19. The Proven Sales Process For Builders With Russ, Sky and Andy

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Higher margins while improving the building experience for your clients. Hello and welcome to the Professional Builder Secrets podcast, a podcast by the association of Professional Builders for building company owners, general managers, VPs and emerging leaders. Here we discuss all things running a professional building company from sales processes, financials, operations and marketing. Hello and welcome. Today I'm joined by co founders sky and Russ Stevens, as well as head coach Andy Scarter for the association of Professional Builders. Welcome, everybody. Excited to have you here today.

Hello, everybody.

Let's get into it. And I'm going to start off with a pretty comical question that you probably get asked quite often, but should professional builders be good salespeople?

Well, sales is important and you do need the ability to sell, whether that's selling a contract to consumer or maybe just an idea to your team. But the ability to sell is absolutely crucial in business in order to be successful. But do you need to be a great. A salesperson? You know, if you're a builder? Not necessarily. You know, if you don't like selling and it's not your strength, then I think it's fine to bring in someone who can do that role better than you can. And that's what it's like in business. It's not a standard template for everyone. You really got to focus on your strengths and then cover off your weaknesses. There was an episode where you interviewed Ty Outro recently, and I think Ty mentioned that the first thing that he did early on was bring in an estimator because that wasn't his strength. So, yeah, if sales is not your strength, yeah, that's a. That's a good place to focus.

Why do you think builders struggle with the term selling or sales in general? Is there a stigma around it?

Definitely. I think it's mindset as well. It's human nature. We have a fear of rejection, and sales is the ultimate rejection. You're actually putting yourself out there. You are asking for something, and when you hear those nos, it just hurts a little bit more. So that fear of rejection is so deeply ingrained. We're just trying to protect ourselves. So I think that's at a particularly unconscious level, but quite consciously, there is that stigma associated to selling and salespeople. Slimy salespeople. We've all heard it, right? And this is something that is talked about a lot when builders first come to us, because, yeah, it's just. It feels dirty. It's uncomfortable. You feel like a dirty, slimy salesman ripping people off. And we just need to remove that. That stigma. And we were talking just before we hit record here, but it's that phrase of gift of the gab. I think a lot of builders in particular, when they're thinking, you know, can I be good at sales? Why am I struggling with sales? I'm just not like that. I don't have a gift of the gab. I. Maybe you're introverted. Maybe you just like focusing on construction, like you know what you're good at and you want to stick to that. And you think sales is a gift of the gab kind of a skill to have. It's not. So we can just break it down and actually pull apart what actually is sales, because we can overcome our struggle with sales if we can boil it down to a very simple process.

So, you know, what are the factors that can impact the sales process specifically for builders? You know, if they're sitting here listening to this, what did they need to consider to actually have an effective sales process?

Well, I think if I can jump in on this one, Bosco, the problem for most people when you say sales process is they immediately get some kind of weird and wonderful Jedi mind trick, impregnated NLP thing in their minds. And the truth is, any builder that has ever sold anything has a sales process. Well, maybe not. They have a sales system. They have a manner in which they go about selling the services that they offer. I think the real emphasis in this needs to be processed, because what really needs to happen as the starting point is capture what you are doing now in writing, in sequence, so that you can see the logical progression from the first time you talk to the client right through to when they actually sign the contract. Just to add to that with something that sky said, that I think is absolutely critical is the bottom line is, as a professional, anything. We don't want to be manipulating people. There's no value in a builder getting somebody to sign a contract with them if they don't want to build a home and they don't want to build with me as the builder. So really what we're looking to do is to find that beautiful sweet spot where what the client is trying to achieve and what I'm trying to achieve intersect. And if we can bring those two elements together in a process that is repeatable, we will move ourselves out of that place of the slimy, you know, slide through your own fingers, uphill, manipulative into the space of, I'm going to help these people get the home they want within the budget that they can afford. And if that's the way that builders approach this, I think they'll find that working out the process and closing sales, which is critically important, it is the one skill that every business should. Must have. It's not negotiable. I think they'll find putting a process together to make that happen more often will get significantly easier.

I actually like that. Like, it's the process every business must have. But like Russ was saying in the beginning, do you have to be the best salesperson? No, but you can control the process and make sure your salesperson can follow that and they can do it. It doesn't necessarily fall on you.

