You’ve probably worked hard to create a superb process for bringing your buyers through a framed or rocked home to show them the quality of construction and teach them about your building methods, answer their construction questions, and use the experience to build trust and relationships. Awesome. That is what you SHOULD be doing.
Just wondering, though. Have you worked just as hard to create a superb process for bringing your buyers through the selections experience, teaching them about the high-performing choices you offer in your design studio (whether it is a 15×12 room or a hundreds or thousands of square feet), and using the experience to build trust and relationships? Have you worked just as hard to create a buyer-centric space for this process to occur? A creative, visually-stimulating, emotionally-provocative space which allows buyers to explore, learn, and interact with the Included Features and Available Personal Choices you offer? A space which inspires your buyers to invest into truly creating their dream home and inspires buyers to visualize what this would look like? A space which is so powerful, so compelling, so professional, so first-class that you not only use it for buyers to make their personal selections, but YOU USE IT AS A SALES TOOL TO SELL HOMES? Because it’s so perfectly aligned with your brand promise that it would be stupid NOT to leverage it as a sales tool?
Hmmmm. I’ll let you think about that one for a moment.
Today, more than ever, it’s about fulfilling dreams. That doesn’t mean that VALUE isn’t arguably the most important thing buyers care about today. But I propose that “Getting a house the way I want it” is firmly implanted in the Top 5 decision-making factors. Consumers today (of virtually every type of goods and services) are conditioned to want to “get it the way they want it”, to Not Settle. While that may seem like bad news, it’s actually great news, if you choose to take advantage of it. You can capitalize on the emotional pull of creating a unique, personalized home (notice I didn’t use the word “Customized”) which will support your buyers’ lifestyle needs and allow them to express their own personal sense of style (UNQUOTE!!). You can prove to buyers that you are not only aligned with this need, but have created a best-in-class, buyer-focused, buyer-friendly personalization experience, in a state-of-the-art (notice I didn’t say “enormous”) design studio environment.
And further, if you don’t think the customer EXPERIENCE, the SHOPPING experience is a critical component of the purchase decision, then I’d encourage you to think again (or are you already blogging back about how wrong I am?). It’s critical to understand what your buyers demand from their shopping experience, and how to meet those needs in a way which also meets your company’s needs. Believe me, it can and should be a WIN WIN.
If you haven’t had time to study the consumer shopping experience, check out my next blog which will give you some insight into what today’s shoppers demand so that you can start Thinking Like A Consumer. And yes, I do recommend a trip to your local mall! Really. It should provide some fascinating insights into the consumer decision-making process.
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