Buyers Expectations Moving Forward – Choose Your Own Adventure

In episode 6 of our webinar I talked about Buyer’s Expectations moving forward. If you are more of a reader vs. a webinar listener this is the gist of what I talked about.

I think that some things are going to be permanent changes in the way a buyer shops for a new home. It’s kind of like a buffet. Some people never thought twice about going to a buffet and touching all the utensils countless strangers touched, or touching the handle of a grocery store shopping cart… Now I don’t know if people are ever going to be quite the same when it comes to these things. The same goes for new home searches – we’ve been moving down this road to virtual home buying for a long time now.  Yet some builders protest a new process kicking and screaming. They keep hoping technology will go away, and don’t understand the importance of driving all traffic to their website first.

When I started, we had forced registration and made people provide information to get access to our floor plans. While we’d never think in 2020 to have forced registration, whether we know it or not, we are still withholding information. Holding back information really isn’t an option anymore.

We’ve beat it into the ground the concept of the buyer’s journey. If you Google The Buyers Journey, there are 14.5 million results.  But it’s really more like a choose your own adventure now. Remember those books we had as kids? If you wanted to go one direction, you’d turn to page 43 and if you wanted to go the other direction you turned to page 64?

We need to make sure we have the tools that allow the buyer to choose where they want to go and who they want to interact with. This doesn’t mean removing the human element. It’s just re-examining what our role is in the buyer’s adventure.  Our goal should be more of a guide along the way, which means we still need to ask questions to see where they want to go and why. It’s back to finding out their pain points, and why they are searching for a home so that we can then move people along in that adventure.

The secret to creating an adventure playbook is that all roads lead to unlocking the possibilities of visiting the community.

If that’s virtually or in-person, we shouldn’t force one over the other. Options give customers freedom, and when they have the freedom to choose, they will be much happier with their choices down the road.  In the past 14 years my husband and I have moved 5 times. (He’s retired military now) Several of those times we purchased the homes sight-unseen. We still made a visit to the areas before, but in two cases we did not even see the neighborhoods before we signed contracts.  We are not the exception to the rule. this happens more than you think, and will happen even more if we set up the proper channels to make it happen.

It was the confidence we built in our agents that helped, which means that this is the new arena we have to tackle and perfect in the building world. We truly need to learn how to build buyer confidence and customized service as we provide them with the tools and information, they want. This helps them select which page they want to turn to in that adventure book.

Let people build their own home buying adventure, while being that guide along the way.