There are three kinds of sales teams I have experienced in my sales and marketing career. I have been a part of these teams but more recently assembled them for N5R. There are great sales teams, mediocre sales teams and just plain horrible sales teams. They do things differently and get compensated differently. If you want a world class condo project sales team (and why would you not?) then never believe that you can pay them poorly. Get a world class compensation package ready for them, because a world class condo project sales team that gets compensated at a mediocre level will perform at that pay level. That is both a waste of talent and a poor way to get the results you want. Here are four key points from the ideal process I would go through to build a world class condo project sales team.
- Build a first-rate team and they will build your brand. Money is the foundation, and where do you plan to find it? I prefer a commissions-based incentivized approach instead of leaning more on marketing. You might not expect that given my project marketing reputation, but you could spend a lot of money to generate a ton of leads only to have a mediocre sales team burn through it all with poor results. A great team will turn more of your leads into sales, even if you have fewer leads to work with. Their high-quality efforts will build a brand for you.
- Training is the next most important thing. A talented group of project sales experts with great compensation is not the whole story. Your team needs to be on the same page and have an agreed-upon dynamic sales process to help coordinate their efforts. One extremely effective process is called the Critical Path.
- The Critical Path. This is the order in which your project sales experts reveal their condo development's story to potential buyers. It has a particular rhythm to it. It begins with the big picture, and only after that has been revealed do they dive into smaller details. That big picture is not floor plans or models, which I would describe as smaller details. They start with the area of the development. They go from macro to micro, to simplify a bit: larger region, smaller more specific area, developer, project. There may be more steps in the order depending on the project, but it always goes from macro to micro. The Critical Path is always customer-focused and engaging. Project sales experts will engage with customers throughout the process, asking them their impressions and, for example, what they liked about the video they just saw, so that the pitch can be dynamically tailored to each prospective buyer. The general pitch must be scripted so that it is the same pitch any day of the week.
- Introduce your team to the best hardware and software. Yes, condo project sales teams got by in the past without these tools, but these days it would be foolish not to use them. Past sales teams also spent too much time grinding at processes manually because they had no other choice. Now you have a choice. Hubspot is one particular tool which allows automated site visitor tracking, automated email campaigns, automated social media... with all that smart automation, your world-class sales team can spend more of their time on in-person meetings, discussions with prospective buyers and all the things that we can't automate. Hardware matters too; why print out so many brochures when you can port the content to the iPads of customers and salespeople? Bottom line: your team should get to know technology that will save them time and money.
I hope that you walk away from this with a few ideas. If you want first-rate results, you need to build a first-rate sales team, and you need to do everything necessary to build and maintain first-rate efforts from them. That includes first-rate sales compensation and the best project marketing hardware and software they can use. That also includes formulating a process which can guide your team's efforts for the best results. If you are interested in more ways to build a world-class condo project sales team, and many other marketing insights from my years of experience, you need to get It's Not The Market, It's Your Marketing from Amazon.ca. Why not pick up a free chapter before you get the whole thing?
