I have been out house hunting for some time now and am appalled at the quality of sales people and sales processes that are being used by the best in the industry.
The current sales process works as follows:
- Prospecting: Use advertisements (traditional & new age), road shows, email campaigns, etc to create awareness and interest in the project. Prospects who are interested in the property contact the builder.
- Qualification: The prospect is maintained in some system, CRM or otherwise, for future follow-ups. The only qualification question that is asked are the following:
- Type of apartment is the prospect interested in (Villa vs Apartment, 2 or 3 BHK, etc)
- What is the budget?
- What is the location?
- Closing: Provide the price list and negotiate the price to close the deal. If the deal is not closed in that meeting, the only follow-up is to call and ask for the deal or send a follow-up email.
Now, the question is if this is the best that they can do? I think there are a lot more ways for these folks to improve their sales process. For example, some ideas that they could try out are as below:
- Prospecting:
- Referrals: How many times do these sales people tap into the existing database of satisfied customers for more sales or references? The only reference customers they get are the one’s that are being referred to them. I have not seen any sales person actually seek out references from existing
- I know one builder who has used this way very interestingly. He urges his customers in a project to decide whom they want as their neighbors as they will be stuck with them for a long time and you do not want to have a bad neighbor. This is an emotional connect to the customers to try and get their friends/relatives to buy in the same property. So far he has been successful in selling his projects using this approach.
- Corporate tie-ups: Employers are always eager to find ways to improve employee retention and do not always have budget for monetary incentives. In this situation, a builder can sign an MoU with such employers to offer limited period, highly negotiated prices for their employees. This can be a win-win-win situation for all involved:
- there are employees who are considering to buy a home, they will be tempted to consider the property offered by this builder as they get a good
- The employer can showcase that they value their employees and want to look after them by offering great
- The builder gets high quality leads from one single organization which is easy to manage and can build a base for them to start a referral drive from these leads.
- Qualification:
There are a lot more criteria than the budget, location and type of projects, that can help a salesman close a lead. Some of questions that the sales folks could ask are:
- Liquidity: How liquid is the prospect?
- Need: This their first property or is this an investment?
- Cash flow: How does the prospect see his cash flow change over the next few years? Is there a promotion, salary hike or big cash inflow likely?
- Family members: How big is the family? Is this a joint family? Are there elderly people in the family? How many kids do they have? How big are they?
- Tertiary needs: What are their religious beliefs (Certain beliefs require that you stay close to their place of worship)? What other cultural beliefs do they have?
- Closure:
The answers to all these questions can provide enough information for the sales team to identify the most important decision factors for the prospect and hence can use this to highlight the right aspects of the property to the prospect which fulfills his decision factors.
I believe this will help in closing more deals and help home buyers in getting the best homes that their money could buy.
2 thoughts on “Selling real estate (Homes)”
True.. but why would a sales man do all of this when he himself is flooded with people approaching him?? And more over, majority of projects which middle class people buy dont even have a qualified sales man!! Its just some guy who is doing sales!!
It is true that today in the Indian market context, there are a lot of prospects that walk-in without much effort. Having said that, I do not think it takes much time/effort to ask the additional questions or to ask for references from existing customers. Also, i think that by doing these steps, the sales guy will dramatically increase his chance for closing the deal.
Also, when there is a downturn in the market, the sales guys who will thrive will be the one's who have learnt these skills of prospecting, qualifying and closure.
Just my belief 😉
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