How to Maximize Sales Conversions with a Model Home Portfolio

Customers need to trust that you can build a home to the standard and quality they expect. That’s why it’s important to have a display home, a pinnacle example of your work that helps potential customers to imagine what you could achieve together.

A display home helps builders to showcase their capability, quality, and expertise while helping potential customers imagine what their dream home could look like.

In recent times, customers have seen many builders go into liquidation and major delays in the headlines, so it’s easy to imagine why they might want to walk through a display home before putting down a deposit.

However, building your first display home is expensive and you need capital to do it. It’s a big risk for a builder in their early days and you will also need to invest in salespeople to manage the additional leads that will walk in the door. That’s why it’s important to know how to maximize your return on investment.

Use Your Display Home to Build Trust

It’s hard to create that sense of knowing that this place is just right before a home is built. Showing a customer a flyer or images of your previous work through a website is one way to convince customers of your capabilities. However, a display home helps you to create the wow factor that can inspire a customer to buy. It enables you to simulate a walk-through before the customer’s actual home is built, injecting a sense of safety and security into your brand.

You can create a strong first impression while educating potential customers about the home-building process ahead of them. Most customers will be building their home for the first time, so take any opportunity to showcase your expertise and build a personal relationship.

You should recruit strong salespeople to welcome, inform, and qualify prospects who walk through your display home, with the goal of winning trust and encouraging your ideal customer to sign up.

Showcase Your Craftsmanship

Walking a customer through a display home allows them to explore the finishings, details, materials, and brands that you could use in their project. You can also show your building techniques and different product options so that customers can start envisioning themselves in their future home. It’s an opportunity to showcase your workmanship, demonstrate your value, and justify your price. Customers will also have a tangible experience of the floorplan, getting a feel for the flow and functionality of your home design.

Prepare your sales team to be able to talk about every detail that has gone into the home. They should be ready to talk about tiling, brickwork, windows, energy efficiency, and more. When the longevity of the home is clear, your sales team can negotiate healthy margins and help your business scale.

Interact, Discover, and Negotiate

Walking a customer through a display home is great one-on-one time for your sales consultants. It’s important that they allow the customer to ask detailed questions about what comes as a standard in the home, as well as the other extras and upgrades that are possible. Through this guided consultation, the customer will see certain details that jump out at them, gaining a stronger idea of what they do and don’t like. If you have a skilled sales consultant, they will ask the right questions and develop a good understanding of the customer’s tastes and budget from day one.

This discovery process turns pricing requests into conversations, and your salespeople can educate customers about the value of the workmanship that goes into your home. It’s very hard to achieve the same amount of progress just over the phone or by email, so the display home experience can take you out of price wars and into productive working relationships that respect your margins.

Display Homes Help You Gain Momentum.

Building your first display home is challenging. It requires a big investment of time and capital, but it can help your business to scale. At G.J. Gardner Homes, our team helps strategize so that our franchisees can reap the benefits as fast as possible.

Every display home is displayed on our website so franchisees can benefit from the huge variety of designs across our national network. As a result, they can leverage the benefits of a national network and foster trusting relationships in their local communities to connect to more buyers.