154 Understanding Today's New Home Buyer - Alisa Poncher Mar 1 2023

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And we wanna give a special shout-out and thank you to today's episode sponsor. NterNow. You can learn more at nternow.com.

We'd like to welcome to the show today, our guest, Alisa Poncher. Alisa is the President at Strategic Business Specialists. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

Alisa Poncher: Thanks for having me, guys. I'm excited to be here.

Greg Bray: Well, let's start out and help people get to know you a little bit. Tell us just a little bit [00:01:00] about yourself.

Alisa Poncher: Ooh, a little bit about myself. Well, I've been in the new home industry for 22-plus years, and I've done a little bit of everything from being an entry-level onsite salesperson to a community sales manager, director of sales, VP of sales and marketing, running a design studio, building online sales teams, a national sales trainer, and then most recently, worked for a big national builder as their online national internet sales manager. Now, have an opportunity to really follow my passions and my dreams and things I've wanted to do for a long time, and decided to go out and start my own company where I really can focus on mentoring and training and coaching.

Kevin Weitzel: That's super cool, but we need to know something personal about you, non-home building related that people can learn about [00:02:00] only on our podcast.

Alisa Poncher: Ooh, only on your podcast. Well, I'm a mom to 15-year-old twins. My first job was being the Chucky Cheese, and I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I like jumping out of airplanes, roller coasters, that kind of stuff.

Kevin Weitzel: Like static line or are we talking about free fall?

Alisa Poncher: Well, I did a full tandem jump out of a plane with an instructor.

Kevin Weitzel: That's still scary.

Alisa Poncher: It was scary, but it was fun.

Greg Bray: I need to clarify where the comma was in that sentence. I enjoy jumping out of airplanes, roller coasters. That was not jumping out of roller coasters, right?

Alisa Poncher: Yes. Please, no.

Greg Bray: Okay. Get the comma in the right place.

Alisa Poncher: Yeah. Thank you.

Greg Bray: Well, and as a father of twins, mine are 26 now. I totally understand the joy and adventure that can be as well, so.

Alisa Poncher: Absolutely. I didn't know you had twins, so that's pretty cool.

Greg Bray: Yeah. There's something really amazing to [00:03:00] see what's the same and what's different, but that's a topic for a different podcast, I guess, you know?

Alisa Poncher: Yeah, right. The world of twins.

Kevin Weitzel: What's the topic today, Greg? Alisa's most recent speaking engagement, right?

Greg Bray: Yeah. We wanna talk a little bit about that. Before we do that, let's find out how you kind of decided to get into home building in general. What kind of pulled you into this industry to start?

Alisa Poncher: Well, probably like everybody who's in this industry, never in a million years thought about being in the new home industry. I worked for a medical practice, actually. I was their office manager, medical assistant. I did a stint as a court reporter and realized quickly that the typical Monday through Friday, nine to five, job quickly got boring for me. I decided sales is where I wanted to go if I wanted to have income potential that I was looking for.

And coming from a family of car [00:04:00] people, I knew that's not what I wanted to do and what was the next best thing? Houses. So, I went and got my real estate license and went through the process of buying a new home and really loved buying my new home and became friends with my salesperson, and quickly crossed over to what I called the brighter side of the home industry.

Greg Bray: All right, and give us a little intro into Strategic Business Specialists. You already called it pursuing your passion, so help us understand that passion, and what you guys are offering today.

Alisa Poncher: Yeah. Well, when it comes to sales training, there's a lot of sales trainers out there. I really like the idea and the thought of being able to structure a sales program and a training program that really is personalized to each individual builder. And I find that in my world, from onsite sales and online sales, that there's trainers that [00:05:00] specialize in both of those areas, but nobody really brings them together. And as much as we like to think that online and onsite sales are always aligned, I find that that's not always the case.

Through all the years of doing what I do, and all my different titles and job responsibilities, I really learned that teaching others and watching others become really successful is what gave me the most pleasure. I didn't like sitting in an office in meetings all day. I didn't like trying to figure out how to save $500. I really liked being out there and seeing people, helping other people. Finally decided that this was my opportunity to do that. That's kind of how I got here.