And when you write it down, you've got a documented sales process, then you've got consistency. And I think we see too many gu there. Yeah, they do have a process, more or less, but it's kind of in their head, which means they get taken off track. Very easy. But when you actually document your sales process, then you've got something to follow each time. And that. That's critical.

I mean, what we've seen enough times is even if it is in your head, you don't actually have a sales process. You're following the consumer's buying process.

Yeah, well, you have an idea of where you want to go, don't you? But, yeah, you get pulled off course very easy as soon as they got a different idea.

Yeah.

Is there a proven sales process that works for builders today? And if so, what are some of those key components?

Oh, absolutely. This is something we've been working on and refining and coaching builders on for seven years now. It really is based around the design and build model. This is the process that really works well and that is capturing the lead early on before they've gone to a designer or an architect. That's a very key component and that obviously affects your marketing because you're targeting very different people to people that are just looking for builders to put a price on some plans they've already got. So if we put that aside and take that as a given that we're following the design and build process. The very first step in the sales process is to qualify. You've got to qualify them. And again, you've got to follow a written process. You have a documented process for qualifying, which starts with the closed questions, which will discount people very quickly. Before moving on to the open discovery questions, which will allow you to go deep. And from then, the next step, once they're qualified, is to take them to a meeting. That could be an online meeting these days or in person, but it has to be a structured meeting because that meeting will then allow you to take them to the next step, which is concepts, that is signing up for the designer group. And that's a very important step in the process because that is where you take them out of the marketplace. Once you've got a client to the concept stage, you follow in the process correctly, they really are yours to lose. Circumstances do change. So we're not suggesting all the concepts will go to contract, but a very high percentage will go into a prelim agreement, which is where a lot of the hard work and the detail is done in terms of pricing. It's the last step before contract. So the final step in the in sales process is to sign them to a building contract.

And Bosco, if I can just kind of amplify what Russ is saying there, if you listen to what he did, step one, step two, step three, step four, step five, it is that sequential logical progression from one stage to the next that makes this a process rather than just a good idea.

Where do you think people struggle with the process as well? Is there a ratio of people that struggle on that opening discovery side, do you find a lot of builders struggling on the concept or the agreement side? Is it sort of an even ground?

Well, I think it kind of varies depending on, first of all, the kind of building they're doing and their background. We have the full spectrum at the apb, from people that love that interaction with clients to people that tell us quite openly, well, it's a real problem to have to have a client. They'd much rather just build houses for nobody, you know, which. Which is an impractical way to do it, or as some builders call it, spec homes, where they build for themselves and hope that they can sell them, which, of course is dangerous. But the reality here is we find that most people, when you are able to lay out a process for them and they start to think back over the sales that didn't work and then go, well, if I'd followed this process, they would have worked. We generally find that very, very quickly, they settle down into the different phases of the process that Russ has just explained.

It's funny, isn't it? You mentioned that because we see it all the time. It's the guys that don't have a documented sales process that then Struggle with the sales process that always either move into spec building or that's their goal, that's their dream. I just want.

To. This can go full circle now. But you remember a previous episode we did on marketing a building company. This is where your avatar slots in. Because if you don't have a proper sales process, well, you could have a sales process, but even the way you deal and talk with your avatar matters. And so you'll be repelling other people in your sales process if you're not speaking a certain way or speaking to your actual ideal client. So this loops all the way back into marketing. You've got to have your marketing doing its thing and done properly so you can attract the right people into your sales process. And that's when qualifying comes in and is so important what Russ just said, because that's that your marketing should be repelling the people you actually don't want and only attracting the ideal clients. But if they're in, you know, they've actually entered now into your sales process. They're in a sales conversation. This is an opportunity now for us to see how far we can take them. That qualification is so important not to be understated in any way. That should take so much work to perfect and get right so that you can quickly disqualify even more people. So you only if you're spending this time doing a deep discovery, you know, an emotionally in depth conversation about why they want to build and then doing a meeting with them and then doing concept designs, you want to get rid of as many people as possible quickly because that's a lot of time you are investing. I mean, Eddie, how long's the sales cycle in building?

