We have a great virtual customer conference planned for May 10-14th. This is our largest virtual customer conference ever with over 30 sessions, guest speakers, industry experts, Constellation staff and many opportunities for builders to learn from their peers.
We’ll cover many recent enhancements in our home building software solutions and offer product training sessions as well. For a detailed agenda and registration information, please click on the link below.
We have an exciting show planned with many experts available to answer your questions about our products, recent acquisitions, and real-world best practices. To register for these sessions, please click on the session name in the schedule below.
Over the past year, we have seen huge changes in our industry and technology in general. While many builders were focused on their business and making many tough decisions, we were focused on providing world-class customer service, enhancing our products, and developing or acquiring new technologies to meet the needs of the changing home builder, home buyer, and home owner.
To meet these demands, we have released major enhancements to our core production, accounting and sales solutions, completed two significant acquisitions, developed two new products, and offer many of our products in hosted configurations. Our track record with new acquisitions demonstrates Constellation’s commitment to customers with world-class service and ongoing product support and enhancements. This means that home builders can rely on Constellation for stable products, dedication to the industry, and proven expertise. With more than 100 employees focused on homebuilding software, and over 2,400 customers we are the largest software company in the industry with the resources to deliver mission-critical solutions for home builders of all sizes.
With several booths at the show this year, please be sure to stop by to share some stories, or just ask our experts a few questions. We would like to learn more about your business and offer our assistance in any way we can.
A couple months ago Builder G, not their real name, decided to change the way they follow-up with internet leads. They are already a successful builder, but this is still a big step for their company and their staff. Everyone involved in this will learn how to use the internet differently, identify and follow-up with prospects more consistently, and manage their sales teams more effectively. They will make better use of Constellation’s home building software. I hope we learn a lot as well and we’ll share it with other builders in the Constellation family.
For most builders, the time is right to make this improvement. There is some optimism in the market, websites have probably been neglected, more potential home buyers are getting their information online, the length of the new home buying process has increased, and many large builders are attributing their recent success to a better website sales process.
Builder G will make the following changes:
update their existing website so that it is easier for prospects to obtain community/lot/model/upgrade details and provide contact information
utilize one employee to follow-up with all internet prospects immediately to provide friendly information and schedule sales agent appointments
utilize their existing sales system to track each prospect and ensure that only qualified prospects are provided to sales agents
Builder G hopes to obtain the following results:
obtain more prospects from their existing websites (pre-registration and existing communities)
ensure that all prospects are the responsibility of one person and that their marketing database is properly maintained for future prospect campaigns
use the software from Constellation to follow industry best practices and track every prospect from start to finish
Just a quick announcement to let everyone know that the recording from our online marketing prospect follow-up session with Mike Lyon is available for viewing.
In this presentation, Mike does a great job talking about the changing habits of new home buyers and explains some practical approaches builders can follow to increase the number of new home sales.
To summarize, it’s all about:
providing quick, personal follow-up for all online prospects
ongoing periodic communication (e-mail, phone calls)
bringing online prospects into the sales office
Fortunately, Constellation has sales and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to help with this. We can bring prospect information from your website into your sales system automatically, provide website redesign services, and even help builders go live with a new website very quickly. For example, Kaplan Companies and Stylecraft Builders have used our services to create some amazing websites that are optimized for search engine results.
We would like to thank Mike for conducting the webinar. He speaks with authority about the conversion rates a builder can expect and best practices that can be implemented to boost sales from internet leads. He is also the author of Browsers to Buyers:Proven Strategies for Selling New Homes Online, the home building industry’s authoritative guide on internet marketing, lead generation and leads management.
To learn more about Mike and how he can help your organization, you can visit www.doyouconvert.com.
Click here for your video invitation to this event.
With more and more new home buyers going online to begin purchasing their new home, home builders need to consider the following:
Search engine results and rankings are critical
Websites need to be organized to capture more prospect information
Prospect follow-up needs to happen quickly
Sales staff need to be accountable for every prospect
Prospects that are not motivated now can become motivated at any time, so ongoing communication is important
The session will be presented by Constellation HomeBuilder Systems and Mike Lyon and will feature a detailed presentation, product demonstrations and an opportunity for questions.
Important Registration Information
After you register for this session, all participants will receive an email confirmation via WebEx confirming your registration with an event URL and event password. If you do not receive a confirmation, please contact Cathy Kotsopoulos via email or by phone at (888) 723-2222 ext 6140.
Constellation Builder Broadcast is a complete e-mail marketing solution, providing an economical, results-oriented solution for home builders of all sizes, whether you build 5 houses a year or 10,000.
