5 Home Builder Ideas for Generating More Leads During Model Home Hours

5 Home Builder Ideas for Generating More Leads During Model Home Hours

Happy summer to you!

I’ve been working with my clients on a recurring problem for home builders and remodelers…

Maybe you’ve experienced it. It’s called “generating qualified leads- in the summer- with a tax credit & low consumer confidence hangover.”

Let’s face it, summer time has always been a challenge for new leads, model home traffic, etc. But with the tax credit ending April 30th many of the housing markets, especially lower priced, have seen traffic/leads nearly dry up.

After reading a great article in the May issue of Realtor Magazine I got 5 great ideas for dealing with this issue. Here they are…

~Rick

How to Beat the Summer Doldrums, Tax Credit & Low Consumer Confidence Blues

If you’ve worked in this industry long enough you may have heard the saying, “You have to make hay while the sun shines.”

Well may be YOU haven’t heard this before but my father grew up on a farm so I got to hear it a lot! Historically the home builders and remodelers have generated the bulk of their leads with spring home shows, home tours and marketing events.

Since about 2006 most of these events are no longer working the way they once did. You’re not seeing the numbers, quality and certainly the confidence at these events today.

As consumers continue to evolve and change our housing market it’s time we did the same. Let’s look at the most traditional way to generate leads- model hours.

Model Hours- Are they still viable today?

In our old housing market we’ve used the retail mentality when it comes to model hours- Be open for the convenience of the consumer. This meant 7 days a week and 6 – 8 hours a day.

Now unless you’re a public home builder and have a large advertising budget to drive traffic- you’ve spent your fair share of time at the model getting skunked. It’s demoralizing to the salesperson and the builder. But what are the options?

Open House vs. Model Hours

“Open Houses That Work,”is an article in the May issue of Realtor magazine that showed how some Realtors were “redefining” this traditional advertising method.

Many Realtors have written off the open house since 9 out of 10 buyers are starting their home search online. But other Realtors are focusing more of their energies on open house with dramatic results.

What if you were to treat your model hours more like an open house?

What would you do differently?

What would be the results?

Here’s my top 5 ideas for increasing leads during your model hours by treating them as an open house.

You can get more specifics for these ideas for FREE by clicking here>>

1. Change Your “Shotgun” approach to that of a rifle. Sitting in your model home 5-7 days a week with no traffic is a recipe for disaster. Instead of focusing on quantity of hours, change to QUALITY of hours. That is, put more time into promoting a specific event that will appeal to your target market. Here are some ideas:

- Plan 1 special weekend event for consumer prospects each month. Give them a special reason to come out or come back.
- Plan 1 special weekday event for Realtor prospects each month. Give them a special reason to come out.
- Spend 12-20 hours promoting and planning each event OUTSIDE of your model. More details on this to come.

2. Leverage the web. Since prospects are searching online get your “open house” event online too. List it on the MLS, Craigslist, any local event clandars (check your local paper), Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com.

Blog about the event and utilize Active Rain’s Localism tool.

3. Get Your Signs Out There! Try a mix of 20-40 different signs from company branded to hand-made specialty signs advertising any giveaways.

If you can use balloons do it. Helium containers can be rented from most party stores. Check with your municipality guidelines and see if they’re allowed attached to signs.

4. Use Partners and Themes– Give Realtors and consumers a compelling reason to stop by. You have dozens of local businesses to partner with and cross promote your open house events. Start attending the local chamber events and meet these people. Look to suppliers and manufactures to help too.

5. Make it Memorable– Now that you’ve got that prospect at your model how will you make it memorable? What kind of experience will you deliver? Why would they leave their contact information?

Here’s your litmus test…What is your favorite business to visit? Take a close look at what they do to deliver a fantastic experience and incorporate that into your event.

Does this take more work? Yes absolutely.

Does it take time to develop a database of prospects to market these events to? Yep.

But what’s your option?

I’ve compiled a more specific summary of the above 5 ideas that you can download for FREE on my website.

You can get it by clicking here>>

By the way, do you have some other ideas to get more leads? Leave a comment below and tell me about them!

Happy Selling!

P.S. My website resource area is loaded with tools, techniques and videos to help you navigate and excel in today’s market.

Everything is Free and you can start improving your lead generation today!

Use this link to check out the free resource area>>

Ask Rick a question and he may feature it in an upcoming issue of Coach’s Corner>>