48. How To Generate Leads To Fill Construction Slots With Rick Storlie

The biggest mistake you can make as a builder is you take on the wrong client. You can only start so many jobs a year. You better make sure you start the right kind of jobs for the right kind of clients and the right kind of margins. You need to stop doing what is not profitable. You want to create urgency. In order to do that, you want to use scarcity.

What's the one thing builders need to be aware of when it comes to growing an effective sales strategy?

The longer people have to wait, the more desirable you are.

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, 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. I'm joined today by Rick Storley, founder of Builder Lead Converter, based out of Minnesota. Rick, welcome and thanks for being here today.

Bosco, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

Well, Rick, let's start off with you telling us a little bit about yourself and what you specialize in.

Well, in a nutshell, we free up time for builders and remodelers so they can grow revenue and margins. And the market, of course, the housing market, the building market, the remodeling market has been flipped on its head since COVID where we went from essentially being shut down, in some cases, municipalities forced us to shut down or the market to shut off in March of 2020. And so we, we were scrambling like everyone else, going like, okay, how the heck do we sell homes or sell our remodeling projects? And of course, now that's morphed into, all of a sudden, everybody wanted a home, everybody wanted to redo their projects. And we ran into supply chain issues and labor shortages, and the list goes on and on. And so what we're really focused on today is that each of our clients has limited resources, and so that requires selectivity. And what I mean by that is, like, if you can only start so many jobs a year, you better make sure you start the right jobs for the right kind of clients and the right kind of margins, because otherwise the biggest mistake you, you make today is you take on the wrong Client, because it's not like you can go out and you can just reproduce that because, like, I don't have the labor or it's going to take me another six months to get Windows. And so all those things factor in. So you have to be really, really smart and nimble. And so we essentially do Bosco is we simply help our clients develop a large pool of opportunities that they can choose from. And then therefore, they can focus on the type of projects they want to do. They can focus on making sure they have the right revenue, the right profitability, and the right service area that they want to work in and be very, very smart with the limited resources they have available.

You talked a little bit about how the business came to life. How did it become so successful? Do you feel the demand just spiked, the need for what you do?

I had a client I was talking to recently, and he told me, he said, you worked in this business. I mean, like, you cut your teeth, you. You know what it's like to run a building company. And I think that what I bring to the table is, is that, yeah, I understand all of the challenges that builders deal with, and I'm very strategic. That's probably my biggest. You know, there's lots of things I'm not good at. I am very good at strategy, though. And so I understand the buyer mentality and what they're looking for in a builder relationship and then be able to provide those resources at the opportune time. So our clients, again, get those A lot of opportunities where the biggest compliment I can get from one of my clients is where he tells me, I tell people, no, I have enough opportunities where I could say, no, I don't want to do that job. Thank you, but we're not the right fit next. And they move on. And the reason they can do that is because they have the opportunity, they have something else waiting for them. You know, it's like when we don't have the opportunities, we take on the wrong clients, and that's where we get burned today. But my background is I started as a framer. I literally picked up garbage on the job site, you know, back in the. And worked my way up to where I was a GM of a custom home builder company, and then I would outsource myself as a sales manager the first 12 years of our company, you know, building that up. So the thing what I found though, as far as what we've come successful, is that I found one common denominator with a lot of builders is that builders are great at Building and remodeling homes, but they're not so good at client acquisition. Right? And that's the weak spot. And so I can come in and I can help them be as great at client acquisition as they are at fulfillment, you know, which is actually delivering the home or doing the project and then having that happy client.

You talked a little bit about client acquisition. Let's sort of differentiate between, you know, for our listeners out there, lead generation and client acquisition. You know, what does that mean for them and why is it so important as part of the process for growing a building company?

