The dust is settling, and a new world lies before us. Things have truly changed forever. New Home Sales Managers must have new methods and visionary strategies to understand this new world and create sales teams that can truly be successful in it.
I’m going to teach sales managers the strategies and techniques that lead teams from survival to Thrival at the Myers Barnes Sales Management Conference, June 7th & 8th, 2010 in Dallas, Texas.
LEARN the new methods and visionary strategies
Required to Make It in 21st Century New Home Sales:
• The New Rules of New Home Sales & Marketing
• Developing a World-Class Recruiting Plan
• Creative Compensation & Attracting the Best People
• Fool-Proof: How to Start, Build, or Turn Around Your Sales Program
• An Actionable, Step-by-Step Online Marketing Process
• Proven Sales Strategies for Creating Real Profit
• Connecting the Dot.Com’s between Social Media and Your Website
• The Quick-Start 30-Day Step-by-Step Sales Process
• Creating & Sustaining the New Competitive Advantage
• The Evolving Role of the 21st Century Sales Manager
• Complete 52-Week Meeting Planner Provided
And more tested and successful strategies that you can implement immediately!
Ignite your selling power and blow past your goals to achieve blockbuster sales! Join New Home Sales Expert Myers Barnes and NDG Communications President Tom Nelson at the 2010 International Builders Show for a fast-paced, results-oriented sales and marketing session that will get your adrenaline pumping and deliver over-the-top results.
At Red-Hot New Home Sales and Marketing Solutions you’ll receive hard-boiled advice, tried-and-true tips, sensible solutions, and a bold line of attack for your sales and marketing organization. And, you’ll learn pure-genius techniques that will propel you to success, along with remedies for overcoming hardship economies.
“Wealth” is a word that elicits a wide variety of mental images. Living large, enjoying all the good things in life, and seemingly without a care in the world.
For some people, “wealth” is defined as freedom from the looming burden of debt. The car is owned free and clear and the credit cards aren’t carrying a balance. After years of putting money away, your kid gets a “full ride” college scholarship. Maybe you’ve been making extra mortgage payments to shorten the term and can see the payoff in sight. So, your earnings are your own. You’re not working simply to pay debts.
Others have a vision of wealth that simply translates to a dollar amount in the bank account: millions, tens of millions, or even the billion-dollar mark. For them, there is the hope of winning a lottery, inheriting a fortune, or coming up with the next brilliant invention that the world will line up to buy.
What wealth means to me is the financial substance that enables me to provide for my family and have enough left over to have options. With enough money, you can take the vacations you want, live in the home (or homes) of your dreams, and be free of the daily grind that wears away the joy of your life. You don’t have to be trapped in a job you hate because you can’t afford to give up the paycheck.
I don’t understand the reasoning of people who don’t want to set a goal to be wealthy. We all have an obligation to reach out and help people in need, but you can’t do that if you’re one of them. Remove yourself from the role of beneficiary and assume the role of benefactor for a change.
Many new homes sales people tell me they don’t recognize buying signals from a prospect. I say that you don’t need x-ray vision to see them. Here are some strong vibes coming your way:
1. They walk into your model. In spite of everything they’ve been warned about buying in a down economy, they’ve come to see your model. They’ve already passed a significant hurdle!
2. They make an appointment and actually show up. This says, “Hello, I’m here. Sell me!”
3. They come with a real estate agent. Take #1 and add this fact that they have enlisted the help of a sales pro. This signal is about as subtle as a bullhorn!
4. They inquire about the state of the market. This is a request to be convinced that what they’ve heard isn’t the harsh reality.
5. They tell you they have no intention of buying anything today. Uttering this phrase is more to convince the prospect than to put you off. This prospect is expecting you to back off with a casual “warning”; if you do, you’ve foolishly lost a sale.
6. They go out to the property with you. Time is precious. A tire-kicker won’t spend it on this extra effort.
7. They give you contact information. Imagine meeting someone interesting who hands you a phone number and says, “Call me sometime.” If you don’t make that call, you’re missing a blatant signal of interest!
