31. How To Qualify Your Leads On The First Call With Russ, Sky and Andy

This is Professional Builder Secrets, the number one podcast to help you grow your building company safely and securely. Brought to you by the association of Professional Builders. Join us every week as we talk to industry experts and your fellow professional builders on everything you need to know to generate more leads, more sales and 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. We have another exciting episode from the Professional Builder Secrets podcast. I'm joined today by co founders sky and Russ Stevens, as well as head coach Andy Scarter for the association of Professional Builders. Thanks for joining me today, everyone.

Hey there, Busco.

Hey, Busko.

Lovely to have you in here again. And my first question to start this conversation is around the sales process. Now, I'm really excited because I actually started my career in sales as a telemarketer selling timeshare in North America. And so this podcast episode really is going to take me back to my roots. Now, why is qualifying a lead so important and beneficial for home builders today?

Yeah, maybe you can draw on your experience and tell us on that one, Bosco. But for me, there was a great moment at the end of the film Wolf of Wall Street. Leonardo DiCaprio playing Jordan Belfort. He addresses a room full of business people and salespeople who paid to attend a seminar in New Zealand. And he goes around the room and he says, sell me this pen. And each person, they spew out a long list of features and benefits before getting cut off mid pitch by Jordan as he moves on to the next person. And then the camera just kind of pans out and the audience is left wondering, well, what was the correct way to sell a pen? And the answer was qualifying. Because what these guys should have asked is, how long have you been in the market for a pen? So I guess to answer your question as to why qualifying is so important for home builders, it's because unless someone wants or has a need for what you are selling, then you are really wasting your time. And for home builders, that's not a 10 minute conversation. That could be weeks of work preparing a quote for a consumer that either could not afford to build or maybe was using you as a price check. Or maybe they were just contacting six other builders looking for the lowest price. But this is why qualifying prospects is just so, so important for builders.

All right, so I've actually seen this movie and I enjoyed it thoroughly and it actually brought back a lot of memories as well. But it's an interesting thing that you bring about is, you know, asking the right question to determine if there's a demand, if there's a need and if you're even talking to the right person. But take me through the sales process for home builders specifically, because I'm assuming it's a bit different from everything else out there.

Totally, absolutely. And it has to be, because what we're selling, you know, let's compare it to a pen. Well, this is so much more expensive than a pen. So we need to understand that, I mean, in most cases when we are, you know, designing and building a custom home, this is a consumer's largest ever purchase or largest ever investment. So firstly, the sales process goes for a really, really, really, really long time in this industry. And the perfect sales process, it has to plug into an incredible marketing process. So without even covering marketing, let's just talk about basically from when that lead actually makes contact. Because they're going to come through from so many different channels. Literally it could come from social media, paid advertising, referrals, you know, partner networks that you have, signage, literally anything. So they're either going to make an inbound phone call to you or they're going to make an inquiry via your website. Maybe they start downloading things. Either way, whatever way they get in touch with you, they all need to be filtered into some sort of online CRM system, you know, a builder specific CRM system because that's your database. And at that point, that's when we need to start categorizing. You can't just have a whole page of leads in front of you. We need to know, okay, who's good for us to keep talking to, who's an actual opportunity, who's qualified versus who's not. So the perfect sales process really and truly does begin with the qualification and might I say disqualification of those leads so that we can even go any further. Because past that, if they are qualified, this is when we need to speed up and move through the sales process. We want to get them into meetings. We would love to meet with them. We would put them into concept design agreements, then preliminary building agreements before getting them into a building contract. But you cannot do any of that if you do not have the very start of the sales process, which is your qualification.

What are some of the biggest challenges that home builders face in today's changing world? I mean, obviously you're talking about systemizing a process, but what are some of the frontline challenges that they face.

You know, parking at Home Depot is a real big one. You know, it gets very, very busy at Home Depot on a. On a week. No, I'm joking.

Of course.

