Follow-Up Smollow-Up.
Brian Flook, MIRM

Brian Flook is president of Power Marketing & Advertising. Reach him at bflook@power-marketing.com

If you want to hear negativity, simply attend nearly any builder’s Monday morning sales meeting these days. You’ll get an ear full and then some. “How can I sell houses without anyone to sell to?”  “I can’t qualify anyone for loans any more.” “Everyone has a house to sell and no houses are selling.” We’ve heard it all.

I attended a meeting in Seattle, Washington of some leading consultants recently and to my surprise, I heard something you rarely hear: ‘sales people are a big part of the problem.’ Had I heard correctly? Leading sales trainers accusing sales people as being part of the problem?  But as I listened, I realized that they were correct.

The point was this: For too many years, builder’s sales teams have made tons of money, selling ton’s of houses and barely ever had to ask for the order. It has been too easy.  One trainer observed, “… if a new home sales person has only been in this business since 2001, they don’t have a clue.” Suddenly, the door isn’t swinging open with buyers eager to purchase the first overpriced house you show them. Suddenly, the resale market is no longer writing escalation clauses. Suddenly, sales people in some markets aren’t making $175,000, but settling for $65,000 instead. How can you as a builder possibly feel good about this?

Here’s were I wax positive. Remember, the title to this article is: Follow-up, Smollow-Up. I believe one of the biggest challenges facing builders is the lack of consistent … no, not consistent … thorough … no, not thorough … how about any follow-up from their sales teams … I’m going to get calls on this one.  I’ve been marketing new homes since 1987 and I am convinced that the large portion of visitors who visit or contact builders are, at worst virtually ignored or at best only given cursory follow-up. You are spending hundreds of dollars per head to get traffic and often those buyers don’t even receive a follow-up phone call. I know, because I have shopped and blind visited builder’s sales centers and models for over 20 years. But, if you don’t believe me download this study by Ogenisys/Red Tree Marketing Resultants and see for yourself (if you have the stomach): http://www.doyouconvert.com/blog/2008/04/01/64-of-agents-dont-follow-up-say-what/

The truth is that our industry has a terrible track record of follow-up! So where is the good news in that, you ask? The good news, in my opinion is that part of the answer is pretty easy: Sales Management. That’s right, sales management is the answer and partly the blame for the problem. If you have a sales team, you or your sales manager needs to sit one-on-one every week with every sales person and review every visitor. Review their needs, discuss their circumstances, and strategize a plan to follow-up with that buyer. Then the next week, you must review the results of the last week and do it again. That wasn’t hard, was it? But so few actually do it, and as a consequence, buyers are left to wonder why no one wants to sell them a house.

I recently purchased a 2008 Lexus GS 350. It is a sweet ride and I am glad I bought it.  But, before buying it I really had my eyes on a BMW 5-Series as well. So, I did what anyone else would to; I went out to drive one. My buddy Mason is a bit of a car fanatic kind of guy – one of the ones who can tell you how many horses any car has. He was with me when we visited the BMW store in our area. We went inside and meandered around the showroom for 20 minutes or so. We went up to their inventory room where they store cars that aren’t in the showroom and looked around. All the while, there are sales persons standing around talking everywhere. After roughly an hour, not one person had approached us to see if we needed help.  We went back to the showroom and looked around some more … still no inquiry. Now of course I could say, “hey I want to buy a car here,” but why should I have to do that? Long story short, I left and purchased a Lexus instead. I guess I didn’t meet the BMW snob factor in my jeans and tee shirt.

The point is obvious: BMW could have sold me a car with only a little salesmanship. But no one cared enough to ask.  In the case of new home sales agents, in spite of the fact that builders spend thousands of dollars on traffic generation marketing: According to the aforementioned study, “In only 36% of the visits conducted by the aforementioned study did a builder’s sales agent follow-up with a prospect that visited and expressed an immediate purchase interest.” 

Here’s the good news: you can fix this. It’s time to train, or if the case may be, retrain your sales team that leads cost money and should always be treated as valuable assets. Ignoring leads is paramount to criminal in any market, let alone a down one.

Now, don’t misunderstand me; I know many great sales people who do excellent follow-up. But they are more often than not, the exception, not the norm. Take the time to help your sales team understand how much a lead costs on average.

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