And that's a challenge today, right now, because leads are. It's not hard to generate leads. I mean, literally right now you can go into pretty much any neighborhood, you can put a sign up, especially if you're a remodeler, and you can say, hey, I do XYZ service. And you're going to have lots of people that are interested in getting your service. So lead generation is not hard to do. In certain markets it is, but today it's not. Client acquisition, on the other hand, is the lifeblood of really building a company today. So we already mentioned, like the biggest mistake you can make as a builder is you take on the wrong client, meaning you take on somebody that, you know, the red flags were there, but geez, it was a, you know, it was like, oh, I just couldn't resist. But all this. But all of a sudden then it keeps coming and coming and coming. So now you've got a headache for probably one to two years where you're dealing with the wrong client, your profits are going to suffer, it exhausts you emotionally, it's hard on your staff. It really. There's an opportunity cost with that as well. So taking on the wrong client is a huge problem. You want to get really good at saying no. When you see it's the wrong, the wrong opportunity, just politely say no and move on to the next. So the difference between lead generation and client acquisition is that the client acquisition allows the company to position itself for the types of projects that wants to produce the target service area and then most importantly, highly profitable clients. So client acquisition is simply a process that you build that it allows you to attract and convert the people that are the best fit for your company.

It's an interesting way of looking at it. I like the way you talk about having a choice and saying no as well. That's an important part of working with the right set of people. Where do builders struggle when it comes to lead generation and client acquisition? And the process of doing this.

So if you, if you just. Let's look at the building process. So I spent a lot of years when I was a gm, when I was sales manager, I always saw design. I did a lot of pre construction meetings and the amount of work that builders put into designing and estimating and doing your selections and building out your scope form and doing your purchase orders. I mean, it is just the planning process. It is so detailed and intricate and, and of course it has to be because of the way we do things. Okay, so we have to have the plan, we have to then go into get the permit and then we have to build it. And if we're not all on the same page, we get an undesirable result. You know, unhappy client, project is bad, margins are suffering, and we're going to have somebody that's going to hate us essentially for the rest of our building career. But if we do it right, it just sings along and our clients get done. At the end they go, I can't believe what you pulled off. And that was amazing. And somebody told me this once, Bosco, and it really is true, is that we're in an industry and it's really the only industry where we manufacture in front of our customer. I mean, think about it. You go buy a car, the car is assembled in an assembly warehouse far away from your eyes. The only thing you say is the final product. But when we're actually remodeling or building, we're doing it in front of the customer's eyes. And so they're critiquing everything that we do. So there's a tremendous amount of time and energy that's put into that process. But what I found is, is that from my experience, when it comes to the client acquisition process, is that there's really a lack of understanding from the builder as far as like what works and what doesn't, what is a waste of time and money. And I think what it leads to is really some apathy and then there's really no plan or process. And you sort of like throw darts. And the worst thing that happens is you don't do anything. You just rely on word of mouth or organic. And a lot of guys do that and they can build a little business that maybe will keep them alive for a while. But you're never going to scale anything. I mean, if you want to scale, you've got to treat it just the same way as you do when you build that house. It has to be an intricate plan. It has to work together. Seamlessly with the result at the end, which is again, you're attracting the right client, right area, right product, right scope of work where you're happy doing that work. And most importantly, it's a profitable project where you know, there's nothing better than actually hitting your margins and then having the client thank you. You know, when they, they hand you that check for hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars, and they thank you for handing you that check. And that's really the best part about it.

I'm sure you get this question quite a bit, especially with your line of work working with builders. But what does a healthy pipeline look like for a building company today?

So a pipeline, just to define it, I would define that as this is your database of people that have raised their hand at some point in time and expressed interest in working with you. So the way I would answer that question is, is that if you were unable to generate another lead, is that your pipeline would have 12 months, 12 or more months of profitable business baked into it. Meaning that you could take your company in another one to two years without having to generate any more leads and you would be okay. Now with that said, of course, to get that pipeline up, you have to be doing consistently generation. So the best pipelines are able to generate and convert leads every single month. You know, there's a lot, we're in a cyclical business. There's certain times of the year, oh, it's the holidays. Nobody does anything in the holidays. Now you can generate leads in the holidays for sure. You can fill your pipeline in the holidays. But I know something that that APB has talked about a lot, and I as well is slot selling. And what we really want to try to avoid in this business is where we want to get rid of the ebbs and flows or that roller coaster, I call it even flow, is that you're able to start and close a certain number of jobs every single month, regardless of what the market is or isn't doing. You're always going to generate more leads in the spring than you are around the holidays. That's just a fact. People think that way. But it doesn't mean that you have to get into, let's just say February and not start any jobs because you didn't have any leads in December. So a good healthy pipeline will generate opportunities all year long and that allows you to fill those production slots so that you can even flow your company and you can cash flow is predictable, you're profitable, you're not taking on bad opportunities.

