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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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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,…
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I feel like I make a post about this almost every year… but spring cleaning isn’t just for closets, junk drawers, and that cup holder in your car full of receipts, hair ties, mystery crumbs, and old empty coffee cups from Starbucks. It’s for your follow-up too. Let’s be honest… somewhere in that CRM is a sales process you built with the best of intentions and then never looked at again. She’s out there. Collecting dust. Sending old emails. Possibly embarrassing you. This time of year, is the perfect excuse…
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Alright, friends. We’re closing out March Debunking AI Month with one more thing I need to get off my chest: I am deeply skeptical of these micro learning AI courses that keep popping up all over my social feed. You know the ones. “Learn 47 AI tools in 28 days!” “Become an AI power user by next Tuesday!” “Master the future with our daily 10-minute lessons!” Meanwhile I’m over here thinking… who has time to collect apps like they’re Pokémon? What do I need 10…or 28 different tools? And more…
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One thing I’ve learned over the past 19 years of building and rebuilding Online Sales Counselor (OSC) programs, and 14 years of consulting with builders across the country is this: Hiring a consultant doesn’t automatically change a program. It’s what happens between consulting, training, strategy, and leadership that makes the difference. I can build structure. I can train skills. I can create systems that make your OSC team run like a machine. But if leadership isn’t plugged in, reinforcing, and managing the program after I leave, even the strongest team…
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…
Online Sales Counselors, Sinking Ships, Mindset, Mindshift, Energy, and the Customer Experience
Did that catch your attention? I’m going to tell you a story here. Right now, there is a lot of scarcity mindset going around. I hear OSCs concerned about not getting enough leads, or not setting enough appointments, and for some of them they equate this with not making enough money or even being fearful of losing their jobs. This, in turn stresses them out because they can’t pay their bills, which is understandable, but…
Why Do You Need Executive Coaching with an Online Sales Program?
Whether you are setting up a new online sales program, or working on auditing, improving, or revamping an old OSC program, whoever is going to lead the OSC program or team, needs to be on the same page and understand how to communicate goals to the entire company. I’ve said it before, training an OSC cannot happen in a bubble. The leadership of the company, marketing, and sales teams all need to know what to…
What Does “When in Doubt Send It Out” Mean?
Yes, we all want to be setting appointments. Especially if your leads have slowed down, but we don’t want to set just any appointment. We want to set strong appointments that will convert, otherwise we aren’t doing what OSCs are supposed to do. You may have heard the term, “When in doubt, send it out.” But what exactly does that mean? It doesn’t mean short-cut your job as an online sales counselor and bypass the…
Five Things Leadership Should Know About Online Sales
Sometimes the people at the top don’t understand what Online Sales is, what Online Sales Counselors do, and why this role and the program are so important. 1. This is not a “Catch All” position – The online sales program isn’t a place to dump all the odds and ends in the company. An online sales counselor is not a closing coordinator, they are not the social media manager, they are not the graphic designer,…
Don’t Sacrifice Website Usability for Design
Websites are the online sales models for the new home building industry. You’ve probably heard that before. Just like models are constantly changing as we build new and better homes, close out communities, and start new models – your website too needs to grow and change, but one thing needs to remain the same. It needs to address the needs of your buyers and make the important things easy to find. Sometimes when we do…
Turnkey Solutions Sound Great… But Are They?
I often hear builders say they want a turnkey solution for online sales. Really, they want turnkey solutions for everything. The truth is, almost anything worth while takes time to learn and master. As most builders like to remind me, they are different from their competitors. While we don’t need to re-invent the wheel every time we start up a new online sales program, there will be nuances that are different and require a more…
Blue Gypsy Inc Doesn’t do “CRM Implementation,” We Teach “CRM Strategy”
Well, you know that old story, “If you give a man a fish he eats for a day, if you teach a man to fish, he can feed his whole village.” That’s how we feel about CRM implementation. There’s no doubt about it, CRM is complex. And there are SOOOOO many of them out there. They all have different features and ways to get to the same thing. When I think of the builders I…
IBS 2023 – One of the Best Educational Opportunities All Year Long
If you’ve never been to the International Builder’s Show, or when you do go, you spend most of your time walking the floor, there is an educational component that just shouldn’t be missed. This year I’ll be presenting two different topics on Online Sales in 2 different educational platforms. The 2023 builder show kicks off in Las Vegas, NV January 31st – February 2nd. However, there are also pre-show educational opportunities and some of those…
Digging Deep into Empathy and Asking the Right Questions
Developing relationships. When I first started as an OSC, I saw this as my focus. Develop authentic relationships with the people who call me or email me and ask me about a house. This was my strategy, and it helped me become a high producing OSC. “What?” you might ask, “Does that have to do with setting an appointment for sales?” Well, the people who called me and who were interested in more information in…