Make it Easy for Your Customers to Buy from Strong Community Teams
Teamwork makes the dream work. Right?
You’ve probably heard this expression at some point in your professional career. Hopefully, it’s more than simply an expression for you and your team. Ideally, it’s a reality and one of the staples that make your organization a great workplace.
When I say “your team,” I’m not only referring to the sales team. No, I’m talking about everyone in the organization which plays a role in delivering a superior customer experience. Community Teams, as Jeff Shore and Bob Mirman refer to them in their new book, From Contract To Close, are comprised of every customer-facing employee operating a community (including, but not limited to, salespeople, construction superintendents, studio designers, customer care representatives, etc.). The Community Team members must be on the same page and deliver consistent messages to the customer.
They recommend weekly Community Team meetings to talk about the journey of every customer in backlog and also to talk about any strong prospects who could soon make a purchase decision. Each team member should be intricately familiar with the journey of every customer.
Are you using a customer relationship management (CRM) system to capture essential details of your customers’ lives actively? Is that data easily accessible to every member of the Community Team? Wait a minute; I know what you’re thinking. Is he suggesting that non-sales professionals use the CRM? That’s precisely what I’m suggesting. There is no need for sales professionals to hoard that valuable homebuyer information. Sharing customer insights with the rest of the Community Team will provide both context and empathy throughout the entire process. If you don’t already have a systematic method of conveying homebuyer profiles to all Community Team members, put one in place immediately.
If you’ve heard Jeff speak, read his books, or participate in our training, you are likely familiar with the term Emotional Altitude. Emotional Altitude is a gauge of the customers’ positive emotional experience throughout the process, measured on a spectrum of low to high.
It’s critical to understand that customers often base their Emotional Altitude on what they see or hear (or don’t see or hear) from the homebuilder’s Community Team. In short, Emotional Altitude is modeled by Community Team members. The customer will adopt the amount of positive energy the Community Team actively brings into every conversation.
All of your Community Team members have the opportunity to change someone’s world!
