Jeff Shore, founder and president of Shore Consulting, has been helping builders sell more homes for decades. His annual Sales and Marketing Summit just wrapped up in Nashville, Tennessee, with hundreds of attendees walking away with new ideas on how to engage would-be buyers. BUILDER caught up with Shore to get his parting thoughts.

What caught your attention most during the summit?

You’ve got executives in our industry that work in satellite environments, and they don’t get a chance to meet with their peers. So when you bring them all together, the learning, the camaraderie, the energy, it’s all really, really strong.

I think the whole world will tell you there are a lot of question marks in the marketplace. The question here that I think we’re posing to our audience, and they’re trying to figure out themselves, is how do you stay nimble and ready for whatever happens next, even though whatever happens next is largely unknown? We are trying to look at it and say that there are new opportunities, but there are also new threats. Nimble is a key word.

What about those threats?

I think the key threat is that the buyer can’t predict the future, right? They don’t know what’s going on. And so you’re going to have more and more buyers who are going to tap out. Right now the percentage of people in the United States who believe that it’s a good time to buy is at an all-time low.

But when we look at the markets where it is substantially more expensive to own than rent, there’s going to be a battle for people who are going to start looking even though the inventory out there is very low. That’s what’s supporting us right now. They’re going to look at it and ask, “Is this even worth it?” So the amount of reassuring that we have to do, the stories that we have to be able to tell our customers—these things have never been more critical.

Any other big takeaways?

The buyer is going through a very difficult time. It’s been 35 years for me in this industry, and I’ve never seen a buyer more skittish, more worried, more concerned. And they’re bringing that into their experience. So how are we taking the time to show our empathy skills? There’s a real disconnect there at times, and I fear at times that the buyer is left out of that and feeling almost victimized.

One other key takeaway is that when we think about wanting to more get more sales, we think about how do we add fuel in the form of better plans, better marketing, better pricing—whatever it is, we don’t spend enough time thinking about how to reduce friction. What are the things that are holding people back? If we can get into their head from that perspective and find out their anchors, then we’re prepared to move forward.

You said at the beginning of the summit that you thought maybe the housing recovery happened a bit too quickly, and that it worried you from a sales perspective. What did you mean?

Down markets have a way of flushing out the industry, quite frankly, certainly on the sales side. Especially those people who were letting the market do the work. But the market has to reset long enough for us to look at it and say ‘Now it’s time to make some changes. Now it’s time to really evaluate.’

I am concerned that the market has done too much of the heavy lifting. As it relates to our sales discipline, we’ve been able to rely on the market strength without looking at the core fundamentals of sales, and that’s what’s missing right now. When we think about what will be the next downturn, whenever that happens, I am worried that many builders are not well prepared.