252 New Home Buyer Customer Experience Expectations - Josh Paul Jan 22 2025

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 with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And we are excited to have joining us today, Josh Paul. Josh is the CEO at Homebuilder Ops. Welcome, Josh. Thanks for being with us.

Josh Paul: Greg and Kevin, it's great to be here.

Greg Bray: Well, Josh, let's start off and just help people get to know a little bit about you. Give us that quick background overview about yourself.

Josh Paul: Sure. So, we've been working with home builders for about seven years. I started out in the HubSpot [00:01:00] world and I've used HubSpot every single day. HubSpot's the sales and marketing platform that's on fire right now in the home builder space. But I've been doing that for about 15 years, every single day for 15 years. We started working with home builders about seven years ago. The nature of a home builder sales process really fits well with sales enablement and marketing automation and being able to make data driven decisions, and it's just taken off from there. So that's where we're coming to this conversation from. And I'm so excited to be talking to two of the leaders in this space when it comes to putting out thought leadership.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, before we jump full steam ahead into all things nerdy and CRM, could you please break out with something personal about you that has nothing to do with work, the home building industry, or family?

Josh Paul: Absolutely. Alright. Personal about me. I met my wife working at Walt Disney [00:02:00] World many, many lifetimes ago. We were both on an internship in Walt Disney World and never left. We did the Walt Disney World college program back in the day. It's a great thing to share, a great thing to share with our kids. We still talk about it

Greg Bray: Now, does that come with a lifetime pass?

Josh Paul: Don't you wish. Don't you wish now you have to mortgage your house.

Kevin Weitzel: Was it truly the happiest place on earth?

Josh Paul: It's pretty magical as a college student because you have no responsibility, but to be at work on time and you have access to whatever you need. So, on your days off, you can go to the parks or what was Pleasure Island or the tunnels underneath the Magic Kingdom or water parks. It's a pretty amazing experience. I recommend it to anybody. Not only that, but you meet some incredible people. They're there for the right reasons. I made some lifelong friends on that internship, and I met my wife. Lifelong friends, plus my wife.

Kevin Weitzel: That's cool.

Greg Bray: Well, Josh, tell us a little bit more about Homebuilder Ops, the services you guys are providing and what you're focusing on.

Josh Paul: Sure. [00:03:00] So, Homebuilder Ops is the leading consulting company for HubSpot and home builders. Whenever a home builder starts using HubSpot, HubSpot says, Hey, you guys should talk to Homebuilder Ops and we end up helping them. And the things that people come to us with are, I have leads coming in and after the leads come in, I don't have any visibility into where they're going, what my sales team is doing, where they're piling up, where they're getting stuck, why some are closing, why some are not.

The other reason people come to us is they say, you know, we spent a lot of money on this platform, and we want to get this right. We're not a marketing agency. We don't do lead generation and websites and content. Our focus is on the plumbing and the reporting and the process and getting that right. We do a lot of coaching of executives on how to read their data and how to make data driven decisions. We also do a lot of sales team training, how to sell more with less work as a result [00:04:00] of this platform that your company's invested in.

Greg Bray: Well, Josh, as much as we'd love to spend a lot of time talking about HubSpot, which is really fabulous, and we that conversation. What we really want to dive into today is you guys have done a research study recently, a new home buyer experience expectations survey. You're like me, you like long named things.

Josh Paul: That was the hardest part of this study that actually moment. How do you sum up everything that you surveyed into something somewhat concise, but not really concise.

Greg Bray: All right. So, I'm gonna say it again. The New Home Buyer Customer Experience Expectations survey. It's pretty fascinating, some of the stuff you've got in there. But before we dive into that, just tell us a little bit about the background of why you want to do it and kind of what your goal and approach was to it.

Josh Paul: Like you all and like the ways that we coach our clients, we want to make data driven decisions. So, there's enough research out there on what people are looking for in different homes at different points in time, in different markets. But we wanted [00:05:00] to understand what homebuyers, prospective homebuyers, recent homebuyers want out of the process, how they want to be communicated with, how they want to be followed up with. And also at the same time, the flip side, and this is some of the most interesting data in the study, is what don't they want? What are the things that we're doing and our clients are doing when we communicate just because we don't know any better or because we've always done it that way that is turning home buyers away.

Greg Bray: So, who did you ask then? How did you go out and find the audience and collect this data and start asking these questions?

Josh Paul: That's a good question. We surveyed a thousand recent and perspective new construction homebuyers. So, these weren't just homebuyers in general, these are new construction homebuyers. We hired a top research firm to identify and vet the audience and to build the questionnaire with us, build the survey with us, to make sure that it was statistically sound.

