After the onset of the pandemic in 2020, online sales became a more integral element of the builder business model. Many prospective home shoppers began their searches online and scheduled virtual tours based on information they gathered. As the pandemic prolonged and prospective buyers became accustomed to virtual resources in the home buying process, it became apparent that online selling was not a short-term fad, but a business practice that will prevail long after the pandemic ends.
During the 2022 IBS education session “The New Rules for New Home Sales: Reevaluating Your Sales Process & Tactics in a Digital World” on Feb. 9 in Orlando, Florida, Myers Barnes of MIRM, Matt Riley of New Home, Inc., and Chad Sanschagrin of Cannonball Moments will share best practices for selling homes online as well as the fundamentals needed for success.
BUILDER spoke with Riley about his perspective on digital home sales and how builders are adapting to the new business normal.
BUILDER: How does online selling and digital sales differ from the traditional sales process?
Riley: The buyer process of coming to make an actual purchasing decision online requires them to go through the same mental steps to be able to go through the other end and say they want to buy a home. We do have some differences right now with market conditions. With such low inventory, large built-up demand, and sense of urgency, you have to move quickly as opposed to years in the past when the builder was always trying to create urgency.
But still getting to the buying decision, customers still have to go through the same steps. I use the term BACFLP: Budget, Area, Community, Floor Plan, Lot, Paperwork. Those are the things the buyer has to determine, and they have to make those same decisions whether they’re buying virtually or in person. The challenge that builders face today is how we enable them to make those same decisions. It comes down to embedding the decisions buyers have to make in the content you’re providing them. It can’t just be static pictures anymore. You’ve got to provide a lifelike environment for them to feel comfortable making those decisions. For the builder, the challenge is how do we make it easy for buyers to still make those decisions in a virtual environment.
BUILDER: What skills or tactics are most important for success in the virtual environment?
Riley: Don’t think when things go back to “normal” that buyers are going to all of a sudden say, “Well, you don’t have to do all these things for me anymore.” They’re not going to let us go back to the way it used to be. We’re still going to have to provide virtual showings, FaceTime appointments, and we’re still going to have to do it quickly and kind of be on demand. You need to be set up so you can relay from an initial buyer reach-out to the appropriate community salesperson or online salesperson. At New Home, Inc., we’ll have buyers who live in the area that want to do a FaceTime tour first on a house to make sure they want to come out [in person] and see the house. You have people locally setting up to do virtual appointments.
I think it’s key to embed your content to be a selling tool for you. That’s where video is going to be key. How do you get yourself—the salesperson, the builder, etc.—to become part of the conversation even at midnight on the prospective buyer’s couch? That’s going to be key.
BUILDER: Where are common areas where builders’ online sales processes might fall short?
Riley: The biggest mistake builders are currently making is not investing in online content. They’re looking at the short term and thinking they don’t need to spend any money or focus on the virtual environment because they’re selling houses hand over fist right now. The problem is that a lot of builders think hand-to-mouth: They’re just looking at what they need to do to sell houses today, and they’re not looking at what they need to do a year from now or two years from now to continue selling houses when the wind is not in their sails.
BUILDER: How can builders evaluate the effectiveness of their online sales/virtual sales systems?
Riley: It’s important to audit your content. You have to look to see if you have content on your website or freely available to the customer and evaluate from a customer’s perspective, can they check off the boxes they need to? Can the customer look at your content and get to a buying decision? There’s so much remote purchasing, it’s important to evaluate if you are set up to answer the buyer’s questions from the very beginning. Are you making it easy for buyers to answer the questions they have without a lot of help from you? You’re still there to help, but don’t hold back. Put it all out there for your customers.
You have to know what customers are taking in and what they are not taking so you know where to put your efforts and your money. Watching how much content customers are consuming and tracking how much time they are spending on specific content is vital to know where to continue to spend money and where to pull back.
Riley, Barnes, and Sanschagrin will cover additional sales tactics for the digital world and evaluation techniques during their IBS Session “The New Rules for New Home Sales: Reevaluating Your Sales Process & Tactics in a Digital World” on Wednesday, Feb. 9 at 11:15 AM EST.
