The careful craft of building a custom home often leads to the need for another art form: sales. Especially in the custom home industry, it takes a true sales craftsman to please demanding clients who are accustomed to exemplary service.
What distinguishes a real sales professional from a person whose chief objective is to generate sales to draw a commission check at the end of the week? It’s all in how you take care of customers and whether you generate referrals and repeat business. Here are the five key indicators of a genuine sales professional. How do you measure up?
Hands-on. Prospecting is the name of the game in custom home sales. Rather than wait for your marketing efforts to draw prospects into your model home or sales center, take a hands-on approach to generating qualified leads and customers. There is no limit to the opportunities available to conduct personal advertising and marketing. Tell everyone what you do and how you help create solutions. You never know where your next sale might come from.
Knowledgeable. It would be unreasonable to think that you could know everything there is to know about the custom home industry’s products, services, codes, trends, and regulations. However, the more you know, the more you can speak with authority about your homes and the industry overall. You will operate from a deeper level of confidence, which will reinforce trust with your clients. Remember you can still be an expert in your industry if you don’t know it all, and know-it-alls usually don’t.
A master communicator. It is obviously important to know how to create rapport, listen intuitively, and ask quality questions to elicit revealing answers. Master communicators take it to a whole new level by learning how buyers think and what their real motivators are. This level of skill takes practice and a commitment to observing the human psyche. Mix your observation with authenticity and you will increase your sales performance.
Focused on the end result. All too often salespeople fail to ask for the sale. They stop short of the goal due to many reasons, the least of which is fear of rejection. However, when you have a laser focus on the real objective of making the sale, your closing ratios will rise dramatically. Focus on the goal of closing the deal and on giving excellent follow-up service.
A student of the game. A dedicated sales professional is a student of the game, always involved in continuing education with a focus on gathering information to improve process. Tiger Woods has reinvented his golf swing three times. Remember that reinvention is a continual process.
Polish up on some of these methods; it will reflect your commitment to the custom home industry and help you achieve your sales goals.
Paul Montelongo has been a builder for more than 23 years and is a nationally recognized speaker and consultant to the construction industry. Visit him atwww.paulmontelongo.com.
