Online sales specialist, you’ve just set a
quality appointment for onsite sales. Congratulations! The date, time, and location have been determined, but the process doesn't stop there. We want to make sure the hand-off process and tracking are all done properly to ensure success.
• We have to then enter all information into the CRM. For a new lead, it may mean registering the client in the CRM to start, updating their rating, selecting the community/area of interest, adding the qualifying information in the notes, and creating an appointment. Then, you'll want to send a tour confirmation laying out all of the information needed to prepare them for the appointment (make sure you CC the sales executive on this confirmation) and set your next steps. This should include an appointment reminder the day before along with a courtesy follow-up email after the visit.
• You will then assign the lead to the community advisor in the CRM, send a calendar invite to them, and add the appointment to your reporting document. Remember, this process from online to onsite is to lower the threat level for the customer before they walk in the door. This is the key to rolling out the red carpet for these potential homebuyers.
• Now, let's say the appointment happened–GREAT! This lead is no longer managed by the online sales specialist. The handoff has officially occurred- now, the onsite specialist will handle things moving forward. This way the online sales specialist can tend to more leads and get more qualified appointments through the door.
• If when we follow up with the customer after the appointment, they determined that the community wasn't the best fit, this is the opportunity for the online sales specialist to offer any other options/suggestions from the builder.
When we think about the appointment setting process, we often correlate success with conversion numbers. Have you ever wondered how to accurately track this data? Here are a few tips:
Appointment-Made-to-Kept Conversion:
AKA: How many of the appointments made, showed up.
When you are thinking about your lead-to-kept conversions, typically, we like to see 90% or greater. Seems like a lot, right? To ensure you are tracking this correctly, we want to be sure that if a lead cancels the appointment prior to the visit, this is NOT counted as a missed appointment. This is a canceled appointment, and you would remove this from the equation altogether. The opportunity to fill that appointment still exists; the community advisor is not sitting there waiting at the model home or turning down additional appointments. On the flip side, anyone who is a true no-show counts toward this conversion.
Have you seen more canceled or no-show appointments in the last 6 months?
These tips can help keep these rates up:
- Add personalized video email back in - play on their emotions. When they realize that you are a real person who cares, they too want to respect your work!
- Layer in texting. If you are calling or sending an email to remind your customers of their appointments, add a text message on top of that! 98% of texts are read.
- Remember, we are all busy. So many times, we have to remind them a number of times. (I mean how many times does your dentist remind you, after all!)
Lead-to-Appointment-Kept Conversion:
AKA: How many of your leads who came into the system made and kept their appointments?
Let's start with what leads count in your overall lead count! These are potential leads (or lead-generating sources) that marketing worked to get to engage in the home-buying journey. So, VIPs, waitlist leads, Realtors, etc. also play a big part in the accuracy of the conversion number. YES, THESE ARE LEADS TOO, and they need to be counted in your monthly reporting. We can exclude them from the conversion numbers while they are unable to schedule appointments, but we will add them back in when the opportunity comes to schedule.
Sales-to-Appointment-Kept Conversion:
AKA: How many of your kept appointments wrote a contract?
This is a number that is calculated automatically with formulas in your report, so the only thing needed here is to ensure that the lead-to-appointment-kept conversion and your contracts-written are counted correctly!
Overall Online Sales Contribution:
AKA: What percentage of the company sales started from a kept Online Sales appointment?
This number is also calculated based on the contracts counted along with entering the overall company sales to give you the overall online sales contribution.
Overall, online sales specialists have a lot to focus on–keeping a clean database, accurately tracking data, staying in front of your leads monthly, and being the bridge from wishful thinking and dreaming to taking the next step in the home-buying process. What you do matters! I’m talking to you, Online Sales Specialists!
