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Stop, Look and Listen to Your Customers
 Every job requires a basic knowledge of the tools of its trade. That is as true for sales clerks as it is for builders. It’s also true of marketing.
Within the home building industry, there are four basic marketing tools — or variables ― that can be adjusted and manipulated to achieve optimum sales success. They are the four Ps:
Place — The community or location where the house will be built
Product — The actual house to be built
Price — The price established for the house
Promotion — The advertising, marketing and promotional activity used to stimulate traffic
I often hear builders say that they don’t need marketing because their houses are selling. The reality is that the builders who claim this, whether through luck or skill, have been able to deliver three of the four Ps — place, product and price — to their customers without the benefit of promotion.
Adding promotion to the mix only maximizes their sales potential.
But what happens when a finished home doesn’t sell or a community stagnates? The house is already built, so changing the product or location is too cost prohibitive an option to be considered.
The builder is left with only two variables that he can adjust — price and promotion ― and two alternatives that are not very appealing. He can reduce the price of the house or increase his promotion budget (or both).
Ask Your Customers Want They Want
To avoid having to choose from either alternative, builders should engage in activities that allow them to determine consumer demand before they begin to build. Custom home builders have done this for years. They ask their buyer what they want and then they build it.
Small- to medium-sized builders need to do the same thing, but on a broader scale.
Your first step is to stop building what you like and start asking buyers what they want. If you ask, buyers will tell you. They let Realtors® in your community know what they want — so ask.
Talk to them. Buy them lunch. Meet them at the parade of homes or other home shows in your community. Talk with the real estate agents who are selling homes. Each opportunity provides you with insight into what the market desires.
Determine What They Value
Second, you need to find out what your consumers value, what’s important to them. I don’t care how big your market share, one thing is certain ― more people don’t buy your houses than do. So shop your competition to find out why.
Look at the products selling in your market. Why are they moving while yours aren't? Could it be that you have put too much stock in a particular technique or feature that is not that important to your consumers?
Listen to What They Say
Finally, listen to what your consumers are telling you — because if you don’t, someone else will.
They will tell you what you are doing right, what is good about your home and why they want to live where they want to live. They will also let you know what is not working — where you are spending money and time that doesn’t matter to them.
In short, consumers will help you identify where you have an advantage over your competition, a situation that you can capitalize on easily.
So, stop, look and listen to your customers. The best part about this effort is that it will cost you very little to implement while rewarding you with big dividends.
Hal Von Nessen, MIRM, is the president of RESH Marketing Consultants, a full-service advertising and public relations firm headquartered in Columbia, S.C. Von Nessen is a member of the faculty of NAHB's Institute of Residential Marketing and teaches IRM courses throughout the country. For more information, e-mail Von Nessen, call him at 803-798-0009, or visit the RESH Marketing Consultants Web site at www.resh.com.
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For additional cutting-edge sales and marketing information, subscribe to NAHB’s Sales + Marketing Ideas magazine. Call 800-368-5242 x8192 or visit www.smimagazine.com to subscribe or order a copy. Click here to learn about membership benefits of the National Sales and Marketing Council and the Institute of Residential Marketing.
The Insititute of Residential Marketing Offers Courses and Designation Programs for Sales & Marketing Professionals
The Institute of Residential Marketing (IRM) offers four designation programs for sales and marketing professionals:
- The CMP and MIRM designation programs for new home marketing professionals
- The CSP and MCSP designation programs for new home sales professionals
For more information on these designation programs, click here.
 BuilderBooks.com Offers Sales and Marketing Publications Online
BuilderBooks.com offers a variety of sales and marketing publications online. To view or purchase these publications, click here.
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