Oh, it can be anything up to nine months, in some cases 12 to 18 months depending on the kind of job. And I, I think sky, something you said there, that is crit important that some builders listening to this podcast have just stopped breathing because you've just said get rid of people that are making inquiries. And I think that's something that the professional builder understands is not every inquiry is even worth pursuing. So what you really want is you wanted that front end. And if you think about what Russ said, the first stage is to qualify them. And essentially the best example I can give people is in the qualification process. You're essentially auditioning, auditioning a future client to see whether or not that client gets the golden ticket to go to Vegas or whether they're never going to become American Idol. That's the process and it's not from.

An arrogant Perspective either. I know we've talked about this in the past, like, you know, you want these prospects to tell you why they would be a great client for you. You're not coming from an arrogant perspective, but you're a professional now. You get to vet your clients.

Yeah.

And I think in terms of builders being able to build the business that they want for the future, they have a certain type of build for a certain type of client that is going to suit them. And we always talk about builders developing a niche or a niche depending on which side of the equator you're on. The reality there is that the purpose in that is to dominate a section of the market, to become the go to person in that market. So it stands to reason if you make sure that at the top end of your sales funnel you are putting those kind of people and those kind of jobs in, guess what's going to come out the bottom predominantly more and more and more of the kind of work and the kind of people that you want to be working with. In which case you'll never want to become a spec builder.

So someone once said to me that a customer's favorite radio channel is wiifm, which is what's in it for me. Can you still have an effective sales process while managing clients expectations as well? Because you're going to get people that go, what's in it for me? Throw me a better deal. Can these two concepts live together?

Absolutely. And I think that is how every salesperson should always be thinking whenever they're interacting with a consumer as well. They should be looking at everything from their perspective and thinking, how can I help this person? And this is one of the key things we always try to coach our builders through. Stop selling to people and start helping them. Now you have to act as a fiduciary, which means acting in your client's best interests at all times. And that can even mean losing a contract, not going ahead on a contract because it wasn't right for that particular person. Or maybe your building company wasn't right. And that's not easy to do, especially when times get a little bit tough and you need every contract. But it's a commitment. And when you commit to this way of thinking, you'll find that you'll have much happier clients, you'll enjoy your business a lot more and your margins will be a lot stronger.

And I think Bosco, just to go back to that favorite radio station, a professional builder changes that radio station call sign from wiifm to wiifu. What's in it for us? Because I don't mean I'm not putting emphasis on the fu, I'm putting the emphasis on the for us. Because the truth is this, no matter what part of this business you're in, you sell a particular cookie and that isn't the right cookie necessarily for everybody that you're going to come across. The best thing for both of you is that the cookie you can sell is the cookie that your client actually wants to buy. And I mean, Russ has said it again, help your clients, don't sell to them. Help them get the home of their dreams within the budget that they can afford with as little stress as possible. There's no selling involved in that.

I'm still dying over this f you comment for a second here. But while I gather my thoughts to piggyback on that and you know, yeah, what is in it for me? And this is why we need to qualify and we need to get rid of people. Think about this for a second. When you are so in demand and you do your marketing properly, this is why a sales process is so important. Because you are manufacturing demand, right? If you're, you're, if you've listened to previous episodes and you got very excited by doing proper marketing and you've set up a proper marketing strategy for your building company, ooh, it's a little back to front because if you suddenly start generating all of these new inquiries and you do not have a sales process to back anything up, you will get yourself into a mess very, very, very, very, very quickly. So getting your sales systems down pat correct, by the way, this takes years. Like you can't just implement it and you know, you're good to go that you implement something and you need to tweak it, you need to refine it. You're looking at the metrics, you getting said or listening to what's getting said and reading the emails you're sending out and actually assessing everything. Because if you don't do that, you will get yourself into a mess. But if you do it properly, you can handle anything. And you've got to use automation to handle a lot of this, by the way. And then systems in place that keep gating the next steps. Only a few people go through more and more and more. But think of this for a second. Think of if you're a luxury custom home builder. This is actually really big question we get all the time, especially when you talk about marketing, advertising and how many leads you need to be generating. But I'm, you know, really specialized customer homes, like I'm a Luxury builder. I only need to do like 12 homes a year or whatever. You still need to go hard on your marketing advertising so you can manufacture that demand. We've talked about this before, marketing is linked to margins or margins are linked to marketing. Don't want to get in depth into that right now. But think of Ferrari, Aston Martin. Think of all of those brands that are highly sought after. Think how many inquiries they get, think how many of them are time wasters. If they don't have proper systems in place, they would just be wasting their time all day long. So this is why you want to create a brand that is so highly sought after but have a sales process in place that you can weed out people that are just unfortunately never going to build. And a lot of people never are, they're just interested.

