| REAL ESTATE, REALTORS®, HOMES, COMMUNITIES, CONDOS, NEW HOMES, HOME BUILDERS, NEW HOME SALES, SALES TRAINING |
 Home Sales Channel .com ä |
| Real Estate Advertising Media |
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The Key to Design/Build Sales Training reprinted from: DESIGN BUILD BUSINESS Sales professionals must be trained to sell the entire design/build experience The sales process for custom building is a process unlike any other, according to Tom Stephani, owner of Crystal Lake, Ill.-based Custom Construction Concepts. "It must be approached very carefully and with the understanding that it represents one of the biggest emotional decisions a customer will ever make," he explains. A lot of salespeople treat the process like selling a house. It’s not, according to Stephani. "It’s selling a home, and a home is a lot different than a house." As such, you have to understand the emotional ups and downs your customers are going through. The real key here is to make it clear to your customers that you are selling a service, not "sticks and bricks." The service is helping them create a new home. Training What are the critical issues for training salespeople to engage in this type of specialized selling? There are several things you need to instill in salespeople, and there are several ways to go about doing it. "In most small companies, the owner is also the salesperson," Stephani says. "However, if you have salespeople whom you need to train, I would recommend a professional sales training firm. This firm wouldn’t even need to be exclusive to the homebuilding industry." He suggests the Dale Carnegie course, as well as the idea of looking into your local community colleges to see if they have sales training courses. "There aren’t a lot of courses aimed specifically at design/build sales," he notes. "One good one, though, is a design/build course offered by the National Association of Home Builders’ Certified Graduate Builder program." Another option for training is the Home Sales Channel ( www.homesaleschannel.com ), based in Sarasota, Fla. "A lot of sales trainers focus on specific topics, such as customer qualification," says Ronald Suponcic, director of sales and marketing. Suponcic worked for a commercial real estate company in the 1980s, which had a comprehensive sales training program. In the late 1980s, he moved to the residential new home development industry and applied those same sales principles. "We take a procedural approach to sales and focus on developing good habits in salespeople." The program is called Search to Referral, which goes through the entire process of what good salespeople should be doing. The program also emphasizes the idea of expanding the role of salespeople to include "community management." It is based on the realization that builders need to work leaner these days, working with less staff while doing more volume. "By expanding the role of salespeople, they can do this," Suponcic explains. He believes that salespeople should be responsible for things like advertising, signage, community presentations, prospect program development and dealing with customers. Dealing with customers has its own set of issues, such as product knowledge, demonstration, referral management, closing procedures, follow-up, etc. "We work with salespeople to make sure they develop good habits in all of these areas," he says. There are two benefits to this approach. First, when salespeople make even minor improvements in some of these activities, it results in a big impact on sales. Second, when salespeople are responsible for all of these activities, they can see the big picture. "If all they do is sales, they lose track of what other departments are doing, which leads to errors, missed handoffs and the inability to set the right expectations for customers," Suponcic explains. While outside sales training is an option, there is something to be said for internal training, too. Mark Simone, general manager, Cipriani Builders Inc., Woodbury, N.J., utilizes a combination of both for his four salespeople. The monthly sales meetings feature two main elements. "During the first part of the meeting, salespeople view a one-hour teleseminar hosted by Phil Rea, a well-known remodeling sales expert," Simone says. The focus of the seminars is on closing strategies. During the rest of the meeting, the salespeople discuss their current presentations and challenges, such as objections. In fact, overcoming objections usually is the biggest obstacle salespeople face, according to Simone. "We do some role-playing to help them here," he says. During training, Simone works to capitalize on the strengths of his salespeople. For example, one of them is a great closer. "Some customers really need that, especially if they are indecisive," he explains. During meetings, this salesperson can share some of his techniques with other salespeople who aren’t as strong in this area. Someone else may be strong in terms of building bonds with customers and working on designs with them. "This person can help the closer by providing ideas on how to build bonds and work more closely with customers," he adds. Putting training to work Stephani says the key to success in design/build sales is consultive selling, instead of trying to "close a deal." The idea is to create a partnership with your customer, instead of trying to get them to make a decision to go forward. This means taking baby steps with them — moving slowly and carefully, and making sure they are comfortable at each step of the process. Custom Construction uses a two-step closing process. "When I first meet with a person, I try to get a preliminary agreement, also known as a professional services agreement," Stephani says. This is an agreement stating that the company will assist the customer with all of the services involved in a design/build project. The next step is to create a formal agreement to actually