Sales on Hold? Now is the time to Reset Your New Home Sales and Marketing

A year ago, no one could have foreseen today’s new home market, and we may have been caught unprepared. Sales and marketing teams are facing a different challenge. In a recent client engagement, I spent time with a builder who made the difficult choice to halt sales due to issues with product supply and trade shortages. Instead of being disappointed (well, there was SOME disappointment), the sales manager saw this shoulder time as an opportunity to reset and review.

Now is a great time to shift from shorter-term thinking, like focusing on that next sale, to taking a longer-term view and making sure you’re laying the foundation for success.

Here are three ways to reset your new home sales and marketing programs:

Sales training reset

During times when sales teams are managing a high volume of leads, best practices and diligent follow up processes are often set aside. Teams may even have new employees who have not been properly trained on the CRM.

If you have also put sales on hold, focusing on honing skills with sales training can be invaluable. It offers dedicated time to re-evaluate current systems and ensure everyone on the team manages prospects in the CRM appropriately. It also allows your sales team to ask questions they may have been holding for months for a “good time” to ask.

Review of processes and procedures

Does your company’s messaging match reality? Are your salespeople set up to send eight emails and four phone calls within 30 days of an appointment, but you don’t have a single available home to sell? Now is the time to review your sales processes to be sure you are sending the right message at the right time.

And if your company doesn’t have automated marketing or sales processes in place, now is the perfect time to develop those processes and messaging. Taking the time to establish consistent follow-up processes can pay dividends when the next rush happens and set your company up for success should the market slow.

Reallocate marketing funds

Many builders have scaled down their marketing budget to ease the influx of buyers since the production of homes cannot keep up. Use this opportunity to reallocate those marketing dollars to ensure your team has the best resources and training to succeed next year.

While you may have scaled down marketing, it never stops. Branding is still important. Shifting dollars from short-term lead generation ads and activities to creating additional content for future marketing campaigns is a good way to keep the marketing engine running and support long-term marketing objectives.

Take this time to research new lead generation tactics that you would like to test out. If you’re not leveraging video today or using a different social media channel (TikTok, anyone?), now is the time to explore new avenues you can use in your future marketing plans.

If your company is experiencing a pause or complete hold on sales, embrace this moment with your team. Collectively take a breath, express gratefulness for the past year, and reset for the next wave, knowing you will be fully prepared when it comes.