During our training we often challenge our delegates to shift their qualification questions; to make them more productive, to show more curiosity and care toward the customer.

How have you been getting on?  What have you achieved?

Mystery shop measures your qualification,

Using the shop criteria, are you standing out?

The quality of your questions determines the quality of information you gain from your customers.  A mystery shop will assess you on how well you do the following:

• How well you establish the customer’s reason for moving
• How well you establish their ideal buying criteria
• How well you establish a price range to work with
• Understanding how the customer has arrived at that figure
• How will financial advice help them to buy a home on your development/how you positively introduce the Independent Mortgage Advice service
• How well you establish the customer’s current position and what needs to happen for them to Reserve on your development
• How well you establish the customer’s timescale to move
• How the customer heard about your development
• How well you demonstrate your local knowledge and provide information about the local area

Print this list out and test over the next few days how well you would score in a mystery shop.  If you don’t get 9 out of 9, you’re not doing what you should be doing

Good luck and let me know how you scored!

It is really important in new home sales to make sure that your daily activity is focused on the right things. 

Now is a good time to check that your daily priorities are focused on what gets you sales - creating, making or taking the sale ?

Creating is all about lead generation; your conversation in the sale

• Where do your actual visitors come from?  Measure New Visitors, Re-Visits and Telephone calls
• Where do your Web Enquiries come from? 
• How well do you convert Visitors to IFA referral?  What’s the success rate of your referrals? 
• How many of your leads do you move to a qualified visitor?  Those who are Wiling and Able to purchase?
• What is your Net Conversion rate?

Making the sale is all about what you do to move a sales opportunity closer and closer to the sale

• How well do you next step with the customer to move them through small decisions closer and closer to the sale?
• Making the sale is all about how well you qualify and know how to shape what you have available around the customer
• How effectively do you engage the customer’s rationale to ensure they understand why they are looking at the home your presenting?
• How do you manage their decision making to move them forward all the time?
• How do you get to the overall commitment to focus plot specifically?

Taking the sale is all about what you do to gain final commitment and how well you get to discuss what needs to happen for the customer to Reserve

• Agreeing the what before deciding how
• Effectively planning actions with customers to achieve their commitment
• Making decisions conditional

Knowing your numbers, really knowing your numbers is critical.  You need to know absolutely where your activity influences the next step and what you personally need to do to move a customer forward to a successful reservation and then confirmed Exchange.

So, what needs to change with your numbers? 

How will they make this happen?

Being the best you can be in your role requires you to Solve before you Sell.  We know you will have picked this up before but are you doing it; really doing it?

Solve then Sell is all about selling with structure, staging the events necessary to inspire a customer to make a buying decision – how are you doing that?

We know that a sales approach without structure achieves fewer sales so we suggest that you concentrate on working with a solid structure and you will see that you gain more commitment and more sales will result from this.  The first thing you need to look at is the structure you are following.

• Are you conscious of what you are doing or are you on Autopilot?
• Are you split level thinking?
• Do you have a strategy to achieve commitment little and often?

Remember - No Structure, No Sale!

The sales arena is your environment so take control of each sales opportunity that comes to you.  Practice being ready to structure your sale and be more strategic with your sales approach so that you achieve more Reservations.

Your sales strategy should lead you to keep asking for buying commitment as you go, keep finding out a bit more with each step

• How will the purchase be financed?
• What actions need to be taken to assure that the customer’s proceedability is addressed? 
• What would it take to get the customer to reserve? 
• Be conscious of your sales strategy and your selling structure

Focus on your sales structure today and be the best you can be – go on ask for that extra commitment with the next customer you serve!

When customers who can buy don’t, 1 of the following reasons is often stopping them …

1. A real, insurmountable objection.  No amount of money will make whatever the objection is change their mind so be really clear, ask them ‘what is it you would like to have happen to buy this home?’  at least know what you are dealing with and if anything can be done – move on! 
2. Price objections when you can afford to buy the home are less to do with price and much more to do with how the customer perceived the value of the home you are presenting.  Make sure as you provide information to your customer that you are constantly adding value too.  Talk in gain, use well-crafted PowerPhrases, add value all the way; in everything you say.
3. Some people are uncomfortable decision makers – a big effect of the changing economy and market is how little customers can now trust themselves to make good buying decisions.   Help the customer to make a good decision by helping them to feel more confident about their new home and their decision to buy.
4. Someone else’s approval is needed.  No more than ever before have there been so many people giving your customer the benefit of their opinion!!  Customers are hugely influenced by their approvers – people who have emotional and financial opinions that the customer listens to and take action on the basis what the approvers say.  Help your customer to confidently articulate to their approvers why buying a home from you is exactly what they should be doing and that they are delighted to make the decision – rationally and emotionally.
5. No intention of buying!  Of course, there are people who never intended to buy anyway!  Actually they intended to research and see if what was out there beats what they have now.  Deciding to buy is based on how what you have to offer exceeds what they currently have or helps them to reduce the ‘pain’ they are currently experiencing.  If what you have doesn’t exceed what they have now, the decision to do nothing is so much easier.

