Strategic Residential Marketing

“Common Sense” was an influential revolutionary pamphlet by Thomas Paine, published in January, 1776 in Philadelphia. “Common Sense” avoided abstract philosophy, favoring instead the ordinary language of the day and utilized biblical examples to support Paine’s arguments of independence from England. 

A 1726 definition of common sense is:  “sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts”.  Certainly that was valid in Thomas Paine’s time but it appears to me that common sense may have now died throughout the world.  Every day I encounter events and situations that should not occur and certainly would not have occurred years ago.  And although most evident to me within the United States, I believe that this condition, a lack of sound and prudent judgment, has grown into a worldwide pandemic impacting events both minor and major in every aspect of our lives. 

This morning when leaving the house I noticed that a local swimming pool service company had left a “hanger” on my door knob.  Apparently this was their new major advertising push.  Although I have never heard of the company and have no serious complaints with my current pool service company, I am always interested in new marketing campaigns so instead of immediately trashing the door hanger I took the time to read it.  I will leave it to you to make your own evaluation of the quality of the piece, the image of the company that it conveys and the apparent common sense of the individual that had it prepared.  I was certainly not impressed with the hanger or with the implied professionalism of the company and will not be calling them to service my pool and I wonder what the reaction was of other potential customers. 

This past week I thought that I had converted my phone and internet service to AT&T’s “U-verse”. I use the term “thought” as I had completed a phone call with their sales department on Monday.  Tuesday morning a technician first called and then came by my home to perform the necessary outside work.  However on Wednesday I received a call from AT&T’s technical department.  This service is conveniently located off-shore so that I had great difficulty in understanding the three people with whom I spoke but, from what I did understand of the conversations, the billing for my two phone lines had not been “merged” which apparently is a requirement for conversion of service. The technical department could not implement this merge and I was told that I again had to contact sales.  However, after three hours on several phone calls with numerous people which first took me around the world and finally ended up in Florida after that office was closed, and then continued for several hours the afternoon of the second day as AT&T’s phone lines were out all morning, I have no idea what is going on.  Is it any wonder that Comcast is growing at the expense of AT&T? 

BP has managed over the past few weeks to amaze the world with their total ineptitude, first in operating what was apparently an unsafe off-shore drilling facility and then being unable to stop or clean up the worst oil spill in our nation’s history.  By several estimates, the damages now exceed the total value of their company. 

Turning our attention to the homebuilding industry, I believe that the disastrous collapse of the housing market was caused primarily by a widespread lack of common sense.  Homebuilders continued to build when there was no demand; Lenders issued mortgages that had little likelihood of repayment; Wall Street issued mortgage-backed securities without underlying valid assets and FHLMC and FNMA eagerly joined in the party.  Meanwhile our government stood by doing nothing to stop the disaster apparently assuming that common sense would emerge and save the day.  As we all know, that did not happen and even the logical goal of self-preservation of the corporations that were involved and the employees whose livelihood depended on the survival of their companies failed to occur.  Read the rest of this entry »

I stopped by Walgreens with my wife this morning on our way home from breakfast as she needed hairspray. Upon entering the store I noticed a sign for cartons of Coke which advertised a sale @ 3 for $12.00 + a $5.00 coupon for my next purchase. But when I took my items to the register the clerk rang the coke up at $13.00. When I mentioned that there was an error in the pricing, the clerk’s response was “No, the price is $13.00.”

Having a low tolerance for both rudeness and stupidity, I walked over to the coke display, removed the sign which clearly stated that the price was $12.00 and handed it to the clerk. Instead of apologizing for her error she responded, “Why did you bring me the sign?” I then lost my patience and launched a monologue about both courtesy and the proper response to a customer explaining that her initial response should have been, “I am sorry but my register indicated the price was $13.00. If you would direct me to the sign I would be happy to check that for you and correct the overcharge.”

I am certain that my diatribe had little effect but nevertheless I will continue to try and educate the world on the correct way to deal with a customer. And that brings us to the topic of today’s blog.

It is tough out there today in the homebuilding business and especially tough in new home sales. With the tax credit now ended and new job formation proceeding at a snail’s pace, it is likely to remain tough for some time to come. We have to fight for every sale and that means that we can “never give up, never surrender”. We must intelligently, professionally and creatively work every visitor to create a prospect and then work every prospect to become a purchaser, continuing our efforts until that prospect “buys or dies”.

To achieve that goal we need to have trained salespeople who are experts in our community, our location, our homes and our company and the USP that we provide. Our sales staffs need to be trained in proper sales methodology and technique, how to create personal relationships with prospects and assist in creating purchaser motivation. And homebuilders and developers need to provide the supportive environments that will assist their sales staffs in those efforts. Read the rest of this entry »

I have always found the phrase “be prepared” of special interest, perhaps due in some small part to my enjoyment of musical satirist Tom Lehrer’s song parody from the 1950s.  If you are not familiar with his work, here is a link, hope you find it enjoyable – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSwjuz_-yao.

Recently I had a birthday.  I had stopped celebrating several years ago as the candles were setting off the smoke alarms.  But this year promised to be something special as my son had flown in from Boston with one of my grandsons to celebrate with us.  And “special” it was, although not quite as I had envisioned even though the cards and emails from over one hundred of my social media friends were certainly appreciated.

Several months ago I had coincidently scheduled a doctor’s appointment on my birthday as I try to make those appointments early Monday morning so that I may travel to clients Monday afternoon.  This appointment was for my regular six month check-up but when the doctor looked at my chart and noticed that it was my birthday he decided to do something that he thought was “special” so he drew a smiley face on his exam glove for my prostate exam.  He found this quite amusing; I did not and should have known then that the day was not going to go as had been expected.

After the exam I returned home to pick up my son and grandson to meet my mother-in-law for breakfast. The meal turned into an unanticipated extended event as, after waiting for our food for forty-five minutes, an “extra-special” treat when one of the diners is a three year old, our server realized that she had not turned the order in to the kitchen.

Now rushing to complete a few last minute errands before taking my son and grandson to the airport for their return to Boston, a phone call from my wife informed me that my mother-in-law had fallen on returning home from breakfast.  As she had struck her head, the paramedics were taking her to the only level-one trauma center in the area, the county hospital 35 minutes away.  I drove the kids to the airport and raced to the hospital to join my wife where I sat for the next seven hours while Grandma was immediately examined but then left virtually unattended for the next five hours until admitted for overnight observation.

My mother-in-law is fine, a hairline fracture of her nose, some bruising and injured pride and vanity.  But the day was shot, no “special” birthday celebration for me.  All I had time to do was snarf down some fast food, race home and pack for my 6 AM flight the following day.  Fortunately, I am a follower of the creed “be prepared” and had updated all of my client files and materials for my trip several days in advance so that no serious harm was done, just minor annoyances in the great scheme of things.  And I did have the opportunity while at the hospital to make some new friends – but more on that subject in a future blog.

The point to this lengthy introduction is that the world will constantly throw things at us that we do not expect.  To survive we need to be adaptive and flexible and that can only be achieved by being prepared.  That is true in the homebuilding business as well as in every other aspect of our lives. Read the rest of this entry »