded to such prompts as an 800 number, how to order a brochure or DVD, a live chat, contact a homeowner, and a newsletter signup. "It's tasteful, it's not super tacky," Oliver said. "It asks people to make contact."
• Not tracking where leads are coming from. Every single lead can be sourced using a tracker. That tells a company which call to action produced the most results. "That's really intelligent marketing," Oliver said. "From there, you know how to make your website really wow."
Manage agents better
An effective sales manager does not play helicopter parent to their sales team, said Melinda Brody.
A survey of 1,000 sales agents showed the compliment top managers receive the most is — he left me alone.
"What if you could coach and inspire your sales team to success, instead of managing them?" she said.
Here, training is the ticket and feedback is a friend:
• Training. When possible, delegate training and use peer training instead. Let sales agents present how-to topics to the rest of the team, for instance. "The hardest thing is to give up control," Brody said. "When you're a sales manager, you're like the mom or dad. Do you listen to your mom or dad? No. People learn differently when it comes from their peers."
• Feedback. Employee evaluations are more effective when people are allowed to self-critique, said Brody, who spent three decades videotaping real estate sales agents as a coach. Start with overall performance and ask the employee where they did an amazing job, she said. Then ask where they need to improve, and listen.
Close more deals
Realtors could stick with tried and true old-school marketing techniques to close sales. But those that do have likely fallen behind the curve, said John A. Palumbo.
"The Internet has changed the way consumers think," he said. "They don't need you anymore."
Realtors used to be a buyer's sole resource of information about real estate, Palumbo said. Today home buyers have plenty of data, but need someone who can help them to assimilate and analyze that information.
"You need to position yourself as the expert, someone who can serve as a trusted advisor," he said.
Mastering the soft sale is not passivity, its Kung Fu — it's all about getting the moves right.
Three insights Palumbo offered:
• The old rule was get to know your customer as soon as possible. The new rule is, sell the results as soon as possible. Remember the introduction to the old TV show "Bonanza"? A viewer today would channel surf before getting through all of that, Palumbo said. Instead, think "NCIS," which begins immediately, uninterrupted by commercial breaks and doesn't announce its title until seven minutes into the program.
• The old rule was to upsell. The new is to down sell. A pool company increased its sales from a base of $1,000 to $1,300 using the upsell approach, Palumbo said. But when the sales agents started with their best, $3,500 pool, then lowered the cost by recommending savings, average sales jumped to $1,625.
• The old was rule was, overcome a buyer's price objections. The new rule is use specials, deadlines and expiration dates to close the deal.
Businesses like Groupon and Costco, where deals are common, are already training customers to think about buying sooner instead of later, Palumbo said. If a customer says they have to "sleep on it," the sale is already lost.