Understanding how to respond to these 5 reasons can help you to plan your sales approach and respond accordingly. 

Watch what you are doing, how are you responding to the
5 possible reasons people may choose not to buy?

Revolution is a strong word; what has happened to the new home industry has been a strong change in a short time; different to what we have previously known.

All new home sales executives are required to step up and consider how the sales revolution is affecting them and what they are personally doing to respond to it.

Change happens to you; market, economy and customers change.  Transition is from within; it requires your personal change for improved performance and success.

Are you operating in a tough market?  The answer is NO!  A tough market is when you are uncompetitive and supply outstrips demand.  You are not in that situation. 

Are you operating in tough economic times?  YES and NO!  Lending is a more complex arrangement these days but people are accessing the funding for a new home and there are more products on the market to assist new home buyers; more products than ever before so again supply is high in response to demand.

Have your customers changed?  OH YES!  Everyone we work with describes customers as being more informed, having done more research using the internet and portals like Right Move.  For the first time ever in your lifetime in new home sales, your customers are not starting at the same point.  Their enquiry is informed and how long they have spent on their research in to buying a new home remains a mystery unless you ask!

All of these elements impact on how the customer presents to you and the impact is, arguably, outside your control.  What is in your control is the transition you decide to make to respond to these changing circumstances – it’s down to you; no one can change you for you!

So, here’s our tip for responding to the sales revolution:

• Decide how you are going to demonstrate a personal transition in response to the market/economic and customer behavioural changes
• Use the meet and greet stage to build relationships with customers
• Get detailed information from customers and add the data into the database
• Successfully achieve control with customers; be in control, not controlling
• Delay giving lots of information away for free
• Tailor information around your customer
• Delay entry to product until you are sure what is right for the customer/why you are showing the product
• Build Value throughout
• Achieve constant commitment throughout the sales meeting
• Deflect discussions about incentives and discounts until you have gained agreement in principle to buy a specific home
• Maintain credibility with customers when agreeing the terms of the sale
• Create urgency to inspire a customer to make a buying decision now
• Facilitate customers and propose actions to secure maximum sales

Quite a list!  Where will your starting point be?

Given that the only sound your customer’s ears are filtering is based on how what they hear relates to their reality, your ability to laser target what you say in a way that is tailored to them, you need to be sure that when you are working with a customer you are:

• Using PowerPhrases so what your customer hears from you is targeted to their reality – to do this, you have to get to know them and craft your knowledge into PowerPhrases as you move them through their decision making
• Below the red line on the sales structure (while you are still solving) have 3 or 4 crafted PowerPhrases that promote the gain for a customer in buying from you, on your site and buying now
• Really listening to what they say and you use your best facilitation skills to constantly affirm your understanding and build the customer’s confidence in you as an expert who can really help them in their buying decision
• Gaining commitment from your customer little and often.  Try to think of your sales experience as though it were written down.  You would not be able to easily understand what you were reading without punctuation

Closing little and often is about building punctuation in to the sales journey; where there is a comma, ask a question to gain commitment to a decision. 

Where there is a full stop, ask a clear commitment gaining question – affirm where you are in helping the customer to make their buying decision.

Our best tip is close little and often;
create the opportunities for the customer to get used to making decisions

Build up the customer’s confidence to make a great buying decision with you

Intelligent buyers need intelligent sellers – how intelligent are you being?

Ask Don’t Tell
is one of our selling mantras, so is
Be Curious and Show You Care!

When dealing with more enlightened, informed customers (who are armed with a mass of intelligence they have gleaned from research they have undoubtedly done before visiting you on site) the need for curiosity is off the scale. 

If you fail to be curious with every customer who makes an enquiry, you will:

• Fail to find out where they are starting from in their enquiry – is this based on a lot or a little research into the housing market and suitable property for their needs?
• Fail to understand what motivates them 
• Fail to understand what the sale may be based on
• Fail to next step in a way that makes positive sense for you and the customer

Childlike curiosity with a purpose is something that productive qualification produces… in new home sales being curious will help you close more sales!
When a customer comes into your sales office, you have no idea about them.  Starting with asking for their name so that you can use it to build rapport, the next mindset is CURIOSITY to show you CARE!  

Rediscover your curiosity. Instead of immediately launching into your sales approach when a customer walks through the door, turn on your curiosity, set yourself the target to find out all you can about the customer in the most comfortable way.  Being ruthless with time and gracious with people will help you to be efficient and curious.

