You follow a recipe for cooking. You read the instructions (usually) to assemble something. So why is it that so many new home sales professionals are working without a structured system? If you haven’t implemented one—or need to do better—here’s the value of following a great sales process.
What is a sales process?
A sales process provides a series of repeatable steps that you use to guide your customer through the buying journey. There are various approaches in the pipeline, from 5 to 10 steps. Here’s the 7-step sales process I recommend:
- Initial Contact. Begin with your very first contact with a prospect. Your rapport starts here.
- Qualify. Identify whether or not this prospect is a good fit for your homes. If so, the prospect is now a bona fide “lead”.
- Discovery. Explore the needs of this prospect before you begin pitching your home as a solution.
- Presentation. Do a differential demonstration of your homes so the lead understands and can appreciate the value of your construction, the builder, the location, and the features included.
- Handle objections. Be prepared to address the possible concerns that a customer serves up to you. Talk to your colleagues about the obstacles they’ve dealt with and how they managed them.
- Close. Sum up the positives about purchasing this home. If your customer has any hesitation at this point, go back and repeat steps 3, 4, and 5.
- Follow up and referral. The close of the sale is not the close of the relationship. Check back with your homebuyer to gauge their satisfaction with the buying and building process. Are they happy with the home? They might need you to intervene. A little effort on their behalf now can lead to the invaluable referrals that will come in the future.
Why do you need one?
Following a sales process paves the way to sustainable success. Practice allows you to work out the kinks that could cost you a sale. You won’t find yourself in an uncomfortable situation where you have to ad lib a response. Instead, you easily rely on the routine that you have polished to a bright shine.
A sales process also instills confidence in new home sales professionals. Think about the brands that you buy because you can count on them to do what they promise. You don’t even question it because it’s a proven winner.
For sales managers, a sales process improves efficiency in onboarding and managing team members. Train them in the standardized structure for selling and you’ll give them a strong foundation for communicating with prospects, cultivating leads, and closing buyers.
With a step-by-step selling system, you maintain transparency. It’s easy to see where there are missteps along the way and make the necessary corrections. For example, you’re demonstrating a home without a first-floor owner’s suite and your customer comments that this is a deal-breaker, you clearly progressed too quickly through the discovery phase.
What makes a great sales process?
The sales pipeline will likely need to be refined over time. Tracking the results will show you where you need to sharpen the steps. Look at these sales metrics to see how your process is working:
- Total revenue
- Market penetration
- Conversion rate of Prospects to Leads
- Conversion rate of Presentations to Closings
- Number of referrals
- Quarterly sales growth (units)
- Quarterly sales growth (revenue)
You’ll know your system has achieved greatness when these numbers hit the marks you’ve set. If you need help creating, implementing, or refining your new home sales process, talk to me. We’ll make it happen together.