They did [00:06:00] the acquiring of the data, and then we hired a separate firm to process the data and make sure that the statistics in the report are accurate. We are sales trainers and automation specialists and reporting specialists. We are not statisticians. We hired the experts to make sure that this data was sound. And now we can use the data, just like you all do with your data, to help people. At the end of the day, it's about helping people.

The big takeaway, without going into all the details, is there are things that you can do in your process, in the language that you use, the information that you provide, the order in which you do things that cost you, as a home builder, nothing to make that change. And it increases velocity through the sales process, it increases buyer satisfaction, just by knowing what buyers expect and want out of the process.

Greg Bray: I think it's important because Kevin, you've probably seen people throw out, you know, [00:07:00] statistics and things, and you're like, where'd that come from, and it turns out that they just like emailed their client list or something or they just asked a few friends for some data. And so, I really want it to be clear that what Josh did here is much more than some little, Survey Monkey email blast to his client list, right? Much, much deeper than that.

Josh Paul: Similar to your study, what's the name of the year study that you did?

Kevin Weitzel: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Before Greg does that, Josh, did you seriously just ask him to say one of the longest names of a study in the history of studies?

Josh Paul: Exactly. I want to hear this. I want to compare character for character.

Kevin Weitzel: We've given Greg enough time to take a nice big deep breath. All right. What is it, Greg?

Greg Bray: We did the Insights for Home Builders Online Buying Behavior Research Study. You know, you're right. It's hard to find a name for these things, Josh. I mean, come on, Kevin, give us a break.

Josh Paul: But in the same way, I've heard you talk about this, you wanted to have data backed research that is up to date to help you guide your clients. And that's the same [00:08:00] thing that we did. So, people can take this data and implement it themselves. We use it to shape our processes and our recommendations as well.

Greg Bray: All right. But when you went into it, Josh, I'm going to assume there were some things that you thought were going to be there, right? Because we all kind of have those expectations. This is the way we've been doing it. We're trying to prove that we're doing it right. What was the big surprise, the thing that you went, Oh, I didn't expect that? What jumped out at you in your results?

Josh Paul: tThat's something that I'm most excited about here. There's a lot of information, there's research, there's best practices that talk about the emotional hooks in the sales process and getting people to uncover their motivation behind wanting to move and their interest in a new construction home. What this study laid out, and it could be just the economic times that we're in, is there's a lot of [00:09:00] logistical content and messaging that home builders can incorporate that will mitigate a lot of the concerns and fears and information gaps that buyers have.

Specifically, just overwhelmingly, there's an emphasis on affordability and financing. That's always been part of the process, but that is top of mind for buyers. They want to know that they can afford something before they have any other conversation. Before they opened up their life story to you, they want to understand what is the path, what is the process, how can I trust you and what is the path to being able to afford this?

Kevin Weitzel: So, there's no secret that when a query comes in, when there's a question, that somebody wants an instantaneous and fast response, like three seconds, it's too long of a gap. But is there anything in your study that reveals not the amount of time for the response, but how often that the timeline is of how often they [00:10:00] want to be connected or contacted or reached out to? Was there anything with that?

Josh Paul: It's less about the time and there's not a specific formula for how often. They want to be able to trust their home builder. The builders that provide the information and show that they're actively listening and are knowledgeable, they understand a buyer's specific situation and needs, and they sound knowledgeable about their community and the surrounding area, those are the ones that the buyer, whether they explicitly say or not, gives permission to contact whenever they want. They want to know that they have a person in the industry that they can trust.

In the building industry, we're so focused on product sometimes that we don't do those things that are very easy to do and sometimes lower cost, up front, that help build that trust that get the buyer's permission to be able to reach out to them and ask questions and get a [00:11:00] response if they don't respond right away. So, it doesn't matter whether they're calling every day or twice a day or once a week, you're going to get a response if they trust you. But in order for them to trust you, you have to put in the work up front to build that trust and show that you have answers, you have their best interests in mind, and you understand their situation, both on the emotional level and the logistical level.

They're reaching out because they have questions, and you have answers. When someone fills out a form on your website, it is an ask for help, it is a cry for help. And that's one of the things that we trained a lot of sales teams on is reaching out more often, especially right after that initial inquiry.

Some people say, all right, I'm going to reach out on day one and then on day three and then on day seven. But really, you can compress the amount of time that you reach out to somebody because they still have questions. They've opened this loop. They want you to be able to fill that information gap [00:12:00] that they have so that they can sleep easier at night. Until then, they are still uncomfortable because they don't know what they don't know, and they want somebody who can help alleviate those concerns and that fear of this process. It's the fear of the unknown

Greg Bray: Josh, you hinted earlier about some things that you also discovered that buyers do not want us to do. And so, what I'm not hearing is they're annoyed because there's too much outreach, there's too much communication. We're not ticking them off by sending too much information is what I’m hearing you say. Is that correct?

