How does a builder know if their website is performing up to par?
In this new episode, we will be delving into one of the most important tools for measuring website performance and tracking progress – Google Analytics.
As the first part of our new series “Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)”, we will uncover everything you need to know about Google Analytics and how it can help drive success with capturing leads on your website.
Whether you’re new to tracking website data or looking to improve your current methods, be prepared to gain valuable insights on how this free tool can enhance your online presence and bring in more leads. Dive into the world of KPIs and discover how they can transform your business. Watch/Listen/Read this episode now!
Builder Lead Converter ATTRACTS, CAPTURES & CONVERTS high-quality leads for builders so they can pick & choose their clients & jobs. Find out how at https://www.builderleadconverter.com
Transcript:
Today at Conversations That Convert, we’re going to look at how to find new users from your website analytics. Let’s get started.
Welcome to Conversations That Convert. Every week, we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation, marketing, and sales topics for remodelers, home improvement companies, and home builders. Conversations That Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter, your perfect sales assistant.
And now, here’s Rick and Diana. Transcribed Hey, welcome to conversations that convert everyone. Welcome Diana. How are you? Welcome. I’m good. Thank you. And how about you? You know, I cannot complain. I thought winter was going to go out with a whimper here But I just found out that we’re going to get a bunch of snow here later this week So hopefully one more last dying gasp of winter over the next week And we’ll be officially on to to spring.
And I know you’re going to be traveling soon, too. So I hope the weather cooperates where in your endeavors as well. Thank you. I understand that we’ll have like hot, hot, very hot, like 35 and a degree Celsius. So it’s, it’s going to be hot. It’ll be let’s say summer. Yes. Hot, hotter and hottest. But with that, with that being said, what are we talking about today?
I love today’s topic because it’s about about website traffic and how to find local buyers from. Your website traffic. That’s right. Yeah, we’re gonna be diving into the world of Google Analytics, which sounds horribly boring and awful. But I thought this would be a good topic to look at because this is one of those things you can do for free.
The Google Analytics code is It’s free to get an account on. You can install on your website for free. And I’m just going to show you some of the things that we look at with our clients on a monthly basis and looking at then how do we pull buyers out of this website traffic and also really kind of how to read the reports because it can be a little bit overwhelming.
So this is a brand new series called key performance indicators for builders. So we’re gonna be looking at lots of different things that we track on a monthly basis to give some builders a. Some ideas of if you’re going to, you know, try to manage your front end, lead acquisition, lead conversion, sales, et cetera, et cetera.
What are some of those numbers you want to be tracking so that you can manage your, your business ultimately. And of course, this is all based on that. Number one marketing challenge, which was reported again in 2024 by the association of professional builder state of the residential construction industry survey that says that the number one marketing challenge for builders is high quality leads.
They are very elusive and where we tend to find them, however. Is in your local markets, people that are living in or plan to live in looking for builders that offer your services. So this is people, again, are actively pursuing you because they either want to build or remodel a home. So what do you say, Diana?
Should we look at Google Analytics to find local buyers? I’m so curious. I where to pay attention to where to look. I think I’m a mess when I opened that that platform. I don’t know where to start. So yeah, well, let’s pull it up here on the page. And this is a Google Analytics account for for one of one of our clients.
What I have done is just to get here is I’ve gone into the report section right up here to the left, and then I have gone down to user attributes, and I’m looking at the overview. So this is this will be the demographics of the people that have visited the website in the last 28 days. So this is March 18th today.
This is looking at February 19th through March, March 17th. So the first thing we want to look at is, are we getting traffic from the right parts of the world to our website? And as you can see here number one country is United States. Okay, check. That’s great. Number two, however, is Poland. And interestingly enough, there was a huge spam attack from Poland that happened in February, and it affected lots of different websites.
But it was this bot attack, and they went to not only builders websites, but I’ve seen it on all different kinds of websites, so it was a global event. Now, that has since ended, but it definitely skewed the numbers for February. So that’s one of the things I want to look at is First and foremost, if you are building or remodeling homes in the United States, you want to make sure that the United States is the primary country where people are coming from.
But if you see something like Poland or India or Nigeria like this, it means that you’re getting a lot of spam traffic to your website, which is not going to be good for capturing for capturing leads. Then I’m gonna scroll down. I want to look at users by city. So here you can see that spam attack came from Warsaw, Poland.
Now this particular builder builds in Texas and they are in that Dallas market. So you can see their number one city is Dallas. But what I want to impress upon you is this is if I click through here and I look at all the different cities that are coming to this website. And obviously I can continue.
I’m looking at the top 10 here. Some of these cities that are not local to Dallas is an example here. It might be people that are considering moving to Dallas So we know that in Texas, there’s a lot of people living in California that want to move to Texas. So these Los Angeles buyers, or this traveler from Los Angeles, it may not necessarily be all spam or bad.
It might be people that are considering looking in your area to, to move to. So we have New York, Austin, as you can see all the way through there. So if we add up all these things here between Alice and, or excuse me, Dallas and Ashburn, Houston. Fort Worth, that sort of thing, we might see that. Okay, maybe we have roughly 3, 4, 500 really good, solid inbound traffic units coming to the website in this in this period of time.
And this is really what I want to impress upon you is that if you see our total users for the month for 2640, but that’s, Really not good traffic. What the good traffic is, is the people living in the local markets or perhaps the inbound markets that are coming to your website. So we want to be realistic and what we can expect for for lead capture.
So Diana, any thoughts so far on this? All right. So I just jump in user attribution. I look at the overview. I look at the demographic and That’s a good start. Yep. And I can also look at audiences too. Audience. Yeah. So audiences will tell me again, if I look at all users here, it should break down by platform.
So I can see mobile versus desktop. You know, one of the questions always is, well, do I have more people looking up my website from a phone versus a tablet versus a desktop? And you can see here, mobile in this case. Desktop by you know, almost 60%. So 1600 versus say only 1000 users. Tablet was a very small percentage of that.
And if I again, if I go into the overview, I can also see So majority here was with men, which is unusual. Normally it’s the other way around. Normally it’s female, probably 55, 56 percent to 45%. They’ve even got users here by interest, but I don’t, we don’t pay a whole lot of attention to that age demographic here.
You can see that by far was like that. A 25 to 44 year old demographic that was on the website and obviously English, English speaking. So that’ll again tell me, again, am I in the right area for the type of clients that I want to attract. In this case, yes, but I want to, again, temper expectations based on, again, the city.
That’s the most important thing that you want to to look at there. So should we move into engagement? Yes. So user attribution. That’s important to see my my target to see who is there and engagement. What does it mean? Yep, exactly. So engagement. I like to look at pages and screens. So I want to know what are the most visited pages on the website.
The other thing I’m going to look at here is not so much views. I’m going to look at users, and then I want to look at engagement time. So the higher the engagement time, the more popular the page is, where it’s held people’s attention longer. Now, one of the things I would caution you is that I have found That engagement time is radically, wildly unpredictable.
It seems like we’re not getting really good data at this point because when Google Analytics switched last year from Universal Analytics to GA4 this average engagement time versus time on site does not match whatsoever. So the definition here for average engagement time is the average length of time that the app was in the foreground or the website had focus in the browser.
Seems straightforward. However, time on site typically was much, much longer. We always are looking for those pages where we can keep people for one minute or, or longer. So in this case, if you look at the, this traditional page right here. We’re at a minute seven. Our photo gallery was pushing almost 50 seconds, but the rest of these pages are very, very low.
And by the way, this little bracket right here is the home page. Normally on the home page, we find average time is about 19 seconds. So in this case, it was only 12 seconds. So it was a lower quality lead but keep in mind all that spam traffic from those bots Is going to take and it’s going to dilute this number down because if I go back and I look at that particular That particular traffic if I go here to traffic acquisition and I’m going to go to the overview you will see that all that referral traffic I got which was from poland here if I Dive into that a little bit more right here.
You will see look at that average engagement time one second, so it artificially lowers my my numbers Now if I go back and look at organic social here, this is showing me 41 seconds Look at organic search. This is showing almost two minutes So this goes to show you the value of each type of source is coming to your website Organic search for people using typically google to find you is always going to be the highest quality That’s almost two minutes there You paid search here.
This was also very high at about a minute 40. So that was excellent as well. But obviously this referral traffic that was bots that was garbage direct at 56 seconds display network is over here and then we have organic social at 41 seconds. So that’s that’s really how that breaks down again. I’m looking at new users.
And I really want to focus on new users that are organic search that are living in that Dallas, Texas area, like where this client is from. So that’s how I extrapolate those numbers. What I want to see from a KPI standpoint, I want to see about four to 8 percent of those new users that are living in my local area become a lead in that particular time.
So in this case, if we use the number of roughly 500 I would want to see somewhere between 20 to 40 leads coming to this client during this time. And I want to say this client that we just met with them last week, I want to say they had roughly 37 leads or something like that. So they were closer to that 8 percent capture rate.
So that is how to read Google Analytics. A very, very quick overview. Again, anyone can set up their client their Google Analytics account. You can also, once you get enough data, you can compare, you know, like, say, a month over month, and you can look at, say, the previous month with the current month. So, in this case, now I’m comparing January 22nd to February 18th, with February 19th through March 24th, and I can go back into traffic acquisition, and now I can look at the differences.
So look at that organic social huge jump. And by the way, Diana, if you’re wondering, this guy had an Instagram post that went viral, so that’s why this is up over 2000 percent month after month. And then look at that did do his organic search too, because Google thought right away because he’s got so much traffic coming to it that this is a more authoritative site.
So this jumped almost 700%. And you can see here the referral again, that was mostly garbage traffic. But even direct traffic went from up 450%. So huge jumps month, month over month for this particular website. So Diana, any final thoughts here before we close out? I love this. It’s exciting. And if you know how to open and how to pay attention to those numbers, it’s very valuable to, to measure, because if you don’t measure, then you can’t compare and see, see, and check your progress from month to month.
Exactly right. And that’s the whole key is I’m looking at number one, is my traffic coming from the right areas of the country? How is it finding me? Once they find me, what pages are they looking at? How long are they spending on those pages? And then am I pulling leads off of those pages? Do I have the right lead magnets on those pages?
So one of the things we recently found is that you know, with remodeling, people spend a long time on the About Us page. You For remodelers. And the the, the, the reason for that, of course, is that there’s a huge trust factor. If you’re inviting someone into your home, you want to look at their background and you’ll look at who those people are.
And so a lead will spend a lot of time there. So we want to make sure we have the right lead magnets on our about us page, which historically has not been a really a big conversion page. Or a capture page I should say but now it’s becoming more of that for remodeling So we’re spending a lot more time getting the right lead magnets there.
So anyway, it’s interesting stuff I love data because obviously the numbers don’t lie and it all it gives you really quick analysis of just how healthy you are And then obviously if you’re employing things like search engine optimization or paid ads and things This will give you the data that you need to try to make better decisions On the type of ads you’re running or the type of seo strategy that you’re going after Amazing.
Thank you for sharing. That’s, that’s very valuable. And if you would like to get more information and find out how we can help you attract, capture and convert high quality leads so you too can pick and choose your clients and jobs, go ahead and click on that link right below here, schedule a strategy call with me and be happy to take a look at your website and listen to your company’s story.
And find out if we can also help you. So for my brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all always. See you next time on Conversations That Converge.
As professionals in the home building industry, it’s important for us to start preparing for what lies ahead.
The residential construction industry is ever-evolving, shaped by various factors such as market trends, consumer preferences, and economic conditions.
To gain a deeper understanding of the current landscape in the industry, the Association of Professional Builders (APB) conducts an annual survey to gather insights from builders across different countries.
That’s why we’re excited to bring you some insights from the APB 2024 State Of the Residential Construction Industry (SORCI) results.
Russ Stevens from the APB joins Rick to delve into the key highlights and findings from the 1,500+ builders who took the survey.
Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or new to the game, this information is sure to provide valuable insights that can help take your business to new heights. So, watch/listen/read this episode and get ready to gain an edge over your competitors as we dive into the future of homebuilding together.
Builder Lead Converter ATTRACTS, CAPTURES & CONVERTS high-quality leads for builders so they can pick & choose their clients & jobs. Find out how at https://www.builderleadconverter.com
Rick: Today in Conversations that Convert we’ll be introducing the results of the Association of professional builders annual State of the Residential Construction Industry survey. You’re going to want to tune in here directly from Russ Stevens from the APB on what builders are thinking just like you what’s most important and also what you may want to consider doing here. It’s part of your overall strategy for 2024. Let’s get started.
Welcome to conversations that convert every week. We’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation, marketing, and sales topics for remodelers, home improvement companies, and home builders. Conversations that convert are brought to you by the builder lead converter, your perfect sales assistant.
Rick: And now. Daiana is off today, but I have a very special guest. This is Russ Stevens from the Association of Professional Builders, direct from Australia. Russ, good morning to you. Thanks so much for joining us.
Russ: Good morning, Rick. Good to see you again. It’s it’s been a long time.
Rick: Been a long time, yeah. All of about a week.
We’re recording this right after the International Builders Show, in which Russ came over and brought a team. And so we got to partake in what, 70 some thousand builders and designers descending to Las Vegas and talk everything about home building for a week. The exciting news is The annual State of the Residential Construction Industry survey is just coming out I think it’s you guys are launching it this week as a matter of fact So we’re going to talk about what builders are thinking and what you guys discovered and also Maybe some strategies you want to implement before we do that though Russ give us a little background on association professional builders and how you got to be where you are today
Russ: Yeah, sure.Rick. So the Association of Professional Builders is a business coaching company dedicated to improving the residential construction industry for both builders and consumers. So everything we do has those two factors in mind. And it’s driven by the belief that builders deserve to be earning a lot more money than they’re currently earning, but also that consumers deserve a better service.
And we are. We believe we can achieve that goal through systemization. So we are helping residential home builders to systemize their businesses to make them more efficient, and more profitable, of course, but also to deliver a better service to their clients.
Rick: One of the things Russ that you do, which is I think unique in the industry, Is every year you put together this state of the residential construction industry survey.
And so tell us a little bit about what that entails and the different areas that you cover in that survey.
Russ: Yeah. Well, this this report is now in its fourth year. And like you say we are just releasing the 2024 report right now. It’s it’s hot off the press. And what we do is we go out to residential.
Builders well, I should say owners of residential building companies and ask them a lot of questions, collect a lot of data about their marketing, about their sales operations. Training, remuneration, financials, all aspects of their building company. In the act, we asked them around about 118 questions.
I think it was this year. So as you can imagine, that is a massive commitment for a builder to make, you know,, to answer all those questions. And quite frankly, they wouldn’t do it unless there was a tangible goal. for, for spending that time and answering that information. And I think the real benefit for builders is it, it kind of opens up gaps in their business and this, when they take part in the report, it also allows them to benchmark their building company against other residential building companies.
And this year we had 1, 800 Builders take part. So obviously that’s a phenomenal amount of data that we’ve been able to sift through and cross-reference.
Rick: How many different countries, Russ, do you guys gather information from?
Russ: Four countries. So a large amount of builders in the U. S., but also from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as well.
And we break the data up by country. So you know, in the vast majority of cases, The problems are very, very similar, but there are a few exceptions where things are very different. Safety, for instance, is one thing that springs to mind where some countries are more advanced than others. But yeah four countries with the data broken down by country and overall data structure as well.
Rick: So I’m always interested in the, in the marketing end of things, and I wrote a commentary actually for the, for the report. But let’s talk a little bit about some high-level of things that you’ve seen. This is the fourth year that you have done this. And what have you seen from an evolution or what’s different in 2024 than maybe you saw even in 2023 or 22?
Russ: Yeah, three main things stood out to us in the most recent data. First and foremost, optimism was back at the end of 2023. And that was, that was great to see. And that was reflected in what builders were looking to do in terms of growing their revenue, but probably more importantly, in terms of Net margins and also increasing their salaries as well.
So that came through very strongly in the data that builders were feeling a lot more confident about the year ahead. Another thing that stood out and sadly, this has kind of been on our radar for the last few years through the COVID boom, and that marketing remains a missed opportunity for the vast majority of building companies.
And it’s, it’s probably become a bigger pain point because of the boom that we experienced during COVID. COVID where leads and sales were very, very easy to get, you know, consumers were queuing up to sign with a building company and, you know, builders didn’t have to try too hard in order to generate opportunities and close contracts.
I think a lot of builders forgot how to overcome objections over the last manual kind of went in a drawer and has been collecting dust ever since. So, yeah, there are some skills there that need to be, you know relearn, I would say, and probably the third thing that stood out. Again, this has been a bit of an ongoing thing in the amount of builders that are looking at inaccurate financial data.
It was something like 92 percent of residential building companies are looking at incorrectly. Financial data, which means they are making decisions based on incorrect data. And I think to be fair, almost half of the builders understood that they probably knew that they were looking at inaccurate data because they didn’t know how to calculate the work-in-progress figure.
But the same amount, you know, something like 46% believe they didn’t know how to make this calculation or do this calculation. Therefore, they did not realize that the information they were looking at was incorrect because the guys who said they did know how to do this very important calculation.
We then tested them on the following question, and we found a staggering percentage of those guys. We’re doing the calculation wrong, which meant their financials were wrong as well. So that’s maybe a bigger concern. Cause I think it’s one thing knowing that your accounts though, the financials are, are not correct and you probably shouldn’t be making decisions based on what you see, but if you believe they are correct, then the decisions you’re making are.
Very, very dangerous. So that’s probably a bigger concern.
Rick: I’m going to step on the limit and take a guess that that is understanding the difference between markup and margin.
Russ: No interestingly enough, that has improved over the years and continues to improve. It’s a work in progress, an accounting adjustment.
This is the big Achilles heel within our industry. Very few builders and probably even fewer accountants. I would say almost all general CPAs don’t know how to calculate this figure correctly simply because of the way they’ve been trained on it. And the terminology we use kind of confuses them.
So That’s the Achilles heel. That’s the big issue in our industry right now.
Rick: Sure. Okay. Well, good, good to know. Switch back to the marketing side of things a little bit, because I did review, the numbers and the comparison between 23 and 24. So I guess I’ll throw. A couple of thoughts out there that I found a number one number one marketing challenge for builders is generating high-quality leads.
And that was almost 50%, just 46%, one out of two builders said, Hey, this is my number one marketing challenge. And then the other thing that I saw that was interesting was. Just having enough leads period was I think the number two issue when you combine the two, it was almost six out of 10 builders said that they, they’re not getting enough high-quality leads or enough leads.
And then there was a third item that stood out 12 percent of respondents said that they are considering advertising this year in 2024 that they did not do in 2023. So we kind of took that and ran with it when I was doing some presentations at the show. As you know, what would that look like as far as if you were going to invest in your marketing, you know, what’s, where’s the best place to find those high-quality leads?
And the other thing, I have learned over the years, Russ, which is interesting is that every builder wants to have that ready, willing to enable lead to fall in their lap. Like, here’s my plans. I have the land purchased. I’m just ready to go. I just need a price to go. And so we call that the ready, willing-to-enable lead.
And more often than not, those leads don’t, they’re not, they’re not a good buyer. They normally you know, have already gotten a proposal from a different builder, already have a relationship established with a different builder. And they’re just trying to validate the price they’ve been given by the different builders.
So oftentimes builders will let used by giving them that price. And then they get all excited that, Hey, this is ready to go. And then the person says, thanks so much for us. Appreciate you, you know, reaffirming my decision to go with your competitor. You know, but you’ve been lovely to work with, and have a nice day.
So we talked about high quality leads are developed over time. Just like a good employee is that you, you develop them over time as you establish trust and value. And then when that lead is ready to contact a builder you’re top of mind and they look to you as being the local expert. So I think that’s another, you talk about an art loss as far as handling objections.
