http://builderradio.com/blog Business, Sales and Marketing resources for Realtors, remodelers and new home sales professionals Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:18:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 2006-2010 admin@builderradio.com (Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud) admin@builderradio.com (Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud) Real Estate and New Home Sales & Marketing 1440 http://www.builderradio.com/images/snhplogo_small.jpg http://builderradio.com/blog 144 144 The Monday Morning Sales Meeting for Real Estate and New Home Sales Specialists Selling More Homes: The Monday Morning Sales Meeting for New Home Sales Professionals brings you sale tips and techniques to help you sell more homes. Our audio sales training seminars can help you sell more homes. real estate, new home sales training, real estate sales training, builder blogs, selling more homes podcast, BuilderRadio, Selling More Homes Media Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud admin@builderradio.com no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1842 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1842#comments Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:25:19 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1842 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1842 4 28:30 Even the best websites are of little value if your buyers never find them.  And since most online shoppers (that is, 90% or more of ... Even the best websites are of little value if your buyers never find them.  And since most online shoppers (that is, 90% or more of your buyers) rarely look past the first few pages of a search, getting listed high with the search engines is critical to getting leads. Tom Heatherington is the author of a new book, SEO & Social Media Marketing Guide, that covers how to use current tools and tactics to rank high with the search engines, position yourself and your products in front of buyers, and inspire those buyers to contact and buy from you.  Below are excerpts from our interview with Tom. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of making a website search engine friendly. It's helping the search engine understand what the page is about, your business, products, services and so on. A lot of people make the mistake of building these fantastically gorgeous websites, but they don't speak to the search engine. They're graphic intensive, but not enough information is provided to tell the search that this is a page about a new homebuilder. SEO tweaks all of those fine points that say this is a page about such and such. It's a developing science that is geared towards helping the search engine understand what the website is all about. I wrote a book 12 years ago called The Complete Small Business Internet Guide. At the time I was running my own company. We had been around for 5-6 years, but everybody had the same question: How do I make it work? Fast forward to today and there are new terms, like SEO and social media, and we're getting the same question. So the approach I took was to create a book that showed any business what to do with their website, both on site and off site, to leverage the search engine optimization and social networking. Everything I recommend is based on one goal – driving traffic to your website. I explain to people the value of Google, Yahoo and things local, and what that means to them, and then how to properly use them so they maximize the benefits. The average business is not aware of that. It doesn't matter what kind of business you are in, if you are not involved in the internet today, your days in business are numbered. The bottom line is that people today use the internet before they use the Yellow Pages. If they're looking for a home or a plumber they're jumping online, and if you don't have a presence online –“ if you don't show up on the first page of Google for a search – then you're leaving the money on the table. Pay Per Click SEO and pay for clicks are both tied together. I have a saying, "SEO is forever; pay per click is for now."  SEO is a process can take a few hours or a few weeks to put everything in place. But once it's done, it's done forever. With Pay per click we can grab a few key words, define our business, create an ad and have Google sending us customers today. It's immediate. But you run into the issue of Google assigning a price for your keyword, one of the things they're looking at is how search engine friendly is the page and whether or not the keywords you're buying are reflected in that page. So if you have a well optimized web site and you're buying pay per click, with optimization you actually pay less per click. Pay per click will not help your SEO, but SEO helps pay per click. Any new website should have someone with SEO expertise to look at it. For example, I had a well known plastic surgeon call me. He was disappointed that his website wasn't getting traffic. I looked at his website and right away I could see the problem was that his landing page was titled 'Home Page.' He didn't have any keywords in his homepage, and no headlines that used his keywords.  His page was mostly graphics, so a spider would look at that page and not be able to tell that it was a doctor's site. Label Your Pictures If someone grabs a camera to snap pictures of a house they're listi... Featured Program, Sales and Marketing Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1820 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1820#comments Sun, 22 Aug 2010 21:47:03 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1820 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1820 0 32:40 We speak with Carol Ruiz, RedRocket LA Public relations is an integral part of marketing.  Nowadays, because of marketing budgets having been cut, it’s more important ... We speak with Carol Ruiz, RedRocket LA Public relations is an integral part of marketing.  Nowadays, because of marketing budgets having been cut, it’s more important to ramp up a PR program.  What’s great about public relations is that it is cheaper than marketing; if you’re building 3-5 houses a year and your doing it yourself its essentially free. For larger companies who are using a PR firm, all you pay the monthly retainer, then any kind of coverage that you get on papers is free. So it’s a much more economical way to get attention for your community through your product. Also, public relations provides credibility. When a newspaper or a television program does something on your community or your product it has that third person credibility of the press saying this is a great product, this is a great community.  That’s important because Gen Y and X are your upcoming buyers and they’re very skeptical about ads; they don’t believe them, but they still believe the newspapers and television programs when they hear a reporter talking about something. It’s important to have an integrated PR program, to use both new methods of public relations, specifically social media, but to not abandon traditional methods. They are still tried and true and they work because people still read the news they still look to television and radio. Social Media Integration Social media is a great tool for PR outreach.  What you should do with your Twitter and Facebook sites is follow and ‘friend’ the press. They’re on twitter in huge numbers and they’re following companies and builders on Facebook.  We have a community that we represent in the LA area that a few months ago was selling a home a day. We put out a Tweet that said “13 homes sold in 13 days.” Within 30 minutes one reporter had called us back saying she wanted to do a story and she did. And then within a couple of days, two others called us and said “This is spectacular in this market. We want to do stories!” One of those stories led to a story in Builder Magazine about this community being named one of the Top Ten selling communities in the country. We took that and made it go viral in our social media program and we sent it to reporters in the LA area who picked it up.  So that one piece in Builder Magazine we made sure had legs with additional press outreach. It was a great example of about using social media for PR. I’ll give you a case study on Facebook as well. A friend of mine, Steve Shoemaker runs the marketing for a company in Oklahoma called Ideal Homes. He uses Social Media for PR in great ways.  One example was when a young man bought a lot from them and the next day took his girlfriend out and proposed on the site. Well, Steve took some photos of the couple out on the site after he had proposed to her and he posted it on the communities’ and Ideal Homes’ Facebook page. The local paper there picked up the story and came out. They did an interview with the couple and did an article about the community and about this couple on the front page of the newspaper. It did awesome things for the community and Steve kept Tweeting about it and Facebooking about it.  So not only did it help sell communities in the traditional way by getting an article in the newspaper, it also helped improve SEO because Steve took it further and kept going with it on Twitter and Facebook. Traditional Media Integration I would like to touch on traditional media outreach for builders who perhaps aren’t using it who feel they’re not getting the coverage that they want.  With traditional PR you want to think of universal trends where you can view your community as a case study. The storyline makes all of the difference, especially if it’s tied into trends or into some specific data and research that you ... Marketing Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1775 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1775#comments Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:05:52 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1775 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1775 1 33:45 We speak with Tim Kane, MBK Homes. Few states have housing markets nose dive more than California.  Yet, this Irvine builder is taking the market ... We speak with Tim Kane, MBK Homes. Few states have housing markets nose dive more than California.  