I'd say time more than anything else. I think virtually every one of the guys that comes into our private mentoring program is time poor, if not time desperate. So with what we're talking about here, what we're really doing is assuming, as sky has said, that you've got a marketing process of some sort that's delivering leads. You really want to be able to sort through them and get to the ones that are worth progressing as quickly as possible. And talking about qualification, that's really what this is doing. It's getting, if not getting rid of, if it's not going as far as disqualifying, it's at least qualifying and identifying those people that are ready to build, which is key because obviously you want to then focus your attention on those people. If there are other people that will build at some stage down the road, that's fine, but you can give them stuff to get going within the interim, and then you can focus on the ones that are actually potentially going to turn into a sale for you and ignore the other. So the real answer there is, I would say time above all else. And this qualification process above all else is going to save a builder ton.

I think the danger is we want everyone to be qualified, don't we? Especially when we're looking for sales. And this is where emotion comes into it. And if we don't have a process and a qualifying criteria, we tend to chat to a new prospect, we get excited and we just end up trying to put a square peg into a round hole. And there's a lot of time, I think we talk to guys and they say, I saw the warning signs, I knew I shouldn't have signed this guy up. And that's what qualification is all about. Takes the emotion out of the process, I think, and really helps us to follow a structured process and be disciplined.

And I think, Russ, just to kind of latch onto the back end of that, most builders don't like selling. Most builders, given the choice, if they didn't have to sell, they'd be the happiest people in the world. And what this does for them, giving them a process, takes it into a place where they can systematically work through a process. Rather than trying to be manipulative and in some cases cheesy and all the rest of it, it really turns it into a first do this, then do that, then do that, then do that, which is not cheesy, manipulative, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, that's right. Because what we're really saying is, well, hold on before we go any further, let's just see if we're going to be a good fit. Let's just see if I can help you with what it is. And yeah, like you say, it's not being salesy at all. At that point it's being helpful.

Yeah, and I was waiting to play that card, but you brought it out so early in this conversation. I think the key for most builders is to get rid of the word sales in their mind and replace it with help. I mean, if you think about what the sales process does, it effectively takes a potential home builder and helps them to get the best home possible for the money that they have available in the shortest time possible. We're talking about qualification. If that's the kind of people you are talking to, there's no sales gimmicks involved. It's literally helping people, as sky said, through a process that for them is probably very scary because of the amounts of money that we're talking about.

So is the barrier for liking sales, is it more mindset? Because you talked about the fact that most builders don't like to sell. Right. Is it a perception based thing that just makes them feel really uncomfortable? And I'm going to tagline this with another question too. I'm just curious how many people come into this coaching program with an operational sales playbook that says Andy or coach? Here's all my sales qualifying questions. Do they actually have this or do you end up finding that you have to build it for them?

No, I mean, in most cases when you talk to. I always say this to clients. Everybody has a sales process if they've ever sold anything. But generally it's not documented. If it's not documented, it's not repeatable. If it's not documented and repeatable, we can't test what's working and what's not in order to improve it. So everybody comes along with something that they have used to sell their business or whatever they do, whether it's remodeling or new homes, but it's not professionally constructed, sequenced and optimized. And that's really what we're talking about today.

All right, well, let's talk about the documentation process and let's get into the magic formula because what you're talking about is actually re engineering mindset, re engineering process to have A strong system out there. Let's start off with the home builders. When it comes to sales, when it comes to helping people, what is it that home builders are looking for first?

So you're talking about the actual builders themselves rather than the people building homes?

Yeah.

What they're actually looking for? Well, I think most of all they're looking for guidance for structure. Because when you don't have a process like Andy was describing, you don't have a documented process that you can follow, it's not repeatable. And a lot of people in business generally, not just builders, they're kind of just winging it, really. They know all about the inquiries on an ad hoc basis. And, you know, for a fair percentage of time that can work and up to a certain point that can work, but you can't scale and you can't grow by doing it ad hoc. At some point you're going to have to bring team members into those positions. And at that point you've got to have a structured, repeatable process. And I think that's what builders come looking for from the association of Professional Builders. They're looking for that structure, that step forward by step process. You know, what do I say? How do I establish, you know, if this person is a genuine inquiry or if maybe they're just putting their plans out to six or seven builders looking for the. The cheapest quote. So, yeah, that's what they come looking for from us.