So tell Me a little bit about the whole construction slot sort of concept. We talked a little bit about it in a previous episode, association of Professional Builders. But how does the building company really generate those leads to fill out those construction slots?

When you're selling, you're really always looking for two angles. One is that you want to create urgency and in order to do that you want to use scarcity. It doesn't work in every market, but let's just look at today's market. So there's a lot of opportunity out there, but there's a lot of the wrong opportunity too. So the first thing we want to do is we want to build a client acquisition pipeline where we generate the right type of clients for what we're trying to do. So as a builder, what we do is we say, okay, this is the resources I have available to me. So this could be trades, this could be your own internal employees or subcontractors which you have available to you. Being able to get supplies. Windows, you know, are such a challenge right now. So you know that if you're going to be building homes that a lot of times window lead times right now are six or more months to get windows. So you have a finite amount of opportunities available to you in any 12 month calendar basis. So what a builder does is they look at all the opportunities available to them and then they put together a realistic slot schedule based on production. How many homes can I start and how many homes can I complete or remodeling projects in any one month? So let's just use simple math and let's just say it's four per month. Okay, so I've got roughly 48 per year that I can start and complete. So then we work backwards from there and we say, okay, now I need to generate enough opportunities, enough clients to be able to fill four and really more probably more like five or six of those slots because we have to factor in cancellation rate. So for every 10 jobs I sell, I'll probably lose one. You know, typically 90% is about as good as it's going to get. You'll never get 100%. People do fall out of bed for various reasons. So you really what you're saying, okay, I have four slots every month I need to generate five opportunities. And so that's that backlog that you're going to build up so to fill those slots. And the interesting thing about this Bosco, is that the longer people have to wait, the more desirable you are. I don't know what it is. It's kind of like everyone wanted to date the prom queen, right? You know, in high school it's like, oh, okay, well she's the queen, so I guess she's the most desirable. So you know, we have a lot of people waiting for her. So as a builder, when you are able to speak with your prospective client early on and say, well, right now we are starting jobs, let's say, you know, right now it's may say we're starting jobs in November, we're six months out. To most builders, they would say, oh, I don't want to say that because I'm going to lose the job. But what happens is it's like reverse psychology kicks in. They think like, well, everybody wants to work with you, so therefore I do too. And so by being able to say that you have a backlog and you can't start because you're only starting four projects per month, people are drawn to you. And so really what it comes down to is, is that I need to build a client acquisition pipeline, that I need to produce five or six opportunities every single month for four slots. And the reason I do five or six is because one cancels. Okay, I have a backup. Let's say somebody gets delayed, they don't get design done, I have to push them out. Okay, Now I want to slide someone in to that. So I already always am working with more opportunities than I can deliver. And that is the idea behind slot selling is that I create urgency with my clientele through scarcity. I create an exclusive environment that's good for me and ultimately it's good for the buyer too, because it allows you to make sure that I can go through all my processes to make sure the project or the home is produced the way it should be produced. I'm not cutting corners when it comes to, when I get to the end of the project, I gotta go through all my punch lists, my walkthroughs, making sure my back order items are in, try to get as minimal escrow work in there as possible, and it's a win win for everybody. But ironically, I have a client right now that's just telling me, he says I'm 12 months out and we're actively pushing client acquisition for him. And you know what he's telling people? I'm not starting that job until 2023, you know, until right now. And people still want to come in and meet with him and they still want to talk to him and they still want to sign contracts and they're willing to wait.

So what does an effective sales process look like to complement these lead generation activities and to further complement the client acquisition side of things. Is it so different from other sales processes in other industries?

