Improving Your Lead Close Rate

How many times has someone suggested that you treat your Internet leads differently from your normal physical traffic? Pundits and sales trainers often tell you this. Since these buyers have already visited you online, you have to treat them differently. They tell you to treat them as a Be-Back. The explanation for this prescription is quite logical. First, the Internet is an integral part of more than 80% of shoppers’ new home searches. Second, it is annoying and a waste of time to go through all the general information about the community that these prospects already know. Finally, you are wasting a tremendous opportunity to move the dialogue and sale along by not treating these folks differently. These prospects have already read about the community and looked at plans and inventory, and may already be comfortable with the location, product and price. Well, those pundits and sales trainers are right. What they rarely explain is how you should treat these Internet savvy buyers differently.

This month, I share with you what it means to treat Internet traffic as Be-Back. I loosely paraphrase from a script Myers Barnes delivered at IBS in 2006. Myers is a friend, so I hope he will forgive me for butchering his carefully crafted script. What he had to say was quite profound, because it is a short-cut to improving your Internet-related closing rates. Here it goes:

Salesperson: Welcome to Winding Creek. Thank you for coming in today. May I ask you a question?

Prospect: Certainly.

Salesperson: Our marketing department tells us that a large percentage of our customers visit our website before visiting this location. Did you happen to visit us online before coming in today? [I know it seems to be far too leading of a question]

Prospect: Why, yes, we did.

Salesperson: Great. So, we could say that this is more like your second visit to Winding Creek. Isn’t that right?

Prospect: I guess so.

Salesperson: Welcome back. Tell me. When you visited us online, were there any plans that you remember particularly liking?

Prospect: Well, there was one. I think you call it the Collette.

Salesperson: Fantastic. We happen to have a model of the Collette available here to see. Should we have a look?

Prospect: That would be great.

That wasn’t too bad, was it? You will have to practice, and a little role playing will go a long way to making it natural. You will soon be cutting short the critical path and jumping ahead into your product demonstration. More importantly, you will close more sales.

Google Searches: "New Homes" Search Volume Trends

What goes up, must come down.  After seeing "new home" related searches match their high point in July, we saw a substantial decrease in search volume traffic for the month of August.  A decrease is to be expected, as the selling season cools, and families prepare their children to go back to school.  The cyclical nature of the market along with the national market conditions have made this recent drop more extreme in comparison to other years. 

Below is a snapshot provided by Google Trends highlighting the August dip relative to the rest of the year. (Note:Google does not publish actual search volume quantities performed but they do offer this graph.)

Online Lead Conversion Rates: Maximize Your Results

From Blair Kuhnen, VP of Marketing at Builder Homesite

Several builders have asked me "What should my online lead conversion rate be?" and it is a perennial favorite when I speak about online sales counselor (OSC) programs. This month I share with you a few guideposts you can use when setting up your initial goals and expectations.

There is not a specific lead conversion rate target for a best practice OSC program. Every builder operates with a different set of variables. Some of the factors that affect your conversion rate include:

1. The strength of your market - hot markets get better, more complete leads
2. Your calls-to-action - a good offer gets consumers clicking
3. The usability of your website - if they can't find the button, don't expect them to use it
4. The quality of leads - leads from your own website are always your best leads
5. The effectiveness of your lead handling process and your on-site sales force.

Does this mean, there is no answer? Let me share with you a starting point.

Search Engine Marketing Strategies - PPC vs. SEO - Part 1

Part 1 of our Search Engine Marketing Series will focus on the basics of PPC.

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote a website by increasing it’s visibility in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) when someone enters a keyword phrase that is relevant to that website or business. There are 2 main types of results on a SERP – Sponsored Listings (PPC) and Organic (Natural) Listings (SEO).

The Sponsored Listings are Pay Per Click Advertisements that are created by an Internet Marketer or firm that wants to present an advertisement to those users searching for specific keyword phrases. These Sponsored Listings will show up at the very top of the Search Results Page or on the right hand sidebar. The Internet Marketer responsible for creating the Pay Per Click Advertising Campaigns will assign a maximum bid to each keyword or group of keywords and establish an overall monthly budget that they are willing to spend on those designated keywords.

With each search performed on Google, the ad will post what is called an impression in the Sponsored Listing section. They will only need to pay for that advertisement if someone clicks on the displayed text ad and the user is then redirected to their website. This is referred to as Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising. Initiating a PPC Campaign is rather simple to get started (you can see your advertisements posted within minutes of setting them up) but maximizing the amount of clicks you get for your money is a daunting process that deserves continuous attention and improvement by a PPC Expert.

Check back next week to learn about SEO - Search Engine Optimization.  Yes, it is different than PPC...

The Importance of Visualization: Real $3.1M Mansion Causes Big Virtual Stir

Be sure to read this article on cnn.com about a $3.1M mansion in Washington State that has been re-created in the 3-D online world, Second Life. This is a fascinating and innovative way to market real estate for prospective buyers online. This first attempt has attracted a lot of interest in the virtual community:

"In real life, a house like this might normally attract the attention of 50 to 100 people, but since Wednesday 3,500 people have toured the home in Second Life, according to its broker, Suzanne Lane. Not all of them are prospective buyers of course -- in a virtual world it's easy for anyone who's curious to just stop by.

"I feel comfortable that it will sell within the next couple of months," she said, despite the fact that the Seattle real-estate market has cooled recently."

This gives food for thought on the impact 3-D visualizations have on buyers, and the increasing importance of utilizing advanced visualization tools to attract interest in real estate properties. Consumers will soon expect to see 3-D walkthroughs and video tours of homes they are researching. Pictures and traditional virtual tours are becoming more and more obsolete by the day. As an industry we need to start creating interactive content, such as video and 3-D walkthroughs, that will excite consumers for years to come.

Thanks to Crystal Christopherson from Envision for this post.

How to Capture AND Convert More Leads

To paraphrase the cartoon on the left, The greatest technology in the world won't guarantee you better lead conversion. You need to leverage the latest technologies alongside tried and true lead generation techniques to truly maximize conversion. This post is the first in a series that will help you generate and convert more leads. This post comes from Blair Kuhnen, VP of Marketing at BHI.

Simmons Homes is the leading builder in Tulsa. Tulsa, Oklahoma is a small, but good, homebuilding market. Being a smaller market, with limited relocation and easy commutes, lead volume for builders tends to be low. Many home shoppers are reluctant to give up their contact information and prefer to just visit communities without ever becoming a lead. Simmons has no problem generating lots of leads and converting a great many of them into sales. Here's how they do it.

First a little background. Simmons created an OSC program in October of 2005. When Simmons started their OSC program they were generating well under 100 leads per month. Since that time, they have added NewHomeSource.com, Move.com, NewHomeguides.com, and pay-per-click campaigns to drive up their website leads and third party leads. They have improved their monthly lead volume by 491%, plenty for an effective OSC program.

Simmons sees 20-25% of their total sales coming from their Internet leads. I spent some time this month with Mike Lyon, OSC for Simmons Homes, about techniques for converting more of these leads into sales. Mike is a master of online sales. His strength is in setting appointments. You can order his book on the subject here. After reading it, I would consider buying it just for his phone scripts. Continue reading this post. Click on the link to see the rest.