And I think another one, what a lot of builders, if they're sold on the idea of, yes, systemizing it and qualifying and disqualifying. Another big point or big thing that professional builders are actually looking for is how can I get rid of the people I don't want to build for as professionally as possible, that it's not going to tarnish my company, my reputation. How can I do that? Can I do that? Probably is the first question. And yeah, they're looking for the process. The easiest way to do this, Let.

Them down easy sky, as you were saying that actually, I just realized that you're actually talking about managing risks. You're not just only qualifying leads for revenue generation, but you're also managing your risk. Because most builders probably also don't want to deal with that client from hell that's going to actually create problems for the business. So, you know, there's a lot of risk management if you do this properly as well.

Totally. And you have to think about everything. You have to think about your margins, like maybe you have the perfect clients in front of you, but as you're going through the sales process. Maybe like, for example, say you're doing a renovation, maybe it is like a new build, but they actually have neighbors either side of them and you have found out what those neighbors are like. You could disqualify some based on those neighbors. Even. So you are, yeah, you're, you're vetting a lot really. And the initial qualifying process needs to be very simple. Otherwise, you know, it does end up being like a few days worth of questions and everything. So you sort of, you're constantly qualifying throughout the sales process. But what we have really been talking about is those initial, what initial questions can you ask to really qualify and be like, yep, they qualify for us to do business with them on the surface, let's proceed through the rest of the process. But you know, anything can come up as you keep going. So you do a site visit and you're checking out that site and that's where you come across those neighbors. They're not adding points to or reasons as to why you should take on this project. Like you say, you're managing your own risk, your own margin, your own company.

I'm going to ask that opening question that's going to open this whole conversation into the actual qualifying side of things. But before I do that, tell me a little bit about some successful sales tips to have going into a qualifying call that builders can apply.

Well, we've used this word a couple times so far already, and a big one would be mindset. I mean, there are so many tips, but if we were to really simplify it, the first one I would say is mindset. And I think it's actually reversing it. Rather than having a mindset of can I qualify? These people have the mindset of how can I disqualify them? What is going to disqualify them? Can I look for reasons not to do business? Because really, as a professional builder, you should be having such an influx of leads into your building company. So you want to be looking for reasons not to do work with a lot of different leads, so you really can cherry pick the best ones. So I would say definitely flipping that mindset would be really important to look for reasons to disqualify based on all of your criteria, not trying to find anything, not to build for someone, but at its simplest form, that's a big one. Obviously following a script. So qualification, the way a proper qualification should work is qualifying questions. Typically they're closed questions, so you can either answer that like yes or no. And so really you're qualified or not. Quite simply where I think a lot of people go wrong on or trying to have a strong qualifying call is they're not asking qualifying questions, they're actually asking discovery questions. And these are really open ended, emotionally driven questions and or answers that really take us away from on the surface. Do they qualify for us to do business with them? We're trying to ask them, you know, all these really detailed questions but then, you know, after an hour and a half on the phone we find out the block of land is in a location that we don't service because it's way too far away from us and we actually waste our time. So yeah, it's having a structured script and a process to follow with a mindset of disqualifying them so you can get through the most important factors for someone being qualified to do business with you first. Then you can go on to a deeper dive, emotional discovery with that person.

I think as well. Where some people go wrong with the whole disqualifying part of the process is when they have their questions, they treat it as an insurance form without really listening to the answers. So they're kind of running down their checks, checklist and the person, it's not a great experience for the person on the other end of the phone. But yeah, the closed questions, yeah, not so much because that really is like sky says, it's about disqualifying people quickly so you don't waste your time. But as you then progress into the discovery questions, you've really got to listen and go deep on each one, not just move on to the next question. Because part of the whole qualification process is to build rapport. Yeah, that's really, really important. You know, we're trying to get to the point where they know like and trust us. So yeah, we don't want to lose sight of that either.