Kevin Weitzel: It's funny that you said that you found that a lot of times that sales and online sales and/or OSCs aren't necessarily aligned. Do you think that that is more culturally created, that lack of alignment due to, you know, sales [00:06:00] professionals being fearful that they'll steal their thunder? Or do you think it's a process-driven issue that the handoff and the philosophy of when the client becomes an interest to becoming a potential buyer, is that more the alignment crux if you will?

Alisa Poncher: I think it's a really good question, Kevin, and I think it's actually a little bit of both. I think, and I can say this because I was an onsite salesperson. We're a little bit of control freaks, and that's okay. That's what makes us really good at what we do, right? We know the experience we're gonna provide our customers, and we don't trust everyone else to do the same thing, and that's a hard thing.

From the other perspective, I think sometimes builders as a whole don't always understand the role of the OSC or online salesperson, and everyone within the company doesn't understand it. If we don't train our online salespeople well, and they're not scheduling really good quality [00:07:00] appointments, not that every appointment is gonna turn to a sale, but it's really, I think, a lack of cohesiveness, right? If the OSCs are really doing a great job and talking to customers and really getting to know their information and sharing that information with the onsite, then onsite really values them.

I think there's issues sometimes with some builders on how they compensate when they take something from onsite to help compensate online. The whole version or wording of this handoff, we're not just taking it from the OSC and saying, okay, we're stepping out of it completely. We're handing it over to the expert in the field, and if we communicate really well, we can work together. Our customers won't always tell our onsite team how they really feel, or they don't wanna hurt their feelings. But a lot of times they'll share more with an OSC because they're non-threatening. They're [00:08:00] that non-salesperson, right? So, I think some of it's cultural. I think some of it is each person not understanding each other's roles. I think it's a little bit of both.

Greg Bray: So, it sounds like the goal then is to make something that works well for the buyer, and step away from just because this is how we do it at the builder. At IBS, you did a huge class on understanding buyers and where things are for today's buyer, and how those are changing and evolving. Why was that a topic that you are interested in sharing? What attracted you to that as a choice to submit for a presentation?

Alisa Poncher: Yeah. So, from my perspective, everything that builders do should be focused on the customer experience. And in today's market, that's never been more important. Right? We got in some bad habits during our previous hot, hot market. Not necessarily because we [00:09:00] wanted to, but because of necessity. We were just so crazy busy, and we had people doing bidding wars and we had people on wait lists and we had supply chain issues, things taking much longer.

But when you really think about the experience that our buyers went through over that time, the experience was not very good. It was very frustrating for our consumers and customers. Now builders really need to make sure that we are focused on our customer's experience because now there's even more competition, right? We know that our customers have more choices than ever before. It's not just a matter of, I'm gonna take whatever I can get.

Teaching a class that's really focused on who our buyers are and how we need to understand our customer's journey, is really important. And the class that I just taught is really focused on understanding some of the different [00:10:00] generational philosophy. So, you know, differences between baby boomers and millennials and Gen X and Gen Z. But also understanding how they like to go through the sales process, what their marketing things look like, how they look at design and features in homes a little bit differently. And then we threw in a component of different cultural buyers because they're very different too, right?

We talked a little bit about negotiating and how people react and things that people ask for. Because I think from a sales professional perspective, the more we can understand what people background is and why they come to us the way they do, helps us not take things personally, helps us keep the right frame mind, and really helps us provide a better experience.

Greg Bray: That's fantastic by the way, just all of those insights. We probably need [00:11:00] to reset our expectations on a much more frequent basis than we do, as far as understanding buyers cuz they're changing all the time.

Alisa Poncher: Yeah.

Greg Bray: From the research, you've done and the things that you put together to present, what was something that surprised you as you were kind of preparing and, and looking? It's like, I didn't realize this, or I hadn't considered that. Anything jump out?