You talked about builders trying to navigate through a mindset and also maneuvering through fears of rejection. What are some of the common objections that builders face and what you're hearing from the front lines?

Well, I mean, you're going to hear them at different levels, right? You've got sales objections. So it's like right at the end, right at contract signing, which by the way, if you have a proper sales process in place, you shouldn't really be getting to the end before you hear about a major objection, a proper sales process, you should actually be uncovering them and overcoming them throughout the entire sales process so that by the time you get to a contract signing, it's a no brainer. You just get to move forward. Sometimes though, and we all know this, objections, a lot of the time it's a knee jerk reaction. We do this thing to protect ourselves. It's like, so should we do this now? It's like, no. And you sort of throw out something as a little excuse because you're trying to buy yourself some time to actually comprehend what's happening. So a lot of the time you can just revert back, talk it through, actually understand where they're coming from and then go back through the process and then you can, you know, get your contract signed or whatnot. But if you've done it properly. But sometimes you get big objections. Like right at the end it's like, and I need to think about it. And that's not even the real one. Right? So there are a lot of objections that can come out, but they get masked as other things. So it's, I need to think about it or something's not, well, we need to have a conversation about this priority. I mean, what have you been doing until this point, you've been talking about it the whole time, so there's something else there. So we need to dig a lot deeper. So sure, you've got a lot of sales side objections, but flip it and think about all the other objections you get. Throughout the entire sales process, someone just fills in an expression of interest. You know, maybe they downloaded your design range, how to look through all of them, they've gone through a website, maybe they're filling in a request, a call, because they would like to actually have the opportunity to schedule a meeting and, and talk about designing a new home. And you give them a call. I mean they were interested and you. And it's like, look, I'm too busy, I can't talk. Like that's another objection. That's just another flob off. So we need to be able to actually document all these different kinds of objections we have so that we can have a systematic approach to actually overcoming them, isolating them, putting them to one side, discussing the real root of the problem. If we could solve that, would it make sense to actually get started today?

Yeah. So it's really important to have a framework because these objections, they, although fundamentally there are very few do they will seem different. It will seem like you've got thousands of different objections, but really there's probably only five or six. So having a framework to follow and not be surprised when an objection comes up will really help a lot. I think one of the, the worst ones that we hear is when a builder has done all this work, taking people through the, the whole entire process and they're on the verge of presenting the final contract proposal and the prospect will say, yeah, just email it to me. And in some cases the builder actually does just that. And that is terrible. They gotta be able to overcome that. So objections are not even always obvious. They're not even obvious no's. That is preventing the builder getting into a position to have that good conversation.

And it's a deflection, isn't it? And it could be for many reasons, but one of the big ones is they probably still don't trust you yet. This is why if we take it all the way back, that's why we talk about. On the first conversation you have with someone in the first five minutes, you're not going to go straight out asking for their budget, they don't trust you yet. So they're going to have some sort of an objection or a lie to get rid of that question. Because again, it's that protecting themselves.

What you're saying is they're not saying no. They're just not comfortable to give you the real reason as to what's really preventing them from having this conversation with you.

Correct. Or some of them just don't know how to say no.

Right.

We don't like being rejected personally. This is why a lot of people don't like sales. So we also know how it feels to be rejected. So we try and let people down very easily, and we've all done it. You know, someone's actually asking, you know, for a decision or, you know, they're trying to move forward in some way, and you just try and fob them off gently. You know, look, can you just give me a call back in two weeks? You know, you're never going to answer that call. But they'll get the hint. Right. If they call back in two weeks and you're not there. So we've all done it. So we need to read the signs.

Let's peel the onion a little bit. And I'm sure all our listeners are wanting to know what are some of these trending techniques in sales that are working for builders today? And obviously the industry's changed, but what do you see right now that's quite effective for builders?