But I think even with the qualifying questions, right, as much as we're saying they're closed questions, you either are qualified or you're not. Like you say it sounds too scripted. If it's like, okay, yep, next, moving on. Like you're not personable so you're still trying to build that trust and rapport on the phone. So it takes that little bit of acting still.

So even if the build's going to be and you know, knowing the area and talking about schools, you know, these are great.

And you're talking about open ended questions too that actually require the customer to open up and give you a little bit more insight. It's not just a yes or no question or do you do a bit of both?

Well, that's the thing. So the qualifying questions have to be closed questions. The open ended ones are discovery. So that's a really good point to clarify. But it's exactly the perfect example is what Russ just said. You know, so where is the project? So say you're building new homes. If you have land, the question is, have you settled on your land, for example? That is not where we move on. If they say yes, I would ask those follow up questions. Tell me, where is it? How big's the block? Like, let's learn a little bit about it. They qualify in that they have land. Let's know where it is. I'm not going to wait an hour on the phone to then ask those questions. So you can sort of see that it's a closed question. They're either settled or they're not. But let's try and get the clarity behind those questions. That's the key. That's the kicker.

So we've got two sets of questions here. We've got the discovery side and the qualifying side as well. From what you're saying, that's great. Okay, so I'm going to open up the curtains now. I'm dying to ask this question. What are some of the best qualifying questions that home builders can ask on a first call? And maybe each of you give me one or throw me one that I'd love to hear from from each of you. But let's start off with anyone that wants to take a stab at this.

Well, let me kick it off and say to you that what will make a qualifying question a good qualifying question is it must answer one of your non negotiables. So let's use the example that Scar's already come up with where I do not build within 30km of Sydney. So if you phone me, no matter what advert you've seen, no matter what you're doing, if you phone me from Brisbane, you're the nicest person in the world, you've got $10 million to spend, your plans are amazing, but you're in Brisbane. There is no point in me spending 25 minutes getting into all of the emotion behind your home and your design and your da da da da da. So I'm going to start off by saying the general answer to this is going to be part of the reason why we can make these questions closed is we are really making sure that these people meet our non negotiable criteria before we invest that extra time in them. So in terms of giving you one as an actual question. I'm going to Piggyback and Steel Skies. In terms of where exactly do you want to build? That would be one of them that I would think would have to be there.

I'll give you one. What's your budget? Probably my least favorite one. The reason I want to bring this up is because of the way this, this particular question that is important to know is brought up and addressed. And generally it's brought up during the qualifying questions, the close question, and this is way too early, the budget question has to come right at the end. That's after you've gone through your qualifying questions and you've gone through discovery questions as well. And what that means is you are probably about an hour into a conversation with this person by the time you ask their budget. And a lot of guys will say to us, no way am I going to spend all that time with someone on the phone only to find out that they don't have the budget. But, but here's the problem. When you go in too early asking the budget, you're not going to get a truthful answer. No one has enough trust in you or even probably understands enough about their own project to give you a realistic budget. So what is the point in asking that question and potentially disqualifying people? It's absolutely meaningless. You have to use the structure that we lay out for builders in terms of getting through your clients closed questions first, moving on to the discovery. And only then at the end of discovery will you be in a position to get a truthful, honest budget. And even then, they will probably still need a bit of guidance, an approach we like to take because after an hour of chatting to someone about their project, a builder will have a very good understanding of where that project will most likely sit. And they could probably say, so are you looking to invest between 500 and 750 or maybe a bit more or a bit less? This, this allows the prospect to kind of self select and someone that's really not comfortable with how much they should be investing will feel a lot more comfortable self selecting. And if they say, oh, definitely less than that, then the builder then knows he's got a bit of education on his hands. There's no way you're going to get that project you've described for that kind of money. And anyone tells you they can build it for that, they're just going to be hitting you up with or they're going to be filling the contract with allowances. You're not going to get to the end of that project, paying that price.

