by George Allen

Turns out, not surprisingly, we're not the only ones who underperform.

I give up! (Almost.) Guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the manager of a WAWA Dairy Store in Blakeselle, PA brushed off my suggestion that would've boosted her location's business volume.

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by Joe Adams

Part 1 – Introduction

In the Manufactured Home Industry, as elsewhere, leads received from advertising represent a valuable business asset. As such, all leads belong to the company. Therefore, you must record, control and monitor the names of every potential prospect given to sales and marketing personnel for follow-up. If each name costs about $15.00 to obtain, handing a sales person 50 leads is entrusting him or her with a $750.00 investment. Controlling lead distribution takes on a whole new outlook when you consider leads are a return on a cash investment.

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by Chad Carr

Editor's Note: This article is part of an on-going series that we began publishing earlier this year on the Four Pillars of Retailing. In this series Chad Carr, President of Rainmaker Consulting, shares some of the fundamental principles of successful Retail Management that his company has gathered during their 33 years of working with independent retailers. For previous Articles in this series, click here.

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By Tim Connor, CSP

One of my favorite questions to ask managers, business owners and executives is, "Are you having as much fun today in your position as you did in the past?"

You would be amazed how often I hear, "It just isn't as much fun as it used to be" or something similar.

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by Tim Connor, CSP

"Like, dude, let me be perfectly honest with you."

In that sentence, I gave you three examples of common mistakes many salespeople make quite frequently.

First of all, if you are selling to someone 20-35 and you, like, use the word like, like every other word, they most likely won't, like, notice your over-use of like, the word like. However, if you are trying to sell to someone older or to me at age 60

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by Maria Cucchiara

If you feel your current Manufactured Home Industry website is outdated or isn't getting you the results it once was, then chances are it is time to update it. Just like items in a grocery store have a shelf life, so does your website. Here are six reasons you should update your current website:

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by Nadeen Green

It has been said that more people have been hurt by words than by guns. This anonymous aphorism makes the point that what is said about someone can be damaging and harmful. But some studies and now some pending fair housing cases are indicating that it is not just what is said about someone, but what they themselves say and how they say it, that can be a source of harm in the form of housing discrimination, whether conventional or manufactured housing.

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by Jamie Hammons

July 1, 2010. Thomas F. Collins, founder and president of Flamingo Homes in Athens, was inducted into the Georgia Manufactured Housing Association Hall of Fame during the Association's Annual Meeting on June 1, 2010.

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by Edward "Eddie" Hicks

Government isn't going to solve our industry's problems. They can help by providing us with an even playing field, especially with home financing issues, but they aren't going to bail us out of our current deplorable situation. We can solve our own problems by taking the proverbial bull by the horns and wrestling it to the ground.

It's all about our image, stupid!

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by Mike Hourigan, CSP

Editor's Note: We welcome Mike Hourigan to the ranks of our Featured Articles authors, with the first in a series entitled "When you think about it."

Dictionary.com defines the word resource as 1. Source of aid or supply, or 2. Sources of wealth. The synonyms for resource are: ace in the hole, advantage, upper hand, resourcefulness, stockpile, talent.

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by Chrissy Jackson

What to do about Older Homes?

In many older Manufactured Housing communities, the main thing that causes a problem is simply the age and size of the homes. They date the community. One comment heard from Wall Street is that "the value of a community is the value of its housing stock," meaning that a community can be worth no more than the sum total of the value of the homes located within the confines. And, if the value of a home is based on the perception of the buyer (and we know for a fact that it is) then what do we do to improve the perception of value in older homes?

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by L.A. 'Tony' Kovach

It is exciting, as well as an honor, to have the type of talented new people coming on board with MHMSM.com that we do. This is true not just for our growing team–our family!–of writers and now podcaster, journalist and associate editor. We will soon have a new associate for our IT manager man Bob Stovall, who I plan to introduce to you in the Masthead blog after my return from the Washington DC Summer Meeting. But the focus of this article is the news and part of our vision for that, what that means for you and the factory-built housing industry.

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by Shawn P. Mullins

Energy conservation is a political hot button at present and, if recent history is any predictor, it will continue to play a vital role in our economy and the building industry in general for the foreseeable future. Before too long, the future will be the present and what was once voluntary, will become mandatory. Perhaps a short overview of current energy code applications will help put this into perspective.

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by Ken Rishel

Multinational businesses–and even those confining their efforts to the United States–that are smart enough to benefit from rapidly emerging trends in the manufactured housing industry and land lease communities, stand to make huge fortunes. Why?

To understand what is happening in our own economy, and plan correctly for it, we must also understand what is happening on the world front. Ours is no longer a regional or even national economy; we surrendered that when we lost the collective, national will-to-win at the race for world economic domination. The United States is rapidly shifting to an economy that no longer creates much wealth and, as a consequence, faces a diminishing middle class.

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by Bob Stovall

Online Marketing 1-2-3 is a simplified process to determine if your online marketing strategy meets your minimum expectations for success in your marketplace. If these three basic building blocks are not in place, all other efforts are not likely to produce the results you have in mind – more traffic, more leads, more sales.

Over the next few months, we'll have a look at each of these building blocks. At the end, you'll have a good idea of what needs to be done to assure your success in the future where most of your prospects have lived digital lives from birth.

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by John Underwood

Hopefully you have read the article in a prior issue regarding CONNECTING with the prospects that are looking for a manufactured home. CONNECTING is also known as building rapport, building a relationship, etc. As we discussed in that article, the purpose of this phase of the selling process was to create an environment in which your prospect will feel comfortable and safe in providing you with pertinent and often very personal information. We discussed that a prospect's tension level has to be lowered in order for

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by Don Westphal, A.S.L.A.

In conversations with potential clients and in seminar presentations for more than forty years, I have extolled the benefits of experienced professional guidance in the planning of new and upgraded Manufactured Home Community projects. And, for the most part, have tried to keep this prodding generic for fear that my comments would seem self-serving. I have decided to throw away the "Mr. Nice Guy" approach and tell it like it is. In short, too many community owners and developers have been penny wise, shopping for the cheapest professional services available, and pound foolish, having their proposed development rejected or paying higher construction costs resulting from the use of consultants with little experience in the manufactured housing arena.

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by Zig Ziglar

Somebody once said the difference between a big shot and little shot is that the big shot was the little shot who kept on shooting. There's much truth in that witticism. The reality is, no matter what our target might be, we seldom hit it on the first try unless the target is low, which means the accomplishment–and the rewards–will be insignificant.

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