Yet, this Irvine builder is taking the market in stride, polishing their prospects and focusing on thing:  pleasing their buyers. And it’s working for them.  They are attracting buyers when other builders are still scratching their heads wondering when the market will return. Can it really be that easy – just please your customers and you’ll sell more homes?  Tim Kane, of MBK Builders, describes their 4-step process for achieving outstanding customer satisfaction.  As far as being easy, it took MBK seven years to hone their program.  But the results have proven worth the time and effort, as he describes below: Well one of the things that we’ve focused on is pleasing our customers. We embarked on a program that has taken us seven years and we have had a fair amount of success. We measure that success by surveying our customers. Surveys are sent to customers 30 days after they move in, 6 months after they move in, and then 1 year after they move in. At first we were focusing on those surveys that occurred a year on down the road. But we did a little bit of statistical analysis and determined that the score that occurs at the onset, this score that occurs when they move in, does not change very much from six months to a year.  In other words, if a customer likes you they’ll still like you a year later. If they don’t like you at the onset, it’s very difficult to ever get them to change their mind. So we started really focusing on that initial survey. And we have used a 4-step process to do that.  That process went in order: Step 1:  Keep Your Promises The first part of the process is we work on keeping our promises. The most important promise to a homebuyer is when they’re going to deliver; the move-in date. And if you have not fulfilled that promise with them, it is difficult to have a satisfied customer.   So we worked very hard in that we were careful what we promise and we make sure we deliver those houses when we say we’re going to. Step 2:  Deliver Impeccable Homes. When we first started this we actually had the goal of delivering perfect homes. And there was a lot of push back from the field saying, “You’ve asked me to do the impossible. You cannot deliver perfect homes.” So we actually modified the goal from delivering perfect homes to delivering impeccable homes.  The word impeccable comes from the Latin word ‘Peccare’ which means “to sin or to stumble,” and impeccable means it’s not perfect but there aren’t any stumbles or major issues. Next, we started asking to who’s standard are we delivering those homes; who determines whether they’re impeccable. What we discovered is that construction standards don’t necessarily meet the standards that a home buyer has. For instance if you have a slab with some hairline cracks, the construction standard says those hairline cracks do not affect performance or the structural integrity of the home and therefore are acceptable. A homebuyer on the other hand may look at those cracks and go “those are totally unacceptable. I cannot live with those.” So we took one of our people that was working in our accounting department, we had the criteria that she not have any construction experience, that she was a woman, that she was meticulous and very detail orientated and strong enough to stand up to construction guys who were going to be telling her that that’s not the way things are done, and we had her go though every house that we built before we delivered it. She went through with a camera and took pictures of things that she found unacceptable.  She’s the one that set our standard about what was acceptable and what was not.  If a... Business Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1735 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1735#comments Sun, 08 Aug 2010 20:38:31 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1735 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1735 1 31:15 How to build relationships that turn prospects into buyers Selling More Homes: The Monday Morning Sales Meeting for New Home Sales Professionals brings you sale tips and techniques to help you sell more homes. Our audio sales training seminars can help you sell more homes. real estate, new home sales training, real estate sales training, builder blogs, selling more homes podcast, BuilderRadio, Selling More Homes Media Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1677 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1677#comments Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:35:17 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1677 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1677 0 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1652 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1652#comments Sun, 01 Aug 2010 23:31:32 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1652 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1652 2 31:45 We speak with Meredith Oliver, Meredith Communications We've published a number of programs, articles and webinars on how to make your website work for you to ... We speak with Meredith Oliver, Meredith Communications We've published a number of programs, articles and webinars on how to make your website work for you to attract buyers, deliver a compelling message, and work as a 24/7 online salesperson.  In fact, we'll host a webinar on 8/11/2010 on Creating a Killer Website.  But we've never published an interview like this one with Meredith Oliver on how to protect your site and keep it safe.  In the excerpt below from our audio interview, Meredith shares some excellent points on how to make sure you keep your login information safe so that you'll always know where it is if you need it. And chances are that sooner or later you're going to need it.  The following are Meredith's comments: Developing an excellent ‘wow’ website is not a small investment.  You might spend several thousand dollars to have a really great site created, they you’re going to spend some marketing dollars getting your site found by your buyers.  We expect that the average shelf life of a website to be two or three years because technology does change rather rapidly. After three years or so, it will start to look dated and not function as well for you as you’d like.  You want it to last at least its shelf life term if not longer, and in order to do that, you really do have to protect your investment, ask some questions and partner with the right people to make sure that you’re going to get everything that was promised to you and more. The world is ever changing.  Personnel in your office come and go, or your web development company closes their doors.  If you don’t have certain critical pieces of information, you may find it quite difficult to make changes to your website or move hosting of your website and you could find yourself locked in with someone or some company that you don’t want to be with and feel like you’re stuck. Every one with a website needs to develop a file folder and write on the tab “My Website Info,” and get some hard copies of pieces of paper in this folder.  Emails can get deleted, your computer crashes; sometimes it’s just good to have a piece of paper. The business owner needs to store this information in a very safe place.  Don’t delegate this to someone on staff and then not know where this paperwork is.   If that person leaves they could put you in jeopardy, and there is nothing worse than being a business owner with products and goods and services and not be able to sell them because your website’s down and you have no way to get it back up and running without starting over.  If you’re in sales and something happens to your website, that’s going to hurt your income. The first thing is as simple as having a printed copy of your website contract with your web company.  You need to keep that contract on file and when you are looking at doing business with a web company there are key questions you should ask in advance so that this contract is setup the way you want it.  You really have very little recourse if a), you can’t find the copy of the contract or b), when you do, it doesn’t have favorable language in it. One thing I would be looking for in the contract is who owns the design, the front end of the website – the pretty part that we can all see?  You would want to make absolutely sure that you are the owner of that design.  Some web designers will say “this is my creative property; I own it.”  I personally wouldn’t do business with those folks.  I’d be looking for a web designer that understands that you have paid for this design and therefore you should own it. The next language you’re looking for has to do with what happens to the backend of the site – the content management system if there is one. ... Marketing Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1625 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1625#comments Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:24:51 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1625 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1625 2 42:15 We speak with Myers Barnes, Myers Barnes & Associates, Inc. Every successful salesperson knows that referrals are the lifeblood of a sales career.  Referrals are ... We speak with Myers Barnes, Myers Barnes & Associates, Inc. Every successful salesperson knows that referrals are the lifeblood of a sales career.  Referrals are the reported as the #1 source of new leads for builders and Realtors alike, and sales to those who have been referred to you by happy customers are the least expensive leads you have and the easiest to close. We spoke with one of the foremost sales trainers in the business today, Myers Barnes, to get his thoughts on how to build a strong referral program.  Below are excerpts from our recorded conversation: Each of you reading this needs to ask yourself this question: Doing what I’m doing right now, what can I expect from my business this year if I make no changes? Here’s another question:  Selling how I’m selling, could I be missing any sales? My next question then is this:  What are you going to do differently? I’m going to share a different slant on referrals.  