2024 - 24 New Graduates Take New Home Sales By Storm

Congratulations to the 24 new home sales specialists from 10 different home builders, all across the country, who just graduated from our Spring New Home Sales Training Program, the Virtual Academy.  I am so proud of each one of them for their dedication and commitment to self-development.

Well done Dontell, and Travis, for investing in his future! I was very impressed when Dontell opted to re-write his entire presentation based on my written feedback and resubmit it to me; dramatically improving its impact. Plus, Dontell also attended our optional mortgage class, to learn how to use our Free App, and become comfortable guiding customers to more sales by understanding the numbers.

Also pictured are Amber Cohen and Brooke Scott of Empire Communities in North Carolina, Angelica Bowles of Keystone Home of NC, Vern Thompson of Forbes Capretto Homes in Buffalo New York, and Ray Debetaz from Alvarez Construction in Louisiana. Both Brooke and Angelica have experience with other builders, but have not received the in-depth structured training that their new sales managers have found works so effectively.

There were so many great stories of extra effort by the attendees, such as Amber who is new to home sales and did such an amazing job with the one large homework assignment of writing out her sales process based on the template and principles in the training manual. Her presentation was colorful, full of great storytelling that captured the imagination and also followed the process flawlessly.   Here is what Amber said about what she learned over the five weeks of classes:

The virtual Academy was an intriguing and unique experience. Some of my biggest takeaways were learning new ways to build  rapport, learning better verbiage, and interactive ways to guide tours throughout the model home. I’ve been able to apply everything I’ve learned towards my role as an Associate. I am engaging more with customers by asking questions, and pushing customers to the next step, following the tour layout of the model and much more.

Also pictured is Vernon “Vern” Thompson, who just started with Forbes Capretto Homes, a highly successful luxury home builder based in Buffalo, New York. Vern has spent his life in the restaurant business and felt that he had reached the ceiling in that industry.  He was feeling burned out with the crazy hours, and he dreamt of a better life in our fabulous industry. Interestingly, Vern is also a City Council member in his small town of Cheektowaga, NY.  Thankfully his new boss the talented Alex Miller, saw potential in Vern, as did I, after his Zoom interview with me.  Vern was hired on the condition that he embrace the sales process that we teach; which is proven to yield consistent and replicable sales success.  So far so good, Vern is progressing well as he is assisting the Community Managers write plenty of new business, while he trains and develops his own skills and self-confidence. 

Another super student standout was Stephanie Anders of Pacific Lifestyle Homes in Vancouver, Washington, who sent in her excellent written sales presentation within an hour of being given the assignment, showing a passion for her own personal development. Stephanie wrote me a nice note and shared:

“Thank you Roland, for all the very useful tips and structure. I learned to ask more open ended questions and use the discovery questions every chance that I can.”

Her colleague David McDuffee sent back one of the finest presentations I have ever had the pleasure of reviewing. I am happy to hear from their managers that Stephanie and David have both been promoted to full Salesperson status and have been selling homes at a very high conversion rate.

This future Rock Star Sales group, met with me two weeks after Graduating from the VA, to practice and work on their mortgage skills. Pictured are Dontell Robinson of Landmark Homes, me,  Michael Caruso of Sterling Real Estate Group,  who is now successfully selling modular homes,  Amber Cohen of Empire Communities, Angelica Bowles of Keystone Homes of NC, and Rick Gargiulo, also of Sterling Real Estate Group.

I developed a mortgage app, many years ago, which we give away free to our customers. This is now being used by thousands of new home sales professionals, to make extra sales, by guiding their customers with important monthly investment estimates.

There are many prospective buyers who have no idea of what an approximate monthly would be and aren’t ready to endure the rigmarole of being pre-quailed by a lender. This App is not meant to be used to qualify customers but to help guide them and make sure we are showing them homes that meet their monthly investment target. For me training is about action, like riding a bike or playing an instrument, we learn from doing not sitting in a classroom. We learned how to easily estimate the monthly investment with today’s rate, and then how to adjust factors if the payment was too high; plus other practical tips such as “Reduce to the Daily”.  Kudos to this passionate group, for putting in some extra time to master the numbers needed to sell extra homes.