Alisa Poncher: You know, I think if you think about it, millennials you know, they've gotten a little bit of a bad rap. People try to think of them a lot of ways in terms of feeling entitled, or wanting things easily. But I think it's really important for us as builders reaching out to consumers to know that in 2020, millennials were the highest spending generation. We have to stop thinking this way, and we need to stop judging people based on their age or their ethnicity and really get to know [00:12:00] people for who they are because their backgrounds are what drives this, right?

It's an interesting time. You know, when you think about that these same people, millennials are going to inherit 68 trillion dollars from baby boomers and early Gen X parents before the year 2030. That is a whole lot of money coming into millennials hands.

Greg Bray: Wow.

Alisa Poncher: So, when you start doing research and you start thinking about the financial impact certain generations are gonna have on our industry. It's pretty huge.

Greg Bray: So, millennials are real buyers, is what you're trying to say.

Alisa Poncher: I am trying to say that.

Greg Bray: And it's only gonna grow.

Kevin Weitzel: I like how you, kind of addressed the generational differences, the linguistic differences. You know, like I have a hard time with people that don't understand seventies jive. I just can't relate to people that can't. You know, if you're not hip and you don't dig, when I'm dropping and laying down, then [00:13:00] I just don't get you. I don't, I can't relate. So, I don't understand these millennials that don't understand this, you know, seventies pimp talk. I just don't understand them. No, I'm just kidding. How much does the sales department team, the sales team in a home builder need to recognize those differences and how much can it play into their success in their sales process?

Alisa Poncher: Well, I will tell you, based on my experience working for a lot of different builders over my years, I think it's an area that we're missing the boat on. I don't think very many builders focus on it or train on it. I think you tend to see a lot of builders who focus on active adult or age-targeted communities. They train a little bit differently on that, but there's not a lot of training that goes in and just understanding how things impact our customers and how easy if we can understand that, [00:14:00] what an impact it can have on our presentation or how we talk about things. So, I definitely think that there is opportunity for builders to do a much better job with this.

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Kevin Weitzel: [00:15:00] Now, you'd also said a pretty interesting stat, that millennials were the top spenders. What was that timeframe? In 2020?

Alisa Poncher: Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: But are they the top savers? Because a problem that I hear time and time again from my clients is that they're running into millennials that are spenders. They're consumers. However, they're not savers. So, they don't have the down payments required by a lot of builders to be able to get into a home. Is that an issue?

Alisa Poncher: Potentially, yes. I think that that can be an issue. What I find is that they actually are saving a little bit more than you would think. They're very focused. They're not frivolous in what they're spending on. They look for things that are important to them, and as they're getting into the age of really wanting to think about their futures and stuff, [00:16:00] they're also very savvy and very able and resourceful, right? So, while they may not have huge down payments, a lot of them have baby boomer parents or older Gen X parents who are able to help them.

And I think that we really need to remember that millennials, they're incredibly tech-savvy, but their big thing is instant gratification. But when you think about that, I think we're all kind of turning into an instant gratification world, right? I mean, I never pre-COVID, would've thought I was the person that would order my groceries online. We all want to be able to go online, get information.

I went to a furniture store a few months ago to buy something and they said it was on backorder. I didn't buy it. I wanted to take it home with me then, right? So, as all of our generational influences, they're behind us, but our current situation, [00:17:00] COVID changed things a lot for all of us. It's just really understanding the why's behind a lot of different things.

Kevin Weitzel: You're definitely onto something with the whole instant gratification because my girlfriend and I fight all the time. I have boycotted Amazon since inception. I haven't spent a penny with the company, at least knowingly, because I think it's an evil corporation. However, that's just my personal opinion, not the opinion of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. Just making sure that it's out there because this is gonna be in the ether for a long period of time. I don't want anybody from Amazon thinking, Hey, let's sue those guys over at the podcast. But I hate it.

