Sell the Appointment Perhaps the most important thing to remember about an open house is that the event itself is not a selling opportunity. Rather, your goal is to set appointments or at the very least to get interested parties to sign a guest registry so you can follow up by phone or e-mail and set an appointment later. “We pretty much keep our mouths shut and let the homeowner sell the room,” Gottlieb says. Tyler agrees: “The homeowner sells the company; the sunroom sells itself.” Keep the atmosphere mellow and enjoyable; these people are already interested or they wouldn’t have come, so don’t apply too much pressure.

Whether your event budget is $250 or $25,000 (see “Big Tent,” page 80), a well-planned event can provide a great return on investment. Plan an open house of any size, take careful note of what works and what doesn’t, and pretty soon you’ll have an open house system that can add to your lead flow and your bottom line, pretty much whenever you need it. —Mary Beth Temple is a freelance writer based in northern New Jersey.

Big Tent

Creating an event of your own.

Compared with a customer’s home, an open house event in your company showroom can seem anything but intimate. However, it can be just as successful in generating quality leads. Joe Ronzino, director of corporate retail stores for Four Seasons, the sunroom franchiser based in Holbrook, N.Y., runs two to three multi-day events per year with a family-friendly party atmosphere.

His target demographic is local families. To that end, the event offers popcorn, cotton candy, or hot dogs as well as bottled water and soft drinks. It also features a large attraction, such as an inflatable slide or a maze, to keep kids entertained while parents look over the selection of sunrooms. “We advertise this as a family event,” Ronzino says, “and draw a tremendous amount of walk-through this way.”

Even with a per-event budget of $75,000 and up (including radio ads and newspaper inserts), Ronzino says he winds up keeping his lead cost at a consistent 9% to 10%, while generating millions of dollars in new business annually.

How can you plan an event that’s just right for your company? Ronzino advises keeping the sales cycle short. “You don’t want to create a campaign that is larger than your sales staff can handle,” he says. “Create your budget around the size of your organization and what it can manage.” Appointments are much more likely to turn into sales shortly after the event, while the customer is still excited.

The media cycle should be kept short, too. For best results, place your advertising in a short time frame and direct it toward a tight geographic area. Ronzino’s media ads start just two to three days before the event. “If you spread 70 radio spots over seven days instead of four, you will get a different result,” he says. Hit your demographic target hard, close them fast, and reap the rewards.