By Carole Hawkins
Builders know there’s a council in Jacksonville where they can send their sales teams for education, industry networking and to compete for Laurel Awards.
But a state Sales and Marketing Council? What’s that?
Ron Harris, a former chairman of the Northeast Florida Builders Association’s SMC and this year’s state SMC chairman, brought his group’s April quarterly meeting to Jacksonville.
It’s never been held here before, he said, and there’s a general lack of awareness about the state organization.
“Five years ago I didn’t even know there was a state SMC,” he said.
The mission of the state SMC, like local chapters, is to increase professionalism in the sales of new homes. Ten dollars from every member’s dues in the local SMC are passed on to the Florida Home Builders Association’s state SMC.
The state organization’s most visible work shows up at the Southeast Builders Conference, held annually in Orlando.
There, marketing professionals from across Florida compete in the Excel Awards, a parallel to NEFBA SMC’s Laurel Awards.
A sales and marketing educational tract, held on a Friday at the conference, is also sponsored by the state SMC.
“It opens your eyes and then you see more,” Harris said. “It’s some cool people doing the same thing you do, just in a different part of the state.”
State SMC is more than just a gathering place for local chapters, though. It’s a support network and a breeding ground.
Before the recession, SMC chapters in Florida numbered up to two dozen, said Dale Roberts, state SMC chairman in 2007 and this year’s vice chair.
During the recession it dropped to four.
“It was Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando and Naples by their fingernails,” Roberts said.
Excel Awards were suspended. “We stopped having fun, we were in survival mode.”
The National Association of Home Builders, facing the same problem everywhere, chose to allow local SMC charters to lapse, rather than dissolve, said Kimberly Mackey, a member of the national SMC’s board of trustees and a life director of Florida’s SMC.
It’s made it easier to revive the local SMCs post-recession.
To help, Roberts took the national SMC’s Blueprint for Success, a virtual encyclopedia on how to start an SMC, and created his own CliffsNotes version.
Defunct local SMCs must gather a group of core members, pay dues, populate their calendars and set up committees.
The state team also went on the road, pitching SMC to local builders associations.
“There are some executive officers who don’t even know what an SMC is,” Harris said.
Last year, state SMC recovered four local chapters. This year, Roberts thinks they’ll get eight more.
“To go from four to 16 would be huge,” he said.
The state SMC team is planning four road shows in 2016. With a budget of only $10 per member, it’s an ambitious goal, Mackey said. One that means countless hours taken away from the team members’ own businesses.
But the all-volunteer group does it because they truly believe in SMC’s mission of raising the bar, she said.
“This is too important and we’re going to make it happen,” she said.
Participation at the state level is a bridge to national events and awards. It’s hugely motivating when people see what their national counterparts have accomplished, Mackey said.
Ultimately, the benefits trickle back to the building industry as a whole.
It’s because, as the SMC team likes to remind everyone: Nothing happens until we sell a house.