Now, we know that they are necessary, we talk about it and we pay homage to it, but we don’t really do anything with it. So, the next question you have to ask yourself is: What is my current referral gathering strategy? What are you currently doing to gather referrals on a daily and a consistent basis?  Most people can’t answer that question, because getting referrals actually requires a strategy.  So, I’m going to share with you a strategy today that hopefully will strike a little chord and get you thinking. One of the things we teach in our seminars is never think like a salesperson; always think like a businessperson. You’re in profession of sales, but you actually should be thinking like a businessperson.  Why?  Because business people think long term and they think profits. Business people also think about how they will generate their own traffic.  A huge, detriment to our business is when salespeople just sit and wait for walk-ins. If your strategy is waiting, then what kind of a business strategy is that?  Now, here’s another question.  How many referrals could you gather in the course of a week?  Answer:  Whatever your strategy and your goal dictate. We’re going to show you how to build a predictable business by giving you a strategy that will give you a return of 1 in 3 – for every three sales that you make to a walk-in or to a Realtor, you can get one additional sale by following this strategy.  If your goal this year, for example, is 20 sales, then a 1 in 3 return would mean that if you sell 20 walk-ins this year you can I get 7 referrals from those 20 people.  Do the math.  If your average commission is, say, $4,000, that’s an additional $28,000 a year! Let’s talk about the strategy.  It’s so simple: Step 1: Anticipate cancellations. Make two calls in 24 hours. Step 2: Explain your customer care commitment.  Your customer care commitment is going to involve three sub-steps.  Customer care is going to be a weekly preemptive customer service call.  In addition, it will be a weekly email and then you’re going to give them your scheduled days off. Step 3: A weekly or biweekly photo of their home. Step 4: Lunch on the day of their move-in and a gift subscription to the local newspaper. Step 5: Anniversary card after they move in. Step 6: Non-traditional holiday card campaign. Step #1 starts when they’ve just become an owner, and here’s the conversation that I want you to have with the new owners: “Mr. and Mrs. Prospect, I certainly do appreciate you becoming an owner in the neighborhood.  Now, here’s what I’m going to do.  Tonight I’m going to call you and the reason I’m going to call you is this, because you’re going to obviously have some questions tonight.  Now, how do... real estate, new home sales training, real estate sales training, builder blogs, selling more homes podcast, BuilderRadio, Selling More Homes Media Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1568 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1568#comments Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:07:08 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1568 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1568 2 33:00 We speak with Beverly Koehn, Beverly Koehn & Associates Beverly Koehn started her career as a salesperson in a builder's model over 20 years ago.  Today, ... We speak with Beverly Koehn, Beverly Koehn & Associates Beverly Koehn started her career as a salesperson in a builder's model over 20 years ago.  Today, she shares her insights as a sales trainer and consultant to builders across the country.  Her book, Loyalty Is Love, details how to create long-term relationships with homebuyers and has been a favorite of BuilderRadio listeners.  We asked Beverly to discuss one aspect of building loyalty - creating a winning customer experience.  Below are excerpts from our recorded interview: It’s so important that we all remember that we’re selling so much more than just ourselves and our services and our products today.  We’re selling a relationship, and that relationship means that we have to have a great experience on both ends of the sales spectrum.  The customer has to feel like they are the most important person in our venue at that moment, and we have to treat them that way. Rule #1:  Know Thy Customer First of all, we have to stop and think about what we’re going to do before we actually connect with that customer. If we don’t know this person, we’ve got to spend adequate time really getting to know them as human beings so that we can then connect whatever we’re going to be offering them to something that’s very personalized and very specific to them.  Many times we’re so excited about jumping into the sales process – especially during times of economic change, that we try to speed that process up and skip some of the steps.  When we do that we become more of a sales oriented ‘feature-dumper’ than a customer oriented specialist helping that person get exactly what they want. If I’m your customer you have to begin to establish early on in our relationship that everything that we’re going to be talking about and everything that you’re going to be doing for me is very specific to me.  The first thing that you have to do is you have to spend a lot of time getting to know me.  You’ve got to know for instance that my name is spelled differently than most people spell Koehn.  A lot of people would spell it Cohen. When someone is trying to get my business and I repeat my name two or three different times and spell it for them and they still don’t spell it correctly, that really turns me off.  Because I’ve had the experience of dealing with that personally, I’m very sensitive to that, so I try to make sure that early on I understand what their first name is, what their last name is, how I spell it correctly, how I pronounce it correctly and, of course, the other names of other people that will be involved in the transaction.  That’s just a teeny tiny thing that we do to establish a great relationship and enhance that customer experience. In fact, when they tell you their name, write it down! So few people actually do this that when that when buyers see this simple act of kindness and customer care, they really pay attention.  It shows the customer that they are the most important person in front of you in that moment in time and you are paying attention to them.  What you can repeat back to them is, “Am I getting this correctly, because I want to make sure that I never mispronounce your name.”  That’s very special. Start building rapport and getting to know them as people before we start trying to fit them into a buyer box.  Get to know everything – from their current situation, what they like best about the home that they’re in currently, their family situation, their hobby, their profession – anything that gives us some idea or some insight into the lifestyle of that person so that then as we begin to try to connect with them later on during our demonstration, we’re making sure that we’re connecting wh... Selling Skills Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1530 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1530#comments Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:04:08 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1530 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1530 2 32:15 We speak with, Mike Lyon, DoYouConvert.com “90% of your customers start the search for their new home online,” reports online sales and social media specialist, Mike ... We speak with, Mike Lyon, DoYouConvert.com “90% of your customers start the search for their new home online,” reports online sales and social media specialist, Mike Lyon.  Mike’s book, Browers to Buyers, was the first written manual to outline new procedures for working with Internet shoppers and getting them to move from online visitors to on-site buyers. As Mike points out, these process – and the tools that we have to reach online buyers – continues to change.  So, we asked Mike to bring us up to date with the latest, best means for getting face to face with online traffic.  The following are Mike’s responses: Communication doesn’t stop with the phone or email.  I hear salespeople who say they do better selling face to face or on the phone where they can see or hear and interact with customers.  The problem is that the way people are shopping is changing; they’re shopping online and using new ways to communicate – email, live chat, social media.  They want answers, but they don’t necessarily want to go through all the motions during the research process. So, sales executives need to understand what it takes to communicate with customers during this research phase, what they need to do to keep in touch over time to build familiarity and trust.  There are a lot of tools that help us do a better job communicating, a better job keeping in touch, and that will allow us to do more with less. 1.  Lose the ‘Dumb Phone.’ If your phone doesn’t connect with the Internet; if it doesn’t allow you to put apps on it for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn; if it doesn’t allow you to shoot really good video, then it’s time to upgrade your phone. A smart phone, such as the iPhone, is like a Swiss Army Knife for communication.  It’s always with you, so it’s easy to use to shoot a quick video of a customer or a home, shoot pictures of a home and sending them via email.  You’ve got to have that ability in your phone to keep in touch and communicate in new ways. Even if your cellular plan isn’t up and it will cost you more to upgrade, do it now.  The additional cost of $150 or so is insignificant compared to the commission on a new home that you compared with just a small portion of a commission you get for a sale just because you sent a cool video to someone who was relocating. 2.  Video Video is the second most powerful form of communication; after face-to-face communication, there’s nothing better than video.  Video can share expressions and emotions that you can’t share in an email or even over the phone where you lose that visual communication.  