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Over the years, I’ve worked with home builders who have invested significant time, money, and resources into developing their Online Sales Counselor (OSC) programs. They’ve hired talented people, invested in CRM systems, provided training, and established performance goals. But somewhere along the way, something happens. The OSC program stops being actively managed and starts being measured. How many leads came in this month? How many appointments were set? How many sales came from online leads? What’s the conversion rate? Don’t get me wrong. Those numbers matter. I’m a big believer…
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Over the years, I’ve worked with home builders of all sizes, helping them build, train, and grow their Online Sales Counselor (OSC) programs. And one thing I’ve learned is that even the best OSCs need more than great training to be successful. They need ongoing coaching, leadership, accountability, and someone who truly understands their unique role. But here’s the challenge. Who is managing your OSC program? In many homebuilding companies, that responsibility falls on the VP of Sales, Director of Sales, or another member of the leadership team who already…
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October is here, which means we are officially entering the last quarter of the year. And I think this is a really important time to ask ourselves a question: What are we going to do with the next 90 days? There is a lot of uncertainty in our industry right now. Interest rates, affordability, consumer confidence, traffic and the economy are all creating questions about what the rest of this year will look like and what we can expect when we head into the spring selling season. We can’t control…
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The Builder Marketing Summit has wrapped up for another year, and after two fast and furious days in Dallas, I walked away energized, full of ideas and, as always, wishing there had been just a little more time to talk with everyone. This was my fourth year joining Greg Bray of Blue Tangerine and Kevin Weitzel of Outhouse for the Summit, where they once again gave me free rein to lead the Online Sales Counselor track. That opportunity means a lot to me because there simply aren’t many industry events…
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Recently, a seasoned OSC reached out to me because she knows I do mystery shops. She also knows about the Annual Mystery Shop Report we conduct every year to get a pulse on the state of the industry when it comes to customer experience and the customer journey. She had been mystery shopped. On a Saturday. Her day off. Actually, it was the beginning of a four-day weekend for her. And as a solo OSC, she needs to take time off. Gone are the days when we should expect an…
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Why an AI Tool Isn’t the Same as an AI Strategy AI is everywhere in new home sales right now. Chatbots, automated follow-up, texting, dialers, lead nurturing, appointment setting. There are some incredible tools available, and I am certainly not anti-AI. Used correctly, AI can help us respond faster, manage more opportunities and take some of the repetitive work off our plates. But buying an AI tool is not the same thing as having an AI strategy. You don’t just buy it, unbox it, plug it into your website or…
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One of the first things I ask for when I start working with a new builder has nothing to do with conversion rates, lead response times, or appointment-setting percentages. Well okay I ask for all of that stuff. But I also ask for this… I ask to see every follow-up sequence living inside their CRM. The automated emails. The texts. The videos. The call tasks. Everything. Why? Because before I can coach an Online Sales Counselor, I want to understand what the buyer is experiencing. Every email, every text message,…
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“Everyone knows something you don’t… learn from them.” It’s a simple phrase, but one that’s resonated with me for decades. I’m not even sure where I first heard it, but it’s become part of who I am and how I approach life. Long before Blue Gypsy. Long before I was speaking at conferences or teaching classes. Before I ever became an Online Sales Counselor. It’s a mindset I’ve carried with me from experience to experience…country to country. I learned it years ago while traveling the world. Every place I visited…
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In our last blog post about One Team, One Experience I talked heavily about alignment. If the move from online to onsite is done well, it should feel natural from the buyer’s perspective. Exciting, even. The OSC should be building anticipation, not creating confusion. It should sound more like: “I’d love for you to meet my good friend; they’re going to have a much better handle on those specific house questions and help you take the next step.” That is a handoff. Not: “Here’s the appointment. Good luck.…
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Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of joining an NAHB Shop Talk with a title so good I figured it deserved a blog post of its own: One Team, One Experience: Turning Spring Traffic into Sales. When a topic is this relevant, this timely, and this painfully familiar to anyone in home building, you don’t just leave it neatly tucked inside a one-hour conversation. You bring it back out, dust it off, and say, “Alright, let’s talk about what this really means.” The discussion was moderated by Kelly Fink,…
Successful Email Marketing: Permisson Is The Key
Scraping emails off facebook, linkedin, or business cards for your newsletter is not cool. This is why email marketing gets a bad name. First off the key to correct and effective email marketing is to have a permission based list. Translation: a list of people who want to get your emails. Just because someone hands you a business card at a networking event or accepts your friendship on a social network does not mean that…
Singing the Blues About Blue Gypsy Bluesfest 2011
I’m singing the blues about the Blue Gypsy Bluesfest. As successful as the Blue Gypsy Bluesfest was last year grossing almost $15,000 and bringing together over 350 enthusiastic people in the Tidewater Area to enjoy a day of blues and BBQ, I had to make an executive decision. Sadly I’ve tabled the event indefinitely for the future. There are two major factors that contributed to this decision. The first is the fact that I am…
The Power of Social Media: Should Jewish Organizations Jump on The Social Media Bandwagon?
