AI has become an increasingly critical tool for marketing across industries. It helps streamline processes, improve your ability to connect with customers, and even provide extensive data about customer needs. This is especially true when it comes to homebuilder sales automation tools. However, traditional automation solutions often fall short, preventing you from fully accomplishing your goals.
Are you ready to transform your marketing efforts and provide your customers with everything they need, all without unnecessarily increasing your workload or employee base? Take a look at the latest AI homebuilder sales automation tools and how they can help you accomplish your goals.
The Challenges of Traditional Homebuilder Sales Automation Tools
Automation has been part of your marketing options for a long time. However, those tools often fall far short of what you really need to accomplish your goals—and may throw many potential challenges into the mix.
1. Limited Follow-Up Channels
When you use traditional automation tools, you may have few options to follow up with your customers. In fact, in many cases, you’re limited to one: email. As a result, you’re not able to include your other interactions with customers as part of those follow-ups—and that may mean a disjointed experience that fails to reflect the way customers are connecting with your brand.
2. Slow Lead Response
Many automation tools require time in order to respond effectively to leads—or may not push out the responses that they really need. That may mean you are losing customers to your competitors because they got back to them faster. Fast response time is a critical part of addressing customer needs and ensuring that they feel valued by your company.
3. Poor Qualification Logic
Past versions of homebuilder sales automation tools have failed to take important qualifiers into account when grading your leads and determining which ones you should follow up with. Customers may fall quickly out of your sales funnel when you do not follow up with them—and unfortunately, many of the tools you’ve used in the past may not recognize exactly what signs indicate a valuable lead.
4. Lack of Integration
Your traditional homebuilder sales automation tools may not have integrated well with your existing tools, including your CRM. As a result, you have had poor visibility into the last contact with a customer, a lack of personalization, and, in general, poor follow-up on the factors that matter most to those leads. In many cases, you may not know what customers have been told or what automated responses they have already been through when they finally connect with a representative.
The Game-Changing Benefits of Modern AI Tools
While previous versions of automation tools may have fallen short on your expectations, modern AI tools are fixing many of those shortcomings. Tools like Verse’s AI SDR and Atlas’s AI-powered chatbot can change the way you, as a homebuilder, interact with your customers, qualify your leads, and connect with your buyers.
1. Respond to Leads Across Channels
As a home builder, your leads may come from many different places—including new development websites, which will attract a wide range of potential buyers and people interested in what you have to offer. With modern AI solutions, you can respond to those leads no matter how they initially connected with your brand.
Did they send a query from your new development website? You can respond via email or chat with them directly on the page. Did they connect with you on social media to ask about your available properties? They can get access to that information quickly and effectively—all in a system that is connected to your CRM tools so that you can provide them with the same high-quality experience no matter how they connect with your brand.
2. Provide Answers When Customers Need Them
Most customers aren’t searching for information about their next home or renovation project during a traditional workday. That tends to be an after-work task: one they take on when they have the time and energy to focus on it. Unfortunately, that means that they’re conducting most of their research during a time when you aren’t in the office.
Enter AI-powered chatbots. Instead of being available only during work hours, they are always on—and that means your customers and leads can connect with you no matter when they choose to conduct their search. Whether they need to schedule a quote or check in with you about the materials you use for a specific type of project, your chatbot can provide them with those answers immediately, rather than leaving them waiting for the next business day.
That automatic communication offers a number of advantages. Not only does it allow customers to feel connected with your brand when they’re doing their shopping, but it can also prevent unnecessary delays in getting the answers they need—and that can lead to customers who feel much more satisfied with the information provided.
3. Qualify Buyers Based on Criteria That Matter to You
There are a lot of criteria that can go into qualifying potential home buyers and individuals interested in taking on home renovation projects—and some of them are specialized for your industry. Not only do you need to take budget into account, but you may also want to know more about the specific type of renovation or home the buyer is considering so that you can get a better idea of whether your company actually delivers the products they expect.
Then there’s the timeline. In many seasons, you may find yourself incredibly busy, with an extended timeline for new projects. If you’re working on new builds, you may have very specific timelines before buyers can move in. Any change may mean that a buyer simply is not the right fit for your brand.
With AI tools like Verse’s lead qualification solution, you can take all those factors into account when determining whether a customer is a good fit for your brand, then make sure that you keep in contact with the ones that are most likely to make a purchase.
4. Route Leads to Local Sales Reps
Many large brands have extensive networks that include local sales representatives. With modern AI solutions, you don’t have to worry that a lead will end up mistakenly routed to a sales representative across the country. Instead, these tools can route leads to local sales representatives who can form a connection with the customer, get them what they need, and answer questions and solve problems based on local conditions.
Your location can have a huge impact on many factors related to home building and renovations, from potential weather-related delays to the types of materials or home construction styles that best fit your customers’ needs. Local sales representatives are more likely to connect with that information. Furthermore, local sales representatives can better answer questions related to local contractors, including their capacity or how they do business.
5. Take Leads Through Your Sales Funnel on the Customer Journey
The journey to buying a home—or even settling on a major home renovation project—can be a long one. Customers have a lot of questions in the process, whether they’re in the early stages and just starting to look at home prices or they’re ready to buy and want to know more about your specific offerings. You want to keep them in your sales funnel throughout the customer journey.
Unfortunately, with the wide availability of information today, it’s easy for customers to get distracted—or worse, pulled into a competitor’s sales funnel. With AI solutions, on the other hand, you can keep them focused on you.
With the power of chatbots, you can provide answers to customers at any time of the day—including customized scripts designed specifically for your business. Did a customer fall away or stop asking questions? You can automate those vital follow-up connections, allowing you to draw them back to your brand and remind them of their future plans.
If you want to keep your leads in your brand’s sales funnel, rather than allowing them to fall away, automated messaging and customer support are among the most effective ways to accomplish it.
Transform Your Brand With Homebuilder Sales Automation Tools
As a home building brand, you already know the importance of keeping up with the latest trends and changes in the industry—not to mention the communication customers require. By using effective automation tools, you can transform the way you interact with leads, improve your sales numbers, and enhance your brand’s reputation, all without the cost of adding staff members.
At Verse, we offer conversational AI solutions that keep you on the cutting edge of AI technology and empower you to better connect with your customers and provide the solutions they need. In addition, we offer an AI chatbot tool known as Atlas: a tool designed specifically for homebuilders that provides customer support 24/7, when customers need it most.
Are you ready to learn more about AI sales and marketing tools for home builders and how they can transform the way you do business? Reach out to us today for more information.