Even though it’s still one-way, your buyers can see your excitement, energy and enthusiasm.  So it’s very powerful. People online are doing a lot more watching than they are reading.  YouTube is now the second most searched website after Google. The challenge used to be having the right equipment.  That’s not the case anymore.  Today you can buy a Flip video camera that can shoot in high definition and that is the size of a candy bar; it slides right in your pocket and can go with you anywhere.  It plugs into your computer and with the touch of one button you can upload it to YouTube.  There, you can crop it and edit it – you don’t have to have any fancy software of special skills. That technology didn’t even exist just a year ago! To illustrate the power of video, recently I was working with a client builder on his third Extreme Makeover home.   To publicize his participation, we implemented a social media campaign that consisted of updates coming from two things:  an iPhone and a Flip camera.  In a period of one week we went from 400 fans on Facebook to 2,400, and on YouTube in one w... Selling Tools Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1478 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1478#comments Sun, 04 Jul 2010 00:07:22 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1478 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1478 2 27:45 We speak with Kay Green and Ashley Jennings, Kay Green Designs. Kay Green Design, in Orlando, FL, specializes in model home design and merchandising- the art ... We speak with Kay Green and Ashley Jennings, Kay Green Designs. Kay Green Design, in Orlando, FL, specializes in model home design and merchandising- the art and science of studying buyer behaviors and preferences and incorporating those trends into model homes so that the home has maximum appeal to your targeted audience.  Today, that function is perhaps more important than ever as we see new generations of buyers emerging with different tastes than their parents. We asked the mother/ daughter team of Kay Green and Ashley Jennings what to watch for in terms of trends and colors, and what to do to keep older models up to date with new buyers.  The following are their comments: Kay: There is a lot going on.  What we’re seeing in terms of style right now is a turn toward a more kind of clean line, less clutter look, and we’re seeing it in all the furniture lines, in the fabric lines – just across the board. It’s not the contemporary look that we saw in the 80’s; it’s a softer look but still cleaner.  You see it in all the catalogues as well… IKEA, Pottery Barn, all of the catalogues are showing that look as well.  This is particularly the case with the younger people, like my Gen-X daughter, but we’re also seeing that the empty nesters are trending towards a clean line look. Home Technology Ashley: There is also a lean certainly towards technology.  One of the things that we found recently in doing some research is that especially with the younger Gen-X and Gen-Y buyers, technology is a large part of their life.  So we’ve been doing sales centers, for example, that feature touch screen computers to navigate the community.  Your buyers have already explored your community before even coming onsite.  So they have checked you out.  You’ve obviously done well enough to get them there.  Oftentimes, using technology onsite to explore the floor plan options, different features and upgrades is a way they’re able to do the discovery process at their comfort level. Also, as far as this lifestyle goes, we designed a sales center in Florida where we included a coffee station and some high top tables.  So rather than having your new home buyers come and have to squeeze into a little office space with a small window and feel like they’re committing to the sales process, you can have a conversation with them at a high top table over a cup of their favorite coffee.  that really does provide that comfortable environment in order to continue to share information about who the buyer is and how the home builder’s product fits their lifestyle. Kay: We  are starting to design spaces that are kind of ‘stop and drop’ charging spaces for your cell phone or you iPod.  Usually they’re located close to like the backdoor so you come in from the garage and you put your cell phone down and you throw your keys there instead of the island in the kitchen with all the clutter.  We normally feature either just a floating desktop and then we put two or three outlets above that so that everybody has room to charge their personal communication devices there. Ashley: One of the other ideas that we came up with for enhancing the sales process is to incorporate a docking station for an iPod so buyers are able to dock their own device in the model home.  This allows them to customize their experience by having their own music play while they’re touring the home. Also, we’re not having the heavy built-ins as an entertainment center and the... Marketing Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1468 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1468#comments Mon, 28 Jun 2010 01:41:02 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1468 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1468 0 00:01:01 With Gale Steves, author of Right-Sizing Your Home. Gale Steves is one of America’s leading home authorities. Creative thinker and guru, she helps consumers fashion livable ... With Gale Steves, author of Right-Sizing Your Home. Gale Steves is one of America’s leading home authorities. Creative thinker and guru, she helps consumers fashion livable homes and counsels companies to create products she knows people want and need. She has inspired millions with her ideas and solutions, first as a magazine editor, and most recently as the force behind Open House Productions, a consulting company formed in 2001. We asked Gale to describe the concept behind her new book, Right Sizing Your Home, and how this concept can be put to use by builders, remodelers, and Realtors.  The following are her comments: Right-sizing is about thoughtful space management; about helping people live better.  Whether they live in a big mansion or some pared down version, most of your customers are not living fully in their homes.  They have a wonderful idea of what their house should be, but most wind up living in the kitchen – or even in their own bedroom – because they’re the most comfortable rooms of the house. I want to walk people through their homes without changing the name of where they do what, just have them see that there are spaces they can use for anything they really want to and give them permission to do the things they’re probably still already doing. Today, people are faced with the idea of pulling back or reinventing their house because they can’t sell it, or maybe grandma or their adult kids have come back to live with them.  So, there is a lot of change taking place within the house.  My idea is to encourage people to think about their home plans before they build or before they remodel to see how they’re really going to live in them not only today, but maybe ten years down the road. Most of us tend to build for this moment, never thinking we might get older or there might be changes in our lives.  But the whole idea is for us to rethink our home so we use the space efficiently and well. The word right-sizing it sounds like I’m talking about downsizing.  I’m really not.  I remember back late in the 80’s when I first began noticing that outsized homes were appearing all over the United States with rooms that were either too big or too small or too tall to be useful.  About that time, I also noticed that many older homes, mostly not so big, also had rooms with labels that no longer reflected the way we live.  The truth is I think many of us are squeezing our lives into spaces that don’t work.  So we add on or we buy bigger.  But there are still parts of the house that are ignored. For example, if you have a living room, how frequently do you use it?  It was a site for my Christmas tree and my mother’s furniture.  My dining room I used two or three times a year.  Now, I have right-sized and my dining room is really my office.  It can be converted back into a dining room with a few small changes and a lot of cleaning up, but basically, I’m using it everyday for a better purpose than pleading for the clan to come visit during the holidays. Whether you’re a builder talking to consumers or a designer, or even a Realtor, forget about the old traditional living room, dining room, kitchen and what used to be the den.  Those words should go out the door because we live in our kitchens and we eat all over the house.  We relax all over the house.  We don’t live in our living room. I’m trying to get you to rethink not only how you live, but where you live. We built big in the 90’s and e... Selling Tools Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1459 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1459#comments Sun, 20 Jun 2010 22:05:33 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1459 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1459 0 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1454 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1454#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:55:24 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1454 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1454 2 33:00 Four Steps to Home Sales Recovery Rich Carlson, Carlson Communications, Inc. Rich Carlson, president of Carlson Communications in Northborough, Massachusetts, has been involved in advertising, marketing and ... Four Steps to Home Sales Recovery Rich Carlson, Carlson Communications, Inc. Rich Carlson, president of Carlson Communications in Northborough, Massachusetts, has been involved in advertising, marketing and public relations within the housing industry for 35 years.  He’s also the author of a new book, Are You Prepared for the Recovery.  Rich sat down with us to discuss his book and the major steps he feels are essential for getting through the current market and successfully moving forward.  