So I thought I’d share this interesting debate I’m having with my sister with you. My sister, like me, has traveled the world. She’s lived in foreign countries and traveled Europe, Asia, Africa, North America and the Middle East. She’s visited small little villages in South East Asia and she’s even been stranded in a Typhoon on Mauritius, a tiny tiny island off of Africa. My sister used to be a costume designer and then…
Groupon Super Bowl Ads: #Fail? or Success! – New Media Vs. Old Media
Every year, when the Super Bowl rolls around there are some of us who tune in for the action, and some of us who tune in for the advertising. It’s the only time of the year we don’t want to fast forward through the commercials. With airtime priced at a premium, and millions of viewers expected to be attached to their TV’s in real time, this is an opportunity for products to hit their target…
Texting While Driving: Watch This Video
In this mobile world we live in sometimes we forget to turn off. Sometimes we forget that there’s not anything that’s so important it can’t wait. This is especially true while driving. With our smart phones, ipads, GPS systems, XM radios and so many other distractions it’s not just the stuff of fast food taking our attention off our driving any more. I remember when I learned how to drive 25 years ago it was…
Cutting Down On Random Facebook Friends
I know I’ve done similar posts before. But in this I’m including some tools for you. Please feel free to use. I know for some facebook is the wild wild west full of people willing to take their chances to accept anyone that will ask to be their friend because they use it for “networking.” Nothing wrong with that shot gun approach if you choose to use facebook in that way. But I guess I’m…
What Is Your Time Worth?
When is it time to hire help? It’s hard as a small business owner to make the decision to “cut into your earnings” to hire help. But that’s just what you may need to do in order to increase your revenue. It’s a huge leap of faith, but if you are organized and know what you need and what you want it can be well worth the expense to hire help. It can help you…
Outsourced: Not the Show
Blue Gypsy Inc has grown so much in it’s one year of existence. This is a wonderful thing! This time last year I sent my first proposal out into the world and was busy getting my company name Blue Gypsy, incorporated. Now I have several happy clients who keep me very busy. I’m not complaining! In this economy it’s so nice to be needed and wanted, and actually lead management should be the business of…
Thousand Crane Project: Touching The World Through Ripple Effect
Have you ever heard about the Legend of 1000 origami paper cranes? Ancient Japanese folklore promises to grant a single wish to anyone who folds a thousand paper cranes. Well yesterday I came across the fan page, Thousand Paper Crane Project. Rich Greenhagen, a resident of Virginia Beach, has a unique goal. He’s folding 1000 paper cranes to spread love around the world. It started out as a poem, then became a story and then…
Twenty Christmas Light Displays I’d Hate To Disassemble
Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year, but taking down all the lights and decorations is not my favorite….I take heart in the fact that I don’t have to deal with the disassemble of the following Christmas displays. (But man I love to watch them!) Take a look at these 20 amazing works of art!1. Music Box Dancer 2. Frisco Christmas Lights – Wizards in Winter 3. Coca Cola Holiday Song 4.…