Metrics Aren’t Everything…WHAT?

There, I said it. Metrics are not everything when it comes to a well-oiled Online Sales Counselor program. Especially in the Age of COVID.  I just blew the minds of many people including all my perfectionist OSC’s. You know how I know this? I’m nominating several of my past OSC’s I’ve trained for National Awards through the NAHB, and that means getting all their current metrics to report for a 12 month-period.

• What are the metrics we usually look at for online sales counselors?
• We look at number of leads to unique monthly visits to the website.
• We look at leads that turn into appointments.
• We look at appointments that show up.
• We look at Appointments that show up to sales that are made.
• We look at OSC appointments that turned into sales compared to company sales.

These 5 pieces of data shape the success of an online sales counselor program. But wait. It doesn’t mean it indicates the accurate successes and achievements of an OSC.

Sooooo many factors can come into play within these numbers. For instance. When we are simply looking at unique visitors to the website – there are things that are deeply imbedded in these numbers. Like – traffic sources and channels, locations, time on the site, pages viewed, and more. Also, while we want unique visits monthly, we also want to see returning traffic. If that’s low, we’re doing something wrong! When I examine metrics for builders, I usually see the returns at around 25% – 35% of overall traffic. I think it’s good to see returns. If they were very low, it means that people come once and never come again. That would suck.

So, of those visits people eventually inquire for information – that’s a lead. But look those people that come through as a lead could call, email, text, or even use live chat to contact the OSC. If all those channels are not feeding into the database then there is not an accurate ratio of website traffic to leads, and leads to appointments. To be honest most OSC’s don’t care about the ratio of website traffic to leads, because that’s not really their responsibility. They are not driving the traffic.

What they do get bent out of shape about is if it’s super unqualified traffic, like the constant questions are:

• Do I need to count that warranty question in my leads?
• I got 4 calls for a builder with the same name 4 states over, do I have to include that in my leads?
• All the digital lock leads come to me, but I distribute them directly to the agents, do I need to count those?
• I have had a TON of inquiries for communities that are coming soon, what do I do about those?
• We have 20 Facebook leads that come in at 2 am every day from Estonia, do I need to count them?
• Do I need to count the guy who wanted to order a pizza?

My answer for these is usually, it depends. In some ways we need to remove the obvious stuff – like warranty, pizza delivery, and out of for the wrong builder with the same name. We may need to track the digital lock leads somewhere else, especially if the OSC is not handling that follow up. But the leads that aren’t qualified, or a swath of leads from a source or channel that are really bad, need to be tracked. And that needs to be reported to marketing so we can collaborate on now to improve those leads.

But here’s the thing too, right now we are getting more walk-in traffic coming through the OSC’s then ever before, the OSC’s don’t want to deny someone an appointment, so this is new territory for them. What should they do? They still need to get as much information as they can in all the areas of qualification and let the site agents know the quality of that appointment.

We traditionally say 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 appointments that show up on site convert to a sale. This gap is widening. But take a look at the number of OSC sales to overall company sales. If that is high, we are doing okay. If that’s also low, we’ve got to look at what is going on.

If you really want to dive deeper into metrics, hit me up for a free consultation I’m glad to demystify this all for you.