By Shirleen Von Hoffmann President and Sales Coach for Home Builders Edge
This article also appears in NAHB’s Sales and Marketing IDEAS Magazine December 2011 issue…
It’s not your customer’s job to remember you; it’s your job to remember your customer!
I often play a game with Sales Representatives. We role play a “meet and greet” and “model walk” session. Immediately thereafter, I ask the Agent to recall all of the things they can remember about their prospect. They very proudly start rattling off one, two, then five pieces of information the client gave them. They may get to twenty even thirty details but it is always with some struggle since they took no notes. Once they are finished and the Agent is feeling pretty good about their accomplishment of remembering details I ask them, “Now could you remember these details after seeing five more prospects today? Could you remember these details in 5 days… 10 days… 2 weeks or maybe three months? The answer is always, NO WAY!
Thus, the importance of the registration card. The registration card contains all of the valuable information the builder and marketing team work so hard to get when they drive the traffic through the door. It’s that same information the sales team needs to follow up on to make that prospect a buyer. If you spend $500.00 to drive a piece of traffic through the door, then you can pretty much set the value of a registration card at $500.00 per card. The Agents should know that value too, it’s gold!
In this market, with sales so scarce, we have to look at every step of a sale; do it better and more cost efficient. So when I work with Builders and Sales Teams, it breaks my heart when I see the same registration cards being used that were used in the 80’s? You know, the 5”X 8 1/2” cards that were used when I started in the business in 1981! The registration card is your ticket to sales and yet so few realize it! Other than an actual sale, the registration card is the second most valuable sales tool you have when working with a prospect. It’s the one connection to your sale, once that prospect has left your office. It holds all of the memories of that prospect; if it’s filled out properly.
Can you imagine being a Realtor and spending a day with a client, showing them property and not getting their contact information or not know every detail about your client and what they are looking for? You would be wasting your time, energy and money. Well it’s just as crazy for a New Home community to do the same.
Do you want to maximize your prospects and convert them from leads to buyers? Then make sure your Sales Team are asking great questions and writing that information on a customized registration card. Also make sure you provide a registration card that is built for 2011 and beyond, customized with the details you feel are important for marketing and for follow up.
Here are items your registration card should include:
• Full page, front and back.
• Front for the prospect to fill out.
• The back is for the agent to fill out as they carry it along on the model tour.
• It should be easy on the eyes and not overwhelming should the prospect be the one filling it out.
• It should have a smaller, simple section at the top, with plenty of room for the client to write his or her name, numbers, email, address and preferred method of contact.
• That’s it! The rest of the card should be filled out by the Agent.
• The Sales Agent should ask and fill in the, “how did you find out about us”, details.
The Agent should fill out the back of the card, here are some examples of items it should have preprinted so the Sales Agent can quickly fill in the blanks.
• Date
• A B or C Prospect
• What their needs are and their must haves
• Which home they liked and why
• How many living in the home
• Rent-Own-Contingent-Non Contingent
• Employers, job titles and incomes
• Special interests and hobbies
• Kids, ages, hobbies and sports
• Animals owned
• Space for additional details
• Space for follow up plan
• Reason(s) for follow up section
• 2nd appointment date and time line
Gone are the days when the Sales Agent wrote their prospect details around the corners of the small card with no room to write. The Registration card is a valuable tool and all of the information on it can be used to follow up with the prospect and turn them into buyers. The latest statistic I have heard is that 80% of prospects buy after the 5th- 8th contact. If you are going to make those contacts count then you must have an efficient card to record the prospects pertinent information so you can follow up with that prospect smartly. For instance, if you know your client enjoys golfing, one great reason to follow up with them is to give them a detailed list of the nearby golf courses. But you won’t remember that detail unless it is written on the registration card and then uploaded into a follow up system of some kind. Agents should also have a follow up plan for each prospect whereby they analyze the type of the buyer A, B or C and how many follow up attempts will be made, at what intervals and what kind. Not just depending on a CRM system to generate some standard, impersonal letters, but having those little added personalized touches, the Agent will add from knowing the details about this prospect.
The last item I want to mention here is to make sure you have good training to teach your Sales Team the best methods on how to ask for registration cards. There is no bigger travesty than an Agent not getting a card on every prospect that walks through your door. Some, perform this task better than others, so some training on this element is key to the success of getting one every time.
There is a saying in the business world that goes, “Always be closing. That doesn’t mean you’re always closing the deal, but it does mean that you need to be always closing on the next step in the process.” So let me ask you, how can you always be closing on the next step in the process, if you didn’t take notes to know the next step with that client?
Provide a quality registration card to your Sales Team and insist on getting quality registration cards back from your Sales Team. It will be the one huge shift in your business that will turn those leads into the new sales you need in this market!
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