8. They return your calls. Take #7 and multiply it by two.
9. They ask about incentives. Your prospect is on the cusp of saying, “Yes!” but making sure they aren’t potentially missing an even better deal.
“It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.”
You’ve heard this platitude many times in your life — from a parent, teacher, coach, or friend. But, in the real world, how many times are you measured by your methods and not your results?
Failure is inevitable. No one wants to lose or fail, but it happens. In spite of the countless Baby Boomer parents who drove home self-esteem by pushing the “Everybody Wins” approach, ultimately, everyone succeeds at failing somewhere in their lives.
Look at professional baseball. A good hitter in the major league has a batting average of .300 or higher. That means he hits the ball 30% of the time. But this statistic also means the “slugger” fails to get on base for a whopping 70% of their at-bats. If you couldn’t deliver results on 70% of your attempts, would you be considered a high-powered professional? I doubt it.
While it’s great to drive home the “how you play the game” belief to children, at some point, they will have to accept that, with every winner, there is a loser. Once you grow past adolescence and into your profession, there is a scorecard on you, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. Success is not defined by simply trying. In fact, accepting the “how you play the game” methodology sets you up for failure because you give yourself permission to ignore the outcome.
The most successful home sales professionals I have seen are those who swing for the bleachers every time, putting their full force behind every sales effort with the goal of scoring the big one. Doing anything less than your best — out of laziness, fear, or procrastination — is an immediate strike-out.
I’ve just launched a new page on Facebook specifically for New Home Sales Training. There you will find valuable resources including training videos, new home sales strategies, and much more! I encourage you to utilize this valuable resource, become a Fan, and post your recent sales success stories on the wall as well to share with other likeminded sales professionals.
In addition, the FIRST 100 Fans will be entered to WIN a FREE copy of The Myers Barnes Ultimate Training Library—four of my most recent books on new home sales: Closing Strong - The Super Sales Handbook, Reach The Top In New Home & Neighborhood Sales, Supercharged Sales, and New Home Sales in a Nutshell! With these tools for success, you’ll learn the difference between merely surviving and Truly Thriving.
Keep checking back each week for more FREE New Home Sales Training Videos, Resources and Strategies!
Making a sale requires action, not inaction. Unfortunately, I see one sales center after another populated with so-called “salespeople” who are merely waiting for a prospect to walk in the door of the model. They’ve sharpened their pitch and are ready to hurl it at anyone who crosses the threshold. But, in the meantime, they sit and wait for the company’s marketing efforts to deliver the buyers to them. While they sit and wait, sales are being lost to more proactive professionals.
Here’s the reality. Marketing is the act of attracting. Prospecting is the act of seeking. The Bible says, “seek and ye shall find.” It doesn’t advise you to sit around and wait. In any economy, but particularly in a down market, you need to get out of your chair and find the buyers. Make it happen!
Prospecting is a contact sport. The more contacts you gain, the more sales you will close. Yet oddly, most salespeople wrap themselves in a cocoon and wait for change to occur, laying their hopes entirely in the ability of the company’s marketing campaign to generate leads. As a salesperson, you can let things happen or choose to seize control of your success. When you become an active prospector, you declare, “I accept complete responsibility for the traffic that comes in here. I depend solely on myself as a marketing department.”
Every day that you wait for someone to come to you is eight hours wasted. Get in the game and make direct contact!
I was recently talking with a builder who was incensed by the demands of prospective buyers. “They want me to just throw in a furniture package with the deal,” he sputtered.
I listened and empathized with his plight. I’ve heard this same frustration voiced by many builders, developers, and new homes sellers in this market. Buyers want ridiculous discount and absurd freebies in order to close the deal. They’ve been handed a market where the buyer dictates and they are feeling choked by the heightened demands.
Let’s take a look at the situation though. The leak in the housing market started to trickle in the first quarter of 2007. Now, 25 months later, the sellers are scurrying to plug that gaping hole in a market that is flooded with short sales and foreclosures. The media, real estate agents, and mortgage companies are telling these buyers that now is a great time to buy. Have you ever heard them advise buyers that it’s not a good time?
