How To Determine Your Prospect’s True Budget

Have you ever avoided following up an opportunity because you didn’t know what to say?

Or lost contact with a lead because you didn't want to annoy them by email?

It’s a problem if you don’t have a call script to follow or an email template to send.

So you end up passively ‘checking in’ rather than advancing to the next stage and leaving hot prospects out in the open market where they quickly get picked off by professional builders who have all the right tools at their disposal...

What if you had the call scripts for every stage of the sales process, the email templates that nurtured your leads and the agreement templates for concepts and prelims that allowed you to take the best prospects out of the market and away from your competitors?  

You Must Have A Documented Process

Business coaches refer to this as a Documented Sales Process.

And when you have a documented sales process for your building company, you'll get your clients to contract faster and spend less time following up leads.

According to Sales Gravy, builders that ask assertively for what they want, enjoy a 50%-70% success rate. Compared to builders that don't want to appear pushy, who only have a 10%-30% success rate. 

Professional Builders use scripts all the way through their sales process...

While AVERAGE builders 'wing it' on every call.

So, stop passively checking in with prospects...

And start advancing the sale by using call scripts and email templates...

When you do this, you'll get your clients to contract faster and spend less time following up leads.

The Problem Isn’t Your Leads...

One of the biggest myths in our industry is that ‘the leads are no good.’ 

The truth is, when you generate new enquiries from paid advertising, then a larger percentage of them will be of low quality when compared to referrals.

However, there are also quality leads in the mix and uncovering them is what separates the top performers in the industry from the average builders.  

So don’t fall into the trap of thinking your leads are rubbish because the few you spoke to were unqualified.

Instead, make sure you nurture every contact in your database and then follow a script when you speak to them. That way you can accurately measure the number of qualified opportunities you are generating. 

Here’s what you need to do.

First, create the assets you need for your marketing and sales process. 

These would include your lead magnets which could be a guide, or a checklist or a price list. Something of value to your ideal client that will help them in the early stages of their research, but something that costs you little to provide.

Other assets would be your concept offer and agreement. What are you offering to prospects that have not yet started the design process in order to take them out of the market?

This is a really important offer to create as it allows you to build a strong relationship with a potential client and avoid competing on price along with six other builders later in the sales process. 

You’ll also need to create email templates that can be used to indoctrinate your new leads, deliver your lead magnet and nurture them over the next few months with more useful information.

Most importantly, you’ll also need call scripts that cover what to say on that very first phone call. The questions to ask in order to qualify a new prospect and the deeper discovery questions that you will ask once a new prospect is initially qualified.

Other essential call scripts include following up, dealing with objections, pre-meeting calls, outbound prospecting and voicemail scripts.

When you create these assets for your building company you are well on the way to systemising your sales process.

Calling To ‘Check In’ Is A Waste Of Time

Next, it’s important to get clear on your follow up strategy. 

Randomly calling your best opportunities in order to ‘check in’ with them is a waste of everyone's time.

As a professional builder, you need to work on appointments. That way when you make a call to a prospect, your call is expected, welcomed, and time has been made to receive it.

In order to achieve this, you need to always end each meeting by agreeing on a day and time for the next meeting. 

If a prospect is not keen to set the next meeting, this is a sure sign that either you are not delivering value to them or that they are simply no longer committed to the idea of building.

When a meeting is agreed to, enter it into your calendar and invite the prospect. If they do not accept the appointment within 24 hours, reach out to them to confirm they have received the invite.

When the invite has been accepted, automatically send reminders prior to the appointment by email, SMS and even phone in some instances in order to ensure attendance.

Meeting no-shows are a waste of your time so do not be afraid to convey the importance of your time by reminding your prospect of their appointment.

However, the most important part of your documented sales process is asking for the advance. 

Don’t Be Afraid Of Hearing “No”

If an opportunity is not advancing then it’s stalling. 

You’re just kicking the can down the road.

The reason most opportunities stall for builders is that they don’t ask for the sale, or at least ask to advance the sale.

Why? Because they don’t like to appear pushy... salesy… or desperate. 

Fill in the blank. It doesn't matter what reason you use, it’s not real.

What is real is that they have a fear of rejection.

And by avoiding being pushy...  or salesy… what they are really doing is avoiding the possibility that a consumer will say no.

So instead they kick the can down the road and then wonder why the prospect went with another builder…

It was the price, right?

No, it was their inability to advance the sale because they didn’t know what to say at the end of the meeting…

How You Can Implement Immediately

So what if you had a checklist for qualifying every new lead?

Would it help you to qualify your prospects faster and spend less time following up with people who are never going to build with you?

A lot of custom home builders like you thought it would, so that’s why we created the builders’ qualifying checklist.

When you have it, you'll be following the proven APB sales process for every new enquiry.

So you can identify the best prospects and take them out of the market faster.

Click on the link below to learn more…