There are two things that inform your prospects of a sale: the prevailing property market and the readiness of each customer to commit to a purchase.
Dial up your focus to create a bespoke experience that engages people exactly where they are at whilst recognising the current economic backdrop in which they are making a massive investment.
High performing sales teams stay alert and agile to both of these factors. They ‘dance in the moment’ to match conditions. Sometimes a quick-step, sometimes a slow-waltz!
How is your Sales team performing in an agile market?
Pause for a moment and consider your team. Would each of them be able to answer these two critical questions? Or do they dance to the same tune every day even as the music changes?
A key part of the role of any Sales Manager is coaching a team to ever-improving performance. We know you will see great results by nurturing an alert and agile sales team: one that is equipped to respond deftly to the unique situation of each customer and one that completely gets the impact of even subtle shifts in the property market and is able to translate that to the grass-roots level.
How to assess your team’s market awareness
A good first step on this journey is to assess the market awareness of the team today. Ideally, you are looking for people who have strong market knowledge, a robust handle on local competitors and the creativity to deliver solution-driven responses. Not quite there yet? Try this…
One way to start the conversation and develop some traction around this vital topic is to sign up to several respected national commentators on social media. Get informed and share the highlights with your team. Make it part of the daily conversation until it becomes clear that yours is the team with the inside track on market fluctuations and why now is a great time to buy!
Understanding both the wider and more local economic drivers will tune your team into the likely mood of potential purchasers. How confident are they to make a decision today about buying a new home? What are the common questions and opinions of visitors this month? What reassurance are they seeking?
You are perfectly positioned to work with the team to create PowerPhrases to boost consumer confidence. Team talks are a great way to share and rehearse the group’s ‘voice of relevance’. Now you have really created momentum and shifted the team approach to match the current environment perfectly.
How to assess your customer’s circumstances and ability to buy
With new levels of optimism established, it’s time to take a closer look at the customer’s own circumstances. We believe each prospective customer comes to you at one of three stages of readiness to commit. We call it Willing. Able. Ready. We are seriously invested in equipping you to dig deep into your customer database and assess every customer against these criteria. Only once you have done this, can you truly develop an appropriate strategy that meets them where they are at and next steps them to readiness to buy.
Within every database is an emporium of truth! We get excited about this fact… and advocate keeping a firm grasp of how many customers you have in each category. Being Willing. Able. Ready is a valuable metric to consider introducing for each of your developments. This gives you the opportunity to challenge the team to tell you how they are working with every customer to enable them to be ready to secure the perfect home for them.
We noticed when working with multiple sales teams, that although individual contact can often be professional and helpful, there sometimes lacks a strategic objective to calls. We witnessed a scatter-gun approach. It was this insight that led us at ellare to develop a 5-step plan that will help you to coach your team into establishing an appropriate and dynamic contact strategy for every customer.
- Identify customers into Willing. Able. Ready.
- Create daily call-out plans batching customer categories together
- Set clear objectives for each call-out session
- Identify next steps for both you and the customer
- Agree a date and time to re-connect.
Sales Consultants who have adopted this process tell us that it has transformed their ability to clarify needs and support each customer on their unique journey to reservation. As a nice side benefit, it has also helped them organise their day better and drive up results for pre-booked appointments. This carefully nuanced approach is clearly a winner and so it is surely time to say goodbye to the one-size fits all experience.
All this starts with two simple shifts in thinking – get familiar with the ups and downs of the property market, translate what you know to be relevant to your patch, then help your team to ‘dance in the moment’ with your uniquely understood customer.