This is an urgent request for all village and community operators: don’t be complacent about sales!
For the last few weeks I have been ‘selling’ our DCM Research program, phoning and emailing marketing managers, GMs and CEOs. With our team we have touched over 300 operators, and they can be divided into two camps.
The seriously worried camp and the complacent camp.
The first group experienced the GFC (2007-2011) and the second did not – the split is about 20/80.
The first group remember sales collapsing six months after the October 2007 global crash, and then the following three year sales drought.
As one CEO told me yesterday, back then he had to explain to his then-Managing Director of a large village group: “We have no settlements this month and we won’t have any next month either”.
That means no cash income for two months and more, while overheads remain.
This first group is saying to us they are now going hard to drive volume sales enquiry today. They know they need three times the normal lead rate to get one sale.
The second group is saying enquiry rates are appearing to be holding up “but we are cutting marketing and sales budgets because, well, sales are slowing…”
This will be a disaster for these operators and it is highly likely in 18 months that these executives will not be employed in the sector.
This is not a bombastic statement; it is the lesson from history.
We started our business (DCM/villages.com.au) in July 2006 and we were a baby media group specialising in the retirement villages sector when the GFC hit 15 months later. We had to work really hard to survive, not letting one opportunity be missed and creating new offerings every month to just keep conversations going.
This close involvement with our (marketing and sales) clients gave us vision of the executive landscape.
I can tell you whole layers of executive ranks were wiped out in early 2009, followed by the new execs hired to try to fix things who failed and were also wiped out by 2011, when the next round were employed. This group survived because the housing market started to come back around then.
This is what we are facing today. Village customers are already becoming shaky, before they face a declining housing market – which will happen by Christmas. This is CoreLogic’s chart from last week.
History tells us we have six to twelve months to get our ‘village houses’ in order. What you will need is volume sales momentum if you want the traditional level of actual settlements. You will need these simple steps:
- Really establish what your ‘local’ positioning is in the local market, and your succinct offer
- Build the tools that reinforce that position and offer – for your salespeople, your village manager and your residents to use
- Develop a real monthly action plan and do it
- Engage everyone in the objective of attracting people physically to the village
- Go early and go hard
Our research project delivers many of the tools you will need. Learn about it HERE.
The customers are there to be had, but you will have to work really hard for them. See the next story.
Most of all, don’t be complacent.
