2023 Nationals Winners: Home Building Sales and Marketing Magicians

How do you succeed when you and your marketing team colleagues are all new to one another and you’re working on a new leasing project in a neighborhood that’s not familiar to any of you? 

If you’re Lucy Hudson, Holly Pulliam, Kevin Cui, and Chelsea Davis, you focus on your training, dig into learning about the project and its environs together, and communicate honestly.

During their several weeks of training, the team studied in the classroom and on site at the new luxury Stella apartments, in New Rochelle, N.Y. Together, they ate lunch, walked the city, explored food and shopping options near Stella, and had the occasional happy hour. Adding to their team-building experience was the need to quickly learn five digital operating systems—two of which were new to the trainer as well.

The team succeeded in creating urgency by offering incentives and—since Stella quickly reached 85% occupancy—informing potential tenants that the apartment they’d seen and now wanted had already been leased. —D.K.

Kari Rowell, an online sales counselor for M/I Homes, has always loved social media, so becoming a video influencer for the builder was a natural next step.

Rowell posts her videos on Instagram, Facebook, BombBomb, and LinkedIn, saying they build trust with potential buyers as well as educating them, leading to a number of sales. She averaged 200 phone interactions per week between October 2021 and October 2022.

Working in the home building industry was a natural step for Rowell: Her 19th-century ancestors built some of the first structures in Florida, and her grandfather and parents were builders. “I grew up coloring elevations from the copy machine, running through the model homes, and climbing on the fill piles,” she says.

Rowell got her college degree in construction management and now uses that knowledge to great effect in talking with prospective buyers. She says her ability to explain the construction process helps to build trust with prospects. —D.K.

When Diana Carroll joined Dallas-based Hillwood Com­munities as marketing manager three years ago, she brought to the job a background that includes work in health care communications and advertising agencies, as well as a degree in graphic design. Carroll tapped that multifaceted experience to create a rewards program for real estate agents and to improve the effectiveness of Hillwood’s website as a marketing tool.

Before setting up the rewards program for the builder, Carroll did her homework to make sure it would be effective by looking at similar programs, researching how to choose gifts, and reviewing real estate agents’ sales histories in order to set goals. The program has succeeded in winning agents’ loyalty, attracting new agents, and has increased the number of agents who have repeat sales in the builder’s communities, Carroll says.

Her experience as a director of website design and development also provided insights into how to strengthen the builder’s website as a lead-generation tool, although she notes: “Websites, just like marketing, are never set-it-and-forget-it.” —D.K.

Massive professional and personal challenges awaited Susan Moody during her first year at Rose & Womble. While mastering the many complexities of new-home sales, she also began training for a Senior Real Estate Specialist designation.

Since many of her active-adult prospects were unfamiliar with homebuying technology and the adaptive features their homes would need to accommodate changing needs as they age, Moody exercised patience, empathy, and experience—a legacy from her volunteer service with Meals on Wheels, disabled veterans, and other organizations.

But then Moody’s 9-month-old grand­-nephew Zander was diagnosed with an inoperable liver tumor. “It affected the entire team,” recalls Joanna Mitzel, Rose & Womble’s sales manager and director of training. Thus began a roller coaster of chemotherapy, surgery, and recovery for Zander that “took five steps forward and 10 steps back,” Moody recalls.

But both Moody and Zander persisted. “Susan continued to sell and guide her active-adult buyers to settlement without a hitch,” Mitzel says, to the tune of some $19.7 million in net closed sales revenue for 2021-22. And Zander is now cancer-free. —Sandra Gurvis

Although he spent his entire 18-year career in new-home sales, closed an average of 51 net sales per year within the last five years (some $10.5 million in 2021-22 alone), boasts a 93.7% customer satisfaction score, and has enviable rapport with both clients and co-workers, Sam Rangel isn’t your typical outgoing salesperson type.

Despite being private and introverted, “He’s the ‘glue guy’ who holds my entire sales team of 33 sales professionals together,” says Shant Samtani, VP of sales at Esperanza Homes. “I credit Sam with turning my sales team into a family where he acts as the ‘big brother,’” providing constructive criticism, encouragement, and serving as a role model for long-term career success.

In addition to enrolling customers in Esperanza’s credit repair program, Rangel goes the extra mile, preparing for every scenario regardless of the market, says Samtani, so buyers can achieve the home of their dreams. “Sam’s focus on the words he uses and in perfecting his tone and body language set him apart,” Samtani adds. “He has the maturity to understand that to win, someone else doesn’t necessarily have to lose, and that speaks volumes.” —S.G.

Whether it’s selling cemetery plots, cars, or single-family homes, or helping co-workers, prospects, or neighbors, Jerrad Izaguirre is “the kind of guy everyone describes as their favorite,” says Jessi Kelly, Stylecraft Builders’ chief operating officer.

