Selling Choice: A Smarter Approach to To-Be-Built Homes with Beth Byrd-173

Selling a to-be-built home requires a different mindset than selling inventory — and getting it right can dramatically improve engagement and conversion.

In this episode, Anewgo's VP of Sales - Beth Byrd breaks down a practical, step-by-step approach to selling to-be-built homes more effectively, from preparation and buyer education to creating urgency and converting interest into contracts.

You’ll learn:

-What builders should prepare before pushing to-be-built homes

-How to use buyer insights and trends to guide decisions

-Why choice is the biggest driver for to-be-built shoppers — and how to showcase it

-How to create urgency without relying on inventory scarcity

-Ways to help buyers emotionally connect to a home before it’s built

-How visualization tools and virtual tours increase confidence and momentum

-Tactics sales teams can use to follow up more personally and close faster

This episode is packed with real-world advice for sales and marketing teams looking to turn consideration into commitment — especially as buyers come back online after spending months “dreaming” about their next home.

If you’re focused on improving your to-be-built strategy in 2026, this one’s a must-listen.

Tools mentioned in today’s episode: Anewgo Marketing App and Anewgo Insights

Transcript

0:34

Hello, and welcome to Anewgo of new home sales podcast. I'm your host, Anya Chrisanthon, and before we dive in today, I want to give you a little context for today's episode. This recording comes from one of our Anewgo Client training sessions led by our VP of Sales, Beth, by in this session. Beth walks through how builders can think more strategically about selling to be built homes from preparation to buyer mindset and to conversion. So you'll hear her reference 2 Anewgo tools along the way. Okay. One is the Anewgo marketing app where buyers can design their future home, choosing everything from exterior styles and floor plan options to interior packages and home sites. And then the other, uh, is Anewgo Insights, which is the flip side of that experience, giving builders visibility into exactly what shoppers are engaging with. Both at the individual level and in aggregate so you can spot trends. So that said, the ideas that Beth shares here go well beyond any one platform. So even if you're not using Anewgo tools, the strategy around choice, urgency, visualization, and buyer behavior is extremely relevant for anyone selling new construction. Or to be built homes. And Beth brings a unique perspective combining her real world sales experience with deep understanding of how technology can support, not replace the human side of sales process. So let's get into it. Here's Beth.