Well, I think sky has mentioned one of the biggest ones in this industry, and that's trust and building trust. And the reality is we always teach people that people buy from people they know like and trust. So what you've got to be looking at in your sales process is as many opportunities as you can logically and systematically create to grow all three of those pathways. So create opportunities for people to get to know you. We're not selling a commodity. We're actually selling, in most cases, a relationship. We're talking about building a house, taking anything from six to 18 months. We're talking about a renovation or a remodel, taking anything from three to six to nine months in a remodeling scenario, are potentially going to be in these people's home every day. They are going to be coming out of the shower with a towel wrapped around them. When you are going in there to pull it apart, it gets that steamy and personal in more ways than one. The point I'm trying to make is imagine spending 18 months with somebody you don't trust, you don't like, and you hardly know it's not going to happen. So when we talk about this process, that's part of what we want to do, is create opportunities to be real. And it's way better that you learn that this isn't going to work during the sales process than three months into the build. That would be a foundation. But in terms of techniques, and we've alluded to it with the word process and Russ has unpacked that process to some extent. But the primary technique that we see working for both parties is to not to be move, don't move the sale ahead until the client is comfortable to move to the next stage. So essentially what we're doing there is we saying instead of doing a whole bunch of work over a long period of time and then having this huge meeting at the end of the process to sell the client and there's pressure and tension for everybody in that meeting. If what you do is break it up into bite sized chunks and you get people making what we call micro commitments regularly throughout the process, that is a technique that gets to the point that when you do that final proposal, it's really a summary of all of the other micro decisions that have happened all the way down the line. So as a technique, if we're going to talk about it, that breaking it down, micro commitment, walking people at the pace that they can handle, those would probably be the two foundational ones that I would put out there.

And even if we talk about micro commitments, like let's actually break that down for everyone listening right now, because they're not as big as signing a contract or even buying concepts. These micro commitments are even smaller than that. You are teaching them compliance the whole way through and you're going from very small steps into bigger ones like charging for things. But it's actual compliance. Booking a meeting, accepting the calendar invite, talking at the time you said you would be talking, showing up to that scheduled meeting, then going to concepts, then showing up to your selections, meeting and design meetings.

It's everything, an important component as well. Just what Andy was talking about is bringing them along. When you bring them along through this process, the budget is going to change. Don't be afraid of this. You've really got to own that. When the prospect talks to you about adding something, something in, first of all, you outline what that is likely to do to the budget and you typically you get their approval and their, and their nod. But the one thing that most builders miss is then documenting that in the communication in a follow up. You must get that revised budget in writing in place. Because we may have started with a $450,000 budget. They've just made something else they wanted included. That's probably going to cost about $10,000. They're happy with that. Now, the budget we're talking about is 460. And so it goes on. And we all know that a budget that starts at 450 within three or four months is probably going to get to 600. But if we don't document every step of the way and only talk in terms of the new revised budget, then we've got a big problem to deal with with when it comes to contract time. If we don't do that.

It's a really good point. And you can extend that to every single bit in the sales process. To operate as a professional, the most professional thing you can do is follow every single interaction you've had on the phone or in person, on a meeting or online on a meeting is follow on that interaction with an email, in writing, documenting what was discussed. So everyone's on the same page because we all have our own different versions of reality. And this is where it can get very messy. I know we were talking about this in the client expectations, but you're managing expectations the entire way through the sales process. Like Russ said, more with the budget. That's where it gets messy. So it just builds a good habit if you can do it after every interaction, not just when you talk figures.

And think about where we've gone in this conversation. Let's close the loop again. We're talking about builders working to build the kind of houses with the kind of clients that they want to. We're talking about a process that's documented. What does that mean? It's repeatable. Not only is it repeatable, it's templatable. It's a process. You will literally find that every meeting, if it's following the same sequence, will largely have the same kind of communication package on the far end of it. The more you get this to a process and a system, actually, the easier it becomes in terms of making sure that those things happen. The other thing that I think is important, just before we go to anything else, is we've spoken about trust. We've got to understand that for a lot of people, this is their biggest single purchase that probably until now, they've ever made in their lives. They are naturally concerned and skittish. So if there's one element of those three that I would highlight as this must be taken care of in your sales process, it's got to be the trust side of things.

