Spring has historically been the best time of the year to sell houses.   The old place won’t do anymore; it is too big, or too small.   Or families want to move to where the schools or better.   Magically between late January and late May those decisions come to fruition contemporaneously with the forsythia, the tulips, and the emergence of crabgrass in the lawn.

It is the time of year when new home builders fill their order books and when residential sales people, both for new homes and for resale, begin to make their money for the year.   Or so it should be.

But these are not ordinary times.   The resale market in many parts of the country is driven by foreclosures and short sales.   Home builders are struggling to survive competing against those foreclosures.   Financing for private builders is scarce as many banks struggle through issues with both their residential and commercial real estate portfolios.

It is hard to make a sale and even harder to deliver on it.

In such times, especially for the sellers of new homes, sales are precious.   The revenue from the successful sale and closing of a new home is the oxygen that allows a homebuilder and the various employees, trades and suppliers involved in creating the home to continue to be in business.

As we all have learned: “No Sell; No Eat”.

So it is with a bit of surprise that I have been watching the selling operations of builders recently.   It hasn’t been scientific; it is more anecdotal and observational.   What I have seen has been disturbing.  

First, I think that in order to sell, you have to be open for business when a potential customer shows up.   Yet, all too often, I see sales offices closed or only open on weekends.   Or they have hours that do not match up to when people might be looking (evenings for working folks, Friday afternoons late and Monday mornings early for out-of-towners in for a long weekend).   If 90% of life is just showing up, these folks are on the short end of the stick.   When I inquire, I hear a variety of stories: the budget doesn’t allow them to be open full time or nobody shows up anyway are favorites.  

All I know is that a guaranteed way not to have a budget is to not sell anything, because you are not open or only open half-heartedly.

Second, I think that in order to sell, you have to have qualified, well trained and well led sales personnel.   If the front line of revenue generation is not up to the task, they will not do well, nor will the company.   Zig Ziglar, the sales maven, is credited with the quote “Shy Sales People Have Skinny Kids.”   On one level it is true.   If the sales person is not up to the task of selling, they and their family will suffer.   But it is also true on a deeper level.   If the sales person has not been qualified, trained, and well managed, the sales needed to “feed” the other “kids” (the rest of the company’s employees and their various vendors) will be lacking.   They will be skinny to.   And when that happens, the shareholders don’t do so well, either.

When I asked my friend, John Rymer, who runs the homebuilding sales consultancy Rymer Strategies out of Florida, whether the quality and training of builder sales staffs has improved as the market has become more competitive, he replied in the negative.   My theory was that, as the market got worse and companies downsized, only the best would be left.  

John provided a different perspective.   He felt that, of the top 50% of sales people for new homes in 2007, half had left the industry or were selling in other industries.   Great sales skills are moveable and they go to where the money can be made and the leadership is better, apparently.   He felt that about half of the remainder was being under led and was untrained.    That left about 50% of the sales staffs out there being qualified, well led, and well trained.

Downsizing had stripped away some of the great sales leaders and training budgets were decimated in the drive to cut costs.   His take was that division presidents were reluctant to invest in sales selection, management, and training because of fear of failure.   It was safer to be under-budget and under-performing and to blame it on the market.    

Is this what the industry has become?   I hope not.

Yet, it is spring and some people are buying houses.   If senior managers are not spending their time in sales offices and talking to customers, if they are not investing in making sure that they really do have the best sales people and sales management, if they are not training their sales staffs, if they are not testing to ensure that the psychological match of their sales people is correct for high success probability for sales generation, or if they are not listening to what customers are saying, then they will get fewer sales than they might get otherwise.

If that happens, all the “kids” will be hungry for longer and the shareholders will have to resort to maybe investing in other industries which do take their sales seriously.

Where will you be spending your time this next spring weekend?   The kids and shareholders want to know.