Is Follow Up a Lost Art? Survey says…
Is follow-up a lost art? Can you guarantee your agents are responding and following up with your prospects, the ones you paid $1,000′s to get to walk into the door? In this short video I review a study conducted on this topic (details below) You be the judge. If you are wondering what is going on with your internet leads, it’s time to secret shop your agents. Submit a lead from your website and listing services, not once but several times. Track the response time, quality of the message and how many times they follow up. You will be surprised.
Take a look at this at this whitepaper released by Red Tree Resultants and Qgenisys. They conducted actual on-site evaluations acting as motivated prospects to learn if there would be adequate follow up on the visit to try to persuade the prospect to become a purchaser and what builders and developers can do to improve their market share. What they found out:
- Despite spending millions of dollars to attract them…In only 36% of the visits did an agent bother to follow up with the prospect who visited the community and expressed immediate purchase interest.
- In only 14% of the cases did agents follow up with personalized information about the community that reflected anything they discussed with the prospect.
- Builder agents from the higher-priced homes/communities actually followed the prospect more aggressively than did the lower-priced homes/communities.
- Of all homes visited during our research, unless a prospect followed up with the builder, nearly 60% of all prospective sales would have been lost due to lack of follow up by the builder or the builder’s representative
- We estimate that up to 75% of builders’ emails, both from sales reps and marketing teams were caught by our researchers’ spam filters.
Their findings clearly show that after spending all those marketing dollars to get potential buyers into their homes, motivated buyers were largely ignored and received almost no relevant follow up from the builder’s site agent. On-site builder agents allowed prospects to walk out the door, but also allowed them to slip through their fingers with little relevant follow up…or in many cases ANY follow up after the visit.
The Conclusion – Builders who implement the changes we have recommended here will be better positioned than those that do not to take advantage of the inevitable turn around that will eventually come in the housing market.
Thanks to Brendan and his team for the timely and powerful info.
Contact:
Red Tree Marketing Resultants
Join Me at Sunbelt Builders Show
I am off to Grapevine Texas at the end of the month where I’ll be presenting at the Sunbelt Builders Show on October 30th. Join me for this live presentation covering all the new technology, statistics and information about your online consumers and how to create a powerful program to maximize your reach on the internet. Check out all the details below.
October 30th 10:15-11:45
Browsers to Buyers: Proven Strategies for Selling New Homes Online
Are you looking for a competitive edge in a challenging market? Whether you have a commanding internet presence or you are stuck in the digital dark ages, learn proven methods that are necessary to develop or improve your online new home sales. This powerful seminar will provide an easy-to-follow roadmap leading to a successful online sales program that will help you attract and capture more qualified buyers. Learn the trade secrets that promise to explode your online sales and convert more of your browsers into buyers!
About the Sunbelt Builders Show
The largest and most successful trade show and education conference for the residential and light construction industries offers you the opportunity to:
-Exhibit the latest building products and services
-Learn from the nation’s construction industry experts
-Network with thousands of building professionals
-Enjoy the many networking and entertainment events
Whether you’re marketing products, building or remodeling, Sunbelt offers a positive business climate in which to learn and network in a friendly, relaxed environment.
On the trade show floor, in the education conference rooms and at the many special events, you’ll have the opportunity to network with building industry pros from across the United States and North America.
The Texas Association of Builders and the Sunbelt Builders Show™ will also continue their tradition of providing the very latest in green building and cutting-edge expertise.
Think like Nike – Why hyper-local marketing is important
I recently listened to an interview where experts discussed the shoe industry and how the economy has taken its toll on the apparel market. But unlike clothing, the shoe industry is still selling. But there are challenges. One of the biggest challenges that companies are now facing is the inability to market the way they used to. They no longer have the marketing budgets to handle large, national media buys. They know the importance of advertising, especially now, because in a recession consumers become even harder to reach.
To solve the problem, some shoe companies are employing hyper-local marketing to reach their core markets. Take Nike, for example. They recently released 300 shoes at $250 a pair and had customers lining up outside their local stores in eager anticipation. They were marketing to fans that Nike calls, “sneaker heads” and knew that this hyper-local market would be excited about Nike’s message and brand. The sneaker heads would help spread the message about these new Nikes.
We can do this in the home building industry, too. National home builders are doing whatever it takes to maintain profits, like taking advantage of the current $8,000 incentive for first time buyers. But without a marketing budget, they’re falling short. They are being forced to look at different alternatives for builder marketing. What about these hyper-local markets? Do national builders even know how to market locally?
What are the big boys doing to customize their marketing to the localized economies? How much power are they giving to their local divisions? These are the people who will spread the marketing message and brand. In real estate, referrals are one of the largest sources of sales, so what can home builders do? They need to shift their marketing power to their local teams who understand the local culture — the people on the ground who can energize the local market (that might mean your sales team)
Hyper-local marketing. It’s working for Nike, and it can work for any builder in multiple markets. And social media and the Internet has become an integral part of the marketing mix. Marketing guru Seth Godin talks about building communities in his book “Tribes.” He says you only need a tribe of a 1,000 to be successful. I would say in a local market, you only need a few hundred people buying homes, getting excited, and telling their friends, to be successful.
So what are you doing for builder marketing on the local level? How are you becoming hyper-local in your thinking. What are you doing to change your culture?