I think that’s another art lost is this managing a database? And developing those high-quality leads and being able to pull sales out of your database, even when the phone isn’t ringing or your market’s not hot, hot, hot. What are your, what are your thoughts on that?
Russ: Yeah, it was interesting.
Cause as you say, the number one challenge in marketing was generating high-quality leads once again. But what was also interesting was the number one challenge in sales. Was also generating high-quality leads. So the problem in sales was being pushed back to marketing. So yeah, that was quite interesting.
But like you say, the big issue with a lot of residential building companies is that they are attracting people. design process and you’re being price-checked, aren’t you? Especially if you’re quoting for free, which you know, is a, is a disaster. You’re going to get price-checked all the time when you do that.
And you’re just wasting your time and your resources. So, you know, in, in that respect, the, the. The business model needs to be fixed up for the building company. You know, you can’t be a building company in today’s market. You’ve got to be a design and build company. And as you alluded to there, Rick, that’s when you, your marketing attracts people before they’ve gone into the latter part of the cycle, you’re going to get them before they go into the design process, you’re going to build that relationship.
And then by the time they are looking for a price on that plan, you’re going to be the only one. They might, they might throw it out to someone else for a price check, but you’re in the box seat. And what we find as well is that they don’t even push it out to someone else when you’ve done this part, right?
Because there’s no reason to, even if someone comes up with a cheaper price, they’re not going to go with them because they, you know, they trust you and your process.
Rick: They trust you and you, and you know, they feel, they feel like you’re the best builder to solve their housing problem. They’re going to go with you and, you know, they’re making a large investment.
I think I, statistically wise, I think I remember reading this from Brian Tracy, but he quoted that 87 percent of all sales. The decision is made not based on a low price of 87 percent.
Russ: That is so important. Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve done a lot of research on this as well. Years ago we used to provide a contract signing service for builders where, you know, we would collate all the information, ensuring that the contract had everything in it.
That had been discussed and, you know, it helped to stop builders getting caught out. That service was kind of superseded by-products like Co-construct and built a trend that handled that pre-construction process very well and made sure everything was documented. But when we were doing that, we would always.
Ask the client why they decided to sign with this particular builder. And we never came across a client that said they were the cheapest price. It was always because, and they always said as well that I had a cheaper price for another builder, but I went with this guy because you know, he provided more documentation, more information.
The service was good. The communication was good, blah, blah, blah. There was a plethora of reasons why they chose this builder, but it was never the price. Now you ask You know, a hundred building companies, you know, why they lost their last job and the vast majority will say they lost it on price to another competitor.
If they’re not following the APB process, that is, but yeah, it’s interesting that disconnect, isn’t it? Yeah. Our perception. And like you just backed up the facts from Brian Tracy as well.
Rick: Well, I think what’s interesting is so we have this, I call it a value proposition, right? So value as an equation is price performance divided by quality perception.
So it’s a perception of The lead of what they’re getting in exchange for the money you’re asking and so what happens is The builders always put a lot of emphasis on the price So they feel like if a job is lost it’s on the price But the emphasis should be on the quality perception the value proposition that you know If that lead does not feel like you’re they’re getting the most value from the builder They’re going to default and they’re going to say well, you’re too expensive Well the question shouldn’t be asked then Well, why, why do you feel expensive?
Why don’t you feel like you’re getting the value you’re after? Why don’t you feel like this builder is meeting the needs that you’re looking for when you’re picking up, whether it’s a remodeler or, a home builder? And so that leads me to my next question. Cause I get this a lot where you get a builder that they get to the point in their business and they realize there’s a problem.
I need to do something to change, but they can go and they can Focus on the front end, like say, Oh, I just need to generate some better marketing, and then I’ll figure it out once they get leads or they can say, I’m going to start with my internal processes and systems focus on efficiencies and processes and profitability from an APB standpoint.
Put on your coach hat here. Where do you like to start a builder? Do you like to work on the front-end marketing first, or do you like to work on the internal systems and try to fix that first before you go after marketing?
Russ: Yeah, look, this is a great point because pre-COVID and now we’re into the post-COVID period as well, builders tend to come to us because.
They want to generate more leads because if they generate more leads, they’re going to generate more sales, which means more revenue, which means more profit. So that is why they kind of come to us, but we always start with the financials because in a large percentage of building companies, if they were to scale up, they were literally, they’re going to go broke quicker because they’re not charging enough.
That’s the fundamental problem. But a lot of builders don’t. Realize that because their financials aren’t accurate for all the problems that I I kind of mentioned earlier. So our coaches always start by looking at their current financials and getting those fixed up, i. e. by putting the work in progress, and accounting adjustments into their accounts.
Now, once we do that, a builder. Has the realization that they are not earning as much as they thought they were earning. They might have hundreds of thousands or even maybe it’s just tens of thousands in their bank account, but cash is not profit and profit is not cash. So once we do these calculations they understand.
The real position they’re in actually leads to a mindset change. I mean, we talk a lot in business about mindset. This is one of the most powerful things we’ve been able to do for builders to change their mindset because when they realize they’ve been working for nothing, they get a bit angry, but then they get determined to charge their worth.
And that leads to a very different attitude towards pricing. We also have a very different model for pricing jobs as well. We don’t use the traditional model of adding a markup to the cost of sales. We factor in the fixed expenses and the timeline of the job. So they’re writing a net profit, but this transforms the way builders price jobs.
Now, yeah, I will say. just because you know you should be charging more doesn’t mean you can suddenly, you know, add another 20 percent to your contract and the client’s going to sign, you know, in some cases they will surprisingly enough, but margins are linked to marketing and this all comes down to the law of supply and demand.
So, You do have to be showing value, like you said, and you’ve got to be generating a lot more demand for your services than you can supply. Because then that leads to another strategy that I know you’ve talked to a lot about in the past. We, call it construction slots. I think you call it slot selling that’s what leads to high margins as well.
It’s a very simple strategy. Very, very powerful. So yeah, to answer your questions. Yeah. Builders. You know, we talk about what they want, but then we start with what they need, to protect them really because yeah Builders can lose a lot of money by scaling up on the wrong margin.
Rick: Yeah, you know and I I was hoping you’d say that answer. I knew then I knew the answer to the question
Russ: We’re on the same page with a lot of this stuff Presentations reckon they’re great.
Rick: Yeah, the numbers don’t lie, right? I mean it’s like And we talked about that. I talked about that today with somebody else. And we talked about, you know how the home is built a lot of builders, you know, build the home because it’s their baby and they build it because they want to build this way and they believe in this.
But if the consumer looks at that home and says, you know what, Russ, that’s beautiful, but I don’t see any value in it. So, you know what, I’m not willing to pay for it. And therefore, where does it come out of what comes out of the profit, right? So the numbers don’t lie. And, and I, and I, and I love that because you, you, you.
Once you get your numbers down and you figured it out and then you go like, Oh wow, this is what I’m making. This is what I should do, what am I worth? And really builders, I mean, you can be the best builder in the world. And I just overheard this conversation at the builder show. In one of my presentations, this guy was talking about how he was such a great builder, but his competitors that he felt were like lower-tiered builders or getting all the leads.
It’s like, yeah, they’re great marketers. They don’t have to be great builders. They could be great marketers. But when you, when you are a great marketer and you can back it up with a great internal system and deliver that, that product you know, which is that result, that experience you’re offering the customer, the lifestyle they so desire to live in, in there, in their home.
It’s like, man, once you have that down then you can really take market share and you can really, you know, make a huge impact in your business and get to the point where Now my business can run without me having to be there every single waking moment and I have a better quality of life too because that’s another issue I see a lot to where builders come and say I’m working 60 hours a week.
I’m not making any money. Why am I, why am I in this business?
Russ: It’s a sad fact, isn’t it? In this world, the best product doesn’t always win. It’s you know, a good product with a great marketing strategy will always Great product with an average marketing strategy. And yeah, that may not seem fair, but that’s, that’s the reality of the world that we’re in.
So, you know, to succeed in business, we have to be good at marketing.
Rick: The other thing I wanted to just touch on a little bit if you wouldn’t mind, is the accountability factor when you’re working with. Because I see you, you see this too. I see it a lot is that a builder decides like, Hey, I want to make a change and then they start off and their guns blazing and we’re going to do this.
And then all of a sudden life gets busy, gets busy and life gets in the way. And they kind of just fall off. But when you have a coach that you meet with day in and day out, and you have KPIs that you’d have to report, and you’d have those numbers and you’re reviewing it, and you have this accountability partner, It’s amazing the impact a coach can make but talk a little bit more about that and your your philosophy on coaching and Aligning a builder with a professional coach and what, what impact that will make with that builder.
Russ: Yeah. Accountability is a massive part of coaching because it’s not just the fact that, you know, you arrive at that meeting, you know, you’re going to be. Asked about all the things that you said you were going to do. It’s the week leading up to that meeting, you know, it’s coming. That motivates you to get things done, which leads to progress.
And I guess one of the sad things is that we see so many builders. They, you know, we, we, we have three levels, of coaching. We have our entry-level group coaching where they access our systems. And they get to, they get to access everything and do it at their own pace. And a lot of guys don’t take the next step, which is to work directly with a coach because they believe they can do it themselves.
They got all the, you know, all the solutions here, all the answers they just need to do it. But unfortunately, as we all know, they’re not going to be. Disciplined enough, to do what needs to be done to get them to the goal that they’ve set themselves, you know, in a year or three years, et cetera.
And then they fall into what we call opportunity cost and opportunity cost is the cost of not doing something. So, you know, if you were to put in this great marketing strategy within two weeks and start generating, you know, Great leads from there on after if that takes you six weeks or maybe even six months, the gap, you know, that period is the opportunity cost.
And when you, when you calculate how much business you’ve lost, that’s a lot of money and it. It piles into insignificance, the amount that you would pay to be held to account by a coach that, you know, not only can make sure that you’re doing what you need to be doing to reach your goals, but they’ll also keep you on the right path because there are folks in the road all the time when it comes to what should I be working on?
Should I start with my marketing? Should I do my, get my financials straight first, or Is maybe my sales process broken by the coach because they deal with data, they are looking at your metrics compared to the rest of the industry? They know exactly where the biggest problem is, and it’s never in our experience where the builder thinks it is.
So they’ll go straight to that problem Fix that. And when that’s fixed, that bottleneck is fixed. They will know exactly where the next problem is. And again, it’s, it’s never where the builder thinks is, is a lot inside the builders want to keep working on the thing they just fixed because they now feel comfortable, but we have to pull them out of their comfort zone and go and work in another part of the business.
So that’s why coaching is so powerful. And it’s the reason why, all top athletes have a coach. Why all top business people have a coach, you know, it’s that level of guidance and accountability. Let’s see.
Rick: Yeah, exactly. And I had a mutual client of ours and Clint is his coach. And he just said, you know what?
I just got it built into my budget. He goes, I’m just going to have Clint as my coach because I need it. I realize it. And it’s just if I’m going to continue to my upward trajectory in my business, I’m going to have a coach. And I thought, wow, what a healthy attitude. He completely gets it. And he understands it that you know, if I’m going to invest Whatever, every dollar I invest in coaching, I’m going to get a tenfold return on that.
And not only do I, do I get that return, but now I’ve got accountability as like he says, I want to grow because you’re right. As a business evolves, what was the problem one day? Yeah, you can resolve it, but all of a sudden something else is going to pop up when you grow again. This person speaks of the devil, as far as a year ago when he started, it was getting the right leads, and having the right processes and systems.
So talk to him a year later after setting up a system for him and working with Clint for the last year and now his call was, I got to, I’m too busy. I need to hire somebody now, you know, so now it’s like I got to add staff. I got to get that key person in place, you know, and of course, that’s a new problem that you didn’t have when you’re just starting.
You’re doing everything yourself and you don’t have the overhead or the cash flow to be able to hire that. Well, now he doesn’t. So, you know, you move on to the next problem.
Russ: Yeah. And that’s a good point as well, because there’s another key metric that our coaches look at, and that is workflow. That is the difference between the value of the contract signed and the value of work completed and the balance left over is workflow.
And that is like guaranteed revenue. Now that figure in itself isn’t. Overly significant. But it is a good guide as to the guaranteed revenue coming in over some time. But what is important is when you measure that figure monthly and you watch the trend, because if that figure starts declining, the coach will be jumping onto it and looking to scale down the fixed expenses of a building company to ensure they remain profitable.
’cause they’re effectively gonna be overstaffed. But in the example you mentioned, they’ll be spotting very early. The building, the resources for the building company need to be scaled up so that you don’t get into that situation where all of a sudden you’re burning out because, you know, you’ve been so successful in your marketing and sales that you now work in 60, 70 hours a week.
They will be looking at that a lot earlier and getting the recruitment process firing well before you think you need these people on board, which then allows you to attract the right people and get them trained properly.
Rick: So Russ, one more question here. Two more questions before we wrap up and we’ll tell everyone how to get a copy of the 2024 report.
So the first question is, I’m going to go back to slot selling or what you discussed. And so more of a question or statement, because I ask builders this all the time, like, have you heard of slot selling? Do you understand what this is? And a lot of custom builders have not heard of it. A lot of remodeling companies haven’t heard of it.
And so I explained to them very simply to say, well, normally you’re, the way you’re running your business is, you’re letting marketing and sales dictate production. What we’re doing with SlotsOn is, we’re going to let your production capabilities dictate marketing and sales. And even though it’s not an exact science, and there, some things are floating around, I think what I want everyone to be able to understand is that scarcity creates urgency, and that’s the whole point behind production slot selling.
Number one, understanding what your capabilities are, but number two, where when you call to talk to a lead and you ask them, Hey, Russ, how soon do you want to be living in and enjoying your new space? And they say, Oh, well, you know, we have a graduation party that we want to have it ready for nine months from now.
Now you can work backward and you can say, well, we’d have to start the project by such and such a time. And to do that, you would need to Do this as part of our sales process. Make this commitment. Otherwise, we will not be able to hit that date. Should I give it to you or I have three more leads that I’m talking to, should I give it to them?
You know, your slot date. And that’s what’s so powerful about it is that now I can slide them in there and now I can build a backlog and get people, you know, targeting that slot date. The other thing that I’ve seen that helps is Giving people that end goal for getting selections done and getting the design completed.
Cause otherwise some people will just lag in design forever and it screws up production schedules and control builders into a tizzy if you will, but that’s a, so that’s just one thing I want to add their words of wisdom. So any builder that’s listening to this right now.
That’s going to look at the report and they’re thinking, wow, I want to make some changes to my business. What are any, words of wisdom you would, you would offer based on sort of the results of what you saw in the report and also, you know, your current clients?
Russ: Well, I guess there are two very important things.
First of all, I would urge builders, to remember the mantra. And that is the margins are linked to marketing, the data in this latest report. Demonstrates that the key percentage that needs to be reinvested into a building company is 3 percent in terms of their marketing and advertising and the building companies that invest 3 percent of their revenue into their marketing and advertising have the highest net margin.
So. Even when you compare them to a building company that thrives, I would say in, in, in their perception on referrals and they’re either not spending anything at all or spending very little, the guys that are spending 3 percent still have higher net margins. So even though they’re spending 3 percent more than the other company.
They’re still beating them in terms of net profit. And that’s all because of supply and demand. So that’s, that’s number one. Number two, I’d say is you’ve got to have a plan. You know, if you don’t have a plan, you’ve got a plan to fail. So get that business plan sorted out and start executing the plan because otherwise you’re just shooting from the hip and you’ll probably advertise when you’re desperate.
And you’ll probably turn off your marketing when things are booming. Like we saw during COVID that is no way to run any business, let alone a building company was such a long sales cycle. So yeah, two, two key pieces of advice I would say for builders that you know, to, to make sure they, they jump onto.
Rick: If a builder wants to know more about the association of professional builders, I’m going to, I’m going to, if you’re listening to this, you won’t be able to see it, but if you’re watching the video, I’m throwing up the website there. But how can they get a hold of you, Russ, or what do you suggest they do?
Russ: Well, I think we can put a link in the show notes to the latest state of the residential construction industry report, which is a free PDF download.
So your listeners are welcome to download that and then reference where they are in their own building company against what’s happening, you know, across the rest of the country. And if you’re maybe just listening to this and you don’t have access to the link, you can. You can type in SORCI, S O R C I, SORCI, which is a state of the residential construction industry report.
So SORCI report will come up with a link to download. So either way, you’re going to get the information that’s going to help you benchmark exactly where you are with your own residential building company.
Rick: Well said and good. Words of wisdom there. So thank you so much for joining us here today It’s always a pleasure to have you on and get an update on what is going on And we appreciate you getting up early and taking the time to record this So we’ll put the link below that Russ was talking about wherever you’re watching this video You’ll be able to see the link below to download that report where you can Benchmark your peers and learn a little bit more about the APB, Association of Professional Builders.
So for my brothers and sisters in Christ, May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all always. We’ll see you next time on Conversations That Convert.
Have you considered what might be holding your building company back is a lack of great employees?
Behind every successful construction project is a team of skilled and dedicated workers. The lifeblood of your business is the people who bring plans to life. But in a field where the demand for talent often outstrips the supply, hiring the right employees can pose a significant challenge.
To shed light on this crucial process, we’ve sat down with Paul Sanneman, the founder of Contractor Staffing Source. He reveals six secrets to hiring great employees that will help you overcome common hiring obstacles and create an exceptional workforce for your company.
Get ready to take notes because these tips come from years of experience in the industry and have proven success in finding top talent. Are you ready to level up your hiring game? Dive in! Watch/Listen/Read this episode now!
Today on Conversations that Convert we’re talking to paul sentiment from contractor staffing source and we’ll be reviewing The six myths of hiring for the construction industry. Let’s get started.
Welcome to conversations that convert Every week we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation marketing and sales topics for remodelers Home improvement companies and home builders. Conversations That Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter, your perfect sales assistant.
And now, here’s Rick and Daiana. Hey everyone, welcome to Conversations that Convert, Daiana is off today, but we do have a very special guest Joining us. I would like to introduce paul santamon from Contractor Staffing Source Paul. Welcome. Thank you for having me I appreciate being here. Yes, and it’s 5 00 a.m. Where you are. So we’re very appreciative. It’s definitely well, you know We’re in Hawaii. Everybody here starts at five, but the good news is we get into two. So that’s like, you know, right. Then you go to the ocean and every time in the winter people, you know, you say live in Hawaii, people go out because, you know, it’s like, I know it’s where you are, but it’s always like, you know.
The lowest it ever gets to 68 and the highest it ever gets is 85. So can’t complain. It’s beautiful country. That is, that is for sure. So we are talking today again about hiring and we’re going to get into the challenges that builders or modelers face when hiring and you, as I understand it with contractor staffing source are the largest.
Recruiter in the construction industry. Is that right? Yeah, I didn’t start out that way, but it sort of ended up that way. And you know, it was funny because I started this business like four years ago, right? I’ve been a coach for 40 years. I’m an old guy. I’ve been, I’ve worked with thousands of contractors and what happened, Rick was about four years ago.
I could build businesses because I’m really good at marketing between, you know, to a million to 10 million, million to 15 million. I did a bunch. Yeah. But the problem was growing a business doesn’t do any good unless you have people to do the work, right? so My clients couldn’t they I could get them bigger, but they couldn’t find employees So I said how hard can that be so I went out and found some really good software Found some, you know sort of best practices and a lot of it depends on you know, how you use the software So I gave my software to the clients And they totally messed it up.
They didn’t have time to do it. Right. So I went, okay, fine. Well, I put a guy in my garage, literally put a guy in my garage. And now we have about 30 people on the team. They’re all over the world. I think we could run 400 job openings any given day. And we usually go through two or 3000 resumes a week. We hire like 10 people a week and it’s just all us in Canada.
And it grew a lot because apparently there’s a big demand for this. And we’re pretty good at it. I think last year, okay. We hired about 480 people and only people, only 17 didn’t work out. And that’s because I actually do the best practice of hiring, which is something that a lot of contractors don’t do.