Would knowledge and knowing a little bit about the industry help establish trust as well? Because I think about myself and I think about the things that I purchase, and I'm typically drawn to Salespeople that actually know their product really well and know the industry really well, Would that really play a role here as well?

I think that's critical, isn't it, these days, especially in the world we live in, where people do their research online but before approaching a salesperson? Because what's happening now is they know a lot of the answers already. They're basically interviewing you to see, is this someone I could actually work with. I always think of my wife when it comes to getting a new car and going into a car dealer. She knows everything about that model before she walks in. You know, she's done her research, and she always knows a lot more than the salespeople. And that's fine as long as they don't try to. What would we say, Andy? Lie. That's it.

I was thinking of another word, but, yeah, that'll. That one will do. But I think, Russ, just to amplify that a little bit. Trust comes from not only what you do, but also from other people. And I always talk about every person coming into a sales process with a builder has what I always refer to as the bullshit meter. And when they come in at the beginning, it is ticking on the red. It's right up there watching and listening to every word. But as you show up and you communicate and you present and you do what you say, you start to bring that back down into the green. The other thing that is hugely important that we always tell builders to build into their sales process is previous client testimonials. Having other people who don't have the vested interest that you do say the things that you know will be important to your upcoming clients. So literally bringing previous clients who will confirm the fact that you will do exactly what you say you're going to do is a huge part of actually making that trust thing work.

Totally. There's one thing that everyone seems to know, everyone, every consumer, when they approach a builder, everyone seems to know everything about construction these days. So this is probably the biggest bugbear to a lot of builders and salespeople working at a building company, because everyone seems to know a lot. And just like you were saying, Russ, it's, yeah, we get to do our own research. How many of that's actually applicable to when we're going through that sales process. So as builder number one, if you have someone approaching you who has done their research, they know a lot. How can you build trust with them? Well, you need to ask yourself the question of, okay, how can I add value to what they already know? They may Know a lot of things. How can I put it together for them? How can I actually enhance their experience? Because you don't just want to be like, okay, well, you know everything and you stop selling because they know it all. And you just like, okay, well, here's the next step. And it becomes an emotionless no. This is where we can level up in our sales game and actually go, okay, so this is what you do know. Walk me through. What do you know? What are you aware of? Okay, how can you add value to their experience and their knowledge and walk them through the rest of the journey?

What metrics are crucial for builders and what should they be paying attention to? If a builder says to you, I'm booked up for the next few months, I'm good, I don't have to worry about the sales process. What are you looking at?

Now you're talking, Bosco. This is what we love. This is what we do with our mentoring clients. We produce a KPI dashboard that they fill in. And some of the metrics that we study on that dashboard, or a lot of them, are the lead indicators, which all applies to the sales process. And a couple of key ones that we do look at is the marketing qualified leads. So these are the leads that are qualified in the sense of they are consumers looking to build as opposed to someone trying to sell you SEO services. So we look at the marketing qualified leads that become sales qualified leads, and we do that by qualifying them because that then reveals, are they in our area, are they looking to build the type of home that we specialize in building, et cetera, when they come out the other side of qualifying, they then become a sales qualified lead. And it's very important to measure that ratio because that tells you how well your marketing is performing. The next ratio we look at is the sales qualified lead progressing to a meeting or an opportunity, we call it. And again, by monitoring that number, especially as you take on more people or other people might take over the sales role, it's a very important number to measure or a percentage to measure because that will really reveal how good you are on the initial call. And then taking someone to a meeting because the first thing someone says when you like, how about we meet, we take it to the next stage. First thing they're going to say, yeah, give me a call next week, or I don't have my calendar, my diary and all that type of thing. You've got to be able to overcome those objections. And then the next ratio that we look at is the opportunity, which is the meeting what percentage of those go to concept, which is the design process, because at that point you're taking them out of the market. So again, this is going to reveal how, how good your offer is, how good your sales process is. The next one is the concept to prelim as a percentage, as a ratio, and then, of course, prelim to contract. Now, the interesting one is if you ask most builders what percentage of your prelims go to contract, they'll say one of two numbers, 100% or nearly all of them. That is the perception. But the reality is when you start logging the numbers, it's probably closer to around about 75% to maybe 80%, which is still way too high. The benchmark that we like to work on is 50%. And when you work on 50%, you are generating a lot more prelims than you you actually need to sign. So it really does change the relationship. It leaves you less dependent on each prelim that's, that's in your funnel. That last step, that prelim to contract, is a very important ratio to keep an eye on.