That's a really good one. But it's a good example of what not to have as a qualifying question. So I'll throw a bone. I'll give another example of a potential qualifying question you should add and what we teach our builders at apv. A really important question would be, do you have designs drawn up? Because you want to know how deep they are into that sales process. And this is a real interesting one because this is exactly what Andy was talking about before. It polarizes people. You either do or you don't. And as a design and build building company, you only want to deal with prospects who don't have designs. So you can take that over from the beginning in the sales process. So quite frankly, if they already have designs, they are shopping around for a builder to do a quote and they will pick the cheapest price. So it's a really good way as a design and build company to disqualify people that aren't your ideal client. That's not who you're targeting in your marketing. You're trying to target people way earlier in the process.

So I thought of two questions. When I feel like a game show host right now because each of you threw me a question. So I had two questions and I'm curious if you would say this is a discovery question or qualifying question or it's the question not to ask. Okay. So the first question I have is, have you ever worked with the home builder before?

Love that one.

Yeah, we're all smiling. That's the thing. We're all sitting here smiling.

The reason why I asked that is because technically you want to know if you want to hold the customer's hand, if it's a new time customer, if they're going to be needy or, you know, they want that attention or if they know what to expect. Working with builders.

It's a bit more sinister than that.

Yeah, it is. You way too unjaded. We've all been in the trenches too long on this one. But you know, the, the follow up question would have to be if the answer was, yes, I have built before. Here comes the next bone. How was that experience exactly? Because what's going on there is. And it's a great question to ask because the reality out there is a lot of the people listening to this podcast will be abused by potential clients because their brother in law is going to build for them. That's already decided. But because we don't really trust our brother in law, what we're doing is talking to five other builders to see whether the price he gave us is valid or not. And you know what, I'm not saying to builders, don't throw your hat into that ring, but what I'm saying is know that that's what's going on. And the question you've just come up with allows the builder to ascertain whether this is a genuine inquiry or whether he's simply being used as a price checker and then he can decide, I'm prepared to go in and just give them a price if they've got a comparison or I'm not he can make. But it's a good question. As long as it doesn't stand on its own, it needs a bit of further development.

And because of that, that is what defines it as a discovery question. It's not a qualifying. Because the thing is, the original question you asked Bosco, like, have you built a home before? I think is what it was if they had, is that just like, no, I would never touch them. Or if they haven't, is it no, I would never touch them? No, that is an intel gathering question that we can do in a deep dive discovery. So that was a fun game.

The classic answer is yes. And how's that experience? Yeah, it was great. And is the builder quoting on this job? Yeah. Yes. Well, why are you talking to me?

Yeah, that's how you turned it into a qualifying question right there. Right, okay, I've got a, another one for you. This is, this is the one that could be sinister as well. It could be also opening up a can of worms, which is when are you looking to have your home built? Because sometimes we want to know about capacity as well and we talked about capacity in a previous interview as well on construction slots. So I'm just curious if that's a good question to ask. Like, when are you expecting your home to be built?

Yeah, a very good question. And you can ask it one of two ways. When would you like the project to start or when would you like the project to be finished by. Because if we've actually done our work and we've put together our construction slots and we've planned those things, we as a professional builder know exactly how many more jobs we can take on and when those will be starting down to the day. So bottom line is if somebody says, I need you to start in three weeks time and we know we don't have a construction slot available until November, we are going to say to them we're very sorry, we can't help You. And in most cases, the weird thing is, they'll wait.

And based on Andy's answer there, Bosco, what do you reckon now that question is qualifying or discovery?

Well, I mean, there's so many ways you can look at this, but you're basically asking the customer to wait if you're busy or you're asking the customer what their timeline is and if it matches what your capability of when you can deliver the project.