The following are excerpts from our interview: Step One:  Market Research One thing that I try and emphasize is the importance of listening to your customers and conducting continuous research.  Research, just like sales training, it is not a one-time affair that’s done annually; it really must be regular and ongoing.  One thing that we’re learning as a result of the recession and the rise of social media, which I’ll talk about a little bit later, is how much consumers are better informed nowadays and the marketplace is more competitive. Everyone in the industry really needs to be thinking about what they can do now to be better prepared as the economy and the housing market improves, to really lead the way ahead of their competition in the recovery.  In the market research phase, it’s not just getting a lot of qualitative or quantitative research, but you really need to understand the buyer’s motivations – why they might consider buying, understanding who your competition is, how people feel or perceive that you’re better or different than your competition. The key thing now is that it’s very, very important to listen to the customers, listen to your prospects and really understand why they either have bought one your homes or would consider moving to your community and then taking that information and applying it to the marketing communications, and also to your sales training. The methods of market research really depends on whether you’re talking about product design, or about what people like from a motivational standpoint to inspire them to, let’s say, come out to your community.  Market research, if done by professionals that have experience in the housing industry, can be very valuable.  I realize that a lot of companies today don’t have large budgets for that, but you certainly can do some grassroots research, such as having forms that people fill out as they’re leaving your community or after they’ve visited your model.  Or, you might do a survey by telephone, mail or online. It’s key not to make it too complicated, just tell people it will only take a few minutes to fill out a brief form. Focus groups can be very effective if you want to ask follow up questions.  That’s really qualitative research.  You wanted to make sure that you do it with a relatively small group of 12 to 15 people for a traditional focus group setting. Step Two:  Communicate Your Message Whether you have qualitative or quantitative research results, you want to take that information and you apply it to your marketing methods and communications.  That really starts with the overall brand or what people feel your company represents, and it applies to all of your messages You want to make sure that you take the information and once again, some of the key questions you want to ask in the market research phase is, ‘What two or three words or phrases come to mind to describe our company or community?’  Use some of that information as you develop me... Marketing Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1445 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1445#comments Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:07:05 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1445 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1445 1 33:00 We speak with, Duane Sparks, CEO of The Sales Board and author of the book, Action Selling. Everybody sells.  There are situations where husbands are ... We speak with, Duane Sparks, CEO of The Sales Board and author of the book, Action Selling. Everybody sells.  There are situations where husbands are selling wives, wives selling husbands, parents selling children and children selling parents, employees selling employers and employers selling employees.  It goes on all around us.  Any time you have an interaction with someone where the end result, the expected result, is to gain a commitment, that’s selling. It goes on all the time. So, all of us sell.  Some of us are professionals at it. The question is, can selling be a genuine profession like engineering or medicine, or is it just an occupation? Professions have rules.  They have recognized patterns.  They have organized bodies of knowledge that can be taught and then put to use proactively with predictable results. Selling skills are sometimes presented as collections of reactive tips.  So if a customer says this, you do that.  That requires salespeople to remember all kinds of reactionary things.  If somebody does this, you do that.  So you have a bunch of Xs and Os that you’ve got to remember.  Not everybody is nimble enough to be really good at that.  A better approach is to have a proactive sales process that allows salespeople to use specific skills to encourage customers to move towards a buying decision. Salespeople, if they look at sales as a profession, can make as much money if not more than some of those fields. So, why is it that some salespeople are challenged to recognize that if they follow these rules they, too, can increase their income? The problem is twofold.  Some people have never been trained on how to be professional salespeople.  For those that have been trained, some of the training is just particularly bad and salespeople have been taught some manipulative techniques for gaining commitment. I know in my first sales training experience I was taught no less than 30 different closes.  Things like the sharp angle close or the Ben Franklin close.  I remember the puppy dog close.  I made a living in the 70’s using the alternate choice close – “would you prefer Wednesday or Thursday?” But even that is now viewed as manipulative.  So what’s needed is a sales process that’s based on how people buy so you match your process with theirs.  That’s what we do with Action Selling training. Matching the Buying Process: 5 Steps, 5 Skills There are five unique decisions that people go through before they buy.  These are decisions that are made in every major purchase.  From my experience, they’re made in a predetermined sequence.  I’ve also found that when your sales process matches up with that sequence, you’re far more successful. The first decision that the customer makes is about the salesperson.  Do I like this person?  Do I trust this person?  Do I feel that this person has my interest in mind? The second decision is about the company that person represents – are they credible, are they viable, do their policies match with how I like to be treated as a customer? The third buying decision is about the product – does it fit my needs. The fourth buying decision is the price of the product as an investment; as a value.  Is it a good value? The fifth decision is a decision about when to move forward; we call it time to buy. These five decisions are present in every major purchase.  Now, if they’re made in the prop... Selling Skills Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1439 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1439#comments Mon, 31 May 2010 00:48:35 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1439 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1439 2 35:00 We speak with Paul Foresman, Design Basics, LLC. Thanks to our sponsors, Lasso Data Systems and Sears Commercial Marketplace. According to the book Trillion Dollar Women: ... We speak with Paul Foresman, Design Basics, LLC. Thanks to our sponsors, Lasso Data Systems and Sears Commercial Marketplace. According to the book Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying & Remodeling Decisions (BuilderBooks.com), women make or direct 91% of the decision to buy a new home. Now, this is just an observation, but there seem to be a whole lot of, um…   guys in the building business.  And according to this week’s guest, Paul Foresman, Business Development Director for the design firm Design Basics, LLC, we guys might be at a disadvantage if we’re not getting an ‘alternate-gender’ perspective on the homes we build, market or sell. “We interviewed lots and lots of couples, and most of the feedback we got came from Her, not from Him," begins Foresman.  "We realized that She was making the majority of the decisions when it came to the home plan, the builder, the products for the home, etc. “Prior to this we had been talking primarily with our customers, most of whom were male, small volume custom builders.  We weren’t getting the homebuyer’s perspective.  So, in 1993, we made a turn and for the past seven years have been trying to get a better feel for Her preferences in housing today.” Does the Woman-Centric approach really work?  Will it help builders sell more homes?  He reports that “one builder in Maine sold 17 homes in 2008, the year they got started with Woman-Centric Design.  In 2009 they sold 28 homes – that’s more than a 50% increase in sales!  Another builder in Rhode Island had been selling 15-20 homes per year.  He started with the Woman-Centric approach in January of 2008, and by December 2009 he had sod 149 Woman-Centric homes.  Another builder in Fargo, SD that builds with our program reported that 2009 was his best year ever. “So, it’s making a big difference for a lot of our builders.  It’s a great opportunity to differentiate yourself from everyone else in the marketplace. ” What is Woman-Centric? Woman-Centric Design is the science of looking at every feature of a home through a woman’s eyes.  Foresman describes the four ‘lenses’ through which women see and measure a home or plan – those areas used for entertaining, de-stressing, flexible working, and storage/organization.  “Women taught us that we have to bring in both the practical, functional aspects of design and have the aesthetics – the ‘wow’ first impressions.” Design Basics developed the Woman-Centric concept through over 7 years of research, including holding numerous focus groups.  “But we also spent time with women in their homes watching what they would do to overcome common design deficiencies,” says Foresman.  He cites an example of watching a woman bring her dogs back in through a sliding door.  It had been raining and the dogs were tracking their muddy paws onto the carpet.   