The problem is they say there’s no people just like people say, there’s nobody wants their service. It’s a process problem. If people use the right process, you can find all the people you need. Like if people use the right process, you can find all the clients you need. And you know, Rick, if you have all the clients you need and all the employees you need, and you have great clients and great people, it’s a really great industry to be in.
But if you don’t have good clients, you’re not marketing effectively. And you don’t have good people. It’s really hard. You know, that’s so, that’s so true. So we met at the Job Tread Connect conference. And started talking about things and I, you know, I’m a client of yours right now too, I guess, full disclosure which is great because I get to see your service from, as a, as a client, as from the inside perspective, and you’re helping me find some people for our team as, as we are growing.
So for that. I used to hire people when I was doing my coaching and I was subcontracting sales management, I would hire salespeople and you’re right. It is a process is an absolute process. And it’s real easy to see a bright, shiny object and go like, Oh, this is my guy, or this is my gal. And you make that hire and you start the training process and you get six months into it.
And then all of a sudden you realize like, man, the person quits, or you have to let them go because you just made the worst mistake ever. And so I would always look at that and say. You’re going to put yourself backwards. You’re going, you’re, you’re actually going backwards. If you make that wrong, hire in front, I understand there’s no guarantees.
But one of the things that we were talking about a little bit before the call here today is you said there’s really, there’s six myths. Well, yeah, there’s six, there’s six minutes. This is, I’ve been in construction all my life and. These are the things that contractors believe that get in the way of them succeeding in hiring.
All right I think part of why you went from people think marketing is expensive same kind of thing, right? So it’s like it’s a myth, but first myth is you know only recruit when you need someone I mean, contrary, I’ve had this problem or something. People go, well, I need a guy I’m going to recruit for the guy and I’m done.
That’s a myth. Only recruiting someone. There is no successful company. I know that doesn’t recruit all the time. And if you should recruit all the time, I’ve been trying to convince people to do that. Ever since I started this business, I’ve changed my pricing structure to try to encourage that, but you should always be recruiting.
Just don’t think you’re recruiting. You need somebody. The second myth is employees are expensive. Oh, I can’t afford that guy. Right? And that’s not true. You can’t make any money without employees in this business. They’re the best investment you’re ever going to make. So employees are not expensive.
They’re really their best investment going to make. And the third myth is we can do the recruiting ourselves. How hard is this to do? Man, I put an ad in indeed, you know, I call the guy a week later and he’s already got a job. How come I didn’t work out? Right? So it’s like, you know, You need to hire somebody, either us or somebody.
There’s a lot of people that are good at this. I mean, you don’t fix your own car. Do you, Rick? Usually nowadays, I’m assuming that’s right. Probably do. You don’t, you don’t do your own accounting. I’m guessing. Also a lot of subcontracts, you have no problem with them outsourcing, even electrical or plumbing or all this kind of stuff.
But somehow everybody thinks, Oh, I’m a great recruiter. How hard can this be? It’s like marketing, you know, get somebody knows what the heck they’re doing. It’s what it’s the best investments you’re going to make. The next one, this, I really liked this, this method is recruit within the construction industry.
I run into this all the time. I want a, a selection coordinator that has, you know, five years experience in construction. Or I’m an office manager. It is not true. For example, D. R. Hurtins and Lenard, those big companies, they will not even hire anybody with construction fears because they don’t want them to learn the wrong way.
They only hire people without experience. Example in our business, we’ve hired a lot of selection coordinators, office managers. Think about this, Rick, a wedding planner, right? Think about a wedding planner. Wedding planner has to get a bunch of people together, the band you know, the firecrackers.
And no offense, those industries aren’t the most stable. You can’t count on everybody’s going to be at the right time. So the sort of flaky industries, they all get to be at the right time at the right place and everybody has to be happy and it’s got to come off well and look good. Sounds like a remodel to me.
Right. Yeah. Thing is people do that. because they want to do that and they have the talent to do that. So we’ve hired a lot of wedding planners and just killed it as selection coordinators or office managers, that kind of thing. So it is not true. Go, go outside the industry. You’re looking for who people are, not what they know.
You can teach them stuff, but you can’t teach them to be good human being. So hire who they are, not what they know and look outside of the industry. The next one, Oh, this gets everybody in trouble. It’s higher fast and fire slow. You talked about earlier, you hire fast cause desperate. I don’t hire the guy until after I need him.
And Oh my God, I need the guy. And so you hire fast cause you need the guy right away. That’s not really bad news, Rick. The really bad news is firing slow. You get the guy in the organization, right? And the guy or woman in the organization, you brought him on because you were desperate. Now you’ve spent years building this culture, everybody’s honest or trusting there.
You’ve built this great culture was taking you years to create. Then you put in the guy or the woman who’s like not that good, you know, they only lie. Sometimes they only steal occasionally And they just show a dojo once in a while and what happens is it kills your culture? Because everybody goes look at this guy shows up late.
He gets paid this guy, you know stole the nail gun Nobody noticed this guy, you know lied to a client. Nobody seemed to care. So it just destroys your culture And that’s the world’s worst employee, you know, bad enough to, what is that good enough to keep her bad enough to fire and they kill your culture, but you fire slow because you haven’t got anybody else to replace him.
So not only does it, it, the person not work out, that’s not the worst part. The worst part is he kills the culture. You spent years developing. And it’s really hard to recuperate from that. The truth is you should hire slow. Literally take the time, find the people, always be recruiting, make the decisions slowly so you’ve got the right person.
Then, if they’re not working out, fire fast. Do not hesitate, do not wait, fire fast. And I’ve done consulting for many, many years, and many times, I can’t tell you how many times, but lots, They’ve got this world’s worst employee. And then the conversation is about John or Mary. Oh, John’s great this week. Oh, I can’t, I can’t, John did that.
Oh, John crashed a truck. Oh, but he wasn’t drunk. I mean, it’s like crazy, right? And they keep this person on for years because they don’t want to go through the emotional pain of firing them.
I just, I just, just heard a quote from Donald Trump and he was talking about the three types of employees he had, he goes, there’s bad employees, there’s good employees, and there’s great employees, he goes, great employees. He goes, you can never pay them too much. Cause they’re going to take you. They’re going to catapult your business.
They’re going to take you where you could never go without them. He goes, we love great employees. He goes, bad employees. They’re easy. They’re bad at fire. He goes, good employees are the worst because they’re not bad enough where you fire them. But they’re not great and they kind of just slog along. He goes, good employees are the worst, you know, kind of that milquetoast type employee.
Well, the problem is the good employees I talked to the other day, and he has a, he has a production building coming and he did, you have the Peter principle is you promote level people to the level of incompetence and they stay there because you can’t. Demote him because you promoted him and you can’t promote him because not doing a good job.
So you get organization, the people that just don’t quite do it. He has a production builder builds like four or five houses a week and he’s down to like three houses a week because production building, he promoted his superintendent to director of construction and he isn’t cutting it, but he’s a friend of his.
He’s been around a couple of years and his whole organization is dying because this guy doesn’t know how to build or doesn’t create a process to build a house today. Just can’t pull it off. And it’s not, I mean, he got promoted to his level of incompetency. Now he’s a friend of the owner, so he doesn’t want to let him go.
He doesn’t want to fire the guy, but he’s killing his whole organization. And it happens all the time. I finally convinced him to hire a new guy and demote this guy and say, look, I’ll give you the same amount of pay, but just you’re not cutting the job. And I mean, I would ask everybody listening to this podcast at a very serious question.
Now, Rick, same to you if you have any employees. If you were going to start your organization over today, let’s say for a reason, everybody let go and you had started over again today. And now you had to hire back the people that you had before. Anybody that you wouldn’t hire back, you should fire. Yeah.
And do you remember Al Mays? He was a coach in the construction for years. I think he’s maybe retired now, but I took a class from his, him once. And he said, He said that he threw the question out there. Well, when, when should you fire somebody? He says, the first time you think about it. You know, and there’s always this, you know, I’ll tell a couple of sentence are the phone rang you.
Oh my God, it’s Sean. You’re not excited about the phone. It’s John. Right. Or John left a message. Oh, no. I mean, when you, when you hear the person’s name, there’s this sort of dread that you show up. I mean, like the person only lies 10 percent of the time, but you’re never sure when the 10 percent is. So you can’t know when to trust him.
Right. Right. And those kind of people, if they have working for you, they just kill it because you know in your heart that that that guy should go someplace else. But because you don’t include the emotional pain of firing the guy, you don’t have somebody to replace him because you’re not recruiting, you keep them on.
And I would say in any construction company, that’s probably the worst problem I’ve seen. You may have cash flow problems, you may have marketing problems, but when you have the worst employee problems, It makes it that’s not fun. Yeah, I’ve had because every time you think about that person you go That’s like that.
So if you have anybody that you wouldn’t rehire definitely fire them. Yeah, we had Lisa you late when I was hiring for I would go in kind of like you as you know Do subcontract sales management and I’d evaluate the the sales team, you know And I called it like you have the you have the The sales people are really in three levels as well.
So you have the superstars, the ones that you just need to support, let them do their thing, get out of the way. They’re going to, they’re going to produce for you. Then you have the middle, which is usually about the 50%. You’re always trying to coach them up to get them up and superstar level. And you have the bottom 25, I call those the sales prevention team.
The ones out there that are costing you sales. And it’s kind of like that bad employee as well. It’s like, it is drag you down. And like you said, they, they ruin the culture of the business. Other people in your, in your organization are going to be less productive because of this, this person. They’re just a cancer.
So I would come in. Sometimes we call it the queen bee or the king bee, the one that was. Thought they were above everyone else and they didn’t have to follow internal rules and policies, and they could do whatever they want. You know, the best thing you could do is you say, well, Mr. Builder, you should fire this person.
Oh, I can’t fire them because they’re such a good producer. I’m like, no, you don’t understand. They’re taking away sales from everything else. Your team, get rid of them. You’re gonna be able to produce more. And then you’re going to be able to not have to deal with all of the emotional baggage and crap you’ve got to deal with.
Cause they’re usually pre Madonna’s and you can hire up that new person, develop them into your next superstar. That’s going to follow the way that you want to run your company. I mean, I like the sports analogy is a team effort is not a solo effort, right? And you didn’t have an example. It’s on my, my kid’s soccer team, but I think it’s relevant.
They have this kid who was one. He was not easy to deal with for sure. And he always hogged the ball playing soccer. He gets the ball and wouldn’t give it to anybody else. And he was just really difficult. And he, and so the coach got rid of him. He says, I can’t have this guy on my team. Everybody freak.
And they’ve won way more games after they lost the guy than they did. Cause he was killing the team, even though he was the star, he wasn’t a team player. He didn’t ever pass the ball. He didn’t, he didn’t help build a team spirit. He was always the. The guy who was, he knew was better than everybody else and it just killed the team.
So, you know, construction is definitely team sport and look at, you should all, you know, what team isn’t always recruiting or always having a bitch. That’s, yeah. So let me go over the six items one more time. Just for our listeners. What were they? Okay. One is the myth is only recruit your needs and you need someone.
That’s not true. She’s recruiting all the time. The second one employees are expensive. They’re not best of best insurance. Third is we can do the recruiting ourselves. Okay. That’s not true. Hire somebody that’s good at it. It’s going to be great expenditure of funds. Next, recruit within the construction industry.
Not true. You can recruit, you know, just put construction experience preferred, but not required. Next one is hire fast, fire slow. It’s just the opposite. Hire slow, take your time, find the right person. If they’re the wrong person, boom, let them go. Fire fast. Next is recruiting is a project that ends. It doesn’t ever end.
You should always be looking for people all the time So if you get rid of those myths, you’d probably be better at hiring people yeah, so I always I always found that some of my Same thing I would go to a builder and we would we would put together an ad and start recruiting for sales people and the same thing as I was like frick I want to hire someone with experience and I would say well why?
Because then they’ll know what they’re doing. So they can come in here and I don’t have to train ’em, and they’re just gonna take, take and run with it. I said, what you get when you hire someone with experiences, you are bringing over all their bad habits they develop from somebody else. So now what I have to do is I have to untrain those bad habits and now I have to train them up in the way you want to do things.
So what would be easier? Having to untrain and retrain or just finding someone with the right characteristics we’re looking for and then train them up. From there, right? I mean, Rick example is a project manager. He’s been in the business 30 years. Shows up with his yellow pad. It says, I do not need anything, but a yellow pad.
I’ve been doing this for a long time. Just let me run the project and stay out of my way. This computer stuff, I don’t need it. I’m good with that. And it just kills your organization. If we got a little time, I’d like to go over the best recruiting practices. If you have time to do that, right? So I’ve learned what you need to do now, whether.
You have us do it for you, which I recommend because it’s better than doing it yourself, or you do it yourself. You gotta follow this process, in my opinion. In order to hire a good employee. Never once first is right. You know, the art of writing a job ad, it’s got a lot easier with chat GPT, go to chat GPT and say, write me an ad for a project manager, like your HR professional.
But you’ve got to write a killer ad again. It is an ad. It is not a description. The idea is you’re getting somebody to quit the current job. They’ve got to come to work for you. So it’s a lead with things like, are you not appreciated where you are? Do you feel like you’re better than the rest of your employees?
Is your boss not treating you? Well, you need to lead with something that’s going to appeal to the person you want. Don’t say looking for a project manager must have five years experience, blah, blah, blah. That’s a job description and add an ad is the idea is supposed to get somebody to buy your stuff.
Right? So it’s a job ad. Make sure you write a great, great job ad. Yeah. That’s the first one. Don’t use convention. The second one, where do you post a job ad? Post it everywhere. We post it on a hundred, a hundred and some job boards, plus LinkedIn, plus, you know, all the social media. We do it on, you know, what is it?
Monster. We search your databases. Place it everywhere you possibly can. Even put a poster on your supplier’s thing. Don’t just put it in deed and figure it done. That’s important. The next one is this is the most important and the hardest to do. Probably respond immediately. Don’t, you know, when people, you know, we respond to people who do it in real time.
If somebody applies for us, they hit send 10 seconds later to get. Thank you for applying for ABC company. We really appreciate your resume. Do it immediately. It’s just like marketing. How fast you follow up a good lead. And, and, and just to interject here, so I know you’re, so I hired you, you’re helping me right now.
So we have a software I log into and I kind of, and I do it almost daily as I get notifications, but when that, when that ad response comes in, that candidate comes in responding to that ad, then there’s an AI built into it where they, they get that, Immediate email. It looks like it says, Hey, just wanna let you know we received your application, right?
I mean, so it’s important. You respond immediately. Do not wait. Okay. It’s just like if you get a marketing call, you don’t call him back 3 days later because they’ve already gone to somebody else and all the good people also look at this way. If you’re applying, you must be applying for 10 companies, not for one.
When you’re looking for a service, you’re calling, you’re going down Google and calling five people. If you, if you apply for 10 companies and only one says, thank you for applying. We’re getting right back to you. Which company looks the best to work for? Exactly. Somebody who’s on the ball. Okay. So respond in, in minutes, not days.
And it’s hard to do because we have to go through, we go through three or four, you know, applications a week. Three, 4, 000 applications a week. We have to go through 200 applications to find a guy. So the reality is what owner or person in office has time 24 seven to call his people back right away. It’s just not realistic.
Cause it, again, there’s an average of, I think, 200 applicants every time we hire a person. Okay. The next one is selection process. It’s key. Here’s an assessment. There’s a lot of good psychological tools out there. He’s an assessment has a lot of AI in it. I’ll know about you being your mom. If you take this thing.
So get a good assessment process or something. There’s a Colby, there’s disc. There’s a bunch of stuff out there. Make sure you do a good psychological assessment of the person before you hire them. The technology is there. And we have, I think the best, but it doesn’t matter. Find some technology. So, you know, the person’s intelligence, their integrity, you know, what, what, whether the right person, I, for the job, do a really good analysis of that person.
And it’s, you know, people just don’t use the tools and that makes it really hard. The next one is after you, you know, do a good analysis, as far as an assessment goes, do a video interview. We have video interviews that we do for everybody, you know, and And we structure those video interviews depending on each person.
So we always do video interviews. Because there’s some things you can’t find in an assessment. I mean, what do they look like? What do they come across with? I mean, how are they as a human being? You can’t tell some of those things unless you watch a video. Okay. And then always do reference checks because You know, I had one guy that hired a bookkeeper, embezzled him, hired the next bookkeeper, embezzled him, and he went to the DA’s office and he said, look, didn’t you realize a bookkeeper you just hired got fired for embezzlement?
I mean, come on, right? So it’s like, you know, do reference checks and background checks, okay? So if you do all those things, You’re much more likely to find a good person. I think there’s lots of great people out there. As I said, we generally don’t have problems in finding good people because we follow the process, but most contractors literally don’t have time to do this.
And if, even if you give them the tools, that’s why I did this company. Cause I give you the tools. I’ll give you a good assessment, you know, good, how to do all this stuff. You don’t have time to do it. It’s like a half time job for anybody, at least. You know, and we, when we have got a client, there’s four people on the team.
There’s a recruiter, there’s a person who scans resumes 24 7, they have an assistant, there’s another person that does all the applicant facing stuff, makes them take the resume assessments, calls them, does make sure the applicants know we’re interested in them. That’s the account manager. And then there’s a specialist you talk to every week.
So we have four people on the team just to hire for a guy, right? Yeah. And can you picture in your company, who in the heck’s going to do that? One of the things I noticed as I’m going through and I’m, you know, you, you, you look at the candidates and again, I’m using your software. So I see the resume. I see.
How they responded. I can look at the assessment, you know, and I’m looking at this. I’m like, number one, I’m really so happy that I hired a recruiter because I need somebody to protect me from myself because sometimes you look at a resume and you fall in love with a candidate, and then you start to overlook some of the red flags that are popping up, you know, as you’re following this process, and it’s so nice to have you know, I’m working with Carell, Just to say, Hey, what do you think of this candidate?
What are these assessments? What do you see? Are there some red flags here? And where? Then if you, if that person says, Hey, you know what? This looks like a really good candidate, pursue them. So it’s like, okay, set. Or, you know, Rick, the resume looks good, but this, this, and this popped up. So this is a candidate I would probably.
You know, not stay away from and one that I, you know, those behavior traits, you know, that I, I found with the assessment that that you’re using. I mean, those are phenomenal. You have to look at somebody’s, you know, do they blame others that take responsibility to you know, how cooperative are there?
Are they willing to follow leadership? Are they I forget the other one. Loyalty. You know, some of the things in there. It’s like, wow, that’s just amazing. You can find out the characteristics, the personality traits because I always look at it and say, if I have the right characteristics, I can train somebody up.
I can coach. I can train them up, but I need somebody that’s going to believe in the mission of what we’re doing here. and is going to be loyal. And if there’s a bump in the road, they’re not going to lose it or blame somebody else, but they’re going to actually be professional. And that is, I think, you know, one of the really biggest advantage of really partnering when you hire someone, because man, you talk, look at your fee.
If you hire the wrong person, we were talking about this, you know, you’re six months into it. You realize you hired the wrong person. You spend all that money hiring the wrong person. You put all that time and effort into coaching and training them. And six months later, you just went backwards. Now you have to completely start over all that time and energy and money that you spent on that person for six months is all gone.
I mean, that’s what I do. You know, we do it monthly. It’s, it’s much more if you do it like on a commit for a year, cause I think people should do that. We have a really, I consider a low monthly fee compared to, I mean, a lot of people say, I hired more to hire my last project, my project manager, and I’ve hired you for all it paid you all year.
It’s way, because we use a lot of our labor. We use a lot of, you know, AI, so we can do it way better and cheaper than almost anybody out there. That’s why I’ve grown so well. So, I mean, if you’re going to do it yourself, at least follow the best practices that’ll make sure it happens again, there’s plenty of great people out there now.
