People who are at the top of their fields tend to have some things in common. They’re insatiable students of their crafts, relishing every opportunity to improve their performance. They know their objectives, how they’re doing toward meeting those goals, and where they stand against the competition at all times. They perform their jobs at a consistently high level, and they’re committed enough to professionalism in their fields to share what they’ve learned.
That sounds like some new-home sales associates we know. When other sales associates are happy with closing one in 20 deals, these killer closers have conversion ratios—the number that tracks the percentage of prospects who convert to sales—from 1 in 6 to an astonishing 1 in 2.5.
How do they do it? That’s what we wanted to know, so we asked—in detail. What we learned was that top closers are successful because they master and execute a system on a consistent basis. They do what they do every time.
It’s not rocket science, but it just might be harder. There’s a tremendous amount of knowledge to digest, from the concrete details of construction, financing, and contracts to the particulars of the builder’s story, the steps in the sales process, and the art of reading a buyer’s emotions and sifting through the non-issues to find their true objections.
So, meet the master closers. We identified five “Ps,” qualities that are consistent among them. We’ll let them tell you how those qualities impact their performance and what they can do for yours.
Passion
Brenda J. Cook admits to a certain intensity in her work ethic and a voracious appetite for learning. A licensed pilot, she started college when her sons were grown and earned a degree in industrial management at age 47. “When I do something, I do it 100 percent, not halfway,” she says. “I read. I attend every class I can. I don’t think you can ever quit doing that.”
She’s also a raving fan of her community, Daniel Island, which is a 4,000-acre island in the center of metropolitan Charleston, S.C.
“When people come in, I say, ‘Let me give you [a] tour and let you fall in love with Daniel Island,’” she says. If buyers are in a hurry, she acknowledges how busy everyone is today and invites them to sit down for a moment with a community map so she can mark some areas of interest for them to look at on their own. “Nine times out of 10, I can get them in a car for a tour,” she says. “If they say they have five minutes, I can end up getting two hours.”
Cook credits her 1 in 2.5 conversion ratio to several key steps: setting and monitoring sales goals, having a sales process and following it consistently, being an active listener with her customers, having detailed knowledge of her product to be able to match buyers with just the right house, and following up regularly with her prospects and buyers.
She builds such rapport with her buyers—it helps that they all wind up being neighbors—that 75 percent of her sales come from referrals.
“It might be a difficult market today, but I prefer this market,” Cook says. “When I write a contract, I know I’ve done my job. I’m not just shooting fish in a barrel. I’m a professional, and I’m very good at my job.”
Brenda J. Cook
Market: Charleston, S.C.; Builder/Developer: Daniel Island Real Estate Co.; Years in the business: 5; Closing ratio: 1 in 2.5; Used to work as: real estate agent, investor, and builder. “I was the money lady and the cleanup crew.”; Motivational quote: “Press on.”—John David Cook, Cook’s late son; Cook’s sales tip: Help prospective buyers connect with you and the community. Every serious buyer leaves with “something they can hold on to,” such as a coffee mug. That’s followed up with a handwritten thank-you note, a postcard, e-mails, and phone calls.
Process
Angela Drake wants to remind new-home salespeople that this is still a great real estate market. “I look at my parents and their generation,” she says. “We don’t have double-digit interest rates. The oil industry isn’t in the toilet. Even then, people still bought houses.”
She also wants to remind them that new-home sales is a great field. A former resale agent, Drake says she much prefers selling brand-new homes. “People come to you [as a new-home agent],” she says. “You’re not out there beating the streets, fighting for listings. I don’t think people in this business know how good they have it.”
There’s also nothing you can do about the market, so get over it. “The market is what it is,” she says. “You can’t be dependent on it, and you can’t use it as an excuse to not better yourself.”
The best way to better yourself as a salesperson, Drake says, is to have a process and follow it every day with every customer.
Her presentation is heavy on getting to know her buyers, their needs and desires, and why they want to move. She tells customers about the community and Simmons Homes, demonstrates the models and then the community amenities, and, finally, takes them to a homesite. By then, prospects know the one house and one lot that’s perfect for them.
And then she asks for the sale, right? No, then she tells them what to do.
“Throughout the process, I educate the buyer,” Drake says. “Then I say, ‘You know what site you want and floor plan. Let’s go ahead and start the paperwork, lock in the price of the home, and get your favorite homesite.’ If you ask, ‘Do you want to?’, they’ll say, ‘No,’ and come up with a million excuses. I kind of tell them, ‘We need to secure this today.’”
Angela Drake
Market: Tulsa, Okla.; Builder: Simmons Homes; Years in the business: 5; Closing ratio: 1 in 5; Used to work as: retail manager and resale real estate agent; Motivational quote: “Your attitude determines your altitude.”—Myers Barnes, new-home sales educator; Drake’s sales tip: Show every prospective customer a homesite on the first visit. Talk about the type of homesite they would like to have and where they would like to live in the community. That creates a sense of urgency “so I can be credible to ask them to sign the paperwork on the first visit.”
Practice
When Kerry Wright joined Pulte Homes, he was required to undergo extensive training that included product, community, and construction knowledge. A former college football player who spent countless hours practicing for every game, he loved every minute of the training.
“It was a lot of work,” he says, “but when you get an engineer who wants to know how the house is built, you can talk to him intelligently.” If he gets a parent, he can tell them the name of the school district’s superintendent and the average SAT scores at the local high school.
That knowledge helps him ask customers the right discovery questions, including the one question he considers to be central: Why are they looking for a new home?
“The entire process is driven as a result of that question,” he says. “Once you can figure out the answer to that question, you can tailor your presentation.”
