Attention Developers, Bankers and Equity Partners…

Does your marketing need a lift? Are your sales personnel doing everything they can to maximize results? Is your competition one step ahead? Do you need improved sales velocity? Time for a full blown project, marketing, and sales audit.

After one evaluates thousands of projects over the years and meets and works with hundreds of sales personnel, one gets to know when something is wrong with a project and if anything can be done about it. MAC gets asked regularly to evaluate existing projects and suggest a plan for improvement. This is not an easy task and every project is so unique…but here are a few tips to get you started in the right direction…

1. Treat your project like a brand new project… as if you’re considering investing for the first time or you’ve just inherited this damn project and you’ve got to figure it out. So… start with fully understanding the current situation…shop all of the competition, meet and discuss the market with all the local developers and sales staff if possible, profile all existing buyers (interview them personally if necessary), conduct exit surveys, examine every aspect of the customer experience and the product offering. Don’t just take what the sales team says to be gospel. This is no small undertaking – plan to spend hours and hours understanding the project – what’s working, what’s not. You need to be picky during this phase of the process and forget about the costs associated with changes-identify anything that isn’t 100%, you’ll deal with the solutions and costs later.

2. Have the sales team secretly shopped and taped.  At MAC we will tell our personnel that we may do this in advance and that we will share the results with them so they can work to improve. Understand what a REAL customer’s experience is. Are they getting a proper presentation, is the team qualifying the prospects, are trial closing questions being asked, are influencers also being sold, is the follow-up of good quality??? Wouldn’t you like to know?

3. Lock yourself in a boardroom and make a plan.  Estimate the cost benefit of each strategy and decision. Include all stakeholders in the process to gain buy-in and faster decisions.

4. Protect Buyers.  Despite potential changes, protect at all costs existing Buyer contracts (see my blog entry ”Completion retention programs”.)

So, I haven’t given advise on “what” to do precisely…simply to help Vendor’s seek to thoroughly understand their particular problems. Typically once this is done properly the solutions present themselves clearly.

Bottom-line: Treat the project new. Conduct a comprehensive review of the current situation. Understand your buyers intimately. Have the best sales personnel possible. Get outside expertise if required. And don’t underestimate the effort (or dividends you’ll recieve) required to do this properly! And likely, the solutions will present themselves.

Happy Selling.

Cameron McNeill