Now, more than ever, it is critical to know as much about potential home buyers as possible. You would never send the same e-mail to a home buyer as you would to a real estate agent. Constellation Builder Broadcast offers affordable tools to send timely, meaningful communication to your prospects and customers that will help you get referrals to help increase sales.
Collecting and managing e-mail addresses is just the beginning. Beyond simply sending the e-mail messages, Constellation has prepared a best practices guide for e-mail marketing. This guide, along with Constellation Builder Broadcast will help you optimize your e-mail campaigns, and effortlessly keep your campaigns in compliance with junk e-mail regulations.
Some of the key benefits include:
Built-in best practices for e-mail marketing and campaign management, designed to increase prospect-to-customer conversion ratios.
Build strong, trusted relationships by staying in-touch with your prospects, ensure delivery of the messages you want them to read, and encourage them to make a purchase decision.
Measure e-mail marketing effectiveness with insightful reporting, tracking and analytics to determine content relevance, timeliness, frequency and overall performance of your e-mail marketing campaigns.
See how you can stand out from the competition with polished, professional, and highly relevant e-mail marketing campaigns.
Constellation had a great day 1 at PCBC 2009. We met a bunch of home builders that are just getting started or looking for ways to improve their businesses with technology. Our online home owner warranty and service guides were a hit, with a few builders learning how to reduce warranty costs, while communicating online with their new home buyers.
Just a reminder that we will be at PCBC (Booth 1316 South Hall) next week with several new products and enhancements for home builders. We have had a great year developing award winning software products and helping builders do more with less.
Similar to the Large Builder Roundtable this group provided an inside look at small and medium sized builders discussing the recent stimulus programs, selling new homes, doing more with less, implementing software systems, working with trades and suppliers, vendor portals, home builder websites, and the impact of green building on home builders. Each builder describes their experiences dealing with conditions in their market and how they use technology and processes to do more with less.
All Constellation customers have received invitations to our upcoming virtual user conference. If you have still not registered, please do so using the links below.
Constellation HomeBuilder Systems is pleased to invite you to our first ever, Virtual User Conference on March 23 through March 27, 2009.
Join us for this FREE event in the comfort of your office, or any location with an internet connection and a phone.
Hosted by our BuildSoft, Builder 360, NEWSTAR, FAST and Constellation CRM (formerly “CFT”) product families, these series of webinars will include valuable product update sessions, industry best practices, and home builder roundtable discussions.
Delivered by Constellation experts and guest speakers, you will learn about new product enhancements, upcoming events, industry best practices, trends in the customer base, and opportunities to help you get the most out of your software system.
Product Update Sessions
On March 23rd at 1PM EST, we will be hosting the following product update sessions. Please register for the product update session of your choice using the links below.
Today’s home buyers are fearful of making a buying decision and consumer confidence is at historic lows. We as sales people must do all the heavy lifting to get them to want to buy. The key to this is repetitive contact and building a trusted relationship to enable them to take action without regret. This means using your system to its fullest to keep in touch with the prospect. None of us can remember all the details and the necessary follow-up schedule. This session will explore the reasons for the fear, despite the great values in the market, and justify the use of valuable tools you may already have to make high tech equal high touch.
Now that the housing boom is behind us and the entire industry is dealing with a new reality, managing warranty and service costs is very important. In this session, we’ll show you how many builders have reduced their warranty and service costs, and improved customer satisfaction and referrals with small investments in online homeowner manuals, maintenance guides, newsletters and service request portals.
Many builders, both small and large, can achieve cost advantages and improved forecasting using purchase orders. In this session, builders will learn how to reduce costs as a result of issuing purchase orders and paying trades without relying on completion slips and invoices. Even if you are already using purchase orders for your trades, this session will provide additional opportunities for process improvement.
Get the Information You Need from Your Accounting System
As a follow-up to our Coping with Financial Distress webinar from last August, this session will help Canadian and US builders identify how to analyze those ratios that are the most important in running their business. Using the information from your accounting systems can help you improve your bottom line and increase your profits. In addition, timely communication to lenders from from their builders will help ensure viable financing solutions. Steve Hays and Felicia Malter, Partners in the Home Builder Services Group at RubinBrown LLP, will also share some information about what financial reporting might look like as we prepare for better times.
Builder Roundtable Discussion
On March 27th at 1PM EST, we will be hosting the following builder roundtable discussions. Please register for the session of your choice using the links below.
– Small Volume Builders and Remodelers
– Larger Volume Production Builders
Additional Information
Register now, or contact
Cathy Kotsopoulos via email or by phone at (888) 723-2222 x6140.
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