Gaining a customer’s commitment to purchase was the hardest part of the process for Wright to master, he says. After continued study on the subject, he’s learned that the key is to get customers to engage emotionally. To help make that happen, he likes to close customers on every room of the house during the model demonstration. Then, he uses the same technique for the entire house. “I’ll say, ‘So the Oakmont is the right home for you, isn’t it?’ A bunch of small yeses along the way lead up to a big yes at the end.”
Wright is equally practiced at handling buyer’s remorse.
“If I have someone I’ve done a hard close on, I’ll tell them to call me and tell me all the things they love about their new home,” he says. “It’s fun. It gets them involved in the process.”
Kerry Wright
Market: Chicago; Builder: Pulte Homes; Years in the business: 3; Closing ratio: 1 in 6; Used to work as: high school teacher and football coach; Motivational quote: “I run on the road long before I ever dance under the lights.”—Muhammad Ali; Wright’s sales tip: Closing is a natural ending to the presentation. “If you’re not asking for the sale every single time on the first visit,” he says, “you’re doing yourself and the customer an injustice.”
Preparation
No one has to explain the importance of preparation to Kathy Nassar. Having spent much of her life as a dancer and a dance teacher, she knows what’s involved in getting ready for the few moments spent in the spotlight.
For a new-home sales consultant, practice includes role playing, which Nassar and her partner do when things are quiet in the model. “We make it fun as we’re trying to do better,” she says. “We just have a competitive spirit.” Her sales team also does role-playing in its weekly sales meeting. “One day, we had a role-playing action where the salesperson [unintentionally] stopped the deal,” she says. “That was real eye-opening.”
In today’s market, she notes, some of the most valuable preparation came in educating herself about financing, something she didn’t know much about when she first made the switch from teaching to real estate.
“I really made it my business to ask questions,” she says. “I want to be an expert in every single capacity. That’s the teacher in me. I don’t want to talk at customers. I want to be able to explain [financing] to them in a simple form so they can understand it easily. You really have to understand it yourself to do that.”
She also makes good use of a loan assessment form, which she provides to her customers “right off the bat” because it’s a point where so many buyers get nervous in the process. Having a realistic idea of how much house they can afford to buy helps them relax and enjoy the process of looking at homes. She also uses a mortgage calculator to give customers the big picture of what the cost of homeownership includes.
The practice, along with her natural enthusiasm for helping people learn something new, is especially important in her community because the price point attracts a lot of first-time buyers.
“I make it my priority to make sure they feel comfortable,” she says. “I want to make sure they feel knowledgeable, so it’s stress-free and fun. It’s really rewarding for me.”
Kathy Nassar
Market: Phoenix; Builder: Taylor Morrison; Years in the business: 1 1/2; Closing ratio: 1 in 4.5; Used to work as: high school English teacher and dance instructor; Motivational quote: “Let your hook be always cast. In the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.”—Ovid; Nassar’s sales tip: Celebrate the sale with your buyers. Right after the contract is signed, she changes the lot sign to read “sold,” takes a picture of the buyer with the sign, has a print made of it, and sends it to the buyer with a congratulatory card.
Persistence
Ted Uelk doesn’t give up easily. He generally asks for the sale at least five times during the first visit, and he’s always going to show a buyer a homesite. Uelk then asks to go back to the office to review the paperwork. If buyers want to go home and think about it, Uelk says, “Of course. Let’s go back to the office and recap what we’ve talked about.” Either way, he ends the visit with the buyers sitting at his desk, recapping what they’ve seen and what they liked, and setting an appointment for the next visit.
Uelk says the key to his ability to close 1 in 2.7 prospects is managing buyer’s remorse. He tells them it’s normal to experience a moment when they wonder what in the world they’ve just done. After they leave, he calls their home phone, leaving a message to congratulate them and remind them of the next step in the process. Over the next seven days, he’ll be in touch seven times. During construction, he’ll take photos and send the buyers updates when the framing package comes in or their street address arrives. “We call those ‘moments of magic,’” he says.
Even if a prospect doesn’t convert to a sale, Uelk stays in touch. He recalls a buyer who had been told incorrectly about a highway that was possibly coming close to the community. “Whatever evidence I could show them on the government’s Web site showing it coming nowhere close to the neighborhood, it didn’t matter,” he says. They backed out of the contract. But Uelk wasn’t going to give up. “I already knew they loved the neighborhood,” he says. “I gave them information on another home about the same size on the complete other side of the neighborhood from where the highway was never going to go.” They bought the house.
Ted Uelk
Market: South Bend, Ind.; Builder/Developer: Weiss Homes; Years in the business: 4; Closing ratio: 1 in 2.7; Used to work as: a licensed financial specialist at a bank, helping people with their retirement accounts; Motivational quote: “It’s not the number of hours you put into a day, but rather what you put into those hours that makes the difference.” —Bob Schultz, new-home sales consultant; Uelk’s sales tip: Write up detailed reports on the customers that you think are most likely to buy and meet with your sales manager on a weekly basis to strategize ways to create urgency for those buyers. “Sometimes, having another set of eyes look at the information can help me get an idea on how to get them to purchase.”
Books you might find on a master closer’s shelves.
We asked our sales pros what books have helped them succeed in new-home sales. Here are some of the titles they recommend:
Close Every Sale Without Fail, by Myers Barnes and Shirley Mozingo
Driven From Within, by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil
Flawless Execution: Use the Techniques and Systems of America’s Fighter Pilots to Perform at Your Peak and Win the Battles of the Business World, by James D. Murphy
Getting Past No, by William Ury
How to Be a Great Communicator: In Person, on Paper, and on the Podium, by Nido Qubein
Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service, by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles
Secrets of Selling from Real Estate Masters: What Top Producers Know That Others Don’t, by Terry Weaver
Selling Rules! by Murray Raphael
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell
The Traveler’s Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success, by Andy Andrews