Use productive questioning whilst establishing what the customer is trying to solve in their life demonstrates a genuine interest in the customer.  Remember to pre phrase your qualification questions with phrases like:

• Tell me about
• Describe or explain to me
• Help me to understand
• What other pre phrases have you tried that work for you?

Be Curious and Show Your customer that you really care about them – it will pay off! 

Intelligent selling responds to today’s market and focuses new homes sales professionals on how to inspire today’s customer to make a great buying decision.

Buying a new home from you
on your development NOW!

New home selling is a role that needs great intelligence:

• Customer intelligence
• Product knowledge and house building intelligence
• Local area knowledge and market intelligence
• Selling within the law and absolute professionalism
• Economic intelligence
• Corporate intelligence

Our best tip is get close to the intelligence you need to talk ‘on the level’ with your customers; to inspire them to buy from you.

The challenge in today’s market is to be sure that you are:

• Proud and Professional  – demonstrating self confidence, self-motivation and personal awareness together with a ‘Can Do’ attitude, a commitment to sales and to assuring customer satisfaction
• A Sales Expert – Demonstrating the most effective selling skills using your selling knowledge, skill and behaviour to nurture the customer’s buying decision and next stepping them to a stable Reservation.  And that’s on top of achieving the highest level of customer service, active prospecting, lead generation and enquiry management
• Commercially Astute – Great sales people are sales entrepreneurs who are profit aware and manage their development, knowing what is required to show it is Your Site; Your Business
• Market Aware – being a great sales person means that you are market aware, have the best market knowledge, are market proactive and competitor aware using this information to be solution driven in your responses to sales management and customers
• Sales Intelligent – having the most up to date Knowledge – product, local, site, company and how you stand out from the competition
• Totally Photoshoot ready – all the time.  Great sales people manage and achieve the best Presentation – self, sales, site and stock
• Managing all the information to achieve maximum sales and efficiency.  Although great sales people are not necessarily the best at administration the job requires the highest standards of reporting and administration.  This involves making sense of all the information, using it to inform solutions, to drive your marketing decisions and to demonstrate performance to company procedures and protocols

Use the checklist above.  Rate yourself against each element out of 10.  Where are your personal areas for development and how will you tackle them?

Success today in new home sales depends  on so much more than when we had a booming market.  The customer has changed, the market has totally changed, how have you changed?  What will you commit to changing?

We get sad when we see how hard a sales consultant works and then we see them blow all the effort because they don’t have courage to ask the customer whether they would like to Reserve.  We would be less sad if we heard sales consultants asking how what you had done with the customer had helped them in their buying decision and which home they prefer at this stage.  Sadly we don’t hear either of these often enough.

Think about how you value yourself, and what you do.  So many sales consultants NEVER ask for the business. Please don’t be one of those sales people who do so much good selling and then fail to ask for the sale. 

It’s a common mistake and you can put it right!

Asking for the sale or ‘closing’ is vital so always make sure you gain customer feedback and commitment, it is this gradual approach that will increase your Reservation rate!

We believe that good closers do everything they need to do make it easy for customers to say Yes so we challenge you to make sure that as you work with your customers, you are giving them plenty of opportunity to make small decisions to narrow down choice and get to a plot specific point when it makes sense for you to ask that they reserve the home with you.

Close little and often helps to develop confidence on both sides

Customers need to be confident of their ability to make a great buying decision.  You owe it to the customer to make it easy for them to buy by inspiring them with your enthusiasm.  If you don’t ask, you won’t get it! So remember your customer needs you to ask so that they can say yes!!

Choose your time, choose your question – Is this the home you would like to reserve? Which of the homes you have seen do you prefer?  Given the choice, would you rather this one or that one? What for you is the next step? How has what we have done helped in your buying decision?

There are so many ways for you to lead your customer confidently to the close, plan out how you will ask the next customer you work with.

All your customers have only one radio channel; a channel that they hear 24/7.  It’s called What’s In It For Me Radio!

Given that the only sound your customer’s ears are filtering is based on how what they hear relates to their reality, your ability to laser target what you say in a way that is tailored to them, you need to be sure that when you are working with a customer you are:

• Using PowerPhrases that mean what the customer hears from you is targeted to their reality – to do this, you have to get to know them
• Really listening to what they say and you use your best facilitation skills to constantly affirm your understanding and build the customer’s confidence in you as an expert who can really help them in their buying decision
• Gaining commitment from your customer little and often.  Try to think of your sales experience as though it were written down.  You would not be able to easily understand what you were reading without punctuation.
  • Closing little and often is about building punctuation in to the sales journey; where there is a comma, ask a question to gain commitment to a decision. 
  • Where there is a full stop, ask a clear commitment gaining question – affirm where you are in helping the customer to make their buying decision.

Our best tip is close little and often;
create the opportunities for the customer to get used to making decisions

Build up the customer’s confidence to make a great buying decision with you