Exactly. So it's qualifying, isn't it? You either can hit that deadline or you can't. You either have capacity for them or you don't.

So I'm going to make a bold assumption from this. I'm assuming you guys have all of these questions somewhere, because in the time that I've known you, everything you do is systemized and articulated some way. Where can home builders find these questions?

We're not going to answer that question at the moment because that's a discovery question. Are we talking about qualification questions? No. I think if you're very nice to sky at the end of this podcast, she might flick you a link to something that'll help you with the exact questions that we use.

So you do have a qualifying list of questions?

Absolutely. And not just a list. We actually go as far as helping. We give builders a suggested script for each question. They can then customize that and all the rest of it. Just before we move off this, though, if anybody's looking for a kind of a rule of thumb on these things, I always draw the comparison with dating. Okay. You cannot ask questions that have to happen after roses, chocolates, dinner, and a clean motor car. You can't ask those before you've done all of that. So you've got to see qualification. As I'm washing the car, I'm making sure it's properly vacuumed, I've had a shower, I've got chocolates, I've got roses, I'm on time and I've booked the best restaurant in town. Those are your qualification questions. And if you get those right, well, then you might even be able to take the lady out to movies afterwards as well.

This is the time you're going to tell us that you're also a dating coach at this point, Andy, that sounds.

Like a great date.

I definitely am not. Don't take that advice from me at all. Definitely not.

Well, let's talk a little bit about the customers, because we've talked a little bit about what are home builders looking for. Right, but let's change the narrative now and go with the customer. Side of things. What are customers looking for today in a professional home building company?

Well, it depends to a large extent on the individual consumer because there are three things that drive a decision and they are quality, speed and price. So it generally always comes down to one of those things that's a real driver for a consumer in the market to build a new home. When we establish that quality is their main driver, it's typically someone that's building their third or fourth home. Quality then becomes paramount because it could be the final home they're looking to build. And for those guys, communication is generally key. It's very, very important, and that's because they've built before. They understand what happens in this industry. Once they sign the contract, communication generally becomes very poor. They're also looking for expertise because they're looking to build a quality home. They're looking for someone that has got a lot of experience in the industry and can make suggestions to them as well. So they're looking for a lot of guidance. They're looking for someone with a track record. On the other hand, when you establish someone that's driven by speed, these are typically the consumers that need to be in by Christmas because they got consumers, they got. Got family coming over from overseas, so they got out the home finished by Christmas. There tends to be a smaller percentage. But it is a very important factor to understand because for these people, the way we sell to them is by showing them a timeline and giving them guarantees as well on completion. And this is probably the easiest contract of all to win, I would say, because so, so few builders actually offer any kind of timeline or schedule as part of their proposal. So anyone that's really driven by a completion date, the builder that presents them with a timeline is easily going to outperform the other builders. And then finally we've got the. The guys that are driven by budget. And this tends to be the first home builders, the younger generation. Typically, for those guys, obviously what they're doing really are looking for is a fixed price. They don't want to see a lot of allowances in their contracts. So, you know, it's really important for a builder to ensure that when they're dealing with someone that's very budget focused, that they can get to a fixed price, which obviously is very, very tough in the current climate with supply chain issues, but also to go that one step further and provide options to reduce the price. Now, in the first instance with quality, we're putting on plenty of different options to upgrade, but we have to look at going the other direction with someone on budget and give them options to actually reduce their price.

So one of the foundational tips that I learned at a very young age was never start a call with discounting. And that was something that my coaches had always said to me, because you don't know what the price points are for a customer and you could potentially be watering down your rate. Now, obviously in this industry there's so many do's and don'ts. We've talked a lot about the do's. Let's get into the don'ts. What are some of the absolute crucial things that builders should avoid on a sales qualifying call today?

