Thomas Skahen and Janice Dumont hatched their plans for Primetime Communities when both were separately invited to give presentations at a National Homebuilder’s Association Conference in 2003. The following year, they launched their real estate sales, marketing and advisory firm. Based in Littleton, Primetime manages sales in five states.

Janice Dumont and Thomas Skahen

Title: Co-Founders, Primetime Communities

Age: Skahen, 44; Dumont, 45

Experience: Seven years

So how did Primetime get started?

TS: Janice and I started talking about a new business model… creating a service company for developers. Which is extremely atypical. We think highly of the Coldwell Bankers and the Century 21s. They’ve got a great business model for selling one-off homes. But when you take that model and put it into a multi-million dollar new construction site, it doesn’t work. In fact, it fails miserably. We’re of the opinion that [for these kinds of properties] you to need to operate like retail, and have full time sales people that are working nine-to-five, five to seven days a week… So in essence we’re the in-house marketing and sales team for 25 different developments in New England.

We cut our teeth on the real difficult stuff early on – so the developer would say okay, take this community next to the dog pound, or…

JD: Cemetery….

TS: Trailer park…

JD: Strip joint…we’ve done ‘em all.

TS: And we’d say, okay, we’ll do it, and get those properties sold, and over the next seven years we’ve evolved and moved up, and developers have given us larger assets.

How do you deal with demanding buyers in a tough market?

JD: When the market started getting more difficult, the developers were pulling back and trying to get more control, because they were afraid of losing too much. We needed to empower the sales teams in order to get deals done on the spot, but the fear on the development side was, if you do that [salespeople are] going to give them everything, condo fees, discount the price… The sales teams wanted a card [that would list all the potential discounts] and I was like, ‘No.’ You need to find out, otherwise you’re negotiating against yourself. You’re going to end up giving them all these things and if that’s not really what they want – now you’re giving them all that, and [the buyer will say] ‘Oh, by the way, this is what I really need.’ So there was a lot of fine tuning, [training our sales staff to draw out from buyers], ‘What is it for you right now that’s going to make this compelling?’ And then massaging that.

You deal with a lot of luxury properties and active adult communities – it’s not everybody who can afford to live in one of these properties. In a tough market, how do you find your buyer?

TS: [One thing was that we] changed our websites for our communities significantly. Instead of being static, it’s more interactive, with blogs, letters, updates, things that are changing. We’re piloting a call-in [service], an instant contact feature – if you’re on the site, you can click and speak to somebody.

JD: In sites where we saw that where the market was more web-focused, we said we need to engage these people at point of contact. That requires big commitment, though, because in order to do that you need to have someone available who can speak to you at all times. So everybody that works at Primetime has to have a [real estate] license, pretty much, whether they were greeters, marketing people, operational staff…We’ve had sales as a result. If you’re at work and you can just type and you’re curious about something, you don’t have to go to the phone…it’s all about being able to give people what they need when they need it.

TS: We also bough Flip video [cameras] for our sales staff, so that people who have already bought at the community can give testimonials [that are included on the development’s website]. Which is big right now. Because people’s biggest concern is, is this developer going to make it? And if you’ve got people in the community they can see, on video, to say, “yeah, we live here, it’s great, the developer is awesome” – it works, because it’s authentic. These are real people who are marketing our communities for us.

JD: In one case, there was a site where we had someone out of state considering purchasing. To be able to relate some of the things that [a buyer] has shared to what you’re showing them in the video [was powerful]. I mean, in the beginning, Tom referred to us as the Blair Witch Project. But they got a lot better, and it was a way, too, to get the people working in the field excited. They saw us constantly trying something new.

Skahen and Dumont’s Top Five Things Homebuyers Are Looking For:

• Value. The market’s more balanced these days, but buyers still want bang for the buck.
  
• Choice. Buyers want lots of options for finishing touches.
  
• Financing Options. FHA certification has been key in attracting buyers.
  
• Maintenance free living.
  
• Flexibility with timelines.