Let's Turn ThreeEfforts to promote triple-play services in new homes are on the rise, but how do builders make sure everyone is happy?

Last year, Lennar Communications Ventures asked the Boston-based Yankee Group to put a price tag on what home builders could reasonably offer to cable and phone service providers when it comes to new home sales. To put it another way, the division of Lennar Corp. wanted to know how financially attractive new home buyers are to communications companies.

The answer: Yankee Group determined that every year, new home buyers make decisions about cable, Internet, and phone services worth almost $11 billion over the lifetime of those subscriptions.

Along a separate but related vector, Lennar also wanted to know whether its customers would listen if the company encouraged them to buy their services from a carefully selected provider. To that end, Peter D. Hart Research Associates of Washington found that two-thirds of new Lennar homeowners trusted the builder to give it good information. And better than 60 percent said that if Lennar would recommend a service bundle and help get it turned on, they'd be interested in subscribing.

Put together, these findings spell out what many builders have already come to realize: Partnering with communications providers to deliver bundled services—voice, video, and data—can be a win-win-win proposition for all parties. But how do builders, who may know more about windows than Windows (the computer kind), maximize such relationships while making sure their buyers are satisfied?

“We want to make signing up for these services an integrated component of buying a Lennar home,” says David Kaiserman, president of Lennar Communications Venture. “It's all aimed at making the purchase of a home simpler and more enjoyable.”

Builders such as Lennar, Kimball Hill Homes, Pulte Homes, and others have struck agreements with companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable to market the latter's services to new home buyers. This can entail everything from a gentle nudge to the builder's “preferred service provider,” to sales training and sponsored community events. (In some cases, builders and developers sign exclusive deals with companies that install fiber-optic networks then manage those networks and the services that traverse them. See “Welcome to Wiredville,” page 38.)

While none of the parties likes to talk in specifics about the success of these programs, they all seem to agree that their alliances bear fruit.

“Our customers trust us and look to us for guidance.” says Kaiserman. “We get good penetration for our providers.”

Here's how to ensure you make the most of an agreement to promote bundled services in your communities.