Woman-Centric design would call for a hard surface transition area where pet’s could be towelled before they reached the carpet. Woman-Centric in Action What are some of the design elements that make a home more desirable?  Foresman lists a few for us here: Spa Shower: “Our research shows that 78% of women never use the bathtub in the master bath.  So ... Marketing Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1434 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1434#comments Mon, 24 May 2010 00:32:54 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1434 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1434 2 32:00 We speak with Carol Flammer, mRelevance “The blog is the engine of your social media program,” begins Carol Flammer.  She should know – she’s been blogging ... We speak with Carol Flammer, mRelevance “The blog is the engine of your social media program,” begins Carol Flammer.  She should know – she’s been blogging since before most of us ever heard the term.  Her company, mRelevance, helps builders, developers and communities define and implement successful online marketing strategies, much of it centered on social media.   Carol explains why blogging is so important to a current marketing strategy and how to get started. 5 Key Reasons to Go Social There are five basic reasons to use social media: More Traffic / More Leads Build Brand Reputation Management Social Media Optimization Friends, Fans & Followers – You engaging others. The idea of social media, though – keeping up with blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Active Rain and so many others – can be intimidating.  “How do I keep all of that up to date?” is a question Carol gets a lot.  She explains how it works: “The answer is easy if you build your program around your blog and post a minimum of eight blog posts per month.  Those eight blog posts will feed through to Facebook and LinkedIn and your other social outlets, so right there you’ve created a big part of your content.  Then, when they click on your Facebook page and the see your blog post linked, guess what – they end up on your blog! The same for Twitter, etc. “Just think about what’s already going on in your company and it become really easy to find 8 different topics to talk about each month.  Builders and Realtors are already sending out eFlyers on programs and incentives; they’re educating people about the tax credits and different things going on in the community.  All that information that they’re already putting out  can be repurposed into blog posts. “For example, if you’re a builder and you’ve introduced a new home plan, talk about that.  If there’s a new restaurant that opens near your community, or an event, such as a parade or fair taking place, talk about that and say, ‘Oh, by the way, if your attending the event, why not come by our model or sales center or office while you’re here. “Your blog and your social media strategy should tie in to your overall marketing plan.  If there is a theme or promotion going on, then you should see parts of that in your social media.  Granted, it should not be the main push of your social media; you don’t want to turn people off and get ‘unfriended.’  But it does need to be there. “So, you’ll have 8 blog posts per month which will also become 8 Facebook posts and 8 Twitter posts, etc.  Then, monitor your social sites and respond to questions or comments.  There’s nothing worse than a potential buyer trying to contact you or ask a question through Facebook and not getting a response.” Flammer notes the backside advantages of blogging and social media – it increases the SEO (search engine optimization) of your main website.  However, she takes it a step further.  “We’re seeing more and more that the blog is becoming the main website.  If you need a new website and it can be a blog, that’s the way they’re being built today.” How to get started bl... Selling Tools Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1424 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1424#comments Sun, 16 May 2010 22:24:00 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1424 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1424 2 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1413 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1413#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 01:11:48 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1413 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1413 1 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1397 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1397#comments Sun, 02 May 2010 18:18:43 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1397 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1397 1 32:30 By Erik Cofield, BuildTopia You can be a great construction science guru or a fantastic architect and you can graduate from Harvard with a business degree, ... By Erik Cofield, BuildTopia You can be a great construction science guru or a fantastic architect and you can graduate from Harvard with a business degree, but if you’re in construction you have to realize that you’re also in marketing.  To make sales you have to get the leads, and then you have to market to them.   Otherwise, you won’t sell any houses.  If you’re not out there getting the leads and staying in touch with them, you won’t have future business. For me, it’s all about business best practices.  I really enjoy it when salespeople really 'get it' and say, “You know, I can do a better job staying in touch with people, not only initially, but then for the long term.”  I think a lot of builders – even the giant builders – don’t do as good of a job as they could by staying in touch over the long haul. Automate Your Lead Marketing The first thing is that all of us want to do as much as we can do.  We’re a competitive society.  But the truth is none of us can do on our own as much as we would or could if we had some assistance.  So, if I were Batman, how could I possibly have my own TV series without Robin?  If I were Wonder Woman, how could I have anything going on without my invisible plane?  We all need these tools in our lives to help us accomplish more, whether it’s a partner, a computer or whatever. So in terms of lead marketing, a lot of people miss the boat.  They still have their hard copy prospect cards; they’re still using Excel Spreadsheets or Outlook or something that’s not really allowing them to be as effective as they could be if they used a real CRM system. A good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is like having a super power.  Without a system, you simply can’t follow up with every lead personally, immediately, every month for two years or three years.   You lose track of leads and you drop leads here or there; you can’t really prioritize them or send the right message, etc.  All of that changes if you leverage technology by putting the power of a CRM system to work for you. CRM systems today are inexpensive and easy to use.  So what’s the excuse not to have a great system?  It’s really about changing our habits and changing the way we do things. That’s the first roadblock to many salespeople. They see this as something that is going to be time consuming to learn.  But if you take the time now to learn a system, you’re going to save oodles of time later on, be more effective and make more money. It does take a little bit of time to set these things up and figure out what message you want to send to a web lead today, and the message you want to send 30 days from now or 365 days from now.  So you set up all of these campaign items as tasks, phone calls, letters, emails, but then after that initial work, imagine being able to send out 500 emails to your prospects that are timely, pertinent and personal to them based on wherever they are in the sales status.  That’s a huge time-saver.  So it’s a little work up front, but a lot of time savings down the road. If you start out like you want to end up and everyone has a mechanism to communicate effectively; if everyone knows what everyone’s supposed to be doing and everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to be doing, not only do... Selling Tools Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1385 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1385#comments Sat, 24 Apr 2010 22:03:09 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1385 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1385 0 28:30 We speak with Joe Colletti, The Joe Colletti Group The Joe Colletti Group provides sales training and business growth consulting to builders, developers and real estate ... We speak with Joe Colletti, The Joe Colletti Group The Joe Colletti Group provides sales training and business growth consulting to builders, developers and real estate brokers.  Joe is a well-known speaker in the housing industry and is the co-author of Roadmap to Success, with Ken Blanchard and Stephen Covey. Here, Joe shares his take on the sales process and what he refers to as the presentation sequence: Through the years I’ve done my share of mystery shops.  About four or five years ago I began noticing that there was a common thread that was starting to appear, that no matter how qualified and how experienced the salesperson was, there were routinely things they missed – they forgot to ask this question; they forgot to give that information.  Out of over 300 shops, not one salesperson ever made it through a sales presentation without letting at least something slip through the cracks. It comes to down to 1) not doing the fundamentals, and 2) not having a structured presentation with a purpose and a direction. Many people have what they call 'presentations,' but they’re really just giving information to the potential buyer.  They’re giving information about builders, about their product or their community, but not with a real purpose in mind.  The purpose should be to give good information to that buyer that’s going to help them move forward, and asking questions of that buyer at the right point and place and time that will help you customize the presentation for that particular buyer. I’ve developed a flowchart to help augment the presentation for the salesperson.  