Running a calmer release day

Resources › New home sales strategy

Start with the allocation, not the price sheet

Most release days go sideways before the doors open. The price sheet is ready, the brokers are confirmed, but nobody has agreed on which units are held back, which are open to the public and which are promised to the VIP list. Settle the allocation first and the rest of the day has something solid to stand on.

Write it down as a single list your whole team can see: every unit, its status and who it is reserved for. When a broker calls asking for a specific suite, the answer should take seconds, not a hallway conversation.

Agree on what counts as a hold

A hold without a rule becomes a hold that never expires. Decide how long a unit can sit on hold, what a purchaser has to provide to keep it and who is allowed to release it. Put the rule in writing before the release, so nobody has to make it up under pressure.

Teams that do this well usually set a short window, often the same business day, and require a signed worksheet and a deposit cheque to convert a hold into a firm reservation.

Track deposits from the first cheque

Deposits are where small errors turn into expensive ones. Record each cheque against the right unit and the right purchaser the moment it arrives, along with the due dates for the deposits that follow. Your back office should never have to reconstruct the schedule from a stack of photocopies.

Review the day while it is still fresh

At the end of release day, sit down with the sales team for fifteen minutes. Which units moved, which stalled, and which questions kept coming up? That short conversation is the best data you will get on pricing and absorption for the next phase.