How to Run a Sales Center that Builds Trust

Yes, you read that right. Forty-two percent of new construction buyers who visited a sales center cited “pushy or difficult” sales center representatives as the reason they didn’t initially consider a newly built home. Perhaps more troubling: Nearly half — 46% to be exact — of existing home buyers surveyed for Zillow’s 2021 New Construction Consumer Housing Trends Report also stopped considering newly built homes for the same reason. 

A third number from the report illustrates why being pushy with these prospects is exactly the wrong approach: Forty-five percent of new construction buyers surveyed said they’re able to take their time to explore options — that compared to 33% of existing home buyers.

“The competitive advantage for new construction is time,” says Jeff Tucker, senior economist at Zillow. “There’s no rushing people through the biggest purchase of their life in a single weekend where they have to figure out how much to offer, whether they can waive the inspection, and so on. The frenzied speed of purchase is extremely stressful for home buyers.”

Because new construction buyers are less likely to be targeting a very specific location, and tend to enter the buying process with more financial resources than existing home buyers, they’re more likely to move on quickly from a bad experience. For builders, that means lost sales, and longer sales cycles for the deals that do close.

The better way is to build trust. That may take more work up front, but in the end it will provide more consistent results, a blueprint for future sales and marketing efforts, and more opportunities for referrals and testimonials. Read on for insights into how.

Best practices for a trustworthy online experience

Before they ever set foot in your sales center, much less a home you’re offering, buyers will be judging the experience online — both consciously and subconsciously. A site loaded with insincere marketing boilerplate, unclear navigation, and incomplete information won’t foster confidence. Make sure your online presence is discoverable, user-friendly, and comprehensive.

Simplify discoverability and availability

Optimize your listing on sites like Zillow, but also make efforts to ensure people can easily find your builder site and content online. To start, verify your site is hitting its marks for search engine optimization by addressing the factors that influence search algorithms.

Provide a way for prospective buyers to schedule in-person tours online — 66% of survey respondents indicated that preference. Check out Zillow’s full suite of buyer discovery tools.

Elevate customer and user experience

A poor customer experience online suggests that the experience will be poor all the way through close and beyond. Since your prospects are shopping for a home and a community in which they’ll live, you don’t want to send that message. Start them off on the right foot.

Label links and buttons in a consistent way that clearly conveys what happens when the user clicks on them. Whether you’re working with an agency or an in-house team, make it clear you want to avoid dark patterns. Allow people to opt in to a preferred mode of communication. User-test your online experiences early and often. Then implement that invaluable customer feedback using data-driven, scientific methods.

Ensure comprehensiveness and consistency

Make sure you have media that covers everything in detail, from the homes, to the area, to the community, to frequently asked questions. Be transparent about introductory pricing and lot availability. Set up a system that ensures your online resources and sales center reps are saying the same things. More on that below.

Best practices for builder sales center staff

Successful selling involves building a relationship with the buyer, and that couldn’t be more crucial than when you’re helping them find the place they’ll live for the foreseeable future. And your sales center staff is most often a home shopper’s first in-person exposure to your community. Here are ways to make it a good one.

Sales teams should be emotionally intelligent and empathetic

Your sales reps should be practicing customer service basics like introducing themselves by name, making eye contact, limiting industry lingo, and staying friendly throughout the interaction.

But it’s not enough to just go through the motions.

When people are considering where to buy their home, trust is a massive element. Empathy — a pillar of emotional intelligence — is one of the core drivers of trust. Builder enterprises need to ensure they’re training teams to practice empathy, and their hiring processes need to attract people who know why that’s so important.

Understand your buyer in advance

Knowing the needs, concerns and decision drivers of the buyers that consider new construction gives you an advantage with those buyers before they even step foot in your model home. To brush up on your target home shopper, take in our on-demand webinar on customer trends in new construction. 

More ways to focus on earning the buyer’s trust

Earning the buyer’s trust is crucial to establishing a relationship with them. When reps are on tours or interacting with customers at a center, they should also keep these conversational basics in mind:

Engage people in a conversational manner. Learn what they’re really looking for in a home; this should not come off as a high-pressure sales presentation.

Ask questions in order to find ways to relate. What are their hobbies, interests, pets, future plans, and importantly, their concerns? Do they have concerns or questions specific to your offering, new construction in general, or the buying process as a whole?

Repeat and clarify what they say. This way, they can be sure you’re listening carefully and you can be sure you understand. Buyers are often learning about new construction and our offering at the same time. That’s a lot of information, and your reps should be able to speak to the nuances knowledgeably.

If they brought someone along, include everyone in the dialogue. You never know who their influencers are. More on that below.

Be prepared to work with agents

Also from the report: 52% of new construction buyers who use an agent and a builder or sales center during their home search want their agent to handle all those communications. Buyers tend to trust their agents. Agents may be unfamiliar with new construction, and could need as much education on your product as their clients do. But don’t cut them out of the process. A spurned agent could tell their clients to look elsewhere.

Stay consistent during sales calls and tours

It’s frustrating for visitors to get conflicting information from members of the same team. That comprehensive messaging you painstakingly detailed online? Make it clear the sales team should know it and have the discipline to stay on message — whether that’s while they're discussing home features, community information, construction timelines or even the sales center hours.

Best practices after prospective buyers visit or tour

A well-oiled operation will continue building trust after prospects visit. This means nurturing leads in a nuanced way, and reassuring them you won’t be sending spam or calling repeatedly. 

Have a reason to follow up

Frame follow-ups as a way to inform prospects about price changes, feature updates or news about your homes or community. If you’re emailing prospects, make it easy to unsubscribe or opt for fewer emails; home shoppers may be taking their time, so let them come back to you when they’re ready. 

Finally, asking happy customers how they heard about your offering is a great way to measure the return on investment of your marketing efforts. For more tools and information on ways to do this with Zillow, read about Zillow’s Builder Dashboard.

Offer something in return

If a sales center visitor is a high-intent buyer, they’d probably like to hear more about your homes and communities — especially if the information is exclusive or personalized. Encourage reps to follow up with in-person conversations by offering to send visitors a market data report, neighborhood overview, a guide on buying new construction, or anything else that might help their decision.

Build and maintain a comprehensive FAQ system

Ask your reps to note follow-up questions from prospective customers. Then keep a spreadsheet and quantify the questions. The more often you hear a question, the better off you’ll be to answer it upfront. This also goes a long way to reduce churn in the sales process. Hearing the same objections from multiple prospects? Address them online and update your reps. By providing consistent, accessible information, you’ll attract more engaged buyers and fewer who are “just browsing”.

Request interviews for testimonials

Provide incentives for happy purchasers to be interviewed. You’ll gain more of that invaluable customer feedback, and you’ll get nuanced, natural language testimonials, which are far more convincing than canned, written responses. Get permission to post the best quotes on your digital properties and channels. Marketers call this social proof, and research shows that online reviews are trusted almost as much as personal reviews.

For more insights, tools and information, check out the New Construction Resource Center.