Video Mystery Shopping: Who Cares about the Community??
Recently I was watching a video mystery shop, and the sales associate was giving the ‘shopper’ a tour of the community. This particular community was a golf course community and featured not one, but two champion golf courses designed by some very famous pro golfer. The sales associate was going into GREAT detail about the golf courses. He was discussing greens fees, golf pros, and even level of difficulty about each course. He was getting very excited and animated as he shared this information with the shopper, who by the way was an elderly single woman.
Finally, after about 25 minutes, he looked at the woman (who by now had a glazed over expression on her face) and asked her if she was a golfer. Her answer? No. In fact, not only was she NOT a golfer, she didn’t know the first thing about golf. She wouldn’t have known the difference between Tiger Woods and Tony the Tiger!
The sales associate’s broad smiled quickly faded away and you literally could feel the awkwardness of the situation coming straight through the video! Now, before you jump to conclusions, let me make this very clear….it is imperative that the sales associate be very knowledgeable about his or her community golf course, however, the mistake was in not ASKING THE PROSPECT if golf was an important community amenity to her.
You see, if it isn’t important to YOUR BUYER….it isn’t important to the sale.
I recommend that before you launch into a full dissertation about your community, that you first determine what is important to your buyer. It will save you a lot of time and allow you to personalize your presentation to the buyer.
Simply asking your buyer questions like ‘What is important to you in a community?’ or ‘What do you like to do in your free time?’ will give you the information you need to customize your presentation to meet their needs.
Asking questions is the quickest, easiest and most direct way of gathering information that will move you closer to the sale. No one expects you to know all the answers! But, your buyers do expect you to take the time to get to know them and uncover their wants and needs…..
