3 Best Prospects for New Home Sales

Are you being asked about prospecting for new clients? You remember prospecting, don’t you? It’s what we do in a normal market. As a prospecting refresher, I’m sharing the three R’s of new home sales: repeat customers, referrals, and realtors. 

New home salespeople, suddenly we’re having to talk about prospecting. This is a subject we talk about a great deal in normal markets, but let’s face it, it’s been a hot minute since we’ve seen a normal market. 

Sales leaders are asking me about prospecting skills and pointing out that their salespeople are simply not prepared to do the prospecting necessary for the market to come. Salespeople themselves are asking similar questions and having meaningful conversations over in Sales365.

Who you are prospecting to?

There’s a whole wide world of people that you can talk to about purchasing one of your homes. I suggest that you start by talking to those people who are most likely to purchase. I have a limited amount of time in which the prospect I don’t want to use that time talking to people who are highly unlikely to buy.

I believe we should focus on three areas, the three R’s if you will repeat visitors, referrals, and realtors.

Repeat Visitors

Sometimes people visit a sales office, and they might very well fall in love with a home, but the timing isn’t right. It has nothing to do with the home or with their appreciation of the home. It simply means that this is not a good time for them to purchase, and they walk away to think about it.

The problem with walking away is that they become detached from their initial emotional impulse. They just sort of forget that they were so in love with the home that you were selling. Repeat visitor prospecting aims to reignite the very emotion that stirred in that customer’s heart when they saw the home in the first place. 

That’s why taking good notes about your customer is so important. You are taking good notes, aren’t you? And when I say good notes, I don’t simply mean that they want three bedrooms and 2500 square feet. What I mean is, what were they in love with? What struck them as something that would truly enhance their life?

When you’re reaching out to repeat visitors, this is the opportunity to reconnect to the emotion and to talk about the home and their life in emotional terms.

Referrals

These are the best source of sales and the easiest if you’re taking good care of your customers. Elated customers are prone to send many new prospects to your community in the first year after they moved in. People referred are far more likely to have a good experience themselves. They walk through the door with a smile on their face. They’ve already been preconditioned to want to like your community. I cannot speak highly enough of the value of referrals.

Two things to keep in mind for referrals. First, you have to make sure that you are delivering stellar service to your customers so that they are inclined to refer to you in the first place. Second, you have to nudge your customer consistently.  You have to nudge your customer to want to send you those referrals and to make positive comments to friends and family members.

Learn more about referrals and providing great customer experiences in my new book, co-authored with Bob Mirman, releasing this month, From Contract to Close. You can preorder your copy here!

Realtors

Let’s face it, realtors have buyers. Some new home salespeople take the tactic of talking to as many realtors as they possibly can. I prefer more of a targeted approach. By that, I mean targeting individual high-performance realtors. I recommend you identify several higher-producing realtors and then play the long game. This isn’t about the one home that you have for sale today. It’s about all of the future sales that your high-performing realtors will be able to bring you down the road.

Your best realtor relationships come from people who trust you and whom you trust.

How committed are you to owning your prospecting efforts and making sure that you are constantly driving self-directed traffic to your community? This is how and when we have the best chance to excel even in a slower market.

Until next time, learn more to earn more!