Well, I don't think so. I don't think so in other industries. But I do think that we are unique in building a home in that there's really three primary factors that we always look at when it comes to sales process. I would say the first thing that we do wrong, let's start with that, is we don't specialize. We promote ourselves as generalists. Okay, so I am a remodeler. I am a home builder. Okay, great. I need to have the service door on my garage repaired. Will you come remodel that for me? Sure. Okay, I'll do that. Well, no, that's not what you do. You need to specialize and you really need to focus on what you do well, where you want to do it. And then as far as when I say the scope of the project, I can spend $25,000 remodeling the kitchen, or maybe I could spend $250,000 remodeling the kitchen. So what sort of fit and finish level or project scope do you want to work in? Because some remodelers really like to get into the high end stuff. And home builders too. Very, very custom. And some are like, ah, you know what, we're not made for that. You know, we want to stay more in this area. So you need to understand where is that sweet spot for you. Mistake number one is you don't specialize enough. Mistake number two is you let marketing dictate sales. You know, marketing is typically looked at as okay, is okay, bring me opportunities. I'm going to put something out there and try to get something back in the form of opportunities. But that's not what marketing is. That's more lead generation. Marketing is getting out there. What is the value of your service? And in order to really hit the right target market, I have to make sure that my service is, is tailored to appeal to that target market. So sales dictates marketing. And let me give you an example of what that looks like. The builder targets the projects. So they say, okay, I want to build kitchens or I want to build custom ranch, one level homes. Whatever it is they define. Here's the service area that I want to target because that's another huge mistake in this business is that we get too big of a service area. We spend too much time behind the windshield and it costs us up opportunities. We need to make sure we're working in a service Area that is realistic to wherever our home base is and where our trades are coming from. And then they also want to figure out that project scope, like I mentioned. Are we trying to target $25,000 kitchens or $250,000 kitchens or something in between? So the marketing plan is built around that, and then you update it quarterly because you pivot for the realities of your local market. Every market is unique and different. But I talked to a remodeler about this the other day, and we were discussing this very thing, and I said, you have it backwards. I said, what does sales say? Hey, this is where we're really good. This is where we compete well, this is what we're known for. Okay, so let's market around that and let's bring in more projects like that. Because then what I do is I create a raving fan club. You know, I have a thousand people that are following me for this type of projects that we specialize in in these areas. And now we're a specialist, you know, and a specialist always gets paid more than a generalist. Tell me a little bit about the.

Blind spots for builders today when it comes to lead generation. I'm sure that all builders must have a few things that sort of commonly align when it comes to those entities of blind spots.

Yeah. So blind spots. The biggest blind spot today is simply an over reliance on the market to deliver leads. That's the biggest blind spot. There's a quote out there is that prosperity conceals your genius and adversity reveals it. And we have a lot of genius being concealed right now because people are calling and emailing, and there's strong demand in most markets, not all, but in most markets. So I would say the biggest blind spot today is really over relying on the market to deliver leads. Now we're going into well into year two now of where we haven't had to do a whole lot to get leads. Yeah, it's a challenge to get projects done. It's a challenge to hold our margins. But as far as, like, bringing business in the door, a lot of people are busy. And when they're busy, they simply work in the business. They don't work on the business. So we stop pushing the pedal down to improve processes. You know, again, I have certain clients that I don't have to push them. They're just always pushing. Like the guy mentioned that said he's a year out. He said, I can look at this two ways. One is I've got a year's worth of work, cut my ads, you know, Stop running this. And the other way to look at it is I've only got a year's worth of work, right? You know, so I need to keep my foot on the pedal and I need to try new things. And he made a really interesting comment to me. And he said sort of like 2008 hit. This is obviously going back a few years when the recession hit and the market crashed. He goes, we learned right away, we don't know how to market. We don't know how to market. And so then we just started trying everything. And he goes, now we've refined our process and we have it down. We know who our clientele is. And he told me the other day is that when we book an appointment for him to tee up a client, he says, rick, I know I'm going to sell that client before I ever talk to him, because I have so much information on him, I know it's the right client, or if it's not, before I ever talked to him, it's like, well, that's kind of the epitome. And by the way, his. He's marking up his jobs 56.9% for a design builder, modeler, which is off the charts. And he doesn't do anything under 100 grand, you know, so. Incredible. Yeah, he's. He's really. But he's worked at it and worked at it and worked at it and worked at it. I wish I could take all the credit for it. I can't. Again, what do I do? I just keep opportunities in front of him and he just continues to push the pedal.

So what are some of those lead conversion tactics, you know, organic lead conversion tactics that you need to factor into the sales process to acquire those clients?

