4 Ways to Maximize the New Home Sales “Off-Season”

It’s the start of the real estate market’s “off-season.” It all goes downhill from here, really. It’s the time of year when family vacations and back to school shopping merges with changes in weather and inevitably the holiday season. The time of year when no one wants to buy a house, right?

Come on…. Do you really believe that no one wants to buy a new home in the second half of the year?   We can acquiesce to the fact that fewer people want to buy new homes than in the “traditional” months of March through June, but we can’t let that humbug mentality bounce cause us to sit on our laurels crossing our fingers that we won’t starve between now and Spring.

The phrase “off-season” typically refers to a period of time where professional athletes endure travel, training and preparation.   Are professional athletes competing in the off-season?

But what about sales professionals? Do we work longer hours, prepare contracts and sales plans and compete? Do we feel pressure to meet quota? Does all of this feel more intense during the spring selling season? The answer to all of these questions is yes!

So what’s a Sales Pro to do? A Sales Pro, like any other “Pro” needs to make the most of their off-season, to ensure a successful and winning regular season.  If you haven’t compared your career to that of an NFL football player (or any other athlete for that matter), here are four ways to help you think about and maximize your off-season:

• RECOVER.  Anyone who’s been successful in sales will tell you it is HARD WORK. At an industry standard conversion rate of 6%, we have chosen a career in which we are rejected (i.e. “No!”) 94% of the time. We are only successful 6% of the time! And that’s if we’re doing a good job! We work long days and every weekend. We miss soccer games, weddings and backyard barbecues. We have early bedtimes on Friday night. But we love our job and if we’re any good, it can be very lucrative.

But like an athlete, we need time to rest and reconnect with our personal lives, so we have balance and don’t burn out. Making conscious choices to turn off the cell phone on days off, take a vacation or even leave right when the model closes during slower months is critical to our performance in the busier months. If we’ve performed well in the regular season, we deserve to rest during the off-season. But “resting” doesn’t mean “sleeping.” We also need to take time to…

• REVIEW. In order to get better, we need to know where to improve. This is where we “watch tape” to identify areas in our sales process or “game” plan[S2] , that could be holding us back. This could mean reviewing a secret shop, requesting a performance meeting with your manager or spending a day going through all the prospects that visited your model and didn’t buy. Identify where you went wrong, missed a step or just generally fell short. Without knowing where you failed in the past, you won’t be able to determine what you need to succeed in the future. Once you’ve identified two to three areas, you can start to formulate a plan for…
• CONDITIONING.  Most athletes know their limits and value their rest and recovery time. But that doesn’t mean they sit around playing Xbox all day. Most disciplined athletes will use their time off for conditioning. Building strength in the off-season helps athletes maintain muscle memory and prevent injury in the regular season. As sales professionals, we can “strength train” in our off-season as well by staying on top of our craft and industry. Attending training sessions, reading and role-playing with peers are all conditioning activities we can do to keep our sales muscles toned and prevent missing our goals in the regular season. And once we’re conditioned and ready to head into regular season, we can…
• PREPARE. Let’s call this “Spring Training.”

By definition, spring training is “the preseason period, especially in February and March, when baseball players prepare for the upcoming season.”

Well, we’re not baseball players, but we can certainly relate to this beloved practice of ramping up our game for the upcoming season. Whether you’re a baseball fan or not, you’ve certainly seen or felt the excitement of this magical time when our favorite teams hit the field in a warm, sunny locale, and we get our first glimpse of hope that THIS COULD BE THE YEAR.

Spring training takes focus and looks a lot like planning:

• How many sales is the community budgeted for?
• How many sales do I need to make the income I want?
• How much traffic do I need to convert to get my sales?

Being able to quantify these answers and understand the actions needed to achieve them is what prepares us for regular season and gives us a glimpse of hope that THIS COULD BE THE YEAR to blow your goals out of the water.

So as we enter the off-season of new home sales, let’s make sure we treat this time with the respect and professionalism of an athlete. While we should all still be focused on selling houses, we should take advantage of this somewhat slower period to Recover, Review, Condition and Prepare ourselves to hit it out of the park in 2020. Because….

“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.”

Thanks, Yogi.