Builder - February 2009 - (Page 50) SALES STRATEGIES drew some criticism from local bloggers, who debated whether it violated the unwritten rules of social media about pretending to be someone you’re not. The response from target buyers, however, was completely positive. “They totally got it,” Flint says. Print and 15-second radio and TV ads—very targeted buys based on the favorite media of the prospective buyers at GreenWay Crossing—all drove traffic not to Hubbell Homes’ Web site but to HaileyBrownstone.com and to her Facebook page. That runs counter to traditional wisdom, which says that all a builder’s marketing efforts should drive traffic to its Web site. But the team at Hubbell Homes knew that the target buyers for GreenWay Crossing knew their way around Facebook and the blogosphere and would feel comfortable there. It also made tracking the effectiveness of the campaign a snap. “Being able to track visitors to our Web site from HaileyBrownstone.com gave us much more effective return on investment,” Flint says. “The people who left her site and clicked through to Hubbell Homes spent the most time on the site and looked at the most pages. They were serious.” Another huge benefit of the campaign was affordability. It’s free to use Facebook, blogging, and YouTube, where viewers could watch a video of Hailey showing guests around her new home. Hubbell Homes also negotiated free production on its TV and radio ads. The culmination of the four-week campaign was an on-site sales event promoted as Hailey’s housewarming party. Unlike the typical weekend open house, this was a Thursday night party with tapas, sangria, and a disc jockey. It drew more than 50 people on a snowy night during the busy holiday season. “It was a good house party, that’s for sure,” Flint says. “It was geared to how that demographic parties. It didn’t feel like a huge sales push to them. It gave us a great opportunity to show off the community to people who might not have heard of it before. The homeowners were thrilled. They said, ‘You’re attracting the type of people we want to live here.’ ” As a result, GreenWay Crossing went from being an unknown location to the fourth most popular search term on Hubbell Homes’ Web site. Site traffic went up 36 percent over the same time the previous year, and four brownstone sales—both at GreenWay Crossing and another community—were attributed to the campaign. The campaign went so well that Hubbell Homes is considering a second phase, which will be a referral program for Hailey Brownstone’s friends. And the builder is getting requests from residents at its other communities. They want characters for their neighborhoods, too.—P.C. M Happy Anniversary! arketing pros know that personalized messages carry a lot more weight with prospects than generic mass mailings. That’s why many builders require sales associates to send handwritten thank you notes to every visitor and why so many companies send birthday greetings to customers. In a recent ClickZ.com article on birthday greetings by digital marketing pioneer Jeanniey Mullen, one commenter suggested that salespeople substitute a greeting that’s more unique to a customer’s sales experience. New-home sales associates have the perfect date to commemorate: the day their buyers moved into their brand-new home. As always, include a business card and ask for referrals. SALES TRAINING Tools for 2009 Myers Barnes offers a book, free videos, and a blog. O ver the years, thousands of new-home sales associates and sales managers have attended Myers Barnes’ seminars. He’s built a base of builder customers who hire him for consulting, and sales pros who subscribe to his blog. A big part of his process involves scripting to address just about any objection a prospective buyer might have. Barnes has collected “every possible, conceivable script and dialogue,” updated them to apply to current market conditions, and put them together in a new manual called New Home Sales in a Nutshell: Scripts for Success in a Challenged Market. There’s also a section on negotiating. Barnes says he knows that a lot of people don’t like using a script, but says in reality, “they just don’t believe in someone else’s scripts. Your presentation is scripted. What is sales training? It’s knowing what to say and how to respond in given situations. That’s scripting.” Organized into sections of the sales process, from meet and greet to follow-up, the book is “a ready reference manual to be kept on the desk,” Barnes says. “If I’ve got an upcoming appointment, [the prospect] is probably going to say, ‘I need to sell my home.’ What do I say? Whatever the scenario is, it’s in the book.” Barnes also has taken his entire two-day seminar, broken it into 28 YouTube videos, and posted them online. Between that and the 100 sales training blog posts he’ll do this year, it’s a year’s worth of sales training available for free. “People tell me they don’t have the budget for training,” Barnes says. “For this year, it’s free. I’ve been so blessed; I’m booked through November. So I’m giving it all away, except the book; and if they really don’t have the money, I’ll give them the book, too. I believe we can make such a significant contribution to the industry. It can generate a turn-around if [sales associates and managers] will follow it.” And if anyone isn’t successful in 2009, they only have themselves to blame, he says. “For goodness sakes, take advantage of it,” he says. “There’s no excuse now. You’re either a lackadaisical manager or a salesperson without the drive and ambition to succeed.”—P.C. GOT A SALES TIP? FOR MORE SALES AND MARKETING STORIES, VISIT W W W.BUILDERONLINE.COM/SALES. E-MAIL PAT CURRY AT: pcurry@hanley wood.com 50 ■ B U I LD E R f ebrua ry 2 0 0 9 W W W.BUILDERONLINE.COM http://www.ClickZ.com http://www.HaileyBrownstone.com http://www.HaileyBrownstone.com http://WWW.BUILDERONLINE.COM/SALES http://WWW.BUILDERONLINE.COM
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