Josh Paul: That's correct, but you have to do the work up front to build that human relationship and build that trust and provide them the information that's going to fill those gaps and then lay out that path for them. Some of the things that came out of the study that the buyers don't want us to do, that would make you a buyer not want to work with a new construction sales professional is, the top one was slow to respond.

We run these reengagement campaigns for builders [00:13:00] out of HubSpot. So, the premise there is that there are buyers in your database that are still shopping, but because they weren't hot when we initially started talking to them, we're not talking to them anymore. We've moved on to hotter leads, but they're still shopping. So, we run these reengagement campaigns to get them to raise their hand again, show that they're still in the market.

And the number one thing we hear from these buyers when we get them to reengage with the OSC team is, I thought you'd forgotten about me. I'm so glad you reached out. Nobody is talking to me right now. And so, that slow to respond, or no response is a big thorn in the side of new construction home buyers. Another thing is inconsistent answers to questions. You have to be very in tuned with the buyer and understand what you're telling them.

You may be talking to 20 different buyers that week. They are talking to one, two, or, or three different sales professionals. They're very in tune to what you're saying. So, if you're not [00:14:00] consistent, they're going to catch that right away. They don't want you to rush through the process. They don't want any indication that you're prioritizing getting them to sign the contract over their needs, listening to them. Not only listening to them but giving signals and letting them know that you hear them, and you understand their situation. You can't emphasize that enough in the sales process. It's fascinating data.

Greg Bray: They want to feel valued is what I'm hearing you say. They want to know that you still care, even if they're not ready to buy today because they're still trying to figure that out and they don't want to just be ignored for the person who wants to buy today. That's what I'm hearing. Is there other content that you found through, you know, the website and the communication process that helps. buyers feel better engagement or connect better with the builder?

Josh Paul: You guys can relate to this. When you're putting together plans for websites and content strategies, there's a lot of logistical [00:15:00] content that buyers want. It does not always have to be pretty pictures and emotional hooks, and it comes down to arming your salespeople with, it could be a one sheet. Here's how financing works. They don't know how financing works. You kind of assume that they know. And so, one sheet on here's how affordability works. Here's how the process works. It could be on paper. It could be on their website. It could be part of your app.

But it's that content that allows them to open up on the emotional side and on the motivation side. But until then, especially in these economic times, they can't get there until some of these fears have been solved. The call to action for builders coming out of this study is to put together consistent content. Don't make each community sales manager develop their own content on affordability and the process and how financing works, and frequently asked questions. Arm your team with [00:16:00] this data, whether it's electronic or in person.

Going back to that, you know, some of the things they don't want you to do. Builders can only manually reach out to so many people at once, so leveraging your tool set and your automation to be able to stay in touch with people and show them that you would still like to engage with them if you're ready to engage through automation can reduce that no response or slow response time or the gaps between when you're reaching out to somebody that you have a relationship with, without adding extra hours to the salesperson's day.

Greg Bray: You mentioned affordability and financing. Tell us a little more about what they said about pricing transparency. Because I know that I see a huge variant in what builders are comfortable putting out there, especially on the website. You know so many of them just have this starting from price which drives me crazy because it's usually like way different from what any real price ends up. It's like starting from this number but that's only if there's like just [00:17:00] walls and nothing else in the house or something like that, you know, and they have to do all these other upgrades. What do buyers say about pricing and understanding pricing and what did you learn in the survey?

Josh Paul: Sure. Two things they want to understand pricing, not in terms of pricing, but in terms of affordability. That is first and foremost on their mind. We asked the question, what would keep you from signing a contract with a new construction home builder and number one was concerns about affordability and pricing.

And then the second thing was concerns over hidden fees. And this doesn't necessarily need to be at the beginning of the process or publicly available, but the sales team and the sales strategy has to include an overt effort to show that there aren't any hidden fees. It all comes down to trust and you can build trust through process and through content in a systematic way. You don't have to have this magical charismatic salesperson [00:18:00] at every community. You can incorporate a process and arm every salesperson with the content that will create trust, that will manufacture trust.

The other thing that I thought was interesting, we asked what information has the least impact on making you comfortable to schedule an appointment? So, we're not talking about once they've met with them. We're talking about the beginning of the process. What information is of least value to you or has the least impact? One of the top items was current promotions.

What the buyers are saying is current promotions don't drive appointments. That was a little contrary to what we had heard in some other data. So, we dug in further and they said current promotions matter, but current promotions at that point in the process, because I'm so early in the process, I don't understand the other parts of the process or how long this takes.

The current promotions that a builder is running, that they're getting in front of me, don't move me to book appointments. It's too early. Later on, it may [00:19:00] move me to sign a contract faster, but in terms of scheduling an appointment, visiting the community, current promotions don't have the impact that a lot of builders think they do.

