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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,…
Understanding What OSCS Do Daily, Weekly, Monthly
In our blog post, “We Are All on The Same Team,” one of the keys to leading your organization is to understand what an online sales counselor does, not just in general but day-by-day, week-by-week and month-by-month. This means understanding the purpose of their position and what needs to happen as a whole. We have a million posts on here about what an OSC’s purpose is. But as a reminder, they are not an order…
We Are All on The Same Team
Marketing, sales, and online sales are all on the same team. We need to put that into practice, especially when it’s easy to slip into a scarcity mindset. Recently I heard two different stories that inspired this blog post. One was of someone at leadership level disparaging OSCs and what they do…because numbers are down. The other was of salespeople disparaging OSCs and what they are doing…because numbers are down! In the first case, I…
OSCs Are Driven When You Give Them the Right Car
An OSC is going to be just as driven as a sales agent to create sales for the company as long as you give them the right vehicle to do so. That vehicle means having the right: Company Support Pay Structure Tools Training Company Support – The gas that fuels the car Energy is everything. The tone set by the leadership of the company can make or break a program. This role needs to have…
Guest Post: Customer Experience in the Fast Lane: A Key to Closing Home Sales
Guest Post by Greg Bray President of Blue Tangerine Founder & Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast Founder of the Home Builder Digital Marketing Summit October 18-19, 2023 in Denver Pioneering home builders have started to embrace the reality of selling homes completely online. However, buying a home online does not mean the process will be completely self-service. A new home is often the largest purchase someone will ever make, buyers will have questions along the…
Don’t Say I Don’t Know: An OSC’s Guide to Building Trust – Scenario Three
The past couple of posts have explored how to build trust and not use the words, “I don’t know.” It’s not that we are trying to be dishonest when we don’t know the answer check out Scenario One for situations where we just may not know the information because we are new, or we haven’t committed something we SHOULD know to memory. Or that we are trying to be deceptive when we haven’t been given…
Don’t Say I Don’t Know: An OSC’s Guide to Building Trust – Scenario Two
In part one of Don’t Say, “I don’t know.” We attacked a scenario that’s easy to fall into if you are a brand new OSC, or even when you have been doing this for a while, but there may be things you just don’t know. Saying “I don’t know,” is the quickest way to kill trust with a new home buyer and have them rudely asking for someone who does know. But in scenario two…
Don’t Say I Don’t Know: An OSC’s Guide to Building Trust – Scenario One
As I got going writing this up, I realized it was waaaaayyyyy too long for a single blog post. So here’s part one of three! As an online sales counselor, whether you are new, or you’ve been doing this a while there are questions you simply can’t answer. Either because you don’t know the answer, the information doesn’t exist, or it’s not your question to answer… I’ll explain these scenarios in a three part series,…
Guest Post: Not So Random Advice From, Kimberly Mackey, A Top Trainer in the Building Industry
Guest Post by Kimberly Mackey Founder of New Homes Solutions Consulting Co-Host of Sales & Marketing Power Hour National Trainer & Speaker Recently Kimberly Mackey, co-host of the Sales & Marketing Power Hour & National Speaker, posted a thread on her Facebook group asking for “Random Advice” No specific topic, just good advice. To start the ball rolling she gave us a true gem that needs to be heard by leadership, online sales, and sales…
Understanding Emotions… Not Playing on Emotions
It’s often said the buying a home is an emotional purchase. While of course budget, location, and timeline for needing or wanting to move is important, there is a deeper psychology that comes into play when purchasing a home. At its core, owning a home begins with the foundational levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This motivational theory in psychology from American psychologist, Abraham Maslow’s 1943 paper, “A theory of Human Motivation,” published in the…
Marketing and Online Sales Goes Together Like Peanut Butter and Jelly
When you try to think of two things that naturally go together for some reason peanut butter and jelly come to mind. Okay maybe it’s just my mind. Maybe it’s because there was a long streak in 5th grade where all my mom sent to school with me was peanut butter and jelly. Maybe it’s because to this day it’s one of my favorite comfort foods, or maybe it’s because they complement each other so…