It’s harder to find the average, I think, employee in construction is like 45 years old and it’s getting tougher, but it’s sort of like. If you haven’t got enough leads, it’s because your marketing isn’t doing its job, right? If you’re not converting, there are systems out there on how to be very successful.
I just talked to an interesting venture capitalist the other day. And he said, and he, you know, he has like lots of money, millions. He’s been doing business. He wants to, he’s going into the roofing business in the middle of the country. I said, why? He goes, look at the old guys. They don’t know. They stuck in their old ways.
They don’t know how to, you know, market. They don’t know how our people, they’re just not good at business, but they’ve been there forever. Not much. The other people are two guys in a truck. They don’t have the right systems, the right things. They know what they’re doing. I can go in and just kill it. I could become the, you know, the largest roofer in my market in like four years because I’ve got good systems.
I know how to find good people, how to find good clients. I’ve got the systems and I can make like 40 percent margin on this stuff. He says, I can’t think of a better business to be in than roofing. And I go, that makes sense. Right. But so construction is a great industry. There’s huge opportunity, but just make sure you use the right systems.
And it’s already done for you. Find a great marketing system, find a great recruiting system, get good clients, good employees, and you’ll do well. But unless you have somebody help you with your marketing, which I highly recommend and have somebody help you to recruiting like us, it’s going to be tough because if you can’t find a good client, say clients, you shouldn’t take, which we’ve all had those.
That’s a disaster, right? And you take them and they like cost you money. Don’t pay their bill. They’re difficult to deal with. Bad clients are terrible. Same with the employees. You have employees that don’t show up. They, you know, they lie occasionally. It makes life difficult. So again, this is a great industry.
If you’ve got great clients, great employees, and the system’s out there to do both. And so I suggest you do both because that way you’ll be a happy contractor versus somebody who’s not happy. Very nice way to end this. And I just think, you know, one other thing Which was one of your you know, I can’t afford this employee, you know, I think that’s a sticking point for a lot of people.
And honestly, I’ve looked at that as well, you know, like looking at what the hiring needs I have. But one of the things I keep reminding myself is like, you know, what is the highest and best use of my time? You know, where should I be focusing my time? Because if I don’t have that great employee to do those things that I shouldn’t be doing, sure, can I do them?
Yes. But is it the highest and best use of my time? No. I’m never going to be able to make, add efficiencies into my my, my business, I’m going to make product improvements or come up with new offerings, improve my marketing, basically run my business. And so we used to say from a salesperson’s perspective, it’s like most salespeople when they are meeting directly with the client, they’re 500 an hour people, I said, why are you having your salesperson do change orders?
You can hire a 15 an hour person change. If you don’t have an administrative assistant, you are one. Yeah, there you go. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, anything that you can delegate should be delegated. Just focus on your core competencies and focus on running that business, growing the business, and ultimately getting yourself out of the day to day so that you can really be a business owner and run it as more of a CEO type person.
Well, it’s hard to make that transition sometimes from investment to entrepreneur. It’s a tough road for some people, but if you’re going to succeed, you’re going to have to pull it off. Yeah. And that’s, it’s always, at least in my perspective, it’s always that Ramallah doing a million. And they want to get, you know, they, they’re pretty much, they built their company up so high, but now they’re at the point where they really got to hire some help, they want to take it to the next level.
They want to get to three, five, eight, 10 million that home 4 million. Now they want to get up to the good 10, 20 million a year. That’s the leap right there. I see is that you have to hire people and yeah, you can make a lot of mistakes. By hiring the wrong people and sell yourself back. So very, very, very, very wise words, Paul.
Anything else you want to, you want to finish with here, Paul? Paul, I would say, I love this quote that smart people learn from their mistakes and wise people learn from the mistakes of others.
Well, my last question was any words of wisdom. There it is. That is where you learn from the mistakes of others. Don’t make them yourself. Absolutely. Absolutely. We will put a link below here But if somebody is interested in your services wants to get in touch with you, what is the best way? They can go to contractorstaffingsource.
com they can email me my email is paul at paulsanderman. com Or they can my cell phone literally is 415 599 9006. I’ll take calls Just make sure i’m in hawaii, so don’t call too early. You And again, you know, just we’ll talk to you about what you need to do. If you want yourself fine, we’ll explain what you need to do.
If you want us to do it fine. But you know, if you’re having problems, finding employees, trust me, it’s you, it’s not the market. And if you want to get some help, It can be, there’s no, we have no problem finding great employees for everybody. I said, you know, we hired what four and eight people actually 17 didn’t work out.
That’s not an accident. The industry’s averages might be less than 50 percent or it’s like 95 percent just because you use the right processes. So, you know, if you’re having a problem finding employees, don’t blame the market, don’t blame the industry. You know, when, when, when you’re pointing your finger at, you know, it’s someone’s four feet, was it three fingers were pointing back at you?
It’s all about you. So take the time and energy to do what you need to do to fix the problem because It isn’t outside of you. It’s your practices. That’s the problem. Very, very true. Very, very true So we’ll put your link below here get in touch with paul talk to him about your hiring needs and and he’s got a great system I’m using it right now and and i’m very comfortable to hire four people here probably In the next 30 to 60 days, so it’s really cool to see how that process is So my brother, pardon me.
I said, thanks for having me. I appreciate being here. Oh, yeah, absolutely. This is great. Great information. And for my brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Always. We’ll see you next time on conversation.
How long should you follow-up with an unresponsive lead?
What about those old, cold leads that you never connected with- are they worth re-engaging?
You spend countless hours and resources on lead generation, nurturing relationships to seal a deal. But what about those leads that seemed to slip through the cracks or were put on the back burner?
It’s time to bring them back into your sales pipeline!
In this fourth episode of our series “How to Create a Client Acquisition Road Map”, we will discuss the importance of reactivating cold leads and how it can significantly impact your business growth.
So put your energy drinks aside, watch/listen/read this episode instead, and dive into some effective techniques for reviving those dead-end leads and turning them into satisfied customers. After all, patience may be a virtue but persistence is key in the world of client acquisition.
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Transcript:
Today in Conversations that Convert we’ll be discussing how to pull hot leads from a cold database should be fun
Welcome to Conversations that Convert every week We’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation Marketing and sales topics for remodelers home improvement companies and home builders conversations that convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter your perfect sales assistant and now Here’s Rick and Daiana.
Hey everybody, welcome to Conversations. Convert. Hello, Diana. Hello, welcome everybody. How are you today, Rick? Doing great. Back from the International Builders Show 2024, it was quite a time. 100, 000 plus builders and designers and other housing industry professionals, a lot of great education, cool new products, and got to meet and re acquaint myself with a lot of great people in the industry.
So excited to be back, but also it was a great experience. Sounds amazing. Next time I will be there with you. All right. We want to, and I got to see the sphere in Las Vegas, which is now done. So that was really cool as well. I didn’t go inside, but the outside is really cool. So if you go to Vegas, definitely check out the sphere.
On my list. Yeah. So what are we talking about today, Diana? Today, how to pull hot leads from a cold database. Yeah, that’s right. And this is all part of our series, how to create a client acquisition roadmap. And it’s based on the number one marketing challenge as reported by the association of professional builders state of the residential construction industry survey.
So 46% Of builders in 2024, say high quality leads or the lack of the number one marketing challenge. And the next highest marketing challenge is just having enough leads. So when you take and combine the two together, it’s six out of 10 builders say that is their top issues that they’re facing here this year and a full 12 percent more.
Are considering advertising. So the whole purpose of this particular series is really to answer the question of is advertising really the best place to find leads or should we looking at other areas? So that’s what this roadmap is all about. And today we’re talking about part four, database. management.
So we’re going to walk through really five aspects of managing a database. So what do you? What do you think, Diana? Let’s dive in. I’m so curious. So let’s break in the database and to get to the five areas. So I think the first thing I should do is probably define a database. A database is simply a list of people who have engaged your company.
So this is just contact information, and you may also have additional specifics on their project, but they have engaged your company. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve engaged you. It simply means That you have the contact information, you may or may not have talked to them. So we will walk through the process of categorizing your database and then how you would manage that relationship with each part of your database.
So I think what we’ll do is we will start with the leads who do not engage. Okay. So this happens all the time. You get contact. Somebody says, Hey, I’m interested in something. You follow up and there you’re just not, you’re getting crickets. There’s just no response there. So we have leads that do not engage leads that do not engage.
Typically what that tells us is that the lead is still at the early part of the information gathering process meaning that it’s not that they’re not interested. It’s just that they don’t have enough interest at this point where they’re ready to talk to you. So when we have a lead that does not engage right away, That’s really gonna be focusing on building value and trust over time.
And the leads who, who do not engage are ones that they’re, if you heard the term ready, willing, and able they’re not one of, they’re either one or two. So either they’re, maybe they’re ready, but not willing and able, or maybe they are able, but not ready and willing. As an example. So not a bad lead.
Not somebody that you should give up on, but it’s somebody that’s going to take some time and you’re going to have to really work the relationship, present yourself as a local expert, provide them information on remodeling their home or on building a new home. And come up as really more of an educator, if that makes sense where I want to say, hey, this is some of the elements that go into great home design or modeling design.
This are some of the things that would drive the cost for your project. And if you’re building homes, these are some of the things you want to consider when you’re picking a location to build. And then the other area that I always recommend is that teach people how to avoid getting burned by a builder.
What do you think, Diana? That’s amazing. So so many things to pay attention to in the same time. Yeah, it’s a it’s a lot. And again, it’s just this is just it’s a what’s the word I’m looking for. It is a slow relationship. It will develop over time. I just had a client recently that sold a 2 million custom home.
That lead was in their database for five years. Yeah. So five years, we worked that lead over and over and over again, was able to engage that lead several times, but when they were ready, that builder partner of ours was top of mind. They got the opportunity to sell them and lo and behold, they did sell them.
So these types of leads, they will come around eventually. Not a real high percentage of them, but they will come around eventually. And oftentimes when they do, they aren’t talking to any other builders. Literally, they’re, they’re just, they’re just focused on you. Okay, second type of lead. Now we have the leads that engage.
This is going to be a smaller percentage of your total leads. What we normally find is that for every 10 leads online leads that come into your client acquisition funnel, Roughly six will not engage, but about four will engage and lead to engage are going to engage as part of what we call a booking campaign.
So we’re going to use two types of strategies to encourage them to engage. Strategy number one is called the controlled release of information. So we will give them just enough information to keep them interested, but we will not give them too much where they don’t want to hear from us again or want to reach out to us to take the next step in the sales process.
And of course, that is a phone call to talk about their project. So controlled lease of information is the first strategy we use. The second strategy we use, Diana, is what’s called Marketing segmentation. Have you heard of that term before? Yes. Yeah. So it’s very, very important term for marketers. If you treat your database just like as a sort of a catch all funnel, your conversions are going to be very low, but the more that you can segment your database by interest, the more you can personalize your messaging and your followup and the higher your conversion rate.
So marketing segmentation is really important to understand. Number one, what type of lead they are, what they’re interested in, Right down to, are they interested in the type of project? And also are they more interested in say design ideas, maybe more pricing information or perhaps be location information if you’re building a home.
So once I gather that information, now I can adjust my messaging to create a really compelling reason for them to want to talk to me and I can increase my conversions that much more. So booking campaigns most important part of them is, is that number one, you use multiple mediums. We’ve talked about this many times.
So I call, I do voicemail drops, I will text I might do Google business profile chats, I might do Instagram messaging, Facebook messaging, etc, etc. I’m going to use multiple mediums because I don’t know what, how they prefer to communicate and so I need to figure that out. And some of them might want to talk on the phone.
Great. We’ll call them on the phone. Some of them might prefer email. Others might prefer social media messaging. I, I just don’t know. So any thoughts on that Diana? What I’m hearing is to stay in the game and be consistent and approach all types of mediums. So, because you don’t know, and And if you know, it doesn’t matter.
It’s good to, to, to, to just interact with them in, or in and use several mediums. Yeah, that’s right. You know, you, as far as how do you get them to engage? You simply just give them a good reason. It’s, it’s, it’s, we talked about this before. Remember if we talked about offers, right? As a company of several offers, so your first offer is, is just to engage From, say, a website visitor to opting in.
So giving them something of value, then you have to come up with another offer, which entices them to take the next step. So the next step is always to get them on the phone. And then obviously in the phone call, you have to give them a third offer, which is to take, get them to the next step, which is going to be typically a site visit or an office meeting, that initial consultation.
So there’s always these offers that you have to have at the ready. Now, of course, as we’re going through this process, we’re always qualifying too. Okay. So we might find somebody’s not the right fit for us.
That’s okay. That’s that’s the job We don’t want to waste any more of our time falling up with someone that’s not a good fit nor do we want to waste their time on maybe dealing with a looking at us as somebody that can help them with their project when we aren’t the right builder so offers are really really important And that’s just really all part of this is that as you engage even after you get them You In front of you, you have to continue to put those offers in front of them.
They’ve got to be powerful enough where they want to grab them to take the next step. Yeah, that’s true. So we have leads who don’t engage leads, who engage. And now we have leads that buy. So they become clients. So they sign with a dotted line go to contract. Now we can want to continue working them as part of your database management.
And at this point, once they are, once they are sold We want to go ahead and focus on referrals. Referrals, referrals. Now I can also get reviews. This is a great time actually to get, collect feedback internally and externally. What I mean by that is internal feedback would be, hey, you want to be asking along the way, how are we doing?
And if they’re not having a good experience, you want to get that information. But also we want to do external feedback as well, where if they are happy we want to get them to take that information and get it online and an online review site such as Google. House, Facebook, et cetera et cetera. But work in process clients are very important because the project is top of mind for them.
And so they’re often talking about that project with friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors. And so if they’re talking about it a lot, you keep them happy, give them a reason to want to refer you to those people that are also considering a project similar to yours. to theirs. What are your thoughts, Diana?
So reference, it seems that that’s the key secret to keep asking. Who do you know, who can? Who do you think that can? need our services. So just ask all the time about, about support, the resources, and just don’t assume they know. There’s a, there’s a, a lot of builders out there think that, hey, if I just do a really good job, people are going to go all out and they’re just going to refer me.
And that doesn’t happen. It’s called an organic referral. It does happen. But if you look at you ever read the book rating fans, Yeah, so it’s a great book. It’s like, how do you create a raving fan experience? So a lot of builders do like to focus on the experience and having different touch points.
And I’m a big proponent of that as well. It’s like plan a raving fan experience when you get your people into work in process. And if we take the time to really focus on serving them, Now, the next thing we have to do is we have to continually remind them to be our, on our referral team. And what I mean by that is, is that we have our sales team, but we also have our referral team.
So that referral team, you have maybe dozens, maybe hundreds of referral partners. So those are your past clients. Those are your business to business relationships out there. And you deliver rating fan experiences also remind that referral team that, hey, we’re always looking for more business and we can reward them as well, which I’m a big proponent of is creating like a referral generator where they get to where not only the person that’s giving us a referral can get rewarded, but also the person that’s So that person being referred can get rewarded as well.
So a big part of database management, it’ll sold clients of that work in process. Okay, last but certainly not least, I’m going to call this the completed project section. So we’ve completed the project. Now we typically have two stages here. So stage number one is, will be the warranty process. So that will be from the date of completion until one year after completion.
Here, I’m still focusing on feedback. So again, I want to get feedback from the customer. How did we do for getting your project completed? How is the new project living? When we get to the end of that one year, that’s typically where we’re going to have, let’s say a workmanship warranty expiring. So I may want to gather feedback from them.
What can, you know, what needs to come out and be fixed before your warranty expires, be proactive with that. And obviously the reason is more public relations than saying, Oh, I just want to go out and fix some, you know, issues. Drywall cracks as an example, but I want to be proactive and use this as an opportunity to get feedback and also get more referrals because the project is still fresh in their mind and Diana, when are people most likely to invite their friends family co workers and neighbors over to their newly remodeled space or their new home?
When would that be? Just immediately they receive the Yeah, but pretty much they want to do it. A lot of times it may even be a delay because they say, Oh, I want to order new furniture or I want to do some decorating, but it’s going to be in that first year that people will be coming over. So we want to be really active with soliciting feedback and also promoting our referral program to gather more referral leads from them.
So that’s stage one. Now, stage two. Is when the project has been more than a year old. So typically the warranties are expired, especially workmanship warranty. Now what I’m going to shift my focus to will be again, referrals and repeat business because especially if you’re a remodeler, once that project is two, three, four years old, Oftentimes, now that client is thinking about the next phase of the renovation project.
So I want to stay top of mind with them. And so what we do is just a maintenance tips program where we just focus on reaching out to them four times a year via email and text messages and just giving them relevant information, just reminder things that they should be doing to maintain their investment, which of course is their home.
Even if you just remodel their kitchen as an example, still give them this general tips on what they should be doing in the springtime or the summer or the fall or the winter. Thanks Especially if you have a cold climate, you know, there’s lots of things you can give them. But even in a warm climate, you know, there’s always issues with termites and, and other things like that, that they should be doing on a consistent basis.
Even if it’s as simple as simply is saying, hey, don’t forget to change your furnace filter. You know, that’s one of the biggest compliances. The home doesn’t heat or cool correctly. And it’s usually just a plugged furnace filter. So any, any, Last ideas on this particular section there. It’s good to prepare your strategy for all all those stages for for leads that are not are not engaging for leads who are engaging for sole clients and completed projects.
So you have your clear actions for each step. That’s right. Yeah, exactly right. Now, what’s interesting is this. When a builder reaches that one to 3 million revenue, annual revenue, let’s say annual sales revenue. If you go back and I asked them, Hey, what is your primary source of leads? 99 percent of the time they’re going to say referral and repeat business so you can grow your business up to a certain level just on word of mouth, just on referral referral business and repeat business, especially if you’re a remodeler.
If you want to break through that. You need to not only maintain that amount of referrals, you need to enhance it and then add other lead sources like search engine optimization or organic inbound traffic different types of advertising, maybe B2B referrals. So you have to be very strategic with your referrals and you have to work at it.
It’s kind of like a marriage, right? If you want to have a successful marriage it doesn’t just happen organically people can get along fine, but a really truly joyful marriage You’ve got two people that are working at it and they’re pouring into the relationship So that’s how you have to deal with your past clients is you have to work them pour into the relationship Stay top of mind with them.
Give them a raving fan customer experience And then you will reap the rewards of that, of that referral business. And then you can build on top of that. So that’s your foundational part of your lead generation. Now add everything else on top of it. And now you can get to that 3, 4, 5, 10 million, 20 million a year company because you’ve got that foundation of those of those referral leads.
Yeah. So anyway, last but not least, pretty much everything I explained here can be automated. But you do want to have that manual oversight and some of that manual follow very, very important is to have somebody overseeing it, making phone calls, you can do voicemail drops, and we can plan all that and drop them out there.
But you still want to also target Strategic times in any of these campaigns where you are manually reaching out to those people, including dropping off a gift at, say, somebody’s home. I used to do that 30 days after closing. I would stop by and I would drop off a housewarming gift, talk to the people face to face, maybe leave them a card, ask them a question on referrals.
But that’s the kind of thing that you want to, again, add in to supplement the campaign so that can be done automatically. So Diana, any final thoughts? So just ref, I that’s, that it’s in my mind, referrals and repeat business. That’s the secret. That’s the foundation of any build. Yep. Any builders lead source are referrals and repeat business.
But you do need to, I mean, it’s just part of your database management. You know, the leads going back to those new leads coming in that may be from a website lead or perhaps a paid ad. If you look at a conversion statistics referral, Business repeat business always converts the highest. And you always want to nurture those relationships with your past clients and create those can army of referral partners and just stay top of mind with them and have them be sending you people left and right, because those are typically highest converting and the most profitable sales.