And if you think about what Russ has just said, what this does is it creates for the builder that the biggest problem he has in his life is too much work all of a sudden. The problem he has is if he is signing twice as many prelims as contracts that he needs, he's going to have to turn down 50% of the work. Or imagine this. Imagine if he brought in another team, trained them and stepped up to the next level. The point I'm trying to make here is this. When you start to measure the transition from each step to the next step and you actually have a process and that process has been optimized, you are now in a place where you can scale. Now, we're obviously, I'm re underlining what we always say. We will never scale a business that's not profitable. So the assumption here is that you've got your margins working correctly, all of that stuff is in place. But essentially, once you've got a sales process working, you are now in a situation where you can track that data. And that puts you in a place to literally be able to scale to the next level by simply rinse and repeating everything that you're already doing that's working.

You talked about builders and dashboards and having all these different ratios. Do you find a lot of builders don't have these metrics before they start working with you as well?

What do you reckon the ratio is, guys? Take a stab.

Well, it does vary to be Fair. We have had some very advanced builders come into our program, but it's very much an end. And you can probably speak a little bit more to this than me, but very. I don't use the word bootstrapped, but it's almost like because there's nothing out there that can give you this information, it's always self made. Everyone has their own version of a spreadsheet.

Yeah, I mean that's valid. And what I think we found in the mentoring program in particular, where we dig into this stuff is some of them have certain bits of it and then the rest of it's missing or they have some bits of it that they do well and other bits of it that they just hate doing and because of that they ignore them. It's one of those weird things where when we work with people generally we start on the assumption that we're starting from scratch. And the first step virtually every time with one of our private mentoring clients would be to say, capture what you are doing now because then we're able to actually pull that apart and see where it slots into each of those steps that Russ mentioned earlier.

What resources or technology do you recommend for builders looking to enhance their sales process straight up?

You don't have a sales process if you don't have a CRM system. So you need something to actually handle the sales side. So a CRM system is a customer relationship management system. It's essentially a database, but without oversimplifying it, a few key things that your database needs. Because you can track all of this in a spreadsheet, but you suddenly don't have any benefit of any automation. If you get a proper sales CRM system, you not only have your entire database of all of your opportunities, your current opportunities, your past opportunities and your current clients on there, so you can track referrals and cool stuff like that. It can all be segmented, but you can also have deal tracking so you can actually track current opportunities. You can get a lot more data from a proper CRM system, draw a lot of reports from it, so you can fill in dashboards with lead indicators like Russ and Andy were just talking about. But then you need the automation component. If someone reaches out to you in the middle of the night requesting, you know, a free download, maybe it was a request, a call, they want to book a meeting or something. You need a system to handle that. Professional builders get back to people instantly. So a CRM system allows you to do that. So if you're looking for some sort of system, a just make sure it's cloud based so that we are using modern technology. But B, do ensure whatever system you choose actually has autoresponders so that you can be emailing people automatically, instantly when they require something. It's literally a salesperson that will never go sick, go on holiday. They are there for you 24 7. So you need that kind of reliability in a sales process to go a layer deeper. That's just a technology side in terms of resources is you need this process written down and documented exactly what Andy said. You need scripts for each section. You need a process on how you're inputting data into the system, on how you're moving people forward. You need proper email templates that summarize each of those conversations. Because like Andy said, if you're dealing with the same kind of people building the same kind of homes, the conversations get kind of similar. You, you make it different and unique for who you're talking to. But, but when you summarize a conversation, you can have a very easy template for that where you get to customize it each time you send it. So technology and resources make your life easier.

I think it's one of the most highly discussed topics inside the APB members group on Facebook is CRMs. Which CRM should I be going for? Which CRM do you recommend? And I think on that topic, I think one thing that we would say to builders is look at how fast you're growing, look at the size you want to grow to and make sure you're investing in the system that will service that growth for the next three years at least. Because the last thing you want to be doing is changing systems midway through a fast paced growth.