However, I'm also a big proponent and believer in shopping local. So, when we're out shopping, I'll be like, oh, you know, let's go look for this. And when we're there, they won't have it. It'll be just like you said, out of stock. And then she'll pick up her phone and go, I can get this from 20 different vendors at Amazon. And I'm like, I don't wanna hear it.

Alisa Poncher: Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: Because it's just destroying our local economies. So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that that instant gratification is what everybody's looking for, except for me. [00:18:00] I think I'm the one dinosaur that is willing to wait, I guess is what it comes down to.

Greg Bray: Let's take that, Kevin, into home building because instant gratification and the new home purchase process are not exactly congruent most of the time. Because we have to wait for this home to be built. It's part of that whole journey. So, where does that kind of generational expectation start to become a challenge in a builder's sales process when people aren't used to waiting for things and you know what? You might have to wait a few months to get this house.

Alisa Poncher: Well, I think that's where sales professionals have to step up and improve their game a lot. In the sense that we're having to keep customers excited about a new home, not for 30 days, not for a week, but sometimes for a year and a half. This is where we're dropping the ball in our industry, I feel, in a lot of ways. There's so many amazing tools out there from video. I was just [00:19:00] doing a training with a builder a couple weeks ago.

We don't even do contracts face-to-face anymore for a lot of builders. They're sent out via DocuSign, and the consumer signs it, and comes back. How anti-climatic is that, right? You just bought a house and there's no celebration, there's nothing. So, it got me thinking and we brainstormed and we came up with this great idea of why don't we have you and your builder and your warranty person all get together and have a video filmed and, you know, it's congratulations, welcome to the family, whatever it is, and then you send it out the minute the contract comes in. We need to start thinking about how do we keep our people excited throughout the process and we've gotta be better.

Kevin Weitzel: How do we do it without bringing in too much cheese factor as well? Because I've seen some of the videos that some builders do and there is a high level of cheese. Not to say that all builders are this way, I'm just saying that there's high-level cheese pretty [00:20:00] regularly. I think that it needs to be genuine. I think that that's another thing that a lot of home builders lose track of is, especially with this whole DocuSign world that we're in. That genuine care for that client kind of almost goes out the window.

Alisa Poncher: Yeah, you're right, Kevin. I think for me it's about doing the little things right? It's getting to know your customers. It's knowing when their birthdays are. It's sending a birthday card. It's calling them. You know, if you know their kids are a big soccer fan. It's doing the little things that tell them that you care because what we have to remember is when we are selling homes, these are people's lives. This is where they're gonna be making their family memories, right? And we need to be selling that throughout the whole process, reinforcing why they picked us to buy from, that they made the right decision.

Because guess what? The minute they sign the papers, they're already having second thoughts. They're talking to [00:21:00] their friends about, Oh my gosh, you bought a house with interest rates at this? Oh my gosh, well, did you look at this builder? Did you do this? Oh, did you hear about this? So, we have to keep reinforcing that sale and keep reminding them why they picked us to buy from. They bought from you, the salesperson.

Greg Bray: Great reminders. Absolutely. We talked a little bit about millennials and some of the generational potential differences there. Tell us an example or two from a cultural standpoint of things that builders maybe aren't paying attention to or should start considering a little bit more.

Alisa Poncher: You know, when you talk about from a cultural perspective, where we need to set our teams up for success is there's going to be things that come up. There's different cultural things that have feng shui things, or front doors have to face certain directions. Numbers have to be certain things in the addresses. Coming from different [00:22:00] countries where bartering is part of the sales process, right? As salespeople that sell to people from all over the world, from all over geographic, ethnic backgrounds, we have to be open-minded and we have to understand that not everybody is like us. We have to be able to tone down our ways of thinking.

There's some cultures that as a woman salesperson, I'm gonna offer to shake hands, but I'm not necessarily gonna be offended if the gentleman says no. Right? There's many cultural backgrounds that are very multi-generational and yes, the people who are coming in aren't the final decision people. You're gonna have to resell it to their parents or whoever in the family will give their blessings. And it's just us needing to understand that.