So if you would like to schedule your strategy call and find out how we can help you attract, capture and convert high quality leads, go ahead and click on that link right below. We’ll be happy to talk to you, learn a little bit more about your company and see if we might be able to partner with you to help you not only build your referral business, but also online and other sources of new leads.
So you can have a steady stream of high quality clients and pick and choose your clients and jobs. So from our brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all always. We will see you next time on Conversations with
As you continue to build your businesses and attract potential clients, it’s crucial to have a solid client acquisition roadmap in place.
In the first two parts of this series, “How to Create a Client Acquisition Road Map“, we discussed how to create engagement and how to follow up to acquire & convert high-quality leads into appointments.
Now in this third part, we will delve into the intricate details of how to respond effectively to different lead behaviors. With our expert insights and successful strategies, you can elevate your approach by understanding each type of lead behavior and tailoring your responses for maximum impact.
Watch/Listen/Read to this episode now to master the art and science of client acquisition with our engaging blog post on creating a comprehensive client acquisition roadmap.
Builder Lead Converter ATTRACTS, CAPTURES & CONVERTS high-quality leads for builders so they can pick & choose their clients & jobs. Find out how at https://www.builderleadconverter.com
Transcript:
Rick: Today on Conversations That Convert, we’ll be discussing how to respond to different lead behaviors. And, this gets kind of fun. This is part of our how-to create a client acquisition roadmap. Let’s get started.
Welcome to Conversations That Convert. Every week, we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation, marketing, and sales topics for Remodelers, Home Improvement Companies, and Home Builders. Conversations That Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter, your perfect sales assistant. And now here’s Rick and Daiana.
Rick: Hey, welcome to Conversations that Convert everyone. Daiana. How are you?
Daiana: Hi, very well. Thank you. And you?
Rick: Well as we discussed, spring is strong. It’s getting warmer. The snow is melting. Hopefully, warmer days are ahead when we can spend time outdoors. Isn’t that right?
Daiana: Yes, wonderful I forgot to tell you too.
Rick: I’m taller today because I got a new treadmill
Daiana: Oh, nice.
Rick: My old treadmill broke. I wore it out, literally wore it out, but I got a new treadmill, so I’m now breaking in the new one. So, that’s why, so I get to be a little bit taller and hopefully healthier, but, but we didn’t, we didn’t come here to talk about treadmills. What are we discussing today?
Daiana: Today about how to respond to different, lead behaviors and, about a map, I think.
Rick: Yeah, this is all about creating that client acquisition roadmap. And really, how do you acquire those high-quality leads and keep your sales pipeline full, regardless of what the market is doing?
And of course, this is all based on the number one marketing challenge, as reported again this year by the Association of Professional Builders, which surveyed about 1, 500 builders from four different, countries. The number one marketing issue was high-quality leads. The number two issue has generated enough leads.
So about 6 out of 10 builders are struggling with that right now. So that’s what we are tackling. And this is part three of this series, and this is what I’m calling the If-Then plan. And it’s looking at the journey of the lead and how we will respond. If the lead does this, then we will do this. So, that’s the If-Then plan. So let me give you a couple of scenarios. Is that okay, Daiana?
Daiana: Yes.
Rick: All right. So we talked about how every lead has a unique journey. Once they engaged you, and we talked about the last episode was putting together a follow-up plan. So once they engage that follow-up, now what we have to do as part of our roadmap is we have to, we have to look at. Okay, how will we reengage them?
Because they’ve already engaged once with our follow-up plan. So there’s, there’s really three types of responses a lead can give when they engage you. So, response number one is they can say, Hey, let’s book up.
Let’s I want to book a call with you in order to talk about my project that’s the number one goal, is always to get somebody on the phone so they go from an online lead to a phone call, and then if they’re qualified hopefully to a face to face meeting either at their home if it’s a site visit for remodeling or maybe at your office if it’s a custom if it’s a custom home.
So, we’re going to have them book a call to discuss the project. And so. The next type of response they can give you is they can ask a clarifying question. And that clarifying question might be, well, something about their project. Something of, you know, maybe they’re asking about pricing. They might ask something about the location.
Hey, you know, where their lot’s located or where their home’s located. Do you build in those areas? And then the third thing they can do is they can just not respond, right? Just ghosted you. So they opt-in, you follow up, and nothing happens. And when that happens, you know, there’s no response.
We want to put them into a long-term nurturing campaign and then do some things, after that. So, that’s the whole if-then plan. So what do you think of that, Daiana? Any thoughts or comments on that?
Daiana: I think it’s, it’s, it’s logical and interesting to keep them all involved in, in a process. So, if they choose, they are free to choose. And when they choose something, they enter into another process.
Rick: That’s exactly right. Yeah. and from a technical standpoint, that word we use is called workflow workflow. Yeah, they’re in a workflow. They do something else. They move into a new workflow and then how they behave in that workflow moves them to a different workflow. And so you’re just moving them down. Now again, we always start with a funnel.
So we put all the opportunities on the top and then we’re just working through those opportunities, narrowing it down to them. The best leads, in this case, are the high-quality leads that are ready to engage you. And then we want to get them on the phone with you so you can do your thing.
Now, so we have, if the lead doesn’t respond, if the lead does respond, we know what we do. Now the next thing they want to look at is what we call AND logic, AND logic means this. If the lead responds and does this, then we will do this and we will do something else. So let’s look at our scenarios again.
A lead responds to your follow-up and they ask a clarifying question, but they do not book an appointment. So, what I will do is I will continue with my booking campaign and I will, and a manual follow-up if they do not book an appointment, I will move to a long-term nurturing program and then work the database with them over time.
Now, a lead could also ask a clarifying question and they do book a call. So then I will respond to the question AND I will add them to an appointment reminder campaign AND I will note if they showed or didn’t show up to my appointment AND if they did show up I will qualify them, move them into my pipeline, or abandon them if they’re not qualified.
If they do not show up to the call, I will then put them into a cancellation reminder campaign in an attempt to rebook them. If they don’t rebook them, if I can’t rebook them, I will then move them into long-term nurturing and then focus on database reactivation and event management to try to nurture them and build trust and value over time.
So it sounds complicated and it is kind of complicated. You can’t do this manually. You really have to automate this process. And this is actually the exact type of thing that we build for our clients. But the nice thing is, is that you are engaging the lead how they want to be engaged. And I think you already mentioned that Daiana. It’s like engaging them where you’re at.
That before, too. So if somebody is ready to book a call with you, you’re ready and you give me an opportunity to do that. If somebody needs more time and they’re still trying to evaluate if they want to use your services, I’m ready for that.
And if somebody is somewhere in between, I’m ready for that as well. I can handle all three types of scenarios. So what are your thoughts or any final thoughts on that, Daiana?
Daiana: Yeah. So I think it’s, it’s good to build that with a tool, right? On an automatic tool that can help you with the work workflow. But at the same time, you need to think about this workflow. So and then…
Rick: You have to think things through. Exactly. And you have to think it through from the leads’ perspective. Like I said, you meet them where they’re at. We would all love it if everyone would call us up and say, yes, I’m ready to go. And here’s here’s my money. And when can I sign the contract if this that’s just not how it happens. So every lead every lead’s journey is different.
And you and I were talking about this before the call here today. Sometimes that journey might last years. Right. So you, I know you said you’ve had clients that you’ve talked to months, if not more than a year ahead of time before they engage your services.
I just had a builder that sold a 2 million custom home to somebody they first met five years prior to that, so it can take years to do this. So what we are doing is we’re always engaging that lead where they are at, and then we’re giving them the option, to tell us what they’re ready.
So if it’s long-term nurturing, I’m simply going to focus on educating and building trust and establishing value as a local go-to resource for building a custom home or remodeling your home. Now, if it’s somebody that’s been around a lot longer and maybe they were referred to me, they might be ready to book a call right away. But it takes time to build trust and value.
And so you just need to be ready to meet the lead where they’re at, be able to Give them that roadmap or be able to provide that roadmap that makes the most sense for them. And then again, they’re either going to buy or die. You’re going to stick with that lead until you know, five years from now and they’re ready to build or maybe it’s going to be five months or five weeks.
You just don’t know so you have to have that roadmap built. Understand their behavior and be able to engage them exactly along every step of the way and where they’re at. Any final thoughts? Yeah.
Daiana: So I think you need to do the work and not postpone it and just find a tool that’s working for you. Automate everything and just let the process work for you.
Rick: That’s right. Yeah, and that’s and that’s exactly right. So the very wise words are doing the work, get it, and get something set up because doing this manually doesn’t work. There’s no way you can manually manage a database understand the lead’s behavior and be able to respond appropriately.
Manually it’s impossible. It just doesn’t work. And of course, the larger the project that you are selling, I mean, the higher the price point, typically the longer the sales cycle. So your database is going to grow and grow and grow.
So database management becomes a really key part of building your business and being able to pull multiple sales each year out of people that you met, like I said five weeks five months five years before, and be able to add those to any other new leads that you’re getting that are committing faster, this particular year So do the work.
Yeah, you’re exactly right and have a platform and then just run with it. And of course, you still have to man to measure everything In order to manage, you get to measure everything. So we’re always measuring how the leaders are responding and then responding in kind. Yeah, very, very wise words. so if you would like to see how we could build a client acquisition funnel for you.
And helps you attract capture and convert high-quality leads so you can pick and choose your clients and jobs. Go ahead and click on that link right below here. Go ahead and schedule your strategy call or website audit. That’s something we’re adding. Now too if you want to take a look at your website tell you what you can do better on and help you attract, capture, and convert more high-quality leads.
We’ll be happy to do that. So from our brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ the love of god, and the fellowship of the holy spirit be with you all always. We’ll see you next time on Conversations that Convert
In the previous episode of our new series, “How to Create a Client Acquisition Road Map”, we discussed the crucial steps in building a client acquisition plan that sets you up for success, creating engagement with high-quality leads.
Today, we will dive deeper into one of the most essential elements of any successful client acquisition strategy – follow-up with high-quality leads. We understand how challenging it can be to convert leads into appointments. That’s why in this episode, we will share with you the secrets that are guaranteed to take your follow-up game to the next level and increase your chances of converting leads into profitable clients.
So let’s get started and take your business growth to the next level as we show you how to effectively turn leads into confirmed appointments. Watch/Listen/Read this episode now!
Builder Lead Converter ATTRACTS, CAPTURES & CONVERTS high-quality leads for builders so they can pick & choose their clients & jobs. Find out how at https://www.builderleadconverter.com
Transcript:
Rick: Today in Conversations That Convert, we’re talking or continuing our conversation on how to create a client acquisition roadmap. And this is all about the secrets to creating an effective follow-up plan for high-quality leads. Let’s get started.
Welcome to Conversations That Convert every week, We’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation marketing and sales topics for remodelers Home improvement companies, and home builders Conversations That Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter, your perfect sales assistant.
Rick: Welcome to Conversations that Converts, everyone. Hello, Daiana.
Daiana: Hello and welcome, everyone.
Rick: Lovely to see you again today. So what is our topic?
Daiana: Today it’s about the follow-up and how to get high-quality leads using the secrets to follow up.
Rick: That’s right. This is our new series called How to Create a Client Acquisition Roadmap and this is part two. This is all based on, of course, the number one marketing challenge for builders today, which according to the Association of Professional Builders State of the Residential Construction Industry survey, high-quality leads and the lack thereof are about 46 percent of builders say this is the number one challenge.
And when you combine that with a lack of leads, a total of about 6 builders out of 10 builders out there say this is the number one and number two issue. So we understand what the challenge is. Well, now what we need to do is focus on. Okay. When we do build a road map for high-quality leads, the next thing we need to look at is after part one, which was engaging that lead is now following up with them.
There is a very specific way you want to follow up with the leads. Most builders fall way, way, way short of this. We’re going to talk about four key components of follow-up. So what do you think, Daiana? Should we jump into it?
Daiana: Yes, let’s go ahead and get started. And, I remember that the fortune is in the follow-up. So, there should be some, some secret here.
Rick: That’s great. Fortune is in the follow-up, you know, and we talked about that a lot. It’s like, if you’re going to pay money to drive traffic to your website, what is the point if your website does not capture leads? If you’re going to capture leads and don’t do a good job of following up, what is the point of capturing the leads? So leads are expensive.
And so we want to make sure that they have an Amazon-like experience once they engage your company. And that is really what you’re being compared to. So this follow-up plan is setting the stage for what will happen if they decide to work with you to build or remodel their home. That’s how imperative it is that they get the right type of follow-up, and there are four components here that we’re going to go over.
So let’s jump into it. Question number one, who will follow up? Now, I see this a lot, especially in companies where a lead comes in and then it’s usually like an owner or sales manager and they look at the lead and they determine, well, you know what, I’m going to give this lead to Daiana as an example.
And so then they take and they forward an email over to Daiana, but Daiana’s busy that day because she’s out with clients or maybe she’s not feeling well. And so the lead sits in her inbox for maybe a day or two or three and then she’s catching up and she sees it and she gets back to the lead. Okay, so now it’s been 24 to 72 hours.
The lead hasn’t heard anything and the lead says, you know what, if this is what I can expect from your company, I’m crossing you off the list. So understanding who will follow up is the first question that you have to answer. And if you’re using the system, as I just described.
I can guarantee you, that you are losing out on high-quality leads because high-quality leads are going to try to eliminate you, not include you. So they’re looking for any reason whatsoever to cross you off the list. What do you think, Daiana, of that?
Daiana: Yeah, I think it’s it’s important to act fast and to be there for them immediately. And I can confirm that I gained some clients just by answering fast and they were surprised, Oh, you’re fast. And then they closed the contract.
Rick: Yeah, and they go and they go for it. And that’s exactly what you’re looking for to set the stage. So, a couple of things on who will follow up. Number one, I think it should always start with the same person. And that person can be an AI assistant. You know, I was telling Daiana before, this is that I have an AI assistant, her name is Isabella.
So anytime Somebody books a call with me. The first person they hear from as far as the follow-up goes is Isabella. So that’s fine. You know, we, you know, we and we set up AI systems for our clients all the time because they realize you’re busy, you’re doing things you don’t maybe have somebody in the office all the time that’s right there to handle the follow-up.
Now, the second thing with who should follow up is after the appointment is booked, the lead can always be reassigned. So if you’re an owner-operator and you’re also selling, You might be the first one to follow, to follow up on. And then you will also be the first one that’s going to take the phone call, which is really, you know after the appointment is booked.
However, if you have multiple salespeople, you could always start with more of an intake type person or even an AI assistant who can begin that follow-up with the lead. And then they can be transferred over and that could all be done seamlessly and automatically, and the lead feels taken care of, because they know, like, Hey, I’m getting to the right person of who I want to talk to.
Daiana, any thoughts on that? As far as the turnover and as far as, you know, having one person be that point of contact.
Daiana: Yeah, that’s interesting how AI can help us and take some, some tasks and ask and respond immediately for us. So, I think the question is, how can we use AI to our benefit?
Rick: Yeah, right. And you know, here’s a classic example. What if the lead comes in at 11 o’clock at night?
Daiana: Yeah.
Rick: But you’re not there. Your employees aren’t there. You can’t expect them to be there. You’re not going to hire a 24-hour answering service. And even if you do do that, you have the human element there, which is Who knows what they’re saying or, or not saying. So with an AI assistant, yeah, you can have an after-hours assistant.
You can name your after-hours assistant differently. You can say, hey, my name is Daiana. I’m the after-hours assistant for ABC Builders. Would you like to book a call with, you know, one of our remodeling advisors or new home advisors to talk more about your project? So then people sort of like, well, this is great.
You know, these people are Johnny on the spot, even when the lights are off and the doors are locked. All right. The next question is how will they follow up again. Another huge issue with putting together any follow-up plan is not utilizing all the possible channels and different ways to follow up. So what I mean by this is you have to use multiple mediums.
Historically, when you have, when you don’t have any automation and you have a salesperson following up, they will follow up with the lead the way that they prefer to follow up. Most salespeople will probably use an email. They’ll reply with an email saying, Hey, you know, thanks for your inquiry. You know, here’s the answer to your question, you know, blah, blah, blah.
And what happens is that email typically may not get delivered or it doesn’t get read. Only about 18 percent of emails actually get opened out there. So, isn’t that crazy to think that if you had 10 leads and you’re only using email to follow up, you are actually only re-engaging about less than two out of 10, way, way too expensive? So, email, what we have found is the worst way to follow up.
It has the least amount of engagement and the least amount of conversions using email. Now, after you get into a relationship where there’s a back-and-forth, email is a perfectly fine tool. But at the beginning of the relationship, email we found was the worst tool. Any thoughts on that, Daiana?
Daiana: That’s interesting. And I’m wondering what’s the best tool if email is the worst tool, tool because it’s true looking back. Yeah, after you have the relationship, then you can send the contract and have some conversation by email. But yeah, I use WhatsApp and my phone. I don’t know. What do you think about those?
Rick: WhatsApp is popular with younger people too because it’s a free way to send text messages or SMS messages, right? So, the number one conversion medium is text Yeah. And there’s a simple reason for that is because everyone has one of these and they’re attached at their hip. So, text messaging has, has roughly a 100 percent open rate after about one hour.
There’s really, you know, if you’re not, if you’re dealing with a younger demographic, yeah, WhatsApp or Instagram messaging, obviously Snapchat, that sort of thing. They’re way into that. But most, Home dealers and remodelers are dealing with a little bit older demographic and that professional class, especially they love to use text messaging. So, the text is the best.
And we were talking about when to send a text and how, how to use it properly. Now, phones are still very, very valuable. And some, there are some types of leads out there that love to talk on the phone. They want to talk on the phone.
The challenge with a phone is getting somebody to answer the phone and then getting a time where they, you guys can talk on the phone where you don’t have something, you’re not in the middle of something. So, phone tag obviously is still a really big thing. And I call it the chase, you know, chase, you know, you’re it. No, come back to me. No, you’re it.
And you go back and forth. And it’s very, very inefficient way. So with the phone, you can do a couple of things. One of the things we use is called call connect, and it’s where automatically you can take that new lead. It can call the salesperson or the person in charge of the follow-up, salesperson answers it and says, Hi, you have a new lead named Daiana and she downloaded this on your website.
Press one to connect. And then if the salesperson presses one connect, it will automatically try to call that new lead. If that lead answers, you’re connected and now you can go through, hi, my name is, you are on our website. Did you get the information you’re looking for? Did you have any questions about your home building or remodeling project? Voila.
Now there’s something else you can do call a voicemail drop. So that’s a prerecorded message where you drop it into your lead’s voicemail. And so on their phone, it looks like they missed a call from you. But they have a voicemail and sometimes people will just automatically just hit call and they’ll just call that number back. They don’t even listen to the voicemail.
So all of a sudden you get somebody calling you one of your leads and it’s like, Hey, we have a chance to connect. However, if they’re listening to the voicemail, they get to hear your voice, and you get to obviously give them a compelling reason to want to take the next step in your sales process. So, your thoughts on that, Daiana, as far as how you should follow up as part of your client acquisition plan?
Daiana: Yeah, I think that’s, that’s, that’s very powerful to use all the media that you have, not only one, and be aware and create a strategy, a strategy to follow up, not just say, oh, maybe I will try this or that to have a clear strategy about, and what’s the roadmap from when the client is entering into your lead capture until he converts.
Rick: And part of that strategy is using all those mediums and then when you push out that information that follow up, you do it different days of the week and different times of the day. A lot of people don’t realize that they say, Well, I like to follow up at this time of the day. Well, you don’t know if your leads are open to follow-up at that time of day.
So what you have to do is you have to do all sorts of different days of the week, different times of the day, including weekends to try to engage that lead and find them at a time that’s convenient to them. That’s what you’re trying to do you’re trying to just find out which medium you like to use.
