Sales All-Star: Jim Lee

A 16-year new home sales specialist for custom builder Hans Hagen Homes, Jim Lee is a perennial sales leader who has won wide admiration from his co-workers and peers, says Dorie Griffith, vice president of sales and marketing for Hans Hagen.

"He is the best of the best," says Griffith. "Other salespeople throughout our area know him and admire him because he is driven and he is a team player."

Lee is launching a new community for the company in the far western suburbs of Minneapolis. In his adapted critical-path process, he spends the bulk of his time with prospects out on the home sites, creating a vision of the view from the great room, the kitchen and so on. Then he drives to an existing Hans Hagen community where the prospects can get a more tangible feel for living in one of the company's communities.

"If I can get them into a previous community, almost a fast-forward, if you will, now they are getting into that environment," Lee explains. "They meet other people who have gone through it. They have a casual conversation with those people and ask how they like their homes: 'Would you build a Hans Hagen home again?' And as the community gets built up, I am illustrating homes that are right in the community. So they are getting a better feel and fitting in as much as possible."

To the outside observer, there appear to be two forces at work in Lee's approach, a critical-path-like progression of events all built around a relationship or conversational style of questions and answers. The questions come out naturally while he is on the road with the prospect driving to home sites.

"Along the way, I gather as much information as possible," Lee explains. "What is their road map? What are they hoping to achieve? Where are they living presently? What is their current situation? Do they own a home now? Have they had a market analysis done on their home? Where do they work? What is their lifestyle? That is all part of the process of what I do."

Audio Clip

Jim on his sales technique