22 New Home Sales Team Training Topics

New Home Sales Consultant Training and New Home Sale Training Topics

1. Mortgage Process

This is what most customers feel most anxious about during the sales process. Let’s face it: it’s not fun, and it can be difficult to understand. That’s why it’s important to train sales consultants on the ins and outs of mortgages. It will help ease customer’s stress and will increase your credibility.

2. Benefits of New vs. Used

Most buyers, by far, choose a used home versus a new home. It is necessary for sales consultants to be able to effectively communicate the value of a new home. Sales agents should be sure to discuss energy efficiency, the fear of things breaking, and added costs. All of these amount to cost savings for each customer.

3. Rent vs. Own

This subject should definitely be included in your new home sales team training topics. With mortgage rates being so high, more and more buyers are turning to renting. Most state that their focus is on the monthly payment. However, educating prospective buyers on the benefits of buying, like building equity and freedom, is important to discuss so these clients can see the whole picture.

4. Critical Sales Path

The Critical Sales Path is a proven, decades-old strategy for winning sales. It is the linear process you should take a buyer from greeting to contract signing. When mastering this approach, it is important to focus on five areas:

Welcome

This is the initial step a sales consultant should take when building a relationship with their prospective buyer. Here, there are three goals:

1. Opening the sale
2. Building the relationship
3. Setting expectations

Discovery

This may be the most important step in the Critical Sales Path as it will serve as the roadmap throughout the sales process. During this step, the goal is to engage in discussion with the customer and gather insight into how to sell them a home. The five areas to discover are:

1. Urgency
2. Income
3. Needs and wants
4. Experience
5. Authority

Demonstration

When demonstrating the floor plan features, remember that you are selling a dream. This isn’t just a home to your customers. This is where they will live, eat, sleep, and create memories for years to come. To be successful, sales consultants must:

1. Actively engage the customer.
2. Create emotional involvement.
3. Capture agreement on the floor plan.

Homesite Selection

This is a wonderful opportunity to get your customers out of the model and away from distractions. This is where emotional connections are made — the interactions become more comfortable and relaxed, allowing you to take mental notes that can be used later when gaining commitment.

The three goals in this step are:

1. Actively engage the customer
2. Bring the customer to an emotional peak
3. Select a homesite

Commitment

It’s now time to ask for a commitment! All of the hard work has come down to this. This stage requires a lot of practice and a high amount of knowledge. Various closing techniques and strategies should be mastered, and enthusiasm should be high! Role-playing will help a lot at this stage. The three goals for getting commitment are:

1. Ask for the sale.
2. Handle objections.
3. Ask for the sale again.

5. Objection Handling

Often, customers can get caught up on certain details that can cloud the remainder of the sales process. Once sales consultants learn how to masterfully address these objections and master the real motivation behind them, they can help their customers move along in the sales process. Getting feedback from your team on what they encounter in their market and then calibrating the training accordingly is key.

6. Customer Relationship Management Tool (CRM)

Think of the CRM as the catch-all for customer information. Of course, it’s important to include contact information, but this is where you can organize all of the valuable information you have received from the customer in those zones, like Discovery and Demonstration. Platforms like Hubspot and Salesforce are excellent tools to help keep you organized. They allow you to more effectively understand performance, assist their specific client journeys in the sales process, and equip the marketing team to better personalize their efforts — a win all around if used correctly.

7. Agent Marketing

At New Home Star, we believe that new home sales experts don’t wait for traffic to come to them or rely solely on the marketing team. We encourage our sales associates to create their own traffic through Sales Associate Marketing Initiatives (SAMIs). After all, this extra traffic amounts to approximately five extra sales per year. Empowering your sales team to know how to put together a plan aligned with their community, as well as tips for executing, is key for any successful sales team.

8. Closing Techniques

As most sales associates know, you’ll probably have to ask for the sale numerous times. Because of this, it’s important to master different closing techniques. The more closing techniques you memorize, the greater the ability to adapt quickly and get the sale done.

9. Backlog Management

Once the customer signs the purchase agreement, it is the sales consultant’s responsibility to ensure that those customers make it to the closing table. After all, a lot can happen between the agreement signing and the move-in day. Keeping the customer emotionally engaged during the building process will help avoid cancellation.

10. Managing Interest Lists

As your interest list expands, it’s important to create urgency. Many potential homeowners are currently opting for renting, mostly because interest rates are so high. This is where your training on mortgage payments and the benefits of homeownership come into play. Explaining to your interested parties that they can build wealth through homeownership is essential.