What time of the day do you like to follow up and make it as seamless and simple as them to reengage you? So you can again, move them closer to that phone appointment to talk about their project. Number three question, when will they follow up? So this is again, creating your client acquisition roadmap and your followup, your follow-up plans.
We talked about who would follow up, and how will they follow up. Now the question is, when were they followed up I just led into it as far as you have to change all sorts of different times of the day and days of the week when you follow when you follow up.
So, here’s what I’m suggesting: the follow-up starts before they’ve ever, even in, on your website, you need to have the ability to have, have them ask a question using a live chat and convert that into a text. So that can start the follow-up process.
Scheduling a call gives you, to put your calendar on your website so somebody can pick a time to schedule a call to talk, to talk to you, you can also do a click-to-call. So you put your phone number on your website, you put a click to call feature on it where if somebody’s on a mobile phone they can just hit that with their finger it opens up their dialer and they hit, you know, call.
What happens then is the call comes through to your office but you might miss it. So what do you do at that point? Missed a call and texted back. Hi, this is Daiana from ABC Builder. Sorry, we missed your call. How can we help you? Excuse me. And you start that conversation again, taking it from a call to a text. Now, why a text?
Because text is the number one way when they will engage you. So, I always try to convert as much as I can to text messaging, knowing that if I’m looking at pure data, pure analysis, is that more people prefer to text than anything else. So that’s usually my go-to when I’m just trying to establish that connection. Any thoughts on that Daiana?
Daiana: So, text is the number one tool to use when you want to follow up.
Rick: Just to get someone to engage. I’m just trying to get a response out of them and engage again. If I’m using a text message, the goal is to get them on a phone call. If I’m using an email, the goal is to use that medium to get them on a phone call. A voicemail drop.
Get them on a phone call and a call connect, you know, even if they don’t have a whole lot of time to talk if they answer the phone, I can at least send a schedule a time for me to call back when they have 15, 20 minutes in front of them to talk more about their project. So it’s all about getting them to that magical phone call. I can finish my qualification process.
So, we talked about the website. After, if they don’t call you, they go on your website and say they opt-in. Once they opt in you want to immediately send them an email, immediately send them an email. So again, are they going to reply to that email? No, but it will acknowledge that you received their inquiry.
So, that’s really, really important that they feel acknowledged. What I do at that point is I’m going to wait one to three minutes and then I will send them a text. Okay. Now, we talked about this strategy, but why would you wait, and Daiana, do you remember this? Why do you wait about one to three minutes before you text them?
Daiana: Yeah, so, so you make it real for them. So, it’s like a real person who waits one minute and then sends it. So, you’re not desperate.
Rick: Yep. Exactly. Yeah. So, it becomes, it becomes real because it looks organic.
Daiana: Yeah.
Rick: You can have it right away. It looks like, wow, you guys are Johnny on the spot. It was two or three minutes. I just. Hit like submit and all of a sudden, two minutes later, one minute later. I got an organic message back, back from you. And now all I’m doing is simply acknowledging that I heard from them.
Normally what I want to do as part of that text message is I want to be able to acknowledge, that’m going to give them something because they just opted in. And we call that permission-based opt-in relationship where they feel like they’re going to receive more than they give. So, they’ve given me permission to follow up with them.
I’ve now gone back and I’ve delivered to them something that’s of high value and they’re very happy because they got what they were, were looking for. Now over the next two weeks, I will continue to call and text. And do voicemail drops. And I might use messaging from Instagram or Google, my business, or Facebook as well to re-engage them.
It all depends on what is important to them. In the last part of this part of your plan, I guess the question is what is automated versus manual? The cool thing about this is, is that everything that I have talked to, that I, in this particular episode, except a live phone call can be automated. And as we were talking right before this, AI is now moving into live voice calls.
So there is technology out there right now that will take and it will manipulate your voice and call somebody or talk to them. You know, using your voice. I do not recommend this. We don’t have any clients that are using this, but you should know it’s out there. So, literally everything, including a live phone call, can go to AI. However, why? There’s no, there’s no reason for it.
You should be having that conversation with your lead, especially for the high-end price points that remodelers achieve. If it’s something that’s a very simple sale and it can be a, you know, a very much a generic sort of vanilla type phone call.
Yeah, maybe you could use AI for something like that, but not for something design-builder as complex as building a home. So Daiana, any final thoughts from you?
Daiana: Yeah, it’s interesting how AI will capture and gain more, more, let’s say, more, more things in, you know.
Rick: Right, one of the things that we’re doing right now is looking at using AI while a lead is on somebody’s website of one of our clients’ websites that have not opted in yet. And so we can get into some conversations with them using AI based on their behavior.
And the other part is after they’ve opted in and I can go as part of this follow-up plan, I can incorporate AI into that using specifically SMS or text or text messaging and be more conversational, be able to answer more frequently asked questions, et cetera, et cetera, using AI. So do that to increase my conversions after I’ve captured that lead.
So, that’s what really, that, and that’s right now, that’s, that’s happening as, as we speak. There are some very, very cool things that you know, we’ll be rolling out here in 2024. So, if you would like to schedule a strategy call today and find out how we can help you attract, capture, and convert high-quality leads so you too can pick and choose your clients and jobs, go ahead and click that link right below here.
We’d be happy to take a look at your business, listen to your goals for the future, look at your website, and provide you with some feedback on that. And, that will end up for today for conversations that convert. So for my brothers and sisters in Christ.
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all always. We’ll see you next time on Conversations That Convert. Bye bye.
Are you looking to take your remodeling or home building business to the next level and attract more high-quality leads?
In today’s ever-changing world of technology and marketing strategies, it can be overwhelming to know where to start when it comes to acquiring new clients. But fear not – we are here to guide you through the process with expert insights and successful strategies.
In this four-part series, we will discuss how to create a Client Acquisition Roadmap that will provide you a reliable stream of high-quality leads.
So buckle up as we dive into the first part of our new series called “Create More Engagement from High-Quality Leads”. Watch/Listen/Read to this episode, and get ready to transform your business by attracting and retaining your ideal clients with our engaging, authoritative, and professional approach.
Builder Lead Converter ATTRACTS, CAPTURES & CONVERTS high-quality leads for builders so they can pick & choose their clients & jobs. Find out how at https://www.builderleadconverter.com
Transcript:
Today on Conversations That Convert, we’ll be talking about how builders can create engagement from high quality leads. Let’s get started.
Welcome to Conversations That Convert. Every week we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation, marketing, and sales topics for remodelers, Home Improvement Companies and Home Builders. Conversations That Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter. Your perfect sales assistant.
And now, here’s Rick and Diana. Hey, welcome to Conversations that Convert, everyone. Hello, Diana. How are you today? Hi, very well. Thank you. And how about you? Oh, well, the sun is shining and it’s almost about freezing. So we’ll take it for a January, a January day. And you just got back from Turkey. So welcome back and you look ready to go.
Yes. Ready to face the cold, the cold, the winter. We got a little more, a few more days of winter, but let’s heat things up a little bit. And what’s our topic today? So today we start a new series how can builders create more engagement from high quality leads? That’s right. Yeah. The series is actually called how to create a client acquisition roadmap.
And this is something you and I touched on with last year in 2023. And, you know, the more I looked at it, I thought, you know what, we really need to expand on this and kind of break it down a little bit more for our builders and remodelers. And of course, we always go back to the Association of Professional Builders State of the Residential Construction Industry Survey.
And every year, the APB surveys between 1, 000 to 1, 500 builders and they say, hey, what’s your number one marketing challenge right now? So results are in for 2024. The, the study hasn’t been published yet, but. I know that in 2024, there was 46 percent of all builders said their number one marketing issue is generating enough high quality leads, high quality leads.
And what’s interesting is that the second biggest marketing challenge was generating enough leads. And when you add the two together, it’s about six out of 10 builders. That’s their, their top issues is high quality and enough leads. And obviously. Poor quality leads don’t do anybody any good. So we want to focus on is high quality leads.
And so this new series of creating that client acquisition roadmap is really gonna be focusing on those, those high quality, high quality leads. So what we’re gonna talk about today again, is. Lead engagement. In other words, you have high quality leads coming and going, looking at you every single day, whether they’re on your website and they may be seeing your advertisements or looking at your signs and you want to get those leads to engage you.
I was talking to a remodeler the other day, Diana, and he said, you know, There’s nothing worse. I was, you know, I live in this town and our office is right here. And all of a sudden I look down the street and one of my competitors is building a home. And I never even got a chance to talk to those people.
And he goes, there’s, you know, why, why didn’t I get to engage, you know, with that high quality lead? They’re building right down the street for me. And now for the next, you know, eight months or whatever, he has to drive by that job site. And you’re like, Oh, I kind of get mad every time you, you see it. So there’s nothing worse than that.
Or at least talking to somebody that you you had a conversation with and then you lost it to a competitor usually doesn’t make you feel as bad because you’re like, Oh, well, so and so is cheaper than me or they did this or you know what, whatever. But we don’t even a chance to engage that lead. That’s what really burns you and you have that question that never goes away, which is why, why, why, why, why?
So let’s jump into that. Why leads don’t engage? Why leads don’t engage? Okay, so, so there’s really a very simple reason for why new home and remodeling leads don’t engage with you. And that reason is this. You don’t give them a reason to. It’s as simple as that. And I talked a lot about this at the conference I went to a couple weeks ago, where most builders have what I call a builder centric website.
It simply says, if you want to buy from us, Call my phone number or fill out this form and hit submit. Now, if we talked about this a little bit earlier, if you wanted to buy a car and the car dealer said to you, well, if you want to buy a car, call us or fill out this form and hit submit, you’d be like, you know what, I don’t really think I wanted to buy a car from these people because they’re not giving me a compelling reason to do so.
So that’s what builders do. They typically tell people, Hey, if you want to buy, call me or. and send me an email. And then what happens is the ones that do do that, most builders don’t even get back to them in a timely manner. So people get really burned by that and they don’t want to engage you. So if you want more high quality leads to engage your company, you have to give them a reason to do so.
And that reason should be so compelling that they can’t say no. So what do you think Diana? Yeah, I think that’s a, that’s, that’s a, a, a good question to reflect because I never realized that actually the, and that’s true. The leads don’t engage. Yeah. And if you don’t engage, you don’t get the chance to talk to them.
You don’t get a chance to work with them. Your competitor gets the sale. So we got to get, we got to give them a reason to do that. So let’s go back again to the analogy of,
let’s go back to the analogy of buying that car. So what does the dealership do when you want to buy a car? What’s that offer that they, the, that they, they give you or the reason that they give you to engage it’s come in and take a test drive, right? Yeah. You bought a new car, what a year or two ago. I think there are four now, four years.
You got one of those electric cars that we hear, we hear so much about, but they said, yeah, come in and take a drive, look at the car. You know, test it, push the button, see, see what you think of it. So what that is is really is that’s called your offer. What is your offer? So there’s, there are different types of offers, but your offer is that compelling reason that your leads cannot say no to.
So unfortunately in the housing business, we can’t let someone come in and test drive their remodel or say test drive their custom home. So we have to come up with different offers, but they have to be just as compelling as the opportunity to go drive, Something that you potentially want to buy. I was I was telling you before we started that I’ve worked once with a condominium developer.
And as they were building out the building, they created a guest suite. And if somebody was interested in purchasing in that building, their offer was, Hey, come stay overnight in the guest suite, and then they would give them a gift certificate to a local restaurant and it was right downtown where they could walk to all these different fun amenities and, you know, whether it was a walking trails or parks or, you know, local businesses that That they could visit and it was the closest thing you could get to a test drive.
So yeah another The sales term for it was called the puppy dog clothes it’s when you go to the yeah, you you you take the kids to the pet store, right and then they They hold the dog and they say oh dad. Can we please please please get the puppy? And you’re like, no, no, no, no, please dad and then the salesperson comes up and says well, you know, you can take the puppy home and we have a we have a A money back guarantee for a week.
So if you don’t like the puppy, go ahead and bring them back. Right. And of course, you know, what happens is the puppy goes home, family fall in love with the puppy and the puppy never comes back. So that’s doing that test for the car or staying overnight is really called the puppy dog clothes. So we want to, we want to get as close to that as possible and let the, our leads experience that emotion and feel really good about engaging us.
So let’s go through these three types of offers, shall we? Yes, let’s go. All right. So offer number one is we have to establish trust. Now one of the things I speak on a lot is that the number one source for high quality leads is referral and repeat business. Number one source, hands down. If I asked any builder of any price point selling remodeling or custom homes, if I say, if I could get you more leads, What is your favorite lead source?
Hands down, they will say referral and repeat leads. Well, why is that? Because trust has already been established between that builder and the refer er. Okay, so the person that’s making the referral. So when they refer er, Says to the referee, that’s the new lead saying, Hey, you need to go talk to Diana.
She’s the best remodeler out there. Don’t even bother talking to anybody else. That trust that was established is now instantly transferred over. So when that referral lead comes to you and says, Hey, You know, you built a Diana, you, you built a home for Rick or you remodeled Rick’s kitchen. He said, you are the best.
Can you help me with mine? And you say, yes, absolutely. And that’s a very, very high converting type of lead. So now when we’re looking at other lead sources, such as your website, such as your signs, such as any advertisements you’re doing, you have to give an offer to establish trust. Now there’s a process.
That you go through this. This is a negotiation. So what your offer has to be, it has to be so compelling, they would not want to say no. In other words, that negotiation, they have to feel like they’re getting more than they are giving. Okay, so right now, if you’re a builder and your website is only has a phone number and a format to fill out, you’re asking the thing, for more than you’re giving.
That’s why you have so few people actually filling that out. But if I’m giving something that your leads feel like is more valuable than their contact information, along with their permission to fill it out, they’re going to say, Yes, I want that offer. Right. So it’s a value. So what do we, what do these value?
They value information on getting more design, more design ideas, pricing information, finding a location to build, or just simply being able to ask you a question where they don’t have to get on the phone with you, where they can use a text communication or website chat. The messaging that that sort of thing.
They do value that. And that’s when they’re willing to start that relationship. So your first offer is always about establishing trust again. You’re giving more than you are receiving now. How you deliver that offer is what will confirm that trust. So if you say I’m going to give you this to you, And then when you deliver on it in a timely manner, no doubt.
And no, what I mean by a timely manner is that they’re going to receive it in less than a minute that confirms the trust and now you’re moving them forward to offer number two. So offer number two, Diana, give them a reason to talk to you. Exactly. So now I’ve given them something they value. They’ve given me their contact information.
Now I have to try to give them a reason. That they want to get on the phone with me. So I’m just going to double down on my original offer. So what does that mean? Well, it means that I want to give them more specific information on design as it relates to their project or their new home ideas, or more specific pricing information as it relates to their remodeling project, their new home, or perhaps helping them find a location to build, or if they already own land, I’m going to offer to do a feasibility study.
To to give them a reason to want to talk to me, but I’m going to again supply that information that they need in order to make a well informed choice. And that specific language that I used to teach when I was coaching salespeople is like, everyone wants to make a well informed choice. Nobody wants to be sold.
So if you’re doing your job right, you’re providing them the information, but you’re providing it in a way that you continue to reel them in. You can’t push people, but you can pull them. So you pull them in with your offers. What do you think so far, Dyer? That’s it. That’s I think that’s very, very interesting.
So you’re just pulling them with offer. They come, they jump and say, Oh, I want that. That’s exactly what I, what I want. And you have it. And I want that like with the car. I want that. And you home and remodeling people want information. to help them make a well informed choice. They don’t want to be sold.
So you’re going to feed them the information. So what you have to become, Diana, if you’re a builder or a modeler, is you have to become the local source of information. When you’re trying to get ideas for your new kitchen, you’ll search everywhere. All over the Internet, you’ll look at everything. But ultimately, that always comes back to your location and finding the builder that has is a local source of information for you.
And then that’s your go to person. So that’s kind of your trusted source. So when they feel like they’re getting the information from you, they’ll stop looking, right? So now we’re giving a reason to talk to us. And then the third offer, of course, is we need to go from the phone to face to face. So now I have to give them a reason of why they would want to meet, why they would want to meet.
And of course the phone, when I get them on the phone, that’s so you as the builder get an opportunity to qualify them as a lead. So you want to make sure they’re viable because you don’t want to waste your time with them. You don’t want to waste their time either. So once you’ve had that phone call, At the end of that phone call, your lead is going to have primarily two questions.
They want to know how much home or how much remodeling project they can get for how little money. So they’re going to be asking questions like, well, how much is this? Or what will this look like? Does it include this? Do I get this? You get a lot of times people ask like, well, what’s your price for a square foot for this type of home or this type of project, you know, and I know that drives a lot of builders crazy.
It drives me crazy as well, but just understand that that’s the information that they need in order to make their well informed choice. They don’t understand yet that they need to use your process. In order to get that information. So we have to work with them at that moment to try to qualify them and to see if their budget is viable based on the project they’re describing.
We understand that everyone has champagne tastes. So they want, they want to have this level of finish and this big project. They want to pay. As little as possible. I don’t want to overpay. Don’t want to get sold, you know, that sort of thing. So that’s what they’re thinking. So now what we have to do Is in that conversation after we qualify them is we have to give them another reason of why they want to meet, you know So, okay, let’s go out.
Let’s look at your land. Come on in. I’m going to show you some design ideas you know, come, I’m going to come out to your home and we’re going to take get some as builds done and we’re going to go ahead and, you know, start building a scope of work, you know, for, for your project. So there’s all another offer is here’s why you want to meet and what you’re doing at this point is you’re shifting from there with a want for information, which is, what’s it going to look like?
How much is it going to cost? Where can I build it? To your process, they need to follow your process in order to get that information done. So once they shifted over to that, you know, now you’re running with it and it’s really your, your sale to lose. So what do you think, Diana, final thoughts from you? So free logical offers, and then they can follow the, the, the offers, and then you get the chance to meet with them face to face.
Absolutely. Yeah. And the strategy is called a controlled release of information. So each offer gives them enough. Okay. So I’m going to create a compelling reason of why they want to take the next step with you. So establish trust, give them a reason to talk to you, give them a reason to meet with you. So I’m controlling the release of information and I’m always holding something back that offer.
So they want to go to the next step and go to the next step. And organically we do this organically or build their authority. Maybe you haven’t thought about that, but that’s what you’re doing. But if I give them all the information up front. I never, then I lose the opportunity to continue them going down my sales pipeline.
In other words, I’ve given you all the information you need. There’s no reason for you to want to hear from me again, nor is there any reason for you to want to follow up with me again, you know, to keep moving forward. If I hold some back and you know, I’m holding some back, what I’m doing is saying, Diana, I would love to give you this information.
Here’s how I can get it to you. I need you to come into my office or we’re going to come out to your house. You know, so again, I’m moving them forward in order to get that information. So that that’s the offer and they feel like the offer is worth more than their time, or perhaps it gets to the point of where they’re starting to write you a check, they will opt in.
So it’s always a value perception. What do they value? Making sure you’re giving them something that they value more than whatever you’re asking for in return, contact information, a five, 10 minute phone call, and ultimately maybe a 60 to 90 minute, a consultation at your office or at their home, any final thoughts?
Yeah. So I can ask, when do we start? I sold you. Yes. Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s how it works. Yeah. That’s how it works. And that’s, and I’m sorry, go ahead. Yeah. It’s so, so easy. Yeah. It is. You know what? And the idea is, is that you have to be consistent with your messaging. You have to be consistent with your offers, but more importantly, you have to let the lead note feel like that they are personalized in the offer because the more you feel like it’s personalized.
The more likely you are to engage and move into the next step in your sales process. If it’s just like a static offer, it’s going to have very limited reach. But if it’s something personal, like you’re putting some input into it and you’re getting something back in return, boy, then it’s even more compelling and that will cause you to continue to move forward in the in the sales process.
