SELLING THE CRUISE SHIP VS. THE CABIN

Builder websites and new home sales presentations are giving more and more emphasis to floorplan designs and new home features. It makes sense; customers visit our websites or communities to find the perfect home, so why not give them what they want? As we find ever more elegant ways to compare home sizes, home prices and home features — it’s easy to lose sight of the importance of location, lifestyle and activities in our communities. Today, builders seek to “one up” each other on ever better ways to showcase home designs and features.

The problem is that so much emphasis on home designs and features has had the unanticipated consequence of diminishing the significance of a sales presentation on community surroundings, lifestyle and activities. Smart homebuilders know that we need to match customers’ desires in purchasing a new home to their online and on-site sales experience.

Cruise ship companies learned years ago that focusing on the lifestyle and activities will outperform showing off their cabins. Readers will be hard pressed to find a 30-second cruise ship TV spot that spends more than 3 seconds on cabin design.

Lifestyle, location and activities give small and medium size builders a leg up on large builders.

With large builders gaining ever more market share in today’s highly competitive landscape, online and on-site emphasis on community, lifestyle and activities is an area where small and mid-sized builders can excel. Why? Because a large builder with 100+ communities is less likely to undertake a serious effort at focusing on the unique benefits of each community. Yet a builder with just a few communities in a single market can find ways to build value with a unique proposition in each location.

Similarly, corporate-led sales training at large builders is likely to focus on elements of the sales presentation that are ubiquitous across all their communities (e.g., builder reputation, their building process, floorplans and product features).

Unique elements such as a focus on schools would be a top concern for a family location with great schools, but it a waste of a customer’s time for an empty-nester community in a poor school district. Large builders have a hard time reprioritizing and reordering a one-off sales presentation. But small and mid-sized homebuilders can take the time to arrange each community’s unique selling proposition and emphasize it early in each sales setting.

Learn from the cruise ship industry what others already know: selling the larger emotional aspects of the community will outperform getting mired in the details of floorplans and home features.