11. Selling Year-End Inventory

Backlog inventory homes and spec homes should ideally be closed out by December 31. This will reduce carrying costs and help start the new year fresh. Because of the average 45 to 60-day close window, sales teams should start making this a priority in early October and come up with a plan with their team.

12. Calculating Monthly Payment

Sure, there are plenty of online monthly mortgage calculators, but they do not capture some important variables that must be considered. Be ready to discuss all of the ins and outs of the mortgage process, including debt-to-income ratio, credit, assets, and the different loan programs. These will all affect the monthly payment, which is at the top of every buyer’s mind.

13. Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The USP is the special combination of features and benefits that only your area, community, and vendor can offer. When you compare your homes to your competitors, what makes you stand out? This goes beyond the standard features — what is it about your community that cannot be changed? Crafting a clear, concise USP for your community is essential as it lets your prospective buyers know why they should specifically choose your home.

14. Target Consumer Profiles (TCP)

The TCP is the ideal buyer for your community. Understanding your TCP is the first step in preparing you and your team to create effective selling and marketing strategies. To develop your TCP, look at traits like age, marital status, income, family, etc. This will help you relate to your customers and solve any challenges and/or preferences they may have.

15. Value Proposition

A Value Proposition (VP) is a very compelling and strategically concise statement that demonstrates how the USP directly benefits your TCP. Every prospect who interacts with your community should have a clear idea of the value that you can provide to them so they keep your product top-of-mind.

16. Competition Studies

More than likely, you are not the only builder option for your prospective buyers. It’s highly likely that they are looking at other builders and homes, too. It’s important to know your competition and craft messaging that shows how your homes stack up to theirs. Taking the time to do a detailed competition study will help you sell more homes.

17. Follow-up

Not all customers will sign a purchase agreement on their first visit. On average, sales consultants must contact a customer five times before they provide a final commitment. A planned, strategic, personalized follow-up approach will yield tremendous results and provide value to your customer.

18. Selling Against Competitor Incentives

It happens often — your competition may offer more incentives than you can. Remember that your incentives should be used as a conversion tool, not to drive traffic. So you need to determine at what point of the sales process you should use incentives. The more emotionally invested they are in your floor plan, community, etc., the more they will respond to your incentives. Remember to maintain control throughout the process.

19. Benefits of Energy-Efficient Homes

There are quite a few benefits for customers purchasing an energy-efficient home. They may be struggling with purchasing a new home versus a used home, so communicating these benefits is imperative. Be ready to discuss how purchasing an energy-efficient home can lower monthly operating costs, provide more comfort, and help allergy sufferers.

20. Hot Buttons

People buy homes for different reasons. So, understanding customers’ decision-making motivations is a powerful skill. Sifting through all of the information they share to uncover their emotional drivers is a challenge, but once a sales consultant masters this concept, they can speak with a prospective buyer in a way that truly resonates with their wants and needs.

21. Sales Funnel

This is the emotional path a buyer should follow when making a home purchase decision. This concept recognizes that, to get to the end of the funnel (to a decision), you must first start at the top and work down. While some buyers go through the funnel subconsciously, others will need to be guided, and that’s where your expertise comes in!

22. Email Etiquette

It’s true: one poorly-written email can tarnish the credibility and rapport you have built with your customer. Always double-check your emails for grammatical and spelling errors. It is also helpful to read your emails out loud so you can be sure you’re leaving a good impression and you come across as knowledgeable and helpful.

Real Estate Training Topics and Real Estate Training Ideas

There are also a handful of high-level real estate topics that sales consultants should be experts in. We outline a few here.

1. Real Estate Terms

Part of becoming a credible expert is understanding and using the correct terminology. Words are powerful, and it’s doubtful that a buyer will take you seriously if you call things incorrectly. The heightened emotional state of a prospective buyer makes them very susceptible to influence, giving your word choices even more weight.

2. How to Effectively Handle Low Appraisals

This is all about being proactive. No one wants a low appraisal, but it’s necessary to learn how to handle it. By setting expectations with your buyers, realtors, and design center consultants, you can help avoid some of these challenges. It is also smart to add all of your best builds into M.L.S. and create your own comp packet so you can frame your argument.

3. Working with Other Realtors

The majority of home sales are done with a real estate agent. Therefore, a sales consultant’s success depends on how well they understand and can work with real estate agents. In fact, many times, the real estate agent has already built a rapport with the customer, so the consultant may be the outsider. Treating a consultant like they are a part of the family is important to your success.

4. Negotiation

Negotiating can be difficult – after all, it is the trickiest part of the sales process. Following a consistent process, every single time is key. Throughout the sales process, you have learned valuable information about your buyer, now, it is time to take what you have learned and use it to determine why they are negotiating. From here, you can develop strategies to help you close the sale.