So consistency is key. Consistency is key and personal personalization is key and also fulfillment. Fulfillment is key again to establish trust. You have to get them whatever, whatever they’re after immediately to establish that trust, because if you don’t establish trust upfront, you’ll never get them to go to the next next step, which is the phone call and ultimately that face to face meeting.
So if you’d like to know more about how we can create offers for you to get leads on the phone with you from your website or signs or advertisements, schedule your strategy call today. We can show you how we attract, capture and convert high quality leads so you as a builder can pick and choose your clients and jobs.
And for my brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all always. We’ll see you next time.
Please join us at one or both of the Knowledge Sessions below, specifically tailored for custom building & remodeling.
From Average to Exceptional: An Inside Look at One Builder’s 2x Profit Growth
Date: Tuesday, February 27, 2024 Time: 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Are you ready to shift from industry average to exceptional? Join us for an engaging session where I’ll unveil the blueprint behind one builder’s dramatic profit growth. Through this detailed case study, we will dissect the strategies, tools, and mindset adjustments that led to doubling profits without sacrificing quality or customer satisfaction.
In this program, you’ll learn:
Practical ways to optimize operations for better profit margins.
How to harness data and analytics for informed decision-making.
Techniques for improving team performance and productivity.
The importance of customer experience in driving growth.
Whether you are facing the challenges of market saturation or looking for ways to enhance the profitability of your current projects, this session promises actionable insights that you can apply directly to your business model.
19 Seconds or Less: How to Attract, Capture & Convert High-Quality Digital Leads
In the digital age, your online presence is often the first touchpoint for potential clients. In a fast-paced digital landscape, you have just 19 seconds to capture the attention of your website visitors. This program is dedicated to revolutionizing the way you attract, capture, and convert your digital leads.
Prepare to delve into:
The psychology behind quick online browsing and decision-making.
Creating high-converting landing pages and websites.
Digital marketing strategies for cost-effective lead generation.
Conversion optimization techniques to turn visitors into customers.
With a focus on real-world examples and proven tactics, this session will equip you with the knowledge to overhaul your digital marketing strategies and significantly improve your online conversion rates.
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The competitive world of home building and remodeling requires more than just skillful craftsmanship; it demands innovative business strategies and a keen understanding of how to leverage digital platforms for growth. Mark your calendars for these not-to-be-missed IBS programs, where you will uncover foundational and futuristic tactics to augment both your bottom line and your brand’s visibility.
We look forward to providing you with an experience brimming with industry expertise and insight. See you at the show, where the best in the business come together to redefine the landscape of home building and remodeling.
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Remember to register for these sessions in advance, as spots fill up quickly. Maximize your IBS experience and ensure that these programs are part of your plan!
What is Lead Database Management for Builders and why should you care?
In this fifth and last episode “How Builders Can Keep Their Sales Pipeline Full in a Tough Market”, from our Guerilla Marketing series, we’re diving headfirst into the world of databases.
Your database of unsold leads and past clients are a goldmine of future business. Tune in to unlock the secrets to harnessing the power of your database to ensure a steady flow of qualified leads.
So, watch/listen/read to this episode as we reveal the strategies, tips, and tricks that will turn your database into future clients. Don’t let the tough market discourage you – with a little wit and a whole lot of professionalism, we’re about to revolutionize your lead generation game!
Welcome to conversations that convert this week. We’ll be talking about how to work your database and getting more referral and repeat. Business as well as recapturing some of those cold and aging leads. Let’s get started.
Welcome to Conversations That Convert. Every week we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation, marketing, and sales topics for remodelers, home improvement companies, and home builders. Conversations That Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter, your perfect sales assistant.
And now here’s Rick and Diana. Hey, Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to our first episode of Conversations That Convert for 2024. Diana, Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year to you and to all our audience. Good to see you again. What are we talking about today, Diana? Today we learn how builders can keep their sales pipeline full.
And of course, in a tough market, right? It seems like we still are in the tough market. We’re still in a tough market. Exactly. It was a slow Q4 for 2023 for a lot of builders. It’s probably gonna start off to be a bit of a slow Q1. We’ll see what happens in Q2 and three. Of course, it’s an election year and we never know what’s gonna happen in an election year.
I heard Diana that. There is more elections happening around the world in 2024 than ever before in history. So a lot of countries are going to have some changes here on their political structure and which direction they’re going. And obviously the United States and Canada will be no different.
And us too. So like I say, we will have all types of elections this year, so everything that you can elect, you will elect this year, and they already started by increasing taxes and, and not good stuff. I saw that. In fact, I was told that you’re in Romania. I was told that Romania just added two holidays, and I was talking to one of the people on our team.
I go, Oh, why? Well, why is that? They go, Oh, it’s an election year. The politicians are trying to buy some votes by giving more national holidays to people. I said, oh, isn’t that interesting? So yeah, everything changes in election year. And of course We want to give out freebie stuff, but you know, the interesting thing about this is it relates to home building and remodeling obviously it’s a it’s a major purchase decision And it affects people both ways.
Number one is oh, it’s a fresh start. So I feel confident So i’m going to move ahead with my project It can also affect people like well, I want to wait and see I don’t want to do anything now because I don’t know what’s going to happen with the political direction of the company meaning that Well, maybe I don’t like the way the country’s going, so I’m going to wait and see if there’s change, or I do like the way the country’s going, and I’m afraid of that there might be change in the future, so you can get that paralysis by analysis and you can also get people that say like, hey, you know, my political party’s going to win, and life’s going to be better, and so I want to go ahead and start my project.
Either way, though, the good news is, is that people will be happy. Building homes and remodeling homes in 2024, just like they always have. It never goes to zero. And this is a series we’ve been working on for a while. Towards the end of 23, it’s called guerrilla marketing for builders. And of course, it’s dealing with the number one marketing challenge, according to the association of professional builders state of the residential construction industry survey.
And this is where they ask a thousand plus builders between Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U S. What is your number one marketing challenge and the number one marketing challenge in both 2023? And i’ve already seen the results for the updated survey in 2024. Diana. Can you guess? What’s the number one marketing challenge in 2024?
Maybe to generate high quality leads. Absolutely. It has not changed. It has not changed. In fact, the biggest difference is, is more builders are feeling the pinch because about 12 to 15 percent more respondents said, Hey, I’m going to start advertising this year. Because they feel like they have a lack of overall leads.
It’s total. So this, this last part of this series is all about working your database. You know, by default, builders always come to me and they say, well, I should be advertising. And I said, well, what about your database? It’s like, Oh, what do you mean my database? It’s like, well, you already have people that know you trust you and are ready to do business with you.
You just got to go back and you got to shake the bushes a little bit. So this is all about shaking those, those bushes and working your database. So I, I found that the number one reason of why people don’t do anything with working their database is they just don’t know how to do it, Diana. You know, so it’s like, if we don’t know how to do something, we tend to avoid it because it’s uncomfortable.
That’s true. Yeah. My goal today is just like to provide you a how to so you don’t feel so uncomfortable and you can try this. And this is so simple. Anybody can do it. There’s nothing complex about this. It’s just a matter of actually putting it on your calendar and doing it. And I can guarantee you, if you follow this, you will make some sales that you would not have made if you didn’t do it.
So what do you say? Should we get started? Yes. I’m so curious. I’m ready to take notes. All right. I love it when you pull out your piece of paper. Okay. So let’s start with how to reach out to your database and we’ll. When we get to the end of this show here today, we’ll talk a little bit more about, like, who you should reach out to in your database.
But I want to start with the how to, because I think that’s the biggest stumbling. nUmber one if you’re going to set a goal, you want to make sure it is smart. Well, a smart goal is specific and it’s measurable. So, it’s also actionable. So, what we want to look at is, like, I’m, Having you reach out to five contacts each week in your database.
So I figured, Hey, you work five days. That means one a day. It’s very actionable. It’s very measurable and it’s a very specific. So it, it checks all the boxes for being a smart goal. Now, if you’re going to reach out to somebody, you have to create a reason to reach out to them. So that’s where we’re going to start.
What are the reasons that you could reach out to someone? Well, right now it’s obviously happy new year. Hey, I can reach out to someone and just wish them a happy new year. What plans do you have for 2024? I mean, you can ask them about themselves. You, maybe it’s somebody that you’ve haven’t talked to for a while.
Hey, it’s great to, I want to touch base. See how you’re doing. And you know, talk about maybe some you know, what’s going on in your life here for 2024. It could be a new referral program that you’ve set up. Okay. So, hey, if you refer somebody to me, I will incentivize you and them as an example for a referral program.
Maybe it’s a business update, a new product or service that you are offering. I was just telling Diana before the call here today, I got a text message yesterday from my Auto repair shop. And they said the text was, Hey, 50 percent off oil oil changes for the rest of January. It got my attention. It’s like, Oh, yeah, I mean, obviously, everyone has a car, everyone probably needs to change oil unless they have an electric car like you, Diana.
Yeah, it’s like, Oh, I don’t care. I don’t like it. But anyway, if you have to change oil, like 50 percent off. So yeah, it got me to go in and look at how many miles I had before I needed an oil change. And got my attention. So yeah, it’s like maybe a new service or a special offer. So you can give people a special offer, like if they’re a cold or an aging lead.
Like, I’m a client, obviously, of, of this auto repair facility. But You know I maybe needed an oil change and I was putting it off and now they just gave me a reason to go in and of course Once the door opens there They might find some other things that my car needs for service and they’ve just generated instead of a you know 100 oil change or whatever it is.
I mean they generate a thousand or two thousand dollars worth of services So as a home builder or remodeler, obviously, we’re just looking to get our foot in the door And so that’s what the 50 oil change is. That’s just a simple offer you give to your cold Or aging leads. So tiny any thoughts on that? I think that’s it’s what I want to say that you’re right.
So I resonated that when you don’t know what to do, and you don’t know the step you avoid or you postpone or delegate or you you don’t start, but now just I think this is achievable. 5 contacts per week and just start 11 per day and just say, Hey, start a conversation and then see where the flow goes.
And I think that’s the. Yeah. That’s the thing. And just notice what we our speech, our imaginary speech and scenarios are telling, telling ourselves that, Oh, I will not call me. He’s not available or all those things, but just, just call and say happy new year. That’s right. Yep. Happy New Year simple as simple as that what’s going on in your life this year So this is all about relationships and that what business is everything is a relationship So what we are going to do is over a one week period we will email Text and we will call our contacts.
So that means we will have 15 pieces of outreach so five emails five text messages and Five phone calls. Let’s just talk about a couple of tips with each of these. Number one, for your emails, your subject line is the most important part of your email. Never forget that. Use curiosity to get them to open the email.
That’s what’s most important. So and you could say Happy New Year. You know, what are you up to this year in your subject line? Something like that. But your email, you want to keep it short and to the point. And very simply, you want to ask them to do one thing. Happy New Year. So what’s the one thing you want them to do?
Do you want them to reply to the email? Do you want them to watch for your future text message or call? Do you want them to go to your website? Do you want them to send you a referral? Do you want them to tell you if they’re considering another project? One thing you want to ask that now. At the end of the email, and this is what’s really important, is that you are going to tell them, I will be texting you and calling you soon.
So when somebody opens this email, instead of just blowing you off, they’re looking at it and going like, Oh, I’m going to be receiving a text message. I’m going to be receiving an email. And then that way they can, maybe they’ll reply to the email, say, Hey, no need to call or text. Yeah. Let’s let’s talk some more or you know, cool.
Yeah, I’ll keep you in mind if I have my next project, or maybe we are considering a project. Sort of thing. So again, tell them what will happen next. Now, when we move on to the text message, so we’re going to wait a day or two and then set a text message. In the text message, we will tell them we sent them an email.
Now, why do we do that? Because we can put the most information on why you’re reaching out to them on the email, and obviously if there’s a link or something like that, it works better on an email. But emails go into spam, emails don’t get opened all the time, so you want them to go look for that email. So the text message, you will tell them you sent them an email.
And then you will also tell them you will be calling them. So again, they can’t avoid that text message. They might pick up and reply to your text. Finally, if you have not heard from them, a couple days later, you’re going to call them. And you know what you’re going to tell them when you call them? If you have to leave a voicemail, you’re going to tell them that you sent them an email.
And that you sent them a text message. Okay, so obviously what you’re doing is here is you’re letting people know that you really want to, to talk to them, which is why you gotta have a compelling reason for them to want to, to, to hear from you. So Diana, any thoughts on that as far as just going through that sequence?
I’m taking notes and just, I don’t know if you are smart or the technique is so smart that it’s working. So it makes sense. So you’re so smart. Keep it simple, silly, right? This is this so simple. And again, you just tell them what you’re going to tell them and then tell them what you told them. But most importantly, let them know there’s future communication coming.
So that when they call you on the phone, like, Oh yeah, I got your text. Sorry. I’ve been busy. You know, if they have to answer the phone or if you have to leave a voicemail, they’ll go back and like, Oh, that’s right. He sent me a text and an email. I need to get back to him. So what we’re looking for, of course, is just engagement.
We just want people to engage us and acknowledge whatever our reason is for getting back to them. Now, there will be some that will not engage you. So when you move into the next week, you will start with five new contacts. The next week, you’ll follow the same process. But you will then take the people you did not hear from in week one, and you’re just going to repeat the same sequence.
Send them an email, send them a text, send them a call for anyone that did not respond. So week one, you will reach out to five people. You might hear from three, as an example. Week two, you will reach out to seven people. Two that you’ve already reached out to for the second cycle, and then five new ones.
And then week three, You’ll go into five more new people and whoever didn’t respond from week two. So you’re just going to keep rolling forward like that so over 50 weeks, so we figure we’ll take two weeks off over 50 weeks You will have reached out to 250 contacts At least six times, excuse me, at least three times, but maximum six times.
So they will have heard from you. So very, very important. Now, if you reach out to 250 people and you follow this cycle, you should have an 80 percent engagement rate. So what that means is, is that of 250 people you reach out to, you’ll probably talk to 200 people. Now let me ask you a question, Diana. If you talk to 250 people that already have a relationship with you, what are the odds that you will be able to get some additional business from those people?
200 people that you actually talked to what do you think the odds are think they’re pretty good Yes, and actually what I think of is some I don’t know in the middle of the year You have so many contracts and clients that you will stop doing this technique. So how can you keep doing this? although you you get the contracts and you get the revenue that you want and you’re You’re fully booked.
So I because it’s working, I know it’s working. But all you have to do is to do it because sometimes you just call five the first week or the first month. And then you say, Oh, I have enough. Oh, I have a good rate, 80%. And you start a conversation that will will go into changing and the you will change the flow and the things.
And then you say, Oh, that’s enough. I can’t take anymore. And then you stop doing it. So I hear a let’s say what do you, do you keep sending emails for before year or, well, that’s, that’s a really good point though that you made. I do it until I get busy and then I stop doing it. And that’s just human nature is that I am, I’m going to do the least amount of work and let’s face that.
I would much rather be be meeting and talking with real clients and actually. prospecting like this. I would much rather be building my homes and you know, running my business or even taking a day off. I’d much rather do this. So I think number one is yes, you have to be disciplined in that you have to block time to do it.
Okay. So if you’re going to do this, the best thing you can do is you set up a recurring block on your calendar that every day, and maybe this is at 7 30 in the morning, first part of the day, you’re going to you. You know, do an outreach here. So you’re going to send an email, send a text message, or make a call.
That’s fine. Maybe it’s going to be at 4. 30 at the day. Whatever works best for you. Maybe it’ll be after hours. I’m not sure. But you have to continue to do it. So again, if you want to make sure it doesn’t stop, you’re going to have to have the self discipline to prioritize this and then block time to do it.
Also, you can have someone on your staff do this. It can be delegated. As well. So if you’re a salesperson, yeah, that’s one thing you’ll probably be doing it. But if you’re a business owner, you might have your office administrator do this. You might have your interior designer do this. I mean, anyone, anyone can do this.
They seem to have a script and, you know, know what to say and do and have a reason for reaching out. Now let’s talk a little bit about it. Who, who should we reach out to? In, in? And this is what I recommend. Yeah. I would start with business trades and suppliers. Okay. So any of these associates. So anybody, these are people that supply you with materials, your trade partners and then any, like, say business associates.
So this could be attorneys, lenders, bankers, title companies, anybody that actually works with you. Could be your. you know, whoever you buy your trucks from or could be your auto repair shop. You know, you can reach out. It doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter. Again, you’re just trying to get the word out on, you know, with your with your reason and, or your offer to people.
So I would start there with business. Then I would move into cold and unsold leads. So cold and aging. And then the last thing that I would do would be past. clients, past clients. sO past clients, obviously you can, you can ask for a repeat business. If you’re a remodeler, you could ask for a referral business.
If you’re a home builder but you want to stay top of mind. Now, the reason for reaching out to these three different categories of contacts is going to change. Okay. So my reason for reaching out to a past client is going to be different than I’m talking to say a business to business Associate lead.
And it’s also going to be different when I’m talking to a cold or aging unsold lead. So you see what I’m saying? So that’s why I categorize these people. And I think you start with the people that you have the most active relationship with, which is going to be your business context, because they’re going to give you, they’re going to, you’re going to have their ear because you might have an ongoing relationship with them already.
Then you move into the unsold leads and then you make sure you repeat referral business. But again, 250 contacts. Now you, can you do more than that? Absolutely. Could you do 500 shirt to a day versus one a day. But I’m saying is a start small. Now, here’s what I think is important to understand. You can do this manually or you can automate it.
So the cool thing is you can absolutely automate every single thing here, dropping a voicemail, sending a text message, sending an email out. And then once you automate it, now all you’re doing is you’re just managing responses. Isn’t that cool? So I can set up all the automation tools where Everything goes out.
Timing is Monday through Friday. Text messages go out a certain part of the day. Voicemails go out a certain part of the day. Emails go out a certain part of the day and, and the week. If somebody doesn’t respond to that, we just repeat that cycle the second week and then we go on to our next batch. So yes, you can absolutely automate this and get lots of engagement that way.
But! You don’t have to automate it. Obviously, how long does it take to send a simple template email or a text message or a call? You can absolutely do this manually as well, which is why it’s so it’s so simple and it’s so cool. So Diana, any final thoughts from you on this process? So what I hear and what’s resonating with me is the focus on action and not the outcome.
So I, I will never know who is replying, who is responding. I just focus on, on sending those emails, text calls, so focus on doing my part and then handle what’s going to come back to me. Yeah. And I think the reason that you, the creative reason to reach out to these people, again, you can always keep their favorite radio station in mind, WIIFM, why would they want to hear from you?
Why would they want to get back to you? So again, if I’m, if I’m genuinely interested in what’s going on in their life, what’s new with their business, do they have, are they doing any initiatives this year? You know, if it’s business you know, if I reach out to my past clients, how is your home performing?
Are you happy with your home? You know, and before you ask for a referral or repeat business, so tune into their radio station with that reason to reach out to them. Then once you get into the conversation with him, then you can bring up your offer if you will. Now, the one variable to that is, is obviously that unsold or aging lead.
There’s really no established. Relationship there yet. So there you’re going to keep that, you know, offer for them to engage you Very specific and obviously it’s for new business. So if you want to do an incentive like my Auto repair shop did hey, we’re giving a discount on this right now Depending on what you sell or offer.
Sure. That makes sense I make it make sure it’s limited by a time frame and or a certain amount of those offers you’re going to give away. But I, more often than not, if you’re a design builder, modeler or home builder, the offer should be starting a relationship. Give them a reason to start a relationship with you.
And the relationship is not starting on a transaction. Relationship starts with trust and value. That’s the thing you have to remember. What can you offer them that will help increase their trust to want to engage you and start a conversation about their potential renovation or new home project? Does it make sense?
Yes, and I’m excited. I think that’s a good strategy for the beginning of the year. And also, I see it as an ongoing strategy. So not only at the beginning of the year, so you can just keep, keep doing that. Keep doing it. Especially if you automate it, then you just set it and go and you just respond to those engagements.
