DESIGN INTELLIGENCE from Jane: When Sales Teams "Hype" Design Teams

​An interesting topic came up during  a builder consulting session so I then explored it further in conversations with other builders throughout the week.

I asked Design Consultants and their Managers how supported they feel by their new-home sales counterparts. Some shared great examples: NHCs who “hype them up” in advance—building value in the Design Consultant’s expertise, the benefits of the service they provide, and citing social proof from previous customers. Often the NHCs also covered valuable info regarding what to expect from the personalization experience. In some cases, sales even facilitated a brief in-person or phone introduction, ending with a confident, “See? I told you she was amazing.”
And of course, I also heard the opposite: poor handoffs, weak expectation-setting, and no real “passing of the baton.”

None of that was particularly surprising. What WAS interesting came next.

The DCs then talked about how customers felt during design selections—especially as they began to (and often did) exceed their original investment expectations. A clear pattern emerged: when trust and credibility had been established early on, DCs reported virtually no customer discomfort with the gap between expected and actual investment.

In contrast, the DCs who had NOT received advance credibility from the sales team, they asked for more training and support around overcoming customer concerns about “overspending.”.

Now, the data nerd in me has to say this: this was an informal survey, and correlation doesn’t equal causation. There are likely other factors at play. For example, sales teams who hype up their Design Consultants may also be using other best practices that set customers up for a successful design studio experience. Or DCs who receive genuine praise from sales may be stronger DCs with better skills around conveying value and generating buyer trust. There are plenty of possible confounding variables.

That said—I LOVE the conversations this opened up. So here are some conversation prompts for your sales and design teams:

• How can your sales team better support your design team?
• How important is building Design Consultant trust before the appointment even begins—and how can you do that?
• How can Design Consultants move from “getting the job done” to delivering real value, and influencing buyer decisions by really becoming a trusted expert in their customers eyes?

Every once in a while, I still encounter a builder who challenges the proven reality that customers who invest more in personalizing their homes are almost always happier, more satisfied, and more excited about their personalization experience. Yes, there’s always the odd outlier customer who had a bad experience with an aggressive DC. But over decades of focusing on consumer purchase psychology, and the mechanics of decision making, I’ve seen enough builder data to prove (even to my statistics junkie mind)  that customer satisfaction and option sales almost always both increase together.

Hope this sparks some great interdepartmental conversations.

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