Production and Accounting Software for Home Builders » Case Study

The Value of a New Home Sales and CRM System

Chris Graham — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:57:23 +0000

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit with a client and was pleasantly surprised. The Sales Manager explained that they weren’t currently using all of the features in their new home sales system to capture all the sales information, but then she explained that they did use it for many important functions. She explained that even though they didn’t use it to its fullest extent, it was still a very helpful tool, and she excitedly described how it recently helped her land a very important sale.

A husband and wife had come into the sales office one day and told her that they had visited and taken a look around a couple of years ago, and liked what they saw, and they were getting closer to being ready to buy. The Sales Manager welcomed them back, and invited them to take a look around the model, and politely excused herself, saying that she needed to take care of something in her office and that she would be back in just a moment. She rushed back into her office and pulled up their names in their CRM system, and was able to refresh her memory by reading all of the detailed notes she had recorded during their earlier visits. She returned to her buyers, and created opportunities to work the pieces of information that she had gathered from their visits 2 years ago, into the conversation. The prospects felt very special and thought it was absolutely amazing that she remembered so much about them.

The Sales Manager told me that she ultimately closed a sale with them, and that the prospects mentioned they were very impressed with her ability to remember them. While she recognizes that there were many other factors that impacted the final purchase decision, she was also confident that her effort to enter additional prospect information in the new home sales and CRM system played a large role in landing the sale.

Another Reason to Get Leads into Your Sales System Immediately

Chris Graham — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:06:31 +0000

When your website is hooked up to your sales system in real-time, you can start to analyze data in powerful ways. Without this real-time integration, you won’t know exactly when the lead came in… it would most likely show up as 50 leads every Monday morning, some of them may have expressed interest almost a week ago. (if they submitted their contact information right after you did the import)

Having said that, here is some aggregate analysis for lead distribution by Day of Week and Time of Day. If you look at the charts and imagine how this fits in your prospective home buyer’s day, you should be able to decide when you want your sales staff available to answer questions by e-mail or phone and schedule appointments for your sales agents.

Lead Distribution – Day of Week

husband/wife procrastination factor “can you look up that house we saw last weekend?” it looks like it takes a couple of days for the husband/wife to get around to it.

Lead Distribution – Time of Day

Look for homes online around lunch time
During afternoon meetings, before leaving the office, they look for more homes
Driving home and eating dinner, so no looking for homes at this time
Look for more homes after dinner around 7pm.
From 8PM to 10PM, put the kids to bed
Kids are in bed, time to look for homes again.

Note: Although 8AM, doesn’t look like a prime time for leads, there is some opportunity on Monday mornings as you’ll see below.

Lead Distribution – Day of Week and Time of Day

Around noon on Sunday, they look for homes online
They might be driving around looking for homes in the neighbourhoods they like between 1 and 5pm on Sunday.
Around 6pm they look up the homes that they saw on their Sunday drive
At 8 AM on Monday, they get to work and look at more homes.
At 4 PM on Monday they look for more homes before leaving work
On Tuesday at lunch and towards the end of their workday, they look for more homes.
They look for more homes on Tuesday around 10 PM, then they forget about it until Friday as they prepare for their weekend.

Converting Website Prospects to Buyers

Chris Graham — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:18:24 +0000

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

We’ll let you know how it goes.