Pulte Group - Consumer Home Buying
Consumers then EVALUATE and NARROW their choices, often needing to make compromises on their requirements. With no “perfect home”, a significant amount of time can be spent in this cycle of searching, evaluating, and compromising.
This process eventually yields a SHORT LIST of about 2-20 homes in serious consideration.
Consumers then may be ready to VISIT these homes – perhaps starting with a drive around the location and its surroundings before actually stopping by.
Visits help the customer to NARROW AGAIN, developing a very short list of final options, or eliminating the entire list and going back to the requirements stage.
They'll then arrive at a group of FINAL CHOICES, usually between 1 and 5 homes, and move on to COMPARE/CULL/COMPROMISE phase, where they'll go back for one more round of research before reaching a final choice.
With options narrowed, customers will finally be ready to DECIDE TO PURCHASE and make an offer.
Once the buyer and seller agree on a price… they sign the home purchase agreement, and the buyer provides the deposit.
The customer then starts the process of obtaining FINANCING, ...and BUILDING THE HOME.
Finally, they CLOSE the HOME, get the keys, and MOVE-IN!
Looking back at journey as a whole, it's important to consider the consumer's emotions throughout the different phases – from second guessing, to stress between contract and financing, to buyer's remorse, and more.
Until they move-in, the decision isn't fully finalized, and these emotions could send them back to re-visit their search.
So what about our process? Now that we’ve followed the consumer through their home buying journey, let’s review at all the steps in our sales process.
The first stage is the PREPARE/PRE-WELCOME, where we get the store ready to meet our consumers.
We build rapport and trust during the WELCOME & RAPPORT stage.
DISCOVERY uncovers objections or compromises and helps the consumer narrow choices, using a series of smart questions.
We then DEMONSTRATE what we have to offer, considering a number of relevant factors.
As consumer compromises start being vocalized, we'll then need to HANDLE OBJECTIONS.
Throughout the process we are GAINING AGREEMENT on the next steps of the process, always including a specific date for each agreed upon step. The ultimate agreement is the agreement to purchase.
As agreements are made and the process moves forward, we engage in FOLLOW UP that is useful to our consumers at every stage, as they move to complete their home-buying journey.
Looking back at the consumer journey, the emotion it generates, and the sales process, we can begin to see where they intersect and discover some useful conclusions.
First, the sales process is not linear – as you handle objections and reach agreements throughout the process, you may need to move back before you can fully move forward.
And it's clear that customers have already undergone a long.
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