I think the biggest one, Bosco, is that you've got to get people before they're ready. And what I mean by that is, like, usually it's. If you're dealing with a married couple, it's Mrs. Buyer decides, yeah, I don't like my house. So she decides, do we want to move or do we want to remodel? But there's a process that you go through of where you don't like your house because there's certain things in your lifestyle you're missing. So whether that's day to day living, whether that's entertaining, whatever it is, there's just something they don't like. And so now they start to go into the process of, okay, what if we remodeled our kitchen or we did an addition or we did this? How much would that cost? And so they start just getting out there and starting looking around. So you got to find them when they're in that spot, before they developed in relationships, before they've met other builders, any of your competitors. And you've got to really position yourself is you've got to be the local expert. And so you find what are the resources that she's looking for. And then this is called, from a marketing standpoint, it's called an opt in or permission based relationship. Right. So it's permission based marketing. Essentially what she's saying is, oh, you have something I want. What I will do is I will give you my contact information and the permission to start a relationship with you if you will give me that resource. Because this is what I'm looking for. I need this and we'll talk a little bit more about this. But that usually falls into one of three categories. So if you just provide the right resources, position yourself as a local expert, educating people, and you have to be able to be a specialist to do this, then people will find you, they'll start that relationship and it might be months, sometimes even years, but when they're ready to go, they see value in what you're doing, they've already developed a relationship and they trust you. You're going to get that job.

Talk to me a little bit about some of these trends that you're seeing around the lead generation process. Is most of this acquisition and lead generation process online today is a digital advertising that's predominant when it comes to the current trends.

Well, digital advertising, so let's just define that as paid, I'm writing an ad and I'm paying dollars for it. There's other ways to advertise yourself digitally, organically, right? My website, my social media presence, I can also be on other websites, you know, as far as association websites, maybe some of my supplier websites. So I can get, I can get known that way too. But I would say the difference between generating a lead versus client acquisition. So generating a lead is simply, okay, here's my phone number, call me or here's a contact form, fill it out. What I'm missing there is I'm missing that person that is just researching and not ready to talk yet. They're still thinking about it, they're still just wondering, is this something I want to do? And they're trying to fill in the blanks. And so with a client acquisition process, the first thing we do is that we recognize we're after people that are not ready and willing, but they are maybe able to do the project. And so what we're going to do is we're going to fill in the blanks to help them become ready, willing and able. So the first thing we want to do is we're going to, we got to provide the resources. So that's a big current trend, is that we have to be an expert, we have to be an educator, we have to provide resources, we have to segment that our list, our database. In other words, a lot of builders just, you know, it's like a lot of them don't even have a CRM. And CRMs are not super important. But it's a database is even if it's an Excel spreadsheet, they just sort of have people on pieces of paper here or some people are over there and some people over here. But you got to have a centralized database and then once you have that database, you have to segment it. And segment it means I segment it by however I want to. So if you're doing, you can segment it by project type, you can segment it by location, you can segment it by budget, you could segment by timing. There's endless ways you can segment it. Number two, as far as a current trend is really the trend away from email marketing and the trend towards SMS or text messaging marketing. We know email marketing inboxes continue to falter more and more. Email ends up in spam, doesn't get read, text messages open rate is roughly 100% after an hour and it gets read. So text messaging is really the way to go today to make an impact and actually work with your database. Get those people to raise their hands, the ones that are ready to go. Auto booking appointments is another one. There's so much wasted energy happening today, Bosco, where people are just doing that old school where lead comes in, review the lead, wait till I have a minute to call them back, call them back, leave a voicemail. Okay, lead calls me back the next day, I'm in a busy meeting and I go this back and forth. I call it the chase. There's all this chase going back and forth. Well, the meantime, that person has reached out to two of your competitors. What if they got a hold of them right away? Now they're already developing that relationship and before you know it they're like, oh, you know what, I'm really happy with Bosco. Rick, thanks for the opportunity, but you know, we're good, we're good over here. So you've got to be able to really auto book appointments, get them on your calendar as soon as possible and then you need to get them on the phone and verify if they're a viable lead. But a couple of other things. As far as trends going on today, Google, my business chat is a big one. Google, my business for local businesses is huge. There's a chat function involved there. Now, there's also some different lead opportunities you can do from a pay per click standpoint on Google. But one of the simplest things that we found that actually works really well is simply just retargeting on Facebook. You know, somebody visits your website or happens to visit a landing page for on a Google Ad, and you just retarget them on Facebook. It works really well and it's cheap.

