Where Has Customer Service Gone?
September 18th, 2007 Posted in Curt's Articles, How To Sell Homes
As a New Home Sales Manager, I think I am curious by nature. I enjoy meeting new people, especially other sales people. I like seeing how people react in the first few moments of meeting someone new.
Is it awkward?
Is there a lot of silence?
Is the sales person prepared?
Have they thought out a strategy in advance?
This past week, I decided to go around and talk to as many new home sales consultants that I could. I have recently moved to a new location to sell homes and wanted to find out about my competition first hand.
To get true results and the answers that I wanted to get, I had to act as though I was a real buyer, which I actually sort of am. As many times as I have done this, I am amazed each and every time.
To have someone get out of their chair to greet me was few and far between. Those that did get up to greet me seemed awkward, almost as if it was their first day on the job.
In one especially confusing instance, I walked into the model home sales center and noticed the sales person was on the telephone. It only took a few seconds of over hearing the conversation to understand that it was not a business related phone call.
I walked around the model home for a few minutes, and then came back to the lobby area where the information packets and sales office was located. As I nosed around a bit to try to get the attention of the sales person, I knew I was going to go to extremes to get a response.
I stopped what I was doing and just sort of stood there looking at the sales person as they talked on the phone very casually with a friend. Finally, after about twenty seconds of this, she stood up with the phone still held to her ear and gave me sort of the raised eyebrow, head-nod look.
I sort of laughed in amazement at this cavalier attitude and asked if I could have some information about her homes because I needed to move quickly. Instead of offering any assistance to me or asking me any questions, she made me a packet of all her floor plans as she continued to talk on the phone and I walked out the door.
Amazing.
The only thought that was going through my mind as I walked back to my car was, “It is no wonder that the housing market gets so much bad press.”
This sales lady clearly made the assumption that I was not a buyer before I even walked in the door. She bought into all the negative stories being told of the housing market. She was clearly not prepared to sell a home or help me purchase one.
Of the fifteen different new home builders that I visited and tried to purchase a home from, only one of them offered any real assistance. Only one of them offered me something to drink and it was one hundred degrees that day!
Of these fifteen sales people that I met with, not one of them asked me to buy.
What happened to helping people? What about asking questions to find out what I need?
There is a reason that Nordstrom’s and Lexus are wildly popular and successful. They pride themselves on customer service. They hire good people and train them to take care of their customers’ needs.
There is a saying out there that if you help enough people get what they want; you will get what you want. The catch to this saying is that it has to be done in that order. You cannot get what you want first without helping someone else get what they want.
However, it is exactly that backwards thinking that I encountered during my little experiment. Customer service is not difficult, but it does take effort.
Here are a few tips that will help you improve your customer service:
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Take care of your existing customers first before looking for new ones. It costs less money to simply maintain your current customers then to market and spend time finding new ones. Plus, referrals are the greatest source of future business.
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Listen twice as often as you speak. God gave you two ears and one mouth. Before responding or offering solutions, you must first listen, otherwise you are guessing.
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Ask good questions tailored to find out the answers you need to help you determine the needs of your customers.
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Offer value to your customers before asking for the sale. This means listen intently, determine their needs, then meet their needs with your product or service and show them how and why. To ask for the sale without providing, value is a sign of the pushy salesman that nobody likes.
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After showing and providing your customer value, ask for the sale. It is a disservice to your customer to be able to help them with your product or service and not ask them to buy it. If they leave without buying, you have not really helped them.