I think any call, whether it's qualifying, discovery, closing, anything, I think a big one is we should always avoid doing most of the talking, especially in qualification though, because that's the theme of this episode. The prospect should be doing most of the talking. I'm talking literally 80% of the talking on that phone call. You want to be able to get them to really open up. Now it's a qualification. So these aren't open ended questions as we've talked about, but it's the clarity is what we need. So, I mean, we're there to sort of keep the call on track and really guide the call to where we want it to go. But. But yeah, hands down, I think one of the biggest mistakes builders can ever make on the phone is doing most of the talking because, you know, they've called us so they've inquired with us and I'm just going to share all my knowledge, I'm going to talk like about what we've done and I think it sort of leads to the next point, which is they follow the prospect's lead because the prospect is the one qualifying the builder and they kick off the phone call by asking all of the questions. So they're like, you know, tell me a little about the homes you've built. What was this? I saw this project. How much did that cost? How long did that take? And so a big mistake is being on the back foot and not being able to regain control. And the only way we can ever regain any control in any sales conversation or phone call or whatever is by looking down at our notepad, seeing our plan and the information we needed to get for our qualifying questions and getting that call back on track. So it's not, I'm not saying you can never answer someone's question, but you're able to answer it, maybe clarify the question and then explain, explain why you need to clarify it. But in order to give you that information. Can I ask you a couple of questions first and get back on track, get back onto your plan. So take back control. I think probably the third thing that can see a lot of people, just people in general do wrong in sales and selling anything is ever, ever trying to rush a prospect. Because you're near the finish line, you're close. You can see that either because you just want to get them off the phone, they're not qualified at all and you just do it too quick and you can really burn, or you're really close to the finish line, you can sign them up, you can move them to the next step. Maybe you want to skip a step in the sales process because you get too excited. So rushing in any way is bad. You have to be able to go at the pace in which the prospect feels comfortable, not in which you feel comfortable.

And I would avoid finishing the call without a clear next step. That's a very common mistake. Don't leave it open ended. I'll call you next week. There has to be a very clear next step. And really that is a meeting. It's an agreement. Yeah, call me next week. What day, what time? Send them an appointment. You've got to keep the momentum up and you've got to stay in control of this opportunity.

It's interesting you say that to send them an appointment because sometimes people just say, call me next week to get off the phone call. Right. So the fact that you're actually asking for an appointment is a form of a digital sort of acceptance or sort of going, hey, I'm actually planting the seeds.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that really does allow you to see if this is a genuine opportunity because if someone squirms and point blank refuses to commit to an appointment, you don't agree to call them back. You leave it in their court to come back to you. You are a professional, you're in demand. And if they're not prepared to make an appointment because your time is valuable, you can't just keep calling in the hope you're going to connect. Your time is very, very valuable. If they can't commit to that, they're not right for you. Or maybe the timing isn't right and you leave it in their court. So you make that very, very clear that you're not going to be following up 100%.

It's like calling their bluff, isn't it? I could just go on for a whole episode on tips at this point. But you know, while we're on a roll, I think another Massive mistake, especially in qualifying and discovery early on, is not taking enough notes. We're very busy people. Like humans in general, we're too busy for life as it is. It's more hectic than it's ever been. So we cannot rely on our brains to remember everything. We quite simply just can't. You can barely remember what happened on the weekend when it gets to Tuesday. So we can't expect us or our team to remember 15 minute to an hour and 15 minute phone call with someone that's so much information coming through in that time. So detailed notes are important, but try and make it as easy for yourself as possible. Have a one sheet of paper in front of you that has all the qualifying questions you need to ask as triggers so that you don't need to worry about what to remember to ask. You just get to write down the answers and then clarify what they mean and literally scribble as you go. But then it sort of leads to another point, what's another big mistake? Being littered in paper all over your desk because you're never going to go look at those notes again. So it's actually having the discipline to transfer it, put it into your cells system, your CRM system, put it into that deal or opportunity you're working and take that information with you because we all know it helps in sales. You know, they couldn't book an appointment on Monday because their husband was going into hospital for a very routine procedure, but she booked on Tuesday. I would make a point in that phone call on Tuesday to ask how that appointment went on Monday. You know, like that is how we can go further in sales. So. So it's all about detailed notes.