It’s broken down into six major modules.  They are: Pre-Demonstration Model Demonstration Inventory Demonstration Targeting Sequence Review and Confirm Closing Sequence. Hopefully, you could do all of this in one sitting with a customer, but there are many times when you can’t.  But you always do the sequence in this format.  What it’s doing is telling the salesperson this is the important information that you need to first give, then this is the important information you need to receive from that customer to help customize it for their needs.  What you’re doing is trying to find out what I call the BPP, the buyer’s Purpose To Purchase. So many of us don’t find out what the PTP of the buyer is, and if we do, we find out bits and pieces.  But as soon as you find out the actual PTP for a buyer – or purpose to purchase – you automatically incorporate that into the rest of the presentation.  It actually is hitting on those areas that you know are really important to that particular buyer.  So now that buyer becomes part of the presentation and knows that you are aware of what they’re looking for; that buyer then gives you good information. There’s a saying out there that we’ve all heard, ‘buyers are liars.’  Everybody says that, but I don’t agree.  I don’t think they’re liars; I just think that we ask the buyer for important or personal information at the wrong point and place and time of the presentation. There are certain times when you can ask for specific information and you’ll get it back correctly.  There are certain times when you have to give information regarding your product, your builder, your developer or your community to your customer.  It’s more scientific and it’s more structured than people tend to r... Selling Skills Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1379 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1379#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:02:43 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1379 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1379 2 26:20 We speak with Dan Levitan, Levitan & Associates I talk with builders across the county and still have difficulty understanding how builders expect to profit without ... We speak with Dan Levitan, Levitan & Associates I talk with builders across the county and still have difficulty understanding how builders expect to profit without a true strategy for success.  To illustrate, I was speaking to a gentleman recently that was working on a new plan for a builder.  The builder is upset because he’s not getting the traffic he needs and he wants to change his ads.  I asked, “What good is changing the ad going to do if, in fact, he doesn’t have a strategy?”  This gentleman has been in the business for a while, but surprisingly he didn’t understand what I was talking about. So, perhaps there is a need to go back and explain to people the difference between strategy and tactics.  Changing an ad is a tactic.  It is something done short-term to attempt to achieve a result.  But without an overlying game plan, without a basic position in the market that says that you are different and that you have something special to sell that is targeted to the market, changing tactics just will not work. In order to create a strategy, you’ve got to look at the competition, the marketplace, and yourself and find an opportunity to position yourself so that you are creating something different, something unique; something we call a USP - Unique Selling Proposition - that says to the market ‘this a real opportunity.’ I travel around the country to look at builders and developers and the product pretty much over the last several years has been the same.  Everybody is building it.  Even today as the big national builders change their thrust and their orientation from the extensive move-up product to the first-time buyer, they are again all building the same product.  And when everybody builds the same product, you’re competing head to head and the only differential - the only thing that is going to make a buyer make a buying decision - is price.  There can only be one price leader in the market and if you’re not the price leader and everybody’s competing head to head, then you lose. But there are alternative positions that can be created by creating something different in a community or product, something different in the way they sell, or something different in the way they assist their buyers in purchasing the home that truly sets them apart from the competition and gives the marketplace a real choice. However, 'quality' is not a USP; it's something everyone claims and every customer automatically expects.  There was a builder many years ago  building in the Carolinas and I asked him what set him apart, and he said “quality.” I asked what he meant by quality, and he replied, “I hand-build my cabinets.” I walked into the kitchen with him and we’re looking at the cabinets and they’re hand stained and they weren’t especially good and they didn’t quite fit right, and I said to him, “How much extra this has caused you to hand-build these cabinets?”  He said, “Compared to just buying them out of a box, probably cost me an extra $2000.” I asked, “Have you ever done a survey of your buyers to see what they perceive as quality versus what you perceive as quality?”  He said no.  So, among other things, we convinced him to stop building his own cabinets and do a survey of his buyers to find out what quality was from their perspective.  Everybody believes they build a quality house and everybody believes... Business Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1363 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1363#comments Sun, 11 Apr 2010 23:13:48 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1363 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1363 0 26:20 We speak with Charles Graham, Newton Graham Consultants. Chuck Graham is a principal of Newton Graham Consultants, a Charlotte, N.C.-based management consulting firm that specializes in ... We speak with Charles Graham, Newton Graham Consultants. Chuck Graham is a principal of Newton Graham Consultants, a Charlotte, N.C.-based management consulting firm that specializes in the pursuit of superior financial returns via dominant home builder market share positions. Newton Graham has production builder clients in many markets across the country. We asked Chuck to weigh in on the challenges builders face in managing and maintaining business in a shrinking market.  Below are his observations and insights: It’s a very challenging environment and quite frankly, as an industry we’re all pretty unprepared for what we’re facing. If you think about the recent history of our industry, between 1992 and 2005 there were only two years – five years apart – with negative permit growth.  Housing missed a seventh year downturn and as a consequence we’ve all kind of forgotten how to deal with that. Our muscles of adaptation really atrophied for 13 years.  We weren’t faced with challenges that typically we used to face every five or six years. During that period of time, only one strategy was necessary – grow, grow, grow.  What little we knew about shrink, shrink, shrink was forgotten. An analogy that I use to help us understand what we have to do in the next few years is to think about three ‘wars’ that we have to fight simultaneously. Maybe a good way to think about them is the old past, present, future sides of the equation. The war with the past. Clearly, most all of us continue to fight the battle of bringing our variable costs in line with current company size.  Today the average builder or construction company is 75% smaller than they were at their peak.  That’s an incredible challenge. What’s happening, however, is that as we try to reduce those fixed costs by 75%, marketing has really been decimated.  Marketing expenses are some of the easiest to cut, but they have great impact on our ability to increase velocity.  I think the war with the past, unfortunately, requires us to find some additional savings in areas other than marketing in order to revive marketing. Most of our efforts today don’t focus on the operating statement – reducing fixed costs.  But we have these very hairy balance sheets which are overwhelmed with lot investments.  They’re very far removed from today’s demands. There’ are only two ways to solve that.  The first is bank relief, and the second is building them out.  Neither of those are going to have much traction early on, but yet we have to fight that good battle.  We have to continue to work with out banks to try and get relief.  And likely we’re going to have to liquidate that lot inventory, and that liquidation’s going to require more investment in marketing. Our War Today. Researchers have discovered that today’s customer is very focused on simplicity.  Despite the fact we can’t buy anything right now, we probably are realizing we don’t really need anything.  We’re all fairly bloated with material items and so simplicity is an important item.  It really existed before the recession – we just weren’t ready to go for it. Another one I describe as ‘discretionary thrift.’  Rather than “I have to do this,” people are instead saying “I... Business Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1355 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1355#comments Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:52:44 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1355 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1355 0 25:15 We speak with Mary LeBlanc, Leblanc & Associates For over 20 years LeBlanc & Associates’ primary focus has been the assessment and evaluation of site sales ... We speak with Mary LeBlanc, Leblanc & Associates For over 20 years LeBlanc & Associates’ primary focus has been the assessment and evaluation of site sales agents via the mystery shop process.  “We get out there and pretend we’re serious and motivated buyers, and then our function is to record what the agent does or does not do and generate a report on the technical side of their sales skills as well as their interactions and how the agent creates the sale,” says Mary LeBlanc. As a sales process evaluator, Mary has had ample opportunity to see what makes some salespeople highly successful while others struggle with gaining customer acceptance and commitment.  Here, she shares her unique perspective on selling skills of top performers. I’ve always said that in my next life, I’m coming back as a singer for Manhattan Transfer or some other group like that.  I can’t carry a tune in this life, so I figure my next time around I’m going to be highly talented.  But from time to time, I’ll hear a song that automatically clicks with me as to the parallels of what we do in this industry to the entertainment industry. For example, notice the lyrics to this one song. Basically it says, “Let me entertain you, let me make you smile.  Let me do a few tricks, some old and new tricks – I’m very versatile.  And if you’re real good, I’ll make you feel good; I want your spirits to climb.  So, let me entertain you and we’ll have a real good time.” Those lyrics are from the musical ‘Gypsy.’ It was based on the 1957 memoirs of the notorious striptease artist, Gypsy Rose Lee. And, like I said, there are some parallels in the lyrics to the song and what we do in sales. There is an entertainment component to every sales situation.  I don’t care if it’s in show business, if you’re entertaining guests in your home, or it’s in the sales office; to entertain someone you have to engage them and make them feel relaxed and enjoy the event, whatever it is.  That’s a critical component of sales. How are you supposed to find out about who you are unless you engage them in a conversation?  You cannot engage them in a conversation unless they feel relaxed, and unless they enjoy the process, they’re not going to open up to you.  They’re going to just beat it out your sales office. Obviously this is all tongue-in-cheek.  But when the lyrics say “Some old and some new tricks,” what we do in a sales center as professionals are not tricks.  They’re legitimate skill sets.  However, the challenge for the really, really successful sales professionals is to incorporate both new and old skill to be effective.  Buyers change, market conditions change, and we have to change.  There is always the core function – your foundation – that you have to get certain information, but it’s how you get there that changes. Each selling opportunity is unique.  Sales is not a “one size fits all” formula.  If you use just one approach trying to sell someone, it becomes robotic; it becomes stale and your prospective buyers turn you off.  The challenge to sales professionals is to keep your sales presentation fresh and lively, but relevant to each buyer. Scripting, if you want t... Selling Skills Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1338 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1338#comments Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:47:46 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1338 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1338 2 29:45 We talk with speaker and marketing consultant Jerry Rossi, author of Dog Eat Dog & Vice Versa: 9 Steps to Take the Bite out of ... We talk with speaker and marketing consultant Jerry Rossi, author of Dog Eat Dog & Vice Versa: 9 Steps to Take the Bite out of Your Marketing. 100% of all purchasing is emotional. But, 95% of all purchasers start their look on the Internet.  So, how do you stir the buyer’s emotions when they’re shopping online?  Simple:  With video. Most websites are just flat.  They show pictures and they show plats and they make it pretty, but nothing really triggers the emotion.  Virtual tours are a great start; they’re the most clicked button on Realtor.com.   But I bet no one has ever had a buyer stand in the middle of a great room and start turning himself in a 360-degree circle. Enter video.  Video has just taken over.  I mean, you knew something was happening when Google bought YouTube and now the number of videos that are accessed every month across the planet are just unfathomable - 50 billion videos a week are being opened and viewed. Now, look at builders’ videos and Realtors’ videos.  Most are just sales pitches.  They’re all, “We’re the best…  We’re #1…” They use all these cliché things, “We’re service oriented…”  Well, who isn’t?  “We’re 100% about the consumers…” Yeah, you better be because who’s going to put money in your pocket?  And it’s all what I call it ‘milk-toast advertising’ where they just repeat what everybody else says. My builder clients have said, “We’ve got a million dollar product and we’re going to spend a million dollars on the video.”  Well, consumers don’t want that.  It’s a sales pitch.  They don’t want to see that high quality video like the old high quality brochures that we used to make, which they don’t work anymore.  They want low quality, minute and a half low quality YouTube video.  I don’t mean ugly video.  Videographers call it ‘dirty’ video.  What they mean is it’s not perfect. You can shoot it with that camera that’s in the back of your closet that you bought four years ago to film the family but you never used.  You can use that.  It’s not about expensive video equipment; but what is important is good lighting.  However it’s lit on that little screen on the camera is what you’re going to see in the finished video, so lighting, lighting, lighting.  When we go out and do a video I grab every lamp I can find and light the scene from different directions.  That way you don’t get shadows.. We also practice a thing that we’ve done for years in new homes which is volumetrics.  High ceilings and the clerestory entries give you that volumetric feel.  Hold your camera waist high instead of at eye level. And that gives the viewer of the video a bigger feel of the property. Capture the Emotion of the Home I’m going to give you a quick video we did that was so powerful.  This was the first one we did.  It was 2½ minutes long that’s way too l... Marketing Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1330 http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1330#comments Sun, 21 Mar 2010 22:48:49 +0000 Administrator http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1330 http://builderradio.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1330 0 32:00 We speak with Sundeep Kapur, EmailYogi.com Online Communications expert, Sundeep Kapur, recently conducted a survey of over 400,000 online purchases as to their expectations of the ... We speak with Sundeep Kapur, EmailYogi.com Online Communications expert, Sundeep Kapur, recently conducted a survey of over 400,000 online purchases as to their expectations of the companies that they did business with, online and off.  His team followed up with a cross section of respondents, conducted more in-depth focus groups, and have outlined Seven Key Expectations that your buyers have when they visit your website, pick up the phone to call you, or even open one of your emails. Listen to the audio interview to get Sundeep’s full commentary, but here are the highlights of his survey results: 1. A Specialist I want to start with something very important is that when you, me, Scott, or any consumer goes out and wants to make a decision about the product, a service, even a meal that we are going to go eat, we are going to go by past experience.  We’re perhaps going to ask a friend or Google it, find reviews, etc.  The key thing here to remember is that today’s consumer is empowered.  They know so much when they walk in to make that transaction, it’s really very vital. The number one learning from the survey is that the consumer is looking for a specialist; an expert.  When the consumer comes into our store, or they come to the builder or their real estate agent, they expect that person to be all knowing and able to answer more than simply basic questions. Imagine you’re going to into an electronic store and wanting to buy a flat screen television; you’re going to walk in with a lot of basic knowledge.  So you expect that salesperson to know more than you and be able to answer your questions, or at least quickly get that information back to you. The whole goal here is for a real estate professional or a builder to either know more or quickly have access to this information so they can share it back with the consumer; so they can show the consumer that look, we are a smart entity, a smart organization, or as an individual real estate professional, I’m really knowledgeable about the industry and the needs of my consumer. 2. Convenience Second, the consumer is looking for convenience.  Convenience really is the ability for a consumer to be able to start a transaction in one channel and finish it off in another.  Many businesses assume that convenience means that I have given you my cell phone number so you can reach me at any time, or perhaps my website is available 7 x 24 and can answer all your questions.  Or maybe have a live person answering the phone at all times.  But you see, to the consumer, it is a little different. What they were saying is that convenience means that perhaps you do a Google search, you find a builder or a few builders, you call these builders, you get information sent to you in real time via email.  You perhaps fill out forms online; maybe you get a text message from them that tells you where their office is and that the forms you have completed online are ready for you to come and sign at their office.  Essentially, they’re looking for convenience like that. Builders need to mix up their messaging from different channels to show the consumer that not only are they talking across these channels, but that they’re also listening across these different channels. Let’s say I am a builder and I own four communities.  Most people either call me via phone or they come over to my website, and I have an email newsletter that answers basic questions. I don’t want to just do a print mail, or an email, or answer questions on the phone.  If I have your email ID, your cell phone number, and your direct mail address, Iâ€&trad... Marketing Jerry Rouleau & Scott Stroud no no