TouchPoint Selling

Aug 18 2009 12:25PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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By Rick Heaston

My last blog Ever Eat Too Much Chocolate? drew a comment that caught my eye. Here was the blogger's response:

Been there, done that. Built a house in a neighborhood a couple of years ago, when this whole slump started. Everyone was putting the "builder's tan" siding on their houses. We opted to stand out with a "dark moss" siding. Beautiful. People loved it! One problem, they were scared of the house. Why? The potential for re-sale. What if they got stuck with the house? We did just that. It just didn't work.

I was a bit confused by this blogger's response until I reread a few of the other posts. OHBuilder seems to have zeroed in on my message, but has a different way to express it. Take a look at his/her response:

The different flavor isn't the house... it's you!

Purple, pink or green siding shouldn't make the sale. If it does, then you're not selling - you're taking an order. Listen; what Rick's saying here is that we all build houses (some with tan siding - some with green)... they're not THAT different. What needs to be different is our approach with our buyers. Our salespeople and their approach have to be MEMORABLE.

If they're not, we wind up competing solely on price and we all lose.

Purple Cow in another post has an even different slant on the same topic. Here’s what he/she has to say about chocolate and the process of differentiation:

Your point is valid. If everyone is serving chocolate, it all seems the same. However, there are several different types of chocolate, and numerous ways to serve it. Today, people are afraid of making the wrong decision almost as much as they used to fear making the decision itself. Being too different may also cause some to avoid you. I would recommend following your opening lines ... Get out to see your competition. Find out not only what chocolate they are serving, but how they are serving it. Then, you can see if you need to serve something else, or simply improve on the presentation. Think of it as them setting chocolate out on a plate. You may have the same chocolate but simply wrapping it individually and presenting it to them (the customer) may be enough to make you the purple cow.

Let me take these posts a step further. I want to answer from the customer’s point of view. Here goes.

What if you visited all of the builders in a particular community or area of town? And let’s say the home sites, landscaping, exteriors, color schemes, appointments, floorplans and sales people were all the same. Which would you buy? In other words, which would you pick out of the group and say, “This is the one I have to have?” And there’s more.

Which would you choose to return for a second or possibly even a third visit? And for that matter, what criteria would you use to narrow your choices to that level? Would you feel any urgency to move forward? And better yet, would you be to willing to pay a premium for any of these homes? The answer is simple.

When everything looks and feels the same, you’d choose the home that provides the best price. And in many cases, the thing that can differentiate you most is your sales process. Do it right and you can turn a bad market into a good one.