When it comes to new home sales and marketing, relationships matter. The challenge that most new home builders and developers have is how to build a relationship with a lead and nurture leads in a way that is relevant and timely.
- 80% of leads aren't ready to buy when they first make contact so, what happens if you collect the lead and don't do anything with it?
- 81% of sales happen after the 5th contact. But how often do you make contact and what do you say?
When you consider how long the sales cycle is for buying a new home, it makes sense to have a program to nurture leads. But what does a good one look like?
There are three key components to an effective, lead nurturing program;
1.Know-how
2. A system to manage and nurture the leads
3.Proven content that works
1. Lead Nurturing Know-how
Builders and developers want to know that a lead nurturing strategy is going to work. What should the strategy include? Which workflows are proven? What timing and intervals of communication work best? When is a drip email not a drip email?
SmartTouch® Interactive has spent years perfecting lead nurturing strategies for new home builders and developers.
Tip 1:The first tip is that your follow-up after the first contact must be immediate. Fewer than a quarter of builders and developers do this, but almost all leads expect immediate acknowledgement.
Tip 2: It's never too late to re-engage your leads. "We've taken lists that haven't been touched for two years and re-activated leads for our clients," says SmartTouch Interactive co-founder, Robert Cowes.
Tip 3: A drip email series is NOT lead nurturing. There's a lot more to it.
2. Lead Nurturing System
One of the main reasons sales people don't nurture leads is that they can't keep up with the volume of leads and where each lead is in the sales cycle. That's where having a good CRM and marketing automation system comes in.
Jim Swingle, Vice President Sales & Marketing at Savvy Homes has used a number of CRM and software systems for managing and nurturing leads and he says the SmartTouch® lead nurturing CRM "... covers everything we need it to do, taking a lead from the first response on the internet all the way down to turning it into a sale, utilizing the sales process."
3. Proven Content that Works
Another roadblock for new home sales people, when it comes to lead follow-up, is not knowing what to say that will be relevant to the lead.
How can you learn more about your leads' needs so that you deliver content that is relevant and timely? SmartTouch Interactive solves this problem for new home builders and developers by providing proven content strategies that work and a unique system for gauging new information from leads so that relevant content is delivered.
Content can cover such topics as;
- Location information
- Community information
- Property information
- New home buying process
- Buying new vs. resale
- And so much more.
Here's a snapshot of some of the lead nurturing emails that work for Savvy Homes.
Here's a short video of Savvy Homes' Vice President of Sales & Marketing sharing his experience managing and nurturing leads with SmartTouch.
To learn more about best practice lead nurturing or SmartTouch, the lead nurturing CRM, contact Donna Ream at dream at smarttouchinteractive dot com
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