Changing the sales tactic in 2019 to appeal to a new generation of buyers
By MEREDITH OLIVER
More than 80,000 building industry professionals will convene this month in Las Vegas, NV for the 2019 International Builders’ Show. One of the most highly rated and well-attended educational sessions is the Super Sales Rally produced by the NAHB National Sales and Marketing Council.
The 2019 Super Sales Rally (SSR) features three internationally acclaimed sales speakers and home building experts, Mike Lyon of Do You Convert, Meredith Oliver of Meredith Communications, and Jeff Shore of Shore Consulting.
The theme of this year’s SSR is “The Future of High-Def Selling.” The speakers will explore how to successfully sell to digitally savvy homebuyers without losing the human connection. The focus of the event is to motivate and educate new home sales consultants, sales leaders, and builder owners on how to blow past their sales goals in the upcoming year.
Today’s homebuyer, regardless of age, is super busy, super independent, and hyper-connected. They do not return calls and they ignore traditional sales pitches. How are you supposed to sell these folks a new home? The Super Sales Rally will give you the answers and explore much more.
The internet-empowered buyer knows precisely what they want in a new home and how much they want to spend to build it. They have studied your floor plans, inventory homes, and community amenities in detail before arriving at the model home. The biggest mistake new home consultants make is assuming the home shopper has no information and delivering either a canned or irrelevant sales presentation that does not address the buyer’s needs.
Being relevant to your buyers means listening more than talking. It means customizing your sales presentation in real-time as you listen for their preferred needs and wants. It means understanding the psychology of a homebuyer, which will be one of the featured topics in the SSR. Author, speaker, and home building expert Jeff Shore will do a deep dive into how to adjust your sales presentation to sell the way the buyer wants to buy. We all have a preferred way to buy – and your sales presentation style likely reflects your buying preferences. On a scale of 1-10, how flexible is your sales style? Can you change gears and match and mirror your buyers and abandon your own preferences?
Being relevant also means integrating technology into the sales conversation. Did you know that 76 percent of customers say they have a better experience when the salesperson uses technology during the sales conversation? Your digitally savvy homebuyers expect self-service technology in the model home. We use self-service technology everywhere these days: at airports, grocery stores, and movie theatres. That does not mean you should take a hands-off approach to selling. Top-producing, quota-busting salespeople know how to allow for a blend of self-service and high-touch personal attention with technology such as tablets, kiosks, and virtual/augmented reality.
The benefits of using interactive technology in the sales office are two-fold:
- Reduces friction at the pain points of the sales process
- Creates a stronger emotional connection because many homebuyers are visual and kinesthetic learners – meaning they learn new information such as your floor plans and amenities by seeing graphics and through physical activities like touching interactive screens.
The SSR will explore this topic and teach you how to seamlessly integrate technology into sales conversations.
If the digitally savvy homebuyer does not return calls, what is the best way to follow-up after the initial conversation? Mike Lyon, follow-up guru, speaker, and author, has that topic covered. At SSR, he will explore how to build a follow-up framework that results in home shoppers responding to your emails, voicemails, and text messages. Imagine that! Salespeople often assume that no response means, “I’m not interested,” but that is not always the case. Ongoing, consistent, creative, and personalized follow-up will get a response when the home shopper is ready to buy. You can achieve top of mind dominance if your follow-up is fantastic.
Will 2019 be the year you up your game? Are you ready to learn new the skills, habits, and attitudes needed to thrive in the digitally savvy marketplace? If you are prepared to make a change and explore new ideas, come to the Super Sales Rally at IBS.
Meredith Oliver, MIRM, CSP, is a homebuilding sales and marketing strategist. She works with homebuilders who want to drive more leads, traffic, and sales with digital marketing. Meredith is the author of three books, FANtastic Marketing, FANtastic Selling, and Click Power. Learn more about her at www.meredithcommunications.com and follow her on Twitter @MeredithCSP
The post The Future of High-Def Selling is NOW appeared first on Builder and Developer Magazine.