Kevin Weitzel: So, I actually relate to that very much and I'll tell you why. Me being a salesperson, I'm your typical salesperson's dream because I've already presold myself before I even walk in the door. So, I am that person that literally goes in going, all they got to do is not blow it and I'm a customer.

So, when I look at somebody that's leading with a promotion, I look at that as pressure. They're trying to apply pressure to me to basically force me into something that I already want versus it being a carrot that says hey, here's something that could help you get over the line. I'm already over the line, so I look at it as something that is against what my goals are, which is to have a nice smooth transition. It's more along the lines of them trying to pressure me. And I'm like, well, why do you feel the need to pressure me? You have a quality product. Pricing is where I need to be. The community is where I want to live. So, what's the purpose of this pressure other than just to pressure me into doing [00:20:00] it? What's wrong with it? That's where my mindset goes as a consumer.

Josh Paul: Exactly. And that didn't strike us until after we saw this data. I said, that does make a lot of sense for the reasons that you're talking about.

It's that zero moment of truth, that Google research from probably a decade or two ago now, where consumers are so educated online now that when you introduce what was traditionally an effective sales tactic, like a promotion, to a consumer that has already sold themselves, without knowing it, throws a wrench in the mentality of the buyer.

Kevin Weitzel: I think a lot of people don't trust promotions anymore unless there are those already socially accepted things like we know that Black Friday is a day that Best Buy and all the electronic stores are going to have all these crazy deals. Everybody has deals on Black Friday. Everybody knows if you're going to buy a mattress that for some crazy reason, Veterans Day is the day to go buy a mattress because they have all these promotions that are specific to that specific day, and it's kind of a commonplace that people [00:21:00] understand that. But I think outside of that, I truly believe that people don't trust promotions. And I think it comes down to auto dealers have screwed us on this

Josh Paul: Blame the auto dealers, blame the airlines.

Kevin Weitzel: Let's do it.

Josh Paul: Greg, how do you guys approach content strategy on sites to build trust?

Greg Bray: Well, I think trust is all about educating the buyer, and then providing what we call social proof. That's where we talk about, who else have you done this for and have you been successful with that? And of course, that gets into the testimonials and the reviews and things like that. Josh, did you have some data on how buyers really respond to things like testimonials and reviews as part of all of this?

Josh Paul: That's exactly right, and it aligns with exactly the way that you and your company approach it. We asked buyers what would make them feel more comfortable scheduling an appointment with a community sales professional, with a home builder sales professional. The number one thing was reviews [00:22:00] and those testimonials. A close second is financial information. This kind of aligns with what we've been talking about this entire episode. Company information is number three.

And then the fourth in the top four is information about the purchasing process. Builders are so close to their purchasing process sometimes we don't step back and go, this buyer is thoroughly confused and scared and we need to fill in these gaps and show them the path, and show them that we've done it for other people and that they can trust us before we start talking anything close to a sales conversation. It's educating them.

Greg Bray: Well, Josh, based on the things we've learned obviously we can't get into everything that you've got in the study, but if you could just share with our audience today, one or two things that they should be doing different based on what you learned, what would be at the top of that list?

Josh Paul: What home builder sales leaders should focus on is adjusting their process and providing content to [00:23:00] meet homebuyers expectations. This report is all about what homebuyers want in the process, what a new construction homebuyers expect in the process, and you don't have to retool everything. You don't have to blow everything up. You don't have to fire everybody and rehire everybody. You can introduce content and changes to your process without spending a lot, without a lot of change management, that would make a big difference to buyers and eventually move the needle. You'll have more appointments. You'll have people moving to contract faster. You'll have fewer cancellations because you have aligned your sales process and your marketing efforts with what buyers want, how they want to be treated, and the information they need to feel comfortable moving forward.

Greg Bray: Well, Josh, if somebody wants to get a full copy of the report and see all the data, because again, we've just scratched the surface in a few minutes today, how can they get their hands on it?

Josh Paul: Sure. They can go to [00:24:00] homebuilderops.com/research. That's homebuilderops.com/ research. If you can't find Homebuilder Ops, you can just search for HubSpot for home builders and we're all over that first page.

Greg Bray: Somebody's been doing their SEO. There we go. HubSpot for home builders. Awesome. Well, Josh, we appreciate you spending time with us today. If somebody wants to connect with you personally, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Josh Paul: Connect with me on LinkedIn. I love meeting new people. I love collaborating with people. And most of all, my team and I love helping people. So, look for Josh Paul on LinkedIn.

Greg Bray: Thanks again, Josh, for being with us. And thank you everybody for listening today to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you. [00:25:00]