Izaguirre’s adaptability has paid dividends. During his seven years with Stylecraft, he’s been responsible for selling each of the 350 homes in the builder’s North Gate community, doing much of the marketing on his own, and single-handedly building visibility of the product, community, and location.

All that plus managing pandemic-related delays, product shortages, and price increases. “Jerrad works closely with buyers to manage expectations and provides ongoing communication with updates, addressing all concerns, including sometimes directing prospects to other builders if Stylecraft isn’t the right fit,” says Chad Sanschagrin, founder and CEO of Cannonball Moments’ sales and leadership coaching. “It’s a customer-centric approach that’s brought him many referrals.” —S.G.

In addition to an impressive $135 million (USD) worth of sales in 2021-22, Steve Cicekian and Alex Leung also created two innovative programs to increase sales and assist other brokers. 

Their EMBLEM formula focuses on educating agents, buyers, and other key stakeholders in all aspects of sales, allowing them to easily adapt to changing environments. 

With that, they were part of a team that developed a proprietary, web-based sales platform that improves and simplifies the speed, efficiency, and security of writing contracts by using automated worksheets for agents, providing a consistent database throughout the entire process.

Cicekian and Leung also drew lessons from difficulties they encountered in launching EMBLEM’s Design District, a high-rise condo project in Toronto’s Hamilton district. Launched a week after a 1% interest hike by the Federal Reserve, the project suffered a dearth of buyer demand for condo living outside the city center. In response, the duo created enticing incentives, ranging from discounts to extended deposits, and even a Louis Vuitton gift valued at $3,500 (CAN). “Steve and Alex are the perfect forward-looking sales team,” says Alona Sadovska, EMBLEM’s marketing lead. —S.G.

In April 2022, when sales agent Courtney Schmitter took on the position of online sales counselor, a brand-new job at Stevens Fine Homes, she had just returned from maternity leave after the birth of her daughter Bailey.

The working mom was tasked with setting up an online sales program from scratch, establishing workflows and procedures, and evaluating new software/tech solutions, all while working remotely. And, along with being the first point of contact for new customers, Schmitter was still responsible for clients under contract for the homes she’d sold before becoming an OSC. 

Then Bailey was hospitalized with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a respiratory disease that can be especially severe in infants. “Courtney could have easily thrown in the towel on the OSC, but she stuck it out,” says Naomi Wright, the builder’s marketing lead. 

Instead, Courtney juggled childcare and frequent doctors’ visits while exchanging emails and phone calls with clients, who had no idea of her personal challenges.

In the aftermath, both Bailey and home sales are thriving. Along with closing her existing contracts, Schmitter established an online component that now drives 72.5% of the builder’s sales, Wright says. “Our sales team has come to almost exclusively rely on Courtney for their leads.” —S.G. 

Despite a year fraught with inflation and interest rate increases, labor and materials shortages, and prospect and customer frustration with these challenges, the Tilson Homes online sales team achieved an average sales contribution of more than 70% and a lead-to-appointment ratio that’s “off the charts,” says Dawn Dantzler, Tilson’s VP of marketing and customer experience.

Tilson’s “on your land” approach to home building also has its challenges. Along with already having acquired property that is sometimes in a remote or rural area, buyers often expect to build their “forever” or retirement home. “There may not be community amenities, nearby shopping, proximity to the newest school, or any number of other enticements OSCs normally have at their disposal,” says Eric Alarid, Tilson Homes’ SVP.

The “Magnificent Seven” found time to not only train the on-site team in Tilson’s new customer relationship management (CRM) system, but also had dedicated office hours to answer questions and provide individual tutoring, Dantzler says, “resulting in a handoff rate that went from 68% in January to 97% in September.” The team also mentored and organized roundtable discussions with OSCs at similar builders. —S.G.

As a key strategic business partner with sales in more than a dozen communities and supervising twice as many employees, including 18 full-time salespeople, Taylor Humphrey had plenty on his plate. 

Yet at the end of 2021, with new staff who had different backgrounds and skill levels, Humphrey saw the need for a more in-depth training. The result: Pacesetter University, an in-house, year-long program that covers all of the topics a high-level salesperson should understand, including product knowledge, construction, land features, negotiating, finance, and more. 

In addition to the sales team, the marketing, contracts, and closing departments also enrolled in the university. And although initially created for the Dallas-Fort Worth office, the program has since been adopted companywide throughout the builder’s locations in North America.

Yet, despite his massive organizational skills, ambition, and success (289 net home sales worth nearly $148 million in 2021-22), “Taylor is a humble leader,” says Ryan Taft, senior consultant at Shore Consulting. “He’s always asking, ‘Is there anything I could be doing better to help my team?’ and he is driven to help others succeed while providing an unparalleled customer experience for his homeowners.” —S.G.