As a result of the economic crunch, buyers are making offers that would have been swatted away like a pesky bug just two years ago. But these buyers, while they may appear vulture-like in their approach, are not fools. They resisted the top-of-market buying frenzy, sat on the sidelines to gauge the action, and are now quite enlightened about the status quo of the buyer’s market. They’re ready to play the buying game like a battle to the death. What you call “absurd”, these savvy buyers call “realistic.”
My advice to you is to be prepared. Know that these crazy offers will come, and that they arise from hopes but not necessarily expectations. Sharpen your negotiating skills and respond to those offers respectfully—because at least you have an offer to negotiate! Communicate the value of your property and justify the price. Work harder to see where you can cut your margins and where your buyer is willing to bend. A ridiculous offer just means you have to work harder and smarter.
E-mail marketing is very effective and has a reasonably low cost compared to regular direct mail, but regular direct mail is not going away, and it can be part of an effective marketing mix to reach particular segments of the population who may not be in your e-mail lists. So let’s talk about getting the most from our “land mail” direct campaigns.
The most important thing to understand with regular direct mail is that you must determine your audience first, and then tailor your message to that audience. By getting more specific about your list, about who it is that you should be selling to, you can get better returns from more qualified leads. Conduct better research to isolate your ideal buyer characteristics in your mailing lists to get more on-target.
But direct mail now has a new helper to make your campaigns even more effective. Remember in my last post about e-mail marketing where we talked about a “website landing page” linked in the e-mail where the recipient could go to register for an event, to receive more information, or to receive a gift or a chance to win some incentive? You can do the exact same thing with direct mail by providing the website address for your campaign landing page.
Of course, it’s easier with e-mail marketing because the recipient only has to click a link in the e-mail to go to the landing page, but with a properly targeted list, a strategically crafted message, and an appropriate incentive, you can still push many direct mail recipients to the same landing page where they can provide you with solid contact information for an actionable, and most likely very qualified, lead.
And, variable printinghas created the ability to further personalize mailers to each recipient’s name, interests, and correct product categories and thus make your communications more relevant to individual recipients.
If you make sure to follow these essential rules, your direct mail campaigns will yield more results and produce far more qualified leads.
When I told you “It’s Free in 2009,” I really meant it! Announcing the launch of my new video training series. All my most fundamental lessons about succeeding in new home sales will be available for you to watch anytime. Both on my website MyersBarnes.com and at YouTube, you’ll be able to watch new videos every week and enjoy all of my training FREE!
Keep checking back each week for more FREE New Home Sales Training Videos, Super Achievers!
While direct mail has lost some of its ability to effectively connect with prospects who often see the mailing as simply “junk mail,” e-mail marketing has now become an incredibly effective and interactive method of helping prospects reach you.
E-mail marketing has an incredibly high return on investment because you’re only paying for your recipient list and the creative services used to create the art, copy, and e-mail itself, because there are no printing costs, and because those you are e-mailing have already opted to receive such mailings—these people actually want to hear from you and are far more likely to read what you have sent and make contact with you.
Many of you may have already begun to dip your toes into the e-mail marketing game, and have seen the incredible results. Others of you may have tried, but without attaining the response rate you’d hoped for. The keys to effective email marketing are consistency, a strategically developed message, and a website landing page that captures registrations.
Where most builders and developers fail with e-mail marketing is in applying consistency. Simply sending out one e-mail message and expecting hard returns is unlikely to accomplish anything. Think more in terms of a campaign—where a new e-mail goes out every two weeks, and possibly more often to promote community-specific events.
And, just as important as applying consistency, your message must be on-target and resonate with your audience. If you understand who the correct buyer is, you can create e-mails that are appropriate for their wants and needs. You also must provide the recipients with some incentive to make contact with you.
Typically, when NDG Communications creates an e-mail campaign, the e-mail provides a link to a “website landing page” that provides the e-mail recipient with a form to register to receive more information in exchange for some reward, possibly to enter for a drawing at an event, or the chance to win some prize. The recipient has an incentive, and you now have a registered (and most likely qualified) lead with full contact details.
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New Home Sales, New Home Sales Management Training, New home sales marketing, new home sales management | 
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