5 Sales Strategies for Custom Home Builders
As a company that makes custom homes in the Southern California area, there’s no question that you have your competition. This is just one of the reasons that you must not only focus on providing the highest quality materials and results for your clients, but you must strive to follow the best sales strategies out there.
At Grove Hardware, our specialty is providing a comprehensive list of job site supplies so that you can visit a single hardware store for all your construction needs. That said, in our years of business, we’ve seen some of the ways our clients succeed and we’ve seen some strategies that don’t work. Following are five sales strategies for those of you working with custom homes.
- Start by building trust
- Get into the right mindset
- Talk to your past clients
- Make sure your boundaries are clear
- Focus on the long-term relationship
Remember that every contact you have with potential clients is essentially an interview. If you set up a call time at noon, then you should be on the phone at noon. Waiting just fifteen minutes can show that client that they can’t trust you. Someone who’s about to invest a significant amount of money into a home wants to know that the builder they’re working with is someone they can trust. Don’t tell them you are – show them you are.
As you think about your business, stop thinking about what you need to do and start thinking about what your customer needs. What will make the process easier for them? What will make them satisfied with the end result? What can you do to make it easier for them to say yes to your company? Don’t tell them why you’re the best – listen to their needs.
You can guess all day about what gets clients excited about your particular business, but only by talking to past clients can you find out what really caused them to pull the trigger. Ask previous clients to fill out a survey, or call them up and ask them a few short, straight-to-the-point questions to find out what’s worked for you.
From the very beginning, you should set reasonable expectations for buyers. For example, let’s say you get a potential client on the hook right as you’re closing up a project. You likely don’t have a lot of free time and it may be a time crunch to give the new client the time they deserve. Be honest with them. Give them a reasonable idea of when they can expect to hear from you and be clear about what the boundaries are.
The cheapest, easiest way to get future sales is through word of mouth advertising. When each job is over, remember that it could lead to more work. Keep in touch with past clients so that they’re thinking about you if a friend, co-worker, or relative has similar needs in the future.