Greg Bray: I think those are some great examples and it's so easy to fall in the trap of just thinking [00:23:00] everybody's like me, right? I mean, thank goodness everybody's not like me. That would be a very boring world, but.

Kevin Weitzel: Wait a minute. Do you know how bad Greg wanted to say, thank goodness everybody's not like Kevin. I guarantee that popped through his brain just for a brief, like little picosecond, a little nanosecond of just oh, but then he's, like me. Yes, Greg. Thank you. I love you, buddy.

Greg Bray: Well, if the world was all like Kevin, oh, what a world it would be.

Kevin Weitzel: It'd be a silly place.

Greg Bray: So, but we do fall in that habit of making assumptions based on our worldview, don't we? How, how do you train that out of somebody? How do we learn that?

Alisa Poncher: Well, I think it comes to leadership. Bringing training in and understanding that we all have our own personal biases that we come with, right? We all have them. It's human nature. We see somebody and we make a rash decision, but if we can all be a little bit more aware of differences between people and seeking to [00:24:00] understand and really seeking to learn versus just seeking to get a sale. I think we get more sales because of that. So, we need sales leaders and we need more trainers to talk about some of this stuff because it's not common out there.

Kevin Weitzel: I agree with you. And I think that it's not just a bias and I have a little anecdote behind this. It's also has to do with your personal experience. So, when I was a new fledgling sales professional. I'll even use the term loosely cause when I first started, I was a mess. The first encounter I had was somebody that came over from India. I never knew that it was part of their culture just to naturally bargain. It's just the way that they do everything. It's literally from day one.

The guy offers me some insulting number for this motorcycle I was showing him. I honestly was the point where I thought that the guys on the floor were just pulling a joke on me. I mean, it was that outta line that it was just, there's no way this guy could be real. So, when I come back with a writeup for him, like, yeah, no, here's what this thing [00:25:00] retails for, and here's all the cost and yada yada.

And then he comes back with a number that's like a dollar more than what he said before. I had to fight back, do I wanna punch this guy? Because he's really being that obtuse. So, and I'm looking at the other guys still thinking that they're playing a joke on me. Well, what I learned was so valuable that day that I would take on literally any potential buyer with their bargaining structure from that point forward. So, the fact that I'd never been exposed to that, I learned a huge, huge lesson in the reality of the differences in culture of how people shop and how they buy, and how they negotiate.

Alisa Poncher: It's huge, right?

Greg Bray: America is becoming more diverse every day.

Kevin Weitzel: It's called the melting pot for a reason. We're melting.

Greg Bray: Just a couple more here before we kind of wrap up but tell us a little more about some insights on Gen Z. We've been beating up on millennials for a few years now.

Kevin Weitzel: Cause it's fun.

Greg Bray: It's fun, right? We love you millennials. That Gen Z is starting to move into buying [00:26:00] age or will be soon if they're not there yet. What is something there that maybe is a little different that we need to consider?

Alisa Poncher: Well, that's really interesting that you asked that because it piggybacks onto what we were just talking about culturally, and that is that Gen Z is going to be our most culturally diverse generation of all. Partly that comes because we are the melting pot of the world. From a projection in income, they're projected to hit 33 trillion in income by the year 2030. That'll be more than a fourth of all global income, and they're gonna pass millennials in their spending power within that year. They're coming up.

You know, when we're selling to them, we need to remember and think about that this generation really values authenticity and expression and they're much more independent. They are also our first [00:27:00] digital natives. They didn't live a world without cell phones and the web and that kind of stuff. They're much more knowledgeable and they come into our sales offices much more prepared. So, we just really need to remember that that cheesy salesperson, this generation really craves authenticity, and so if you come across as just that typical salesperson, you're gonna lose 'em the minute they walk in your office.

Greg Bray: With all of these differences generational, cultural, et cetera, there's training salespeople who are dealing one-on-one, you know, of how to be able to talk to somebody. From a marketing perspective, we're trying to put a message out. What tips or ideas do you have for the marketing team, as far as how do I put a message that might appeal to more than one if my product appeals to more than one? Or do I have to do separate messaging, you know, for each kind of target there? What are your thoughts on a messaging strategy?

