There are key ways to communicate and build relationships with customers. I would like to share a couple with you, though this list is really just the beginning. Some examples come from the world of time shares, but there are close parallels you can find in the world of condo project marketing and it goes for real estate project sales in general.
- It's not really what you say, but how you say it. 7% of communication is through words. 38% is tonality; how loud or soft you speak or the length of words you use. 55% is body language. You might be surprised, but even when you're on the phone, some of your body language gets reflected in your tonality.
- Email is the lowest form of communication. It's still a valid way and sometimes the only way, but it's only words, so you've lost 93% of your project marketing edge right there. It's great for confirming meetings or sending documents, but a lot can be misinterpreted because so much of communication is missing. Given the choice, project sales experts always go with phone over email.
- Get to know your customers. Find ways to make them open up about what is important to them. When marketing a condo project, for example, you need to know what your customers are looking for. Time-share sellers do it by taking 20 minutes out of every presentation to discover how attendees like to have fun, then spending the rest of the meeting relating everything back to the information they gathered. They have a harder job trying to sell a 1/52 time-based share of property yet they still get positive results, so why wouldn't this work for a condo project?
- Think of the first meeting as a first date. While one-night stands sometimes work, this is neither reliable nor sustainable. What works more often is to take things one step at a time: coffee on the first date, lunch on the second, dinner on the third, maybe dancing on the fourth and a weekend away on the fifth. A project sales expert wants to build a long-term relationship with a client, and can't count on an instant sale, especially with large purchases like condos and real estate. Bottom line: don't try to close the sale during the first meeting. Good customer relationships take time.
If this teaser has made you interested in more marketing insights, and if you're wondering about project marketing in the world of digital marketing today, read It's Not The Market, It's Your Marketing now available on Amazon.ca.
