How to: Offer a Great Home Shopper Experience!

It's Competitive Out There!

Website visits are up, sales office traffic is increasing, 2018 sales are good.

SalesTouch: Differentiating Your Brand with Information

While these stats suggest a positive market, the marked increase in customer touch points and a growing need to standout in a crowded marketplace creates a highly competitive environment.

It's a Consumer-Driven Environment

There's an increasing emphasis on providing a consumer "experience" -- which Retail Customer Experience tells us is set to overtake price and product as a key brand differentiator by 2020.

But.. what adds up to make a great customer experience?

There's Information and then.. there's a Relationship

There's absolutely no doubt that home shoppers want to be able to (1) go and look at a product; (2) evaluate quality and (3) understand the product before buying.

Sales agents are an important part of the home shopper customer experience: they offer the direct, personal relationship surrounding the purchase. Importantly, a good agent, suggests Amy O'Connor, a sales trainer in Jeff Shore's organization, helps the home shopper achieve clarity and certainty regarding the purchase.  Your agent is going to want to determine the home shoppers needs and demonstrate how your product meets those needs.

Personalize the Experience

Today's home shopper -- Millennial or Boomer -- wants to examine alternatives, analyze the lifestyle and dream.  Listening is important -- as is providing tools to understanding the product. 

Take a look at CPS' interactive touchscreen system, SalesTouch: it offers a unique journey through the customer experience. 

What's your home shopper's particular need? Lower level master? Place for the baby grand? Close-by recreation? Home shoppers using SalesTouch take advantage of a unique process called narrowcasting: every home shopper can locate and examine the information that will help them make a decision.  In the order they want, at the time they want and in the desired detail. Throwing out a wide net, hoping it meets everyone's needs is no longer.

With so many consumers seeking the ability to gain clarity and information before they purchase, the race is on to offer personalized experiences.  SalesTouch provides that differentiating experience that makes your brand stand out!

Let's Put Some Spring into Your Sales/Leasing Office!

Spring Mean Sales!

Spring might finally be here and with it: Spring Selling Season!  No matter what you're selling, says Amy O'Connor of Shore Consulting, Inc., people like buying in the spring. Buyers are ready to shake off the last days of winter and ready for something new!

From a visual vocabulary to virtual curb appeal!

Where to start? Amy is clear: the key to spring selling success is starting strong!

CPS adds: Work to Create a Great Buying Experience!

You want to be your customer's #1 choice; what can you do to make that happen? First, embrace the idea that home shoppers visit your office because they're interested in buying one of your homes.. in many cases, today!

Next, we'll suggest that it makes sense to start looking at your sales office as a customer does. What will help you stand apart so the home shopper rates your community #1?

Consider: Virtual Curb Appeal

What are you doing to create a great buying experience? From the minute a prospect drives (or walks) up to your office, they're using all of their senses to evaluate the experience...from smell to sight to touch!

 SalesTouch uses visuals to appeal to home shopper emotions!

Mollie Elkman, a Philadelphia-based marketing expert, reminds us that pictures offer "virtual curb appeal."  Why not build on standard imagery and Go Interactive to make your office stand apart and grab home shoppers' attention? An interactive touch presentation actively engages prospects from the minute they step into your sales office and can continue the conversation with interactive floor plans, the ability to select and place furniture inside your homes and e-brochures.

CPS offers SalesTouch, the interactive touchscreen system for both large and small (think tablets) screens. We're here to help you kick off (and up!!) your Spring selling season.

Spring Home Sales Look Promising: Are You Ready?

Signs of Spring are all around us: budding flowers, pollen everywhere, gorgeous sunsets!

And, the signs for a great new home Spring selling season are here, as well.  BuilderOnline recently highlighted Realtor.com's economist, Jonathan Smoke's market take: a strengthening economy, increased consumer confidence, low new and resale home inventories and increased consumer purchasing interest.

Are you prepared for Spring's uptick?

Almost all new home sales are local; how are things in your area? If you're in Boston, Madison, Rochester, Minn or Durham, NC...they should be great as inventory is so low that the median inventory age dropped by an entire month!

The news, in other words, is very encouraging for a great Spring season -- are you prepared to take advantage of this terrific market?

I'm ready, you might say; but are you really?  Amy O'Connor, with Shore Consulting, suggests taking a look at 5 "must haves" for the Spring selling season -- and the first is sales momentum. You can check out the other four here.

Amy suggests you need to start strong -- meaning get organized and be fully ready to snag the early Spring sales.

Are your marketing materials up-to-snuff?  Do you have enough of them?  How about your CRM?  Do you have your purchase agreement documents available for quick and accurate preparation?  Have you looked into DocuSign as a way to quickly generate your entire purchase agreement package for across the web signing?

CPS can help with your CRM needs: we had a client, years ago, who said it used to take him about 3 hours to fully prepare a purchase agreement package and that had been reduced to about 30 minutes using CPS CRM's fully automated purchase agreement prep process.  We can get you up and running with an automated process using your documents in less than 1 week!

Using CRM to Extend Sales Office Hospitality

Always love seeing Amy O'Connor's posts on Jeff Shore's website.  Amy blogs in addition to providing new home sales seminars -- and she brings a great combination of insight, humor and kindness to her commentary.

Technology Will Enhance Your Welcome Message!

Recently read 3 Southern Hospitality Tips That Will Increase Your Sales and could imagine Amy asking "How's your Mama doin'?" to a sales office visitor in that great Southern drawl of hers!

Of course, not many of us could ask that question like Amy can but... got us thinking about how the concept of hospitality fits into today's new home sales skill set.  And, what tools might an agent use to consistently enhance the home shopping experience?

Amy's #1 hospitality tip is Express Gratitude. There are lots of new home sales offices out there but this particular home shopper selected yours!  Let them know you are happy they visited and welcome them into your office.

This first visit should be just the beginning of your hospitality touch points. Did you know technology can help you enhance the welcome after the home shopper leaves your office?  Let your home shoppers know you listened and remember their unique reason for the visit.

The percentage of new home sales agents following-up with even a basic Thank You! is very small.

You will stand out with your show of hospitality touchpoints, in other words!

Let's assume you're already recording prospect visits; why not take the extra step and associate a particular area of prospect interest (a floor plan, amenity or an interest in schools)? Have these items setup in advance so you're selecting from a list of "reasons" for the stop at your office!

Then, have a preset series of Thanks for Visiting emails offering a little extra about their particular interest.

It's true; people aren't wild about generic emails.  Set yourself and your community apart from the generic with an informative (and hospitable) follow-up focused on a specific topic.  Think of the possibilities: adding a quick video about an amenity, taking your prospect on a short, cell-phone tour of Plan 2's kitchen!

Wondering how you can become more hospitable with technology? CPS has been providing CRM software to homebuilders for a bit more than 30 years -- we can show you!