The one thing you’re probably going to want to test and change up is the offer, right? Yeah. And you know, that’s just, what is the reason for engaging them? So you should, you know, something might work and hit with a certain demographic in your database. In other words unsold leads. You might find something that really works well there.
Past clients. You maybe have to test a couple different offers to see what resonates with them. But again, always tune into the radio station and you may even wanna call a few vendors you know, that are, you’re closer with, or call some of your past clients you’re closer with and say, Hey. You know, I want to reach out to past clients.
You know, what would be a reason that you would want to hear from, you know, and use them as a focus group to get some feedback. That’s invaluable information that they will give you. Yeah, that’s true. So if you would like to know more about this, about automating this aspect of what we’re talking about here, you can go ahead and schedule your strategy call today.
Find out how we can help you attract, capture and convert high quality leads so you can pick and choose. Your clients and jobs. So thank you once again for joining us on conversations that convert and for my brothers and sisters in christ May the grace of the lord jesus christ the love of god and the fellowship of the holy spirit be with you all always We will see you next time on
Feeling the affects of a tough market? Is your pipeline looking a bit light? Check this out…
In the fourth part of our series on Guerilla Marketing for builders, we will delve into one crucial aspect that is often overlooked when it comes to boosting sales, updating your offer. As the saying goes, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
With the competition for fewer leads increasing in the construction industry, it’s essential to differentiate yourself from others by creating a great offer. So let’s roll up our sleeves and discover practical strategies to attract more customers and ultimately increase sales. Watch/Read/Listen to this episode and get started!
Today in Conversations That Convert, we’ll be talking about how to keep your sales pipeline full in a tough market, and we’re going to be working on the topic of An offer. What does an offer look like for a builder and why you should use it? Let’s get started.
Welcome to Conversations That Convert. Every week we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation marketing and sales topics for remodelers. Home Improvement Companies and Home Builders. Conversations That Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter, your perfect sales assistant.
And now, here’s Rick and Diana. Hey everyone, welcome to Conversations That Convert. Welcome Diana, how are you? I’m very well, thank you. Welcome everybody, and how about you? How are you today? Well, it is the Christmas season, so we want to wish everyone a very, a Merry Christmas. This is our last episode of 2023.
So very Merry Christmas, everyone out there and Happy New Year to you as well. We sure appreciate you joining us today and also for other episodes. So Diana, what are we talking about today? Today, how builders can keep their sales pipeline full. And of course in a tough market in a tough market. Yeah, it’s a little bit slower out there right now So we’ve been working through of this five part series.
This is all about guerrilla marketing for builders, you know based on the question You know, really where should I start? So we’re going to talk about things that don’t really cost you any money or it costs you a low amount of money Versus the big things such as running ads and and all that And this is based on the number one marketing challenge.
Now. We just got the results back from the 2024 From the state of the residential construction industry survey. This is an annual survey put on by the association of professional builders. This year, they surveyed about 1500 builders between Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U S. And what we found once again is the number one marketing challenge in 2024 remains the same as 23, and that’s generating high quality leads.
So guerrilla marketing here, what we’re talking about is you know, things that you can do. Right now to bring some opportunities in the door without going out and spending a bunch of money. You know, let’s just do some of the basics. Let’s do them really, really well. So this is part four. We’re calling this update your offer.
And this is some new language that a lot of builders may not have heard of before. But we’re going to walk through what an offer is. And what it’s not, what are the components of a good offer? And then also talking, you know, a little bit about downselling from, from an offer. So what do you say, Diana?
Should we get started? Yes, let’s go ahead and get started. Let’s go ahead and get started. Christmas is almost here, right? Yes, I can’t wait to rest and enjoy and eat and drink and be merry. Exactly. Yeah. So all right, well, let’s talk about an offer. What? What is it? What isn’t it? An offer is simply It’s, it’s, it’s something that you present to your target market that is too irresistible to pass up.
So, it reminds me of the Godfather movie, right? Come and I’ll make an offer they can’t refuse. That, that’s essentially what it is. I don’t, I think the offer from the Godfather maybe was not, not what I’m talking about here. But, where you would present an idea or really a call to action. To your target market where they would go like, this is a no brainer.
Why would I not do this? So keep that in mind. It’s a no brainer thing. Now, here’s what most builders have for an offer, Diana. It’s call me or fill out this form on my website and hit submit. So in other words, they have no offer. So when, when the market gets tough, like right now, it’s a little bit slower.
If you don’t have an offer or your offer is crappy, that’s one of the reasons that when the market stops producing, your phone stops ringing. And so the builders that are still actually getting business in today, they have a compelling offer or offers out there. And so there’s still people taking advantage of those.
So what do you think so far, Diana? Yeah, so it’s interesting that it’s something so easy and simple. And yet you don’t realize that that can be an obstacle in front of, between you and your, your High quality leads. Yeah, exactly. And this is not just a home building or remodeling thing. There are certain offers we’ll talk about that work better for that.
This is any small business. Anybody who is trying to bring business in the door, any company has to have an offer or sometimes there’s multiple offers, which a lot of our builder clients, you know, they’re going to have multiple offers. What we’re doing is we’re just trying to find the one that best suits that particular lead so we can start the relationship.
And that’s what it’s all about. So let’s talk about what an offer is not. Okay. Okay, really important. An offer is not a discount. Now, there are certain like home improvement companies out there that, you know, will say, Oh, we’re having a sale going on or 50 percent off labor, you know, that sort of thing.
And for design build, that doesn’t work. Okay, so Get that out of your head. We’re not talking about a discount. I have seen other builders to say, Hey, today only take 15, 20, 000 off your home. Okay, that’s not, that’s not what I’m talking about. Even that is not a good offer. And the reason is because from a sales perspective, if I lead with an incentive, you know what the buyer says?
The buyer says, Okay, great. Thanks, Rick. Okay, what else can I can I get? So I’m just going to attract the wrong type of clientele that way. So the only time you should use an incentive, a financial incentive in design bill is when you are closing the deal, not as an opener. Hopefully that, that makes sense.
What do you think Diana? Yeah. So it’s interesting because sometimes we are thinking, when we build the offer, we actually think about a discount. So I never thought about that. So to make the distinction between the offer, the offer, that it’s actually not the discount. So I think it’s there are two separate things, right?
And it really depends what you’re selling. Like I said, some home improvement services. Yeah, sure. You can do discounts. You can do sales. That’s fine. But for design, Bill, that it just doesn’t work. And really, it puts you at a disadvantage as you start that relationship with your buyer. And they’re going to keep that in the back of their mind.
And they’re always gonna be thinking about, okay, what else can I get? Can I get, you know, and that’s the wrong type of client. You don’t, you don’t want to go down that road. So, so let’s talk about now, what are the components of a good offer? Shall we? Yes. All right. So the components must have these things.
Number one is you must match. the, the sentiment of your perspective buyers. And how do you do that? Well, you’re going to do that through conversations. You know, right now, the sentiments in the marketplaces are interest rates are high. Affordability is, is low for, for custom homes. We’re modeling a lot of people to pause because, you know, to go out and get a HELOC right now, you’re talking, you know, maybe eight plus percent.
I’ve heard nine in some cases, you know, it’s, it’s Costs more money to, to borrow. There are still plenty of people out there willing to pay cash though, you know, so those people are still buying, but a large portion of the marketplace has paused. So that means that there, there’s more builders chasing fewer leads, which makes it tougher to get them in the door.
So the Sentimented perspective, buyers are much, it must match. So certain offers are, are going to appeal to your leads based on what the current market conditions are. So in a tougher market condition you’re going to do things a little bit differently than say when things are really hot, you know, and of course we just came out of a really hot market with COVID where we didn’t have enough labor.
We had supply chains issues. We had a huge backlog and we were sort of telling people, Hey, the price is the price. I don’t care if you don’t go, you don’t, you don’t build because. I’ve got 16 people behind you. So we have a different offer when it comes to that. You know, so now things have changed.
So again, just remember that you’ve got to match the sentiment of your respective buyers. Now, number two, your offer really should be based on the time of year and the strength of your local market. I have found the best time to throw an offer out to your database of unsold leads, or even your past clients if you’re a remodeler.
It’s right after the first of the year because a lot of people, you know, they entertain the holidays and they look around at their house and go like, I don’t like my kitchen anymore. I don’t like my bathroom or my house is too small or, you know, I want to downsize. It’s too big, that sort of thing. So people come to the right of the ear and it’s everything’s fresh.
You’re like, you know what, this year I want to do something different. So to come out right away with an offer is a great time to do it. Now I’m going to do a different offer. In say when I get to summer and maybe in the fall or even, or, or different times of the year that I am going to do in the spring.
So the, I should say the winter, which is January right after the first of the year. So this is now the offers coming up. It’s going to be all about happy new year. Hey, if you’re considering doing this. Here’s what we can do for you. That’s kind of how this offer is going to work. Okay, number three You want to use expiration dates and or a limited number of whatever your offer is to create urgency Remember you have to create scarcity in order to create urgency So if you want people to say yes, i’m interested you have to tell them that this offer is only available for a limited time and or There is only a certain number of these.
Available and then finally You want to focus your offer around design is the best, okay, because people their first question is what can I build, you know, and then you start with timing. That’s also another good one. And this goes back to the old sales adage. If I say, hey, Diana when do you want to start a new remodeling project?
The typical answer is, Oh, I’m in no hurry, but if I say, Hey, Diana, how soon do you want to be living in and enjoying your new kitchen or your new bathroom, that sort of thing. Everyone has an idea of when they want to be done. And oftentimes, of course, that result that revolves around some date. So school starting, we have a birthday party coming up or a graduation and that sort of thing.
So it’s usually some sort of their date there. So they know when they want to be done, but nobody’s in a hurry to get started. So timing is also important too. Number three, like if you are selling spec homes, okay. So if you have a low inventory market, one of your offers you can put out there is, is like, Hey, available inventory.
If you would like to know about available inventory that is not on the multiple listing service. In other words, you’re looking for a home. You can’t find one. I have something. If you want information on that, you need to take action. So that’s a that’s a good offer. And then finally locations. So if you have a high demand location, you only have a few lots to sell or a few available lots that are still prime.
That’s a good one. I’m working on that with a client right now. So anyway, let me just run through that again because I gave you a lot. So what are the components of a good offer? Number one, it must match the sentiment of your prospective buyers. It should change Based on the time of year and the strength of your local market, you want to use expiration dates and or a limited number of these to create urgency through scarcity and then focus that offer around design, timing of when they can have the project finished.
If you have available inventory, if you’re building spec homes and or have lots. that are in high demand areas or a low inventory environment. So that was a lot. So Diana, any thoughts there? A lot indeed. And I’m, I’m just thinking about my own behavior. So indeed, I I’m not in a hurry to start, but I am also, I want to finish fast.
So everything gets in, it’s in place. So how can you just match that? So, and realize what’s the reality because you need to start. And there are some setbacks and things that can happen unexpectedly. So you need to budget those too. So just start as soon as possible. And then, and then I think it’s a, we, we need to shift that.
So start as soon as possible and then have no. No deadline when it’s ready. Yeah, right. That’s how a lot of remodelers work, right? It’s like, Hey, let’s get you started. And we hope to be finished by such and such a time. Actually, all our clients are really good with that, with that production management software.
But yeah, that’s that’s the So that is the one of the I would say inherent fears of anyone who’s going to build a home or remodel home is the number one is the price is going to go out of control and it’s not going to be done when you say it’s going to be done. So it’s always good to talk about that, but timing is really imperative, important and you have to understand that.
Everyone thinks they can get their house built twice as fast as it might take, or they can get the remodeling project done real easily. They don’t understand the amount of design time. It takes the amount of engineering, permitting construction, you know, supply time, you know, a lot of our clients that are building homes, you know, it’s.
A year to 18 months, you know, to get something done. I can guarantee you none of their leads are thinking it takes that long. You know, they’re thinking, I can get something built and done in 6 or 12 months. You really can’t. And when you have a low inventory market, you know, a housing market, which a lot of locations still have.
You know, a lot of people they can’t find a house to, to buy. And so they think about building. Yeah, you have to really focus on timing. So timing is really it’s really important for somebody again that’s sitting on the fence. And what you do is you say, Hey, look, I’ve got this available. If you want this information, you need to do this.
You know, so the, the technique is called a sharp angle close. If we can offer you this, will you do this? So if the offer is for timing, hey, we have two available slots where we could have your project completed by such and such date, are you willing to sign a concept agreement or sign a professional billing agreement or go go into plan design in order to get that slot?
You know, so that’s again, an I idea for an an offer. And also I should, I should mention, you know, if you look at your list, you are using segmentation. You have different people in different stages. So a brand new lead who is maybe just on your website They’re gonna they’re gonna react to an offer differently than somebody that you’ve been talking to for a while or has been in your database for for a while.
So that’s the components of a good offer So let’s move on and you know guys we wrap up here today and talk about what types of offers work for design Build now, even if you do semi custom homes and you’re starting with floor plans you know We’re still going to follow design build process because someone still has to find a floor plan first.
They need to personalize it. They need to build it. So if you’re doing stuff from custom, this also applies as well. So what types of offers work for design build? I already mentioned what doesn’t work. Any sort of financial incentives. Never lead with that. Bad idea. Puts you behind the eight ball. It’s very difficult to recover.
So what does work from a design standpoint, and that’s where I usually I start because everyone has that question. What will my project look like? What was my new kitchen going to look like? What is my new home going to look like? So I like to put offers out there for anything related to new technology.
So what’s a new technologies, 3d renderings, 3d interior designs. I can see what your kitchen will look like in three dimensions. I also like virtual reality. You know, there’s, there’s technology out there right now where you can put the goggles on. And you can see your project, you know before you it’s like you’re walking through it I can’t remember the name of the technology, but it’s it’s for home builders They can design a home put it into the software that people the leads put the goggles on they go out to the lot They can walk through that home on the lot They can even see where the windows will be and what their views will be really really cool stuff.
Those are great offers Yeah, anybody who’s interested in doing a custom home loves that because of course That’s the number one question. What’s it going to look like? And so now they can actually go out and see what it’ll look like. So new technology is a good offer. New products. So this is something we used to do a lot with model homes, but it would work really for anything.
A lot of manufacturers out there, when they roll out a new product or they have a higher line, like say appliances are a good example. A higher line of appliances. They will offer incentives. To that particular client that if they showcase that home for some marketing purposes, so that those appliances is an example, get exposure, they will get them in a financial incentive.
So we used to do this all the time. We used to say, Hey, look we’re going to build a model home. We want we we we want to showcase this information. If you’re interested in buying this, if you are willing to upgrade your appliances, you can get a discount as long as we can put it in this particular event and that might just be an open house to showcase that it might be like a pray to homes type thing or modeling show.
So that’s another great offer out there. And you just got to talk to your manufacturer reps and usually all of them have some sort of a promotional program. So That if you expose them to other prospective buyers, they will give a financial incentive. So usually what it relates to is like, say you’re going in and you’re going to build a builder grade type of product.
You can upgrade to the next level there for the same price as the builder grade. So it’s a pretty decent pretty decent incentive. So new products is a good one. The other one I like is additional time with interior designer. You don’t throw it out there. So a lot of you work with interior designers.
You could say, Hey, our interior designer she’s, we’re going to give an extra three hours of consulting time to help you do all of your interior selections free of charge. We only have it available for three people for the next week. If you’re interested. You know, contact me for details that would be a typical offer that would use for an interior designer.
So any thoughts there, Diana? Anything ring a bell for you? Yeah, I think it’s it’s, it’s good to, I don’t know, to work some, some and have a conversation, an extra conversation with the designers and have that, that extra time. I think it’s, it’s very, yes, yeah, women, women love it. So it’s, it’s, it’s very compelling.
And they’re obviously the primary decision makers, you know, to do a big project like this. So offers that are appealing to women. Yeah, for sure. You want to, you want to think of that as your avatar or your target market. Next is timing. Okay. So I like to use slot scheduling. So you, you look at how many projects you can start each month.
You look at, okay, work it backwards. If I were to have a project done by such and such a date, when do I need to start that project? So then the offer is we have two or three. Construction slots available to have your project completed by such and such a time. If you don’t take advantage of these, your project can’t be completed until much later in the year.
So again, I create urgency through scarcity. So slot scheduling is a big one for timing. So the question is, you know, how soon do you want to be living in and enjoying your new home or your new remodeling project? Oh, we only have three slots available during this time. Would you like more information, you know, about your.
Getting started to take those slots so you can have your project completed You just got to give them that little extra nudge that they need, you know to if you can do this We can do this. Remember that’s the idea sharp angle close now when that comes to If you’re building homes or and or have lots so available inventory anything non mls.
We’ve used that before too It’s like hey We have three four five six seven homes under construction that are not on the mls If you would like details on them before anyone else Contact us, you know, contact us for that. So that’s a great offer for somebody looking for that quick delivery home and they don’t want to wait the 12 to 18 months it might take to get a home built.
Same thing if you have lots or land for sale. We, we have this many lots in this particular area. They’re selling quickly. We only have this many still available. Would you like details? You know, that’s another thing that you could do. Now, the last thing that I would, I’ll throw out there is this downsell.
The vast majority of people that contact you for your offer, it may not be in the right fit. You know, maybe it’s just the wrong project, wrong location, you know, whatever. But you should really have a downsell available. And a downsell is one of those things that you just keep in your back pocket. So if somebody contacts you for the offer, you go through your qualifying questions, and then you find out that, hey, you know what, they’re just not a good fit.
Instead of just saying, sorry, we’re not a good fit. We can’t, this won’t work for you. To say, you know what? I’m sorry. It looks like. You know, the type of project you’re considering is not really going to fit for this particular offer. However, we do have, and so you go to that downsell and so that may be something that you have to just have a, it might be just a pool of money you have available to you to say, I can, I can do this, or it might be something that you creatively come up with, you know, some downsell ideas, most of the downsells, you know, the, the, that I used to do would simply be you’d trade them up, you know, kind of on the spot.
So once you understand what are the hot buttons of that lead. And then you could say, Ah, you know what? We’re not able to do this. However, here’s an alternative. We could do this or, or I could go like this. I could say, Diana, if we could do this, would you be willing to do this? So that again, that’s that sharp angle close.
Now I can do that. I could say if. So if is a lot different than giving them the offer right now. So if I have to go back and run my numbers, if I need to talk to my owner, my company or a manager, you know, something like that, I can get out of the information and then get back to the buyer. But I, I got them on the hook at that point, you know, and that’s really what an offer is all about.
So Diana, final thoughts. Well, I, I took some notes. I think it’s good. I never thought about the downsell to have that available. I’m always thinking about how to upsell and how to move forward, how to offer them more, but how to offer the downsell. That’s a very interesting approach to and very creative, very creative.
The downsell becomes almost more important than the actual offer itself because the offer is all about the perception. Okay. The vast, vast majority of people, if you throw an offer out there and they’re interested, the vast majority of it are not going to take advantage of it. They’re not going to, because it’s not going to fit, or you might have a limited availability.
So those people that raise their hand and it’s just like, ah, it’s just not really quite a good fit for what you’re trying to do here. The downsell, you’re going to probably use more than the actual offer yourself. So you do want to think about it. You do want to plan ahead about that, but just don’t let somebody who’s raised their hand.
leave without at least throwing a downsell to them where you can maybe reel them back in and bring them into the side door versus the front door, if that makes sense.
So if you are interested in offers or seeing how we can help you attract, capture and convert high quality leads so you can pick and choose your clients and jobs, go ahead and click that link below. Schedule a strategy call with me. I’d be happy to talk to you about your company, learn more, and to see if we might be able to help you.
So once again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone. And for my brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all always. We will see you in the new year on Conversations That Convert. Bye, everyone. Bye.
Builder Lead Converter 