Russ and sky, you guys have actually triggered something for me, going back to my roots and my memories here about, you know, getting commitment from people. One of the best questions that I actually loved asking people when I was on the phones was, when is the best time to reach out to you? And back in the day, mobiles were still coming into the market. So if someone actually was willing to give me their mobile phone or actually tell me a time that worked really well for them, I knew that they were serious.

They answered them as well, didn't they?

Yeah. So it was almost like, hey, look, I don't want to be chasing you. What's the best number to reach you and the best time to get you next week? Right. And I remember going back and going, that was such a powerful question because it actually told me psychologically what they were thinking or if they were avoiding me. In the first place. So, yeah, no, kudos to you. That's a really good memory here. All right, I'm going to wrap this up with a final question, and that is, how is the sales process evolving for the home building industry? Can any of you give us an industry snapshot?

Well, I think, Bosco, the important word in that question is process. The professional builder today is not winging it. He's not doing it by the seat of his pants. It is a process. As Russ has said, we've been focused pretty much on qualification today. But as he said, qualification must lead you to the next step. What is the next step? They need to decide that. And the format of that. Is it a phone call? Is it a zoom session? Is it a face to face meeting? Even staying with the qualification, as sky has said, you're going to let the conversation ebb and flow naturally. But there's certain minimum information that you must get in order to decide whether this person is qualified or not. The order in which those questions are asked is critically important because your life moves. So let's go back to the example you gave us earlier. At the beginning of the year, I've got one job on the go and I've got 11 slots available. When somebody wants me to start or finish is less important than when I'm having that same conversation in October and I have one slot left. Although the questions, the seven or eight questions will remain the same as the circumstances in my business change, I need to be flexible enough to reorder those questions into what is priority for me. And I think that this is probably the fundamental reason why we want this to be a process. The professional builder works out what is best for him, his team, his business, and then he looks for people that meet those criteria. He doesn't want to build for everybody. He knows he has a limited capacity and he also knows that anybody he builds for that is wrong is stopping him building for that ideal client. So the real thing here is the professional builder is literally working through a process. And what I'm seeing happen, which is wonderful to see, is the professional builder is moving himself further and further away from the start of the process. So he's evolving his qualification call script to the point that anybody in his organization can run a qualification call. If you phone his company and the receptionist picks up the phone, she can run the qualification call right there, as can the bookkeeper, as can the project manager, as can the estimator. It's that detailed, it's that clear. It's all worked out. It's all scripted, it's easy to run. And again, you asked me right at the beginning of this episode, what's the builder's biggest problem? In most cases, it's time. Literally every 15 minutes that he spends with somebody that he's not going to build for is 15 minutes wasted. So does that answer the question? Does that give you kind of an overview of where it maybe not where it's going generally, but certainly where we are taking builders in terms of the subject.

Absolutely. I mean, you're talking, what you're talking about is systemizing an entire process that used to be used loosely built. So the fact that there's essential points that anyone can do this would be amazing for anyone.

Absolutely.

Well, yet another riveting episode. I always enjoy these episodes. I'm just going to do a quick roundtable. Any final words of wisdom before we wrap it up?

I'll dive on in. Cause Andy did tease it before. We do actually give away a full checklist of seven qualifying questions every professional builder should be asking. So what those questions are, why they are those seven qualifying questions, and even some scripts of how to start that phone call, how to disqualify someone and get them off the phone. So we actually give that away and you can grab that completely free of charge. What we'll do is we'll put a link directly to it in the show notes for this episode.

Well, thank you so much everyone. This has been a very insightful interview process and I always like to say that every time I chat with you, my MBA in the construction industry just gets a bit more bigger and bigger and bigger. So thank you for the constant teachings and we really appreciate your time today.

Thanks Bosco.

Thanks Bosco.

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