Advances in technology have radically changed how buyers discover and explore new properties. Perhaps the biggest change comes in the form of virtual home tours. These immersive digital experiences allow prospective buyers to walk virtually through a home from anywhere and at any time.
When combined with intelligent chatbot technology, these virtual tours become even more powerful, working around the clock to engage prospects, nurture leads, and drive conversion. This article will explore how home builders can use this technology to show model homes to prospects for a more effective sales process.
Understanding Virtual Home Tours in Today’s Market
Until recently, prospective homebuyers had to rely on photographs and floor plans to get an idea of what a property looks like until they had a chance to visit it in person. Today’s virtual tours, however, offer 360-degree photography, interactive floor plans, video walkthroughs, and sometimes even virtual or augmented reality tours of the home. These tools offer an exceptional opportunity to grant access to a home before physical access is possible.
While virtual home technology is relatively new, it’s still mature enough to be available and affordable to builders of all sizes. With it, virtual tours can easily showcase architectural details, material finishes, spatial relationships, natural lighting, and more. This detailed and accurate view of the home helps forge emotional connections with buyers before they ever set foot on the property.
The Digital Shift in Homebuying Behavior
Homebuyers are now almost exclusively digital-first. Their property search and evaluation process happens online. They research properties, neighborhoods, and builders before they ever engage with a sales representative. This presents a significant challenge for homebuilders that don’t adapt, and a significant opportunity for those who do.
The challenge comes from the need to capture and maintain buyer attention in an increasingly crowded digital marketplace. Builders who provide robust and engaging digital experiences to prospective buyers cut through the noise and get their properties in front of more serious buyers.
Virtual home tours are the ideal way to embrace the digital-first mindset of today’s buyers. They provide the exact type of detailed and immersive information that modern buyers are looking for. Buyers who have the advantage of taking these tours arrive at the sales office more informed, engaged, and ready to make a purchase decision. The entire sales process is streamlined when information is more readily accessible.
How Homebuilders Benefit from Virtual Home Tours
To get a better idea of how virtual home tours transform the buying process, let’s take a closer look at the benefits they provide.
Expanded Market Reach and Accessibility
When a prospective buyer needs to physically visit a home to get a complete picture of what they’d be purchasing, the pool of buyers is severely restricted. Virtual home tours eliminate this barrier, allowing builders to showcase properties to buyers who are relocating from distant markets. This is especially useful for military families, corporate relocatees, or investment buyers, as these groups are often unable to visit properties in person during their initial evaluation.
Enhanced Sales Efficiency
Many prospects don’t realize that a property isn’t for them until they’ve had the opportunity to tour it. This means that sales representatives spend a lot of time coordinating with buyers who aren’t very likely to make a purchase. Virtual tours allow these casual viewers to move on to a property more suited to their needs without taking sales agent time away from more promising prospects.
Competitive Differentiation
Some markets have a lot of competition, with multiple builders competing for buyer attention. Virtual tours can be a differentiator that makes a given builder stand out from the competition. In addition to providing information that other builders don’t, these tours demonstrate a commitment to innovation and customer service that will resonate strongly with tech-savvy buyers.
Cost-Effective Marketing
A quality virtual home tour doesn’t come for free, but the initial investment pays off quickly by providing marketing value that far exceeds the cost. A single virtual tour of a model home can serve thousands of prospects over time, providing homebuilders with one of the most cost-effective marketing tools they can invest in.
The Power of AI-Driven Digital Assistants
While many builders are still playing catch-up with virtual tours, the most forward-thinking ones are taking them to the next level with AI chatbots (like the Atlas digital assistant). These digital assistants take the static experience of a virtual home tour and bring dynamic and interactive conversations to it.
Intelligent Tour Guidance
Conversations with AI assistants can guide prospects through their tour, capture vital lead information, and answer many common questions. They can relay information about floor plans, pricing, availability, neighborhood amenities, financing options, and more. They can even provide personalized recommendations based on the preferences learned from the conversation. This makes it easy for builders to ensure that prospects don’t overlook the important selling points of a property.
Seamless Information Collection
To close a deal, sales teams need to know as much as possible about a prospect’s preferences, budget, and timeline. Traditionally, this information cannot be gathered until a member of the sales team has a chance to talk to the potential buyer. AI assistants change that, asking contextual questions about move-in dates, family size, feature priorities, and more. This gives sales team members detailed information about a buyer from the moment they first initiate contact.
The 24/7 Availability Advantage
Traditional sales operations are limited by business hours and staff availability. Prospects can’t get information about a property outside of these constraints. Virtual tours combined with chatbot technology upend these traditional limitations, presenting one of the biggest benefits of using the technology: 24/7 engagement.
Capturing After-Hours Interest
People who work business hours can’t do any meaningful property research during business hours. Those who don’t work business hours also frequently search outside of those times. AI assistants and virtual tours allow builders to engage these prospects as soon as they show interest, taking advantage of that momentum rather than waiting for business hours to return.
Global Accessibility
Buyers who are relocating from a distant market have an even harder time. Differing time zones make connecting with a sales team member more difficult, while the inability to view the property in person makes it much harder to evaluate. Virtual tours powered by AI assistants solve both of the problems, showing off the house and answering any questions the buyer may have, no matter the time difference.
Consistent Brand Experience
Variability in how different sales representatives approach showing or discussing a property can result in radically different brand experiences from prospect to prospect. AI-powered assistants provide consistent delivery of information so that every prospect receives the same high-quality experience.
Capturing High-Intent Moments
One of the most important aspects of sales is the prioritization of prospects. High-value prospects should be engaged quickly, while lower-value prospects need careful nurturing until they’re ready to buy. AI-powered assistants help with this in several ways.
Behavioral Intent Signals
A casual browser will look at a property once or twice for a short time and move on to the next until they find one they’re serious about buying. When that happens, they’ll return for multiple virtual visits or engage more deeply with the interactive features. AI systems can identify these patterns and trigger appropriate follow-up actions. They can use personalized messaging, exclusive offers, and priority scheduling for in-person visits to help sales teams close deals more quickly.
Contextual Lead Qualification
The natural conversation capabilities of modern chatbots are a major benefit to builders showing off their model homes. The chatbot can ask qualifying questions that occur naturally within the context of exploration. They can ask about time frames, budget ranges, family sizes, and specific feature preferences that will help sales teams better understand prospect needs and more effectively engage with them.
Seamless Handoff to Sales Teams
When a chatbot identifies a high-intent prospect, it’s smart enough to know that connecting the potential buyer with a sales representative as soon as possible is the best course of action. When it makes the connection, it can provide the agent with all of the relevant information needed to engage meaningfully with the prospect without forcing them to repeat themselves.
Integration With Existing Sales Processes
The goal of these chatbots is to enhance human interaction, rather than replacing it. By integrating with the systems humans use, a seamless continuum between digital and personal experiences is created.
CRM Integration
These chatbots gather a lot of information about prospects. To make the most of that data, they need to integrate with existing sales processes. By integrating with a CRM, valuable data about prospect preferences, engagement levels, and specific interests are all passed on to sales teams.
Lead Scoring and Prioritization
Some software products in a company’s tech stack have built-in lead scoring models that help sales teams prioritize their efforts based on a variety of factors. AI-powered assistants gather a lot of information that is useful to these systems. Through the integration of the two products, the information gathered can be used to enhance lead scoring.
Transform Your Sales Process Today
If you’re ready to transform your sales process with AI-powered virtual tours, book a demo with Atlas today and discover how our intelligent chatbot solutions can turn your virtual home tours into a 24/7 sales machine, capturing leads, engaging prospects, and driving conversions at all hours of the day.