construct the home. "If we haven’t succeeded in creating a good relationship by this time, they are free to select another builder or not do the project at all," he continues. "If they go ahead with us, the fees they have spent with us already are rolled into our fee for the cost of building the home." Cipriani Builders’ primary business is remodeling. The firm uses a Preconstruction Needs Assessment Form during the first appointment with the customer to gather as much information as possible. "The information is not just about the ‘sticks and bricks,’ but about the customers themselves," Simone explains. "This helps us determine what the people really want. When people are considering a project, they may have an idea of what they want, but we can help them with the details. We may even be able to steer them in a different direction to give them what they really need." For example, they may think they need an addition. However, it may turn out that what they really need is to turn two rooms into one. During the first visit, Cipriani salespeople also try to learn as much as they can about the customer. "For example, if they have a garden, a finely manicured lawn, a boat in the driveway or a basketball court, this gives us some ideas to get conversations started," Simone explains. Joseph Dellanno also has a sales philosophy that he tries to get across in training programs. "Salespeople in design/build shouldn’t look like salespeople, because people can smell salespeople a mile away," says Dellanno, president of my Design/Build Coach, my Design/Build Project and Design Solutions in Arlington, Mass. "Design Solutions depends on having alliances with professional design/builders who have professional sales training," he explains. "I realized that the more general contractors I could train to be professional salespeople, the more design/build projects I could secure." According to Dellanno, design/build sales is a consultive process that involves letting clients discover what they need instead of being told. As such, a salesperson needs to wear four hats at once — a consultant, a designer, a builder and a salesperson. "We create a formal sales process that salespeople can follow each and every time," he continues. "For example, we have a draft meeting agenda that is sent to the client prior to the meeting." The client can then make adjustments to the agenda. As such, the final agenda is a combination of the salesperson’s process and what the client wants to cover. The agenda provides the clients with everything they need to know about what will take place. "Clients like it, because it eliminates ‘mutual mystification,’ and they don’t feel any pressure," Dellanno adds. Getting the most from training Experience suggests that providing some salespeople with a little training allows them to take off like a rocket. Conversely, providing others with virtually unlimited training doesn’t help their struggles. The reason, of course, is that some people are more natural salespeople than others. What separates the best salespeople from those who are mediocre? "The best ones have the ability to personalize their presentations," Suponcic suggests. "They have a true interest in what their customers want, and they work to help customers achieve those goals." They also create a bond of trust with customers by being honest and managing customer expectations. These are salespeople who focus on the process, not the commission check at the end of the process. "Customers like salespeople like this, so in addition to making sales with customers, these salespeople end up with a lot of referrals," he adds. Can salespeople learn to be good salespeople if they aren’t natural at it? "There are certain personality types who make better salespeople than others," Dellanno explains. He has found that there are two types of salespeople: hunters and farmers. Hunters are those who are assertive in the sales process and are really looking for the sale. Farmers are those who are less threatening and more easily accept the answer, "I’ll think about it." It is harder for these people to make sales. "In training, you need to adjust the farmer’s personality to be able to utilize a formal sales process," Dellanno says. The sales process requires the role play of a salesperson, not the person. The reason is that sales involves a lot of rejection. "When the client says no to the salesperson playing the role, the person may take it personally. "However, the client isn’t saying no to you personally. He is saying no to the sales role that you’re playing — that your role performance just wasn’t adequate for him to feel comfortable with you." For example, Dellanno is currently training an engineer to become a salesperson. "He is very tense and doesn’t know people well," he admits. "However, I am getting him to play the role of a salesperson and leave his engineering personality at home. He is starting to understand the difference and is doing a good job with it." The issue of sales personalities and the implications for training begs the question as to whether or not owners should be salespeople. "If you truly enjoy the production side of the business, but don’t enjoy sales, I recommend that you don’t sell any more projects," Dellanno suggests. "In addition, owners are generally so emotionally involved in their companies that they ‘give away the shop’ in order to get projects." He knows a company owner who was in sales for 30 years and was killing himself. In addition, his business wasn’t growing. He decided to hire an outdoor lumber salesperson. It has worked well, and the company is now growing rapidly. The reason is that the salesperson is moving the sales process along more quickly, so sales are coming in more quickly. More importantly, the owner is doing what he likes to do. "His wife told me the other day, ‘I have my husband back!’" he concludes. |
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