History has taught us that the greater the understanding we have of our sales center prospects including their thoughts and feelings, the more we can clearly understand their motivations, both physically and emotionally and use that information to better develop marketing stimulus and sales strategies that can grab their attention, get them to react favorably and sell more homes.

1. The Application of
Knowledge is Power
_________________________________________________________________________________
The Importance of Collecting Intelligence

2. Mike Curtin
 www.TheSaleStream.com
 Email: MikeCurtin@TheSaleStream.com
 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/the-salestream
 Tel: 941.704.4422
 Google +: http://goo.gl/ZQUfiS

3. Knowledge is not Power
The Application of Knowledge is
Power
History has taught us that the greater the
understanding we have of our sales center prospects
including their thoughts and feelings, the more we can
clearly understand their motivations, both physically
and emotionally and use that information to better
develop marketing stimulus and sales strategies that
can grab their attention, get them to react favorably and
sell more homes.

4. My experience as a Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing of a
publically traded, 3 billion dollar developer and homebuilder organization
taught me the importance of garnering the right information from new
home sales center prospects.
The Importance of Collecting
Intelligence

5. How did we gather
the information?
• Direct mail surveys
• Focus groups
• In-depth phone surveys
What did we ask?
• Their interest in buying, when and why.
• If they were not interested in buying, why
not and what could we do to persuade
them.
• What were their reactions to the
community, the amenities and the homes?
• What specifically appealed to them and
what did not?
• How did we perform as a sales team and
as a company?
• What could we do to improve our
presentation and demonstration to more
appeal to them?
• What was it, specifically, about our
message that made them want to take the
next step and visit the sales center?

6. Why is this information important?
It gave us the intelligence and the tools to sell more homes and
profitably impact the bottom line.
Back in the day, the effort was very expensive and in some
cases, the time it took made some of the information we
gathered a bit dated. Needless to say, we successfully
applied what we learned and it worked; the company grew
from $500,000 million in sales in 1998 to over 3 billion within
10 years.

7. While our own investments and efforts paid off, not all homebuilder and developer companies had the
financial resources or the inclination to understand their prospects. Most often, the technique used to
elicit this type of prospect information is through sales meetings, which almost always go like this:
Typical Sales Meeting:
Part 1:
• Meeting is spent reviewing administrative issues,
closings, financing and related topics.
Part 2:
• A meeting always starts with this statement…
“Let’s review your hot prospects from the
previous week, shall we!”
• The sales manager then asks each of his or her
sales people the names of their prospects, what
their “hot buttons” are, what their objections are,
where else they are looking and what can be
done to move them along
This technique has been employed since
sales managers and sales teams were
invented to sell new homes.

8. Here is the problem with that technique…the company that is trying to sell
a home for $200,000 to $2,000,000 is relying solely on the opinion of the
sales person. The first seven years of my career were spent on the sales
floor selling new homes, and I guarantee I misjudged and misqualified
many of my own prospects.
The best sales person misjudges some of the prospects ALL of the time
and all of the prospects SOME of the time.
I love sales people, I was and am one, but the problem is, most of the
opinions sales people have and their motivations are self-serving and
understandably so, most are independent contractors working on straight
commissions. The information provided to management is not always in
the best interests of the company.

9. The result is a huge “disconnect” between what the prospect really thinks
and feels and what management assumes they understand about them.

10. The Solution
The solution is obvious and easy…simply ask the
prospect to tell you, in their own words, what they think
about your community, its homes and amenities, if they
want to buy, when and why, etc. Do this immediately
after they have left the community and have had time to
think about what they experienced.
Applying their honest answers to your business model
will help you sell more homes since the potential
customer is telling you exactly how to sell to them.

11. A Story
I had lunch recently at Ruby
Tuesday and after paying, I looked
at the receipt. It asked if I would
take the time to tell management
how my meal and service was by
taking a short survey. I was
directed to a web site. I took the
survey (both the meal and the
service were excellent by the way)
and it struck me as odd…
Here is the management of a
restaurant that is interested enough
to want to know what I thought
about my $40 lunch experience

12. As homebuilders, we don’t make the effort to learn what our prospects
personally think about their experience when they were on our property
looking to buy that $200,000 to $2,000,000 home. We rely entirely on our
sales people for that feedback. It’s like the manager of that Ruby Tuesday
asking my waitress if I was well-served and happy with my experience.
ODD INDEED!
If places such as restaurants, retail stores, financial institutions, and
hospitality providers have figured out the importance of learning what their
customers and prospects really think and feel, it’s high time homebuilders
and developers jump on the bandwagon.
SaleStream has created a mechanism specifically designed for
developers and homebuilders to do so.

13. Contact Us Today
Mike Curtin is a managing partner of SaleStream,
LLC. SaleStream provides homebuilders and
developers with
a technologically advanced PROSPECT
ENGAGEMENT PLATFORM delivering sales
and marketing professionals with “real-insight”
in “real-time.”
For more information, call Mike at 941.704.4422