The worst, especially if you're implementing everything else inside your building company, it's just agro that you don't need. And some people get very scared with a lot of, lot of systems, not, not even just software, but systems, right? Putting in place an entire sales process, scripts for each step and what to do to get from A to B to C. Because when we talk about a sales process, we've not unpacked this just yet, but when we talk about systemizing something as personal as sales and selling someone, they think that, you know, personality just disappears and goes out the window. And the people who don't want to follow a system in something like sales because it's unique to the person in front of them, they're the kind of people usually who don't want to be held accountable and even be held up to a benchmark. But here's the thing, you won't be able to measure anything if you don't have a system in place. So systems, templates, even structure, like, you know, routine sets you free. So really, if you can have a sales process in place that is your baseline, it's sort of like. Like when you have a sales process and all of your scripts and templates in place, think of them like highway guardrails. They keep you on track and you can keep moving forward. You can have a personality, you can have banter with your prospects, you can have a relationship with them, but you've got these highway guardrails up and you just keep moving forward based on this process you've got.

You talked about the members. How are you coaching the members, your current member base as well, to apply this effective sales process moving forward?

Well, we always talk about the fact that we want a system that has proven and predictable outcomes, because there is no point in following a system that's going to get you the wrong result. So, you know, I mean, we've kind of skimmed the surface of it here, but as Russ explained earlier, we know that there are six or seven very specific steps in sequence. And as sky mentioned a second ago, within each of those steps, you can customize them to your situation, your personality, your type of building. But that fundamental process, we know, if you do these seven things correctly, you will succeed. So that's part of it, is that we want to make sure that it's proven, it has predictable outcomes and it must be documented. We've said this a couple of times. It cannot be in your head because you know with the greatest intention in the world, if you get smacked by a bus tomorrow morning, that entire process just evaporated. Every builder should be looking to the future. And the future's got to be either growth and or sale of the business and or passing the business onto their next generations as a positive legacy. If you do not have systems in place that are documented, number one, you are the bottleneck. Number two, when you die, your business dies. Whether that's an actual physical death, whether that's you retiring, whether that's you getting burnt out, which is the other side of this, when you are reinventing the wheel every day, burnout is a very, very real thing very, very quickly. Whereas if you get to the place that you are able to almost do things unconsciously, once a process becomes ingrained and it becomes unconsciously competent, you are then in a place that you can literally be taking the time to really interact with your potential client, really be listening to their responses because you're no longer focused on what's the next thing I have to say. It has become the way that you do things and when it gets to that level, obviously that's where we want to go. So we, we make sure that it's properly documented and that it's followed by everybody that interacts with it. Skye's mentioned already, we want it to be cloud based. We want it to be accessible online so that every one of your team members and your clients can access it. And it's always one of those where do I start? And we always, our response is it doesn't really matter. Start where you find yourself today. You're going to have one of two things. Leads are coming from somewhere and contracts are getting signed or not. You can literally start at either end or as we often do with people, we started both ends and work back to the middle. But the point is you've got to start. You've actually literally got to work the steps out and then detail every one of those. If we were going to pick one, it would be depending on who you speak to qualification hugely important because it solves a whole bunch of problems. Problems. It doesn't just solve your beginning of your sales process, but if you time poor or any of those other things, it'll deal with that for you as well. But what we find in the private mentoring program is a lot of clients come to us with prospects already on the books, which means often what we do is we kind of start at the end and work backwards so we make sure that they get to deal with what's in front of them as professionally as possible and then fill in the middle once we've got the bookends in place, so to speak.

Insightful as always. Any final words of wisdom from any one of you?

I think what we should do here is add a link to the APB sales process for builders so that builders listening to this podcast can download the proven process that has worked so well for our members and they can see themselves how this process works.

We'll make that available in the show notes and it's also available on the website just to make it easy.

Well, Andy, Russ, Sky Pleasure, as always, thank you for being here and another really informative episode. I think we're all going to be changing our radio channels pretty soon.

Wiifu.

Cheers, guys.

Thanks, Bosco.

Cheers, Bosco.

Bye.

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