Production and Accounting Software for Home Builders

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

1. 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

1. Look for homes online around lunch time
2. During afternoon meetings, before leaving the office, they look for more homes
3. Driving home and eating dinner, so no looking for homes at this time
4. Look for more homes after dinner around 7pm.
5. From 8PM to 10PM, put the kids to bed
6. 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

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

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:

1. providing quick, personal follow-up for all online prospects
2. ongoing periodic communication (e-mail, phone calls)
3. 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.

Direct link: Online Marketing and Prospect Follow-up Best Practices

The Constellation FOCUS Dashboard video overview is now available in the NEWSTAR client care center.

This recording summarizes recent enhancements in Constellation FOCUS and it is available anytime for Constellation customers.

Constellation FOCUS is business intelligence tool that helps home builders analyze data, distribute reports, and view business information graphically in the form of charts and graphs.

It’s easy to view. Simply login to the client care center at www.constellationhelpdesk.com, click on the NEWSTAR link at the top, and the event will be listed on the left in the NEWSTAR Video Library.

This session is recommended for General Managers, Sales Managers, Purchasing Staff, and Construction Managers.

To request a user account, or if you need to reset your password, click here.

Toronto, Ontario, August 4, 2009 – Constellation Software Inc. (“Constellation”) (TSX: CSU) announced today that it has completed, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Constellation HomeBuilder Systems (“CHS”), the acquisition of certain assets and liabilities of the Enterprise and the Homebuilder Web Development Group (“The Enterprise”) from Move, Inc. (Nasdaq: MOVE), the leader in online real estate.

The Enterprise, based in Milwaukee, WI, develops custom Web sites for real estate brokerages and homebuilders.  Product offerings include web development, interative voice response (IVR/Hotline) systems, and television production solutions.

“We are pleased to add the The Enterprise to the CHS family of technology solutions,” commented Dexter Salna, President of CHS.  “We will continue to build on The Enterprise’s strong, well established customer base and flagship product line.”

About Constellation:

Constellation’s common shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “CSU”.  Constellation Software in an international provider of market leading software and services to a number of industries across both the public and private sectors.  Constellation acquires, manages and builds vertical market software businesses that provide mission-critical software solutions to address the specific needs of its customers in those industries.

About Move, Inc.:

Move, Inc. (NASDAQ:MOVE) is the leader in online real estate with 8.3 million(1) monthly visitors to its online network of websites.  Move, Inc. operates: Move.com, a leading destination for information on new homes and rental listings, moving, home and garden and home finance; REALTOR.com, the official Web site of the National Association of REALTORS; Moving.com; SeniorHousingNet.com; and Top Producer Systems.  Move, Inc. is based in Westlake Village, California.

For futher information, contact:

John Billowits
Chief Financial Officer, Constellation Software Inc.
(416) 861.2279
info@csisoftware.com
www.csisoftware.com