Beth Byrd 2:19

All right, so let's talk about the stages and the steps to think about for your to be built homes. So first of all, prepare, is the information the buyers want. Easy to find your pricing, your plans, your options. This is a really good time to get those pricings plans options all updated. This is also a really important time for you to review your insights. Look at what trends are we seeing from buyers? What are they consistently searching for? Maybe you'll find that single story plans are trending, or maybe you'll find that homes that have a darker exterior are trending, or a lighter exterior or floor plan options. Maybe that extra gourmet kitchen package is suddenly much more popular than it was before. So this is great to have real time information about what are people shopping for. You can look at how those trends have changed, maybe compared to last year or even in the summer. What are you seeing people shopping for then? Do you have your color schemes updated? Are they current? So when you're looking at what people are shopping for in the colors, then are you working with the design team to make sure your color schemes are matching what people are actually looking for, they're updated with the products that you're offering for the year. A real simple one is, is your disclosure up to date? This is something that's easy to forget, so it's a good once a year check-in to make sure that it is saying whatever you need it to say, because you're really gonna be putting some focus on these. To be built. Brochures coming up. Next. Is your team trained? Do they have the knowledge and expertise to use the app really comfortably with a buyer? So take some extra time ahead of time, and if you need help, I volunteer. I'm glad to help you with that. Be glad to meet with your team, make sure that they understand how to use this when they're face-to-face with a customer. And then are the buyers registering, and I included this here at not as a separate bullet point, but because this is an extension of the training of your sales and design teams, they need to understand that. They need to tell the customer, why should I register? Because otherwise, the buyers may not see the value in it. They may not understand why it's important, but we know that that's really valuable data for the. Builders and the builders need to tell the buyers that this is really valuable for them because they can save their progress. They don't have to start at square one every time. They can save their favorites. They can share them with their spouse, their friend, their realtor, whoever else might be part of the conversation that they're having about building a new home. And it also makes it easy for you to communicate with them, and you can tell'em that if you've got a relationship with the customer, you can say, Hey, you'll save your favorites, and it's really easy for you to share them with me so I can price things out for you. Maybe they've got some other options that you're not showing in the app that you want to consider for them. So it's it really important to make that part of your training is teaching your team to get the buyers to register. And a bonus in the preparation is virtual tours because, if you're in many parts of the country, it may be cold and people might not want to come out some weekends to, see your model home or your home's for sale when it is icy or frigid or snowy. But they can sit on their couch at home and virtually tour a home that has a virtual tour available. And, you can even add designable options, structural options, you know, lots of ways to do that. But this is a great way to increase engagement, especially in those markets where access to the homes is a little bit more limited. Okay, next, let's talk about the buyer's mindset. You need to think about what, are they considering at this point in the journey? Why would they, be looking at. New construction homes, and not just new construction homes, but building versus buying, and the reason is choice. They have a lot more choice when they buy a new construction home than when they buy a resell and they have the most choice when they do a to be built compared to an inventory home. This is where they get to select their home site. They get to select the options for their home, their elevation, their colors, whatever is a builder you offer. This is where they have choice. So when we're engaging them, we need to be demonstrating that choice. Make that your message. First and foremost, and do that with social media campaigns and eblasts. I, I've mentioned it before, but these were some of the most engaging, uh, pushes that I did when I was a builder with these tools was to send out specific campaigns in both places, social media and eblasts, talking about specific parts of the design process. And it is so easy to grab a screen recording, to make a quick little video, a gif. Some kind of visual for them to see, Ooh, that's a really cool tool. I wanna click on that link, and I wanna start designing my home myself. So make that a really big part of your messaging as you're looking to engage your buyers. Make sure that you are talking about choice and leaning into that. Next is urgency. Hurry up. I don't know about you, but one of the things I struggled with sometimes with to be built was it was harder to create urgency. When you're selling inventory homes, they're one of a kind. There is only that one. House that is currently available, but when you're selling to be built, you maybe have several similar home sites and they could build one of many floor plans. So how do you create urgency that makes them move forward to that next decision? And it's really about emphasizing, emphasize. The next steps, especially starting with your site maps, this is where site maps can create urgency because as you get those home site reservations or those sales and the map changes to demonstrate that sale, that's gonna really stick out in their mind as, oh, I better hurry up because I see home sites are moving. I'm seeing activity. So leverage your site maps. It's a really great. Way to put on social media for your sales teams to send individual links. Hey, check out our site map this home site just sold. That's a creates fantastic urgency for those two be built customers. Then use your visualization tools. We, we talked about this in the next step, but how can we start. Getting them dreaming about their home because when they start to make those little micro decisions, like which elevation they like. Which color scheme on the elevation they like, which floor plan options do they like? Then they start moving forward from just considering to imagining themselves in that home. And when they imagine themselves in that home, they start to connect with it in a different way. And there starts to be a little bit of ownership that happens far before they've ever actually signed a contract with you. So use those tools. In, all those sales appointments in your marketing, wherever you're engaging with the customer, make sure you are focused on getting them dreaming and that will create personal urgency. And that's really the key here. It's not just situational urgency. We sold a home site, but it's personal urgency. It's, let me look at that kitchen where I could be cooking next Christmas. Let me see it in my colors with the design or with the gourmet kitchen that I picked. That's exciting and I start to feel the personal urgency to move forward and make that decision. A, a tool like the virtual tour, like this is a really good way to do it. This is just a still shot, but you've seen me demonstrate these before. I've chosen the fireplace here and I chose the windows on each side of it, and I picked the color package. This gets really exciting and gets those feels going, which is what we want. We want to engage the emotion and not just focus on the logic. All right, next, convert them. First, are you watching what they're doing on insights? Because if they have registered, you know exactly what that buyer wants to do. If they've not registered, there's still valuable data that you can pull from. I've, okay, I've sent this blast. What's happening? Who's engaging? What are they looking at? But encourage your online sales teams, your onsite sales teams to be watching that specific buyer. Activity in insights so that you can be moving them forward. When the salesperson sees that, their customer, Mary was looking at home site 10 and she wanted a plan B and she liked the, craftsman elevation and she wanted the, coastal color palette, just making this up. That's a really specific thing that they can follow up on. They know what Mary's interested in. They can take the next steps that are very personal to her rather than generic. They're not flying blind. So, then what do they do to create that engagement and be back appointments, reach back out. Send something, maybe you've got pictures of,, another time you built that home as a craftsman plan, on another street that you could give as an example. I used to text, when I had a customer who left and I had shared the app with them of course, and, I'd hope that they were using it, but sometimes I would design a home for them myself based on what I thought that they might want and send them a link to it in the app. And that was a great way to get feedback appointments because I could show them something new, something different we hadn't talked about, and encourage them to come back and see it in person. A little later in the process too, use that brochure feature, and this is why I mentioned disclosures earlier. Use that brochure feature to attach to your sales agreements. This is a great way to connect that visual with the more boring, logical. Sometimes scary contracts, so it keeps that emotion, that excitement high when the picture of the home that they are going to be building the colors that they've selected. Whatever details you're letting them select at the contract phase are attached to that sales agreement that's so much more interesting and fun than just all the legalese that they are typically dealing with at that stage. Okay, that was it. Quick, uh, short and sweet. Today I wanted you to just have a few ideas what to focus on this next year, uh, or as you're talking to your two bbu customers. Again, as always, if you need any help, if you have questions, if you need training for your team, please don't hesitate to reach out to me and I'd be glad to help.

Anya Chrisanthon 13:26

As always, we're really excited to hear your ideas. If you guys are struggling with anything in particular and you want us to cover a topic, please let us know and we'll be more than happy to cover that. Any next upcoming Anewgo Amplify, you can just email me directly at anya@anewgo.com. With that, thank you so much, Beth, for a great overview for. How to take advantage of everyone coming off the sidelines now, going into your model homes, hopefully, or at least visiting your websites after sitting, in their home over the holidays, thinking about how much they don't like their kitchen, how much they don't like the bathroom, or they don't have extra space for all their guests, and now they're ready to go. They've been dreaming about this. So here you go. Now you have all the tools to convert them. Thank you so much for joining us. Again. We'll see you next month in February for our next Amplify. And you guys we're actually coming up on IBS. So if you are going to be at IBS or if you still wanna go to IBS, we do have extra. Expo passes. So if you guys are interested in that, if you want a free expo pass again, let me know. Email me: Anya@anewgo.com and let your team know. We'll be there at the Sales Central and we'll see you guys there. Until then,

Beth Byrd 14:43

bye-bye.

Anya Chrisanthon 14:44

Thanks for joining.