Just the other day I found a Yellow Pages book placed at my front door. I didn’t even know people made the Yellow Pages anymore, in this age of the Internet, quite frankly! So I picked up the Yellow Pages and placed it in the trash, since I’m not going to use it.

That made me think back to when receiving the Yellow Pages was a BIG deal in our home. After all if we wanted to find out which great restaurants were around our house, or where there was a vacuum repair shop, or a travel agent, band instruments, etc. that is where we turned to. Then I’d make a phone call (or my parents would) to whatever business and see if we wanted to buy what they were selling.

Today, the world has changed, hasn’t it? All I need to do now is pick up my smartphone and I can find out almost anything about anyone I am contemplating doing business with. So can you. So can your prospects.

In fact it’s believed that customers go on about 70% of the buying journey on their own (source Rentping.com/Vidyard.com) before contacting businesses. In other words, by the time your prospects have emailed, called or come in to visit, there is a good possibility that they’ve done a lot of research on your community already.

What does this mean for you?

I highly recommend that whenever you’re speaking with prospects on the phone or meeting with them in person that before you get into your information gathering process that you ask them a question like this,

“Have you visited our website?”

“Have you done some research on our community?”

“Have you visited our community before?”

Before I go further, I need to give credit where credit is due! When I first started with a company in Colorado, Lori Snider (who many of you know as a renowned industry speaker and expert) recommended that I ask the question on research and I did my best to do that with my prospects. I have heard Lisa Trosien (of the Apartment All-Stars and www.apartmentexpert.com) recommend that people ask, “Have you visited our website?” So, thanks Lori and Lisa for the helpful tips! (=

I stumbled upon “Have you visited our community before?” while working on-site, after many situations where I would launch into my sales presentation, only to have clients tell me, “Oh, I came in three months ago and….”

Here is why this is important…

Since today’s customer is likely much more educated about your community, you may not need to spend the first five to ten minutes of your presentation asking them questions to determine what they want, since they might already have a clear picture of what they do want. This helps you become more efficient and effective, by saving you time and energy, and helps keep your customer’s engagement up by not having to answer the same 20 questions s/he’s had to answer everywhere else. S/he might know what she wants, let him/her tell you!

Then once the customer has said “This is what I saw on your website. I’m interested in apartment 402…” you can ask pertinent questions to make sure that apartment 402 is right for the customer’s situation.

YOU: “Jill, apartment 402 is great. I think you’d love that location. Let me just confirm some of the details to make sure that it works for you. 402 is on the top floor, is that okay? It has W/D hook-ups. It’s renting for $1,000. Does that all sound good?…”

This made a huge different to me when I was leasing and I know it will make a difference for you to! Please share your results, questions, or comments below!