Alisa Poncher: That's a great question.[00:28:00] You do need to understand each of the different generational mindsets a little bit. And while yes, your buyer demographic probably crosses a couple of them, most often you're not gonna have all of your generational demographics in one product or community. So, I do think that there are ways to pick out a couple of highlights that each demographic that you're marketing to that's really important to them.

You know, so for Gen Zs, they really value privacy. They prefer a lot more online interaction, statistically. Whereas your baby boomer is a little bit more face-to-face, that kind of stuff. And so I think, from a marketing perspective, you find just one or two things that you can incorporate into your overall marketing strategy that can speak to that person [00:29:00] that's looking for either of those things. Does that make sense?

Greg Bray: No, it does. They just have different focuses in what they connect with, and somehow you have to be able to message more than one without having to like duplicate everything you're doing on your marketing side. It's kind of an interesting challenge to me.

Kevin Weitzel: I actually listened in on a chat not too long ago. It was actually a podcast, and they were talking about how the personal bubble of Gen Z is very big. They need a very large personal gap when communicating because they've started off digitally and they're just not comfortable with that one-on-one intimate conversation. That I found heavily interesting. The fact that you know, even my kids, they're college age and they're texters. They feel more comfortable texting you back and forth, back and forth than just picking up the phone and saying, Hey, you know, what are you doing tonight? Let's go out to dinner. It's crazy.

Alisa Poncher: Yeah. My kids text me from upstairs, or they'll text each other from the couch.

Kevin Weitzel: The twins?

Alisa Poncher: They'll be like sitting next to [00:30:00] each other on one end of the couch and texting each other. We just have to remember when we're working with customers of different generations that the things that they grew up with, their experiences, have such a huge impact and effect on how they perceive things, right?

Greg Bray: I also think we wanna watch out for some of those stereotypes, right? We're grouping huge numbers into, you know, one or two comments about they like this or they prefer that. At Blue Tangerine, we recently did an attitudinal survey looking at buyers' preferences for online interactions. And we were a little surprised to find that there was not as much gender or age difference in people's desires to interact online with the builder versus in person. There were other things that drove that more than just age and gender demographics.

So, we're gonna be making that research study available on our website here if anybody wants to check it out. But I had some assumptions around age being a [00:31:00] huge factor. I mean, I think there's certainly some implications there when someone's more comfortable, but there's some baby boomers that are pretty good with their cell phones too.

Alisa Poncher: There's no doubt about that. I mean, I think anytime we're talking about generational generalities or even cultural generations and cultural differences, they are big picture. They are not definitely all-encompassing. I'm kind of on the border of generations. And it also depends how you were brought up, right? If you were brought up with very traditional baby boomers or more kind of eclectic. I mean, there's so many things that come into, you know, where you were brought up, you know, that kind of thing. And then what you're exposed to on an everyday basis.

Greg Bray: Alisa, we really appreciate your time. This has been a great conversation. Do you have any last pieces of advice that you would like to leave with our listeners today?

Alisa Poncher: We are in exciting market right now. And I think that, yes, things [00:32:00] have slowed down, but this is an opportunity for us as sales professionals to really make a difference and really do something to create a better customer experience. Even when things slow down, people are still out there buying houses. This is not a crisis right now. People will always still have babies being born, getting married, kids leaving the home. Those things are gonna continue to happen and this is really still a prime time for us to really be the best that we can be.

Greg Bray: Well, Alisa, if somebody wants to reach out and connect with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Alisa Poncher: They can reach out to me via phone at (303) 588-2420, or they can visit my website at www.strategicbusinessspecialists.com.

Greg Bray: Awesome. Well, thank you everybody for listening and a special [00:33:00] thank you to our episode sponsor at NterNow. You can learn more at nternnow.com. That's N T E R N O W.com. And thank you for listening today to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Whites without house. Thank you.