Before implementing technology that offers automated sales process capabilities, you must be able to accomplish two things.

First, you must change your mindset from a what-do-I-want-to-communicate sales and marketing model to a what-do-my-prospects-and-clients-care-about sales and marketing model. Second, you must select tools and establish processes that will enable the people in your organization to continually reach out and connect on a personal and emotional level with your prospects and customers. As you look at the various software solutions, there are some basic considerations you should evaluate:

■ Is this software developed for a business-to-consumer operation? Is it homebuilder specific?

■ Are the workflows, field values and documents embedded in the software adaptable to specific sales processes, whether these are legacy “best practices” or the builder’s own time-test strategies?

■ Are the components of customer relationship management, e-mail marketing,Web content and analytics tightly integrated so that you can have visibility into your prospect’s behavior through every step of the sales funnel?

■ Is the system intuitive and easy to use? How many clicks does it take to accomplish tasks? Is the user interface familiar and/or friendly?

■ Can you integrate a campaign that directs people to specific Web pages or documents and also makes follow-up calls and activities easy with a campaign’s report?

■ Does the technology solution offer the ability to see how someone used an e-mail or spent time on the Website before calling?

■ Can the campaigns be dynamic? Does each lead that meets userestablished criteria get entered into the campaign automatically or over time, allowing the campaign to be set up just once, with prospects continually flowing into it? Can hard sales steps be automatically scheduled and alerts set to assure completion of tasks, including phone calls, mail outs, e-mails, etc.?

■ Can prospects be tracked with all of the metrics and demographics that have been gathered, including number of calls, number of emails, the original lead source, additional lead sources, income, home price, family size, kids ages?

■ Can electronic leads from any lead source, including the builder’s own Web site and third party directories, be “de-duplicated” and automatically loaded into the system without human intervention?

■ Can the sales e-mails be made interactive, and measurable, and be easily sent — whether as one-off mass e-mails, as part of an ongoing campaign or in one-to-one communication?

■ Can e-mails be personalized with information regarding communities of interest, children in the family, floor plans of interest and other specifics?

In addition to those aforementioned capabilities, analytics are key in any sale process automation or CRM technology solution. The analytics must offer you a real understanding of how people reacted to the e-mail. Your technology solution should be able to offer these answers:

■ Did the prospect click-through the page links within your Website or the third party links your site includes?

■ Did the second, third or fourth e-mails result in greater interest.

■ How many “touches” did it take to close a home?