Yeah, that makes sense. And at the end of the day, we're living in a world right now where you can amplify so much when it comes to advertising and get more exposure that way too. Here's a tough question, and you can either give it to me in a dollar value or in a percentage value, but what budgets should a building company factor for lead generation? So if they're getting X amount of income, how much of percentage should they take and reinvest into lead generation today?

Well, it's a loaded question and I have to preface it with it depends, number one. It depends on a couple of things. So let's start with home builders and then let's talk about remodelers. So home builders, the first thing it depends on is are you building model homes? Do you have a model home? Because that is your number one lead generation tool. And really it's a marketing tool because you're able to showcase what you're capable of doing. So a model home, and a lot of builders, they don't take the cost of the model home and put it into their marketing budget. So I would say if you are a home builder and you have a model home, you should be using roughly about 1% of your gross annual revenue for a marketing budget. Now, if you're a remodeler and, or you're a custom home builder that does not have a model home, probably closer to 2% of gross annual revenue, Custom builders might be closer to one and a half, you know, because a design build remodeler, if you're doing, you know, five, seven million dollars a year, that's a pretty good size remodeler. So you.2% of that. Okay, I've got $140,000, you know, going out the door in marketing budget. That's a good way to look at it. If you get above 2%, then what I would say is you need to really look at where you're allocating your dollars and take a closer look at you're getting return on your investment.

Wow. What are some of the most common mistakes that builders make when it comes to digital leads? You talked a lot about where to acquire some of these leads online with the trends. But what are some of the things that you got to look out for?

Number one is no strategy. Again, I go back to the building process. The building process is so strategic and it has to fall into place and there's a flow for it and it's highly detailed and it's like if you break that, you're going to have a problem. So it's like inevitably something happens on the job site that goes wrong. You can go back and look and say we didn't follow the process and this is the result of it. So there's no overall strategy for client acquisition. Number two is there's no organic lead magnets. And so a lead magnet is just an offer that you would give on your organic platform. So your social media and your website and that offer is going to be based on what is your target market interested in? You know, as I mentioned before is like hit them before they're ready to call. So if you go on most builders websites, you can fill out a form or you can call a phone number. That's it. There's nothing else. What we have developed over years painstakingly is we developed lead magnets galore. And these lead magnets we know they're a way to start that opt in permission based relationship where we have that exchange that yes, you can start a relationship with me, you can follow up with me in exchange for something. So we will give them some sort of a resource that they're after. And then once we have that resource together, we use list segmentation, which meaning is we'll just say it will categorize that lead by a certain segment. Let's say. So as an example, we'll say here's a lead that wants to get a budget put together for their project. So all of our follow up is based on them getting a budget. And our call to action is simply this is what you're looking at. And the next step for you to do is to schedule a call with one of our new home advisors or remodeling advisors and they'll help you narrow that down. So we give them just enough to get their interest, but if they want more, then they have to take that, that next step. So having organic lead magnets Or a lack of them is a common mistake. The database is underutilized. And this is usually what happens. Bosco is like, oh, I got a lead. I call them back, okay, they didn't return my phone call. So then two days later, I shoot them an email. They didn't reply to my email. Next, we have no idea. Maybe they went on vacation, maybe they got busy at work, maybe there was a family emergency. But the database is underutilized. So they have this database full of people that have already raised their hands that already said, I'm interested and maybe even give them some information. And so we do something called database reactivation. So we'll just go back in and we'll try to make sure. Let's get as much business out of that database before we ever spend a cent on ads. Because we also know that organic leads convert so much better than paid ads. It doesn't matter what the platform is for paid, they never convert as well as organic. Never.

Yeah, it's interesting you say that because I recently went to a display home and I walked in, looked at this display home, got greeted by someone, and as I walked out, I picked up a brochure, went to the website, looked at the pricing. There was no retargeting, there was no emailing, there was nothing. That basically was a touch point. And while I probably fit the profile of someone that potentially could be a lead for them, there really wasn't any engagement online or even a follow up. So it sounds like there's a lot of companies out there that organically don't do much to attract the clients or.

That'S what you experienced is very normal. Yeah, very, very normal. So time to respond was my next one, which you just kind of hit. It's like even if you do put your name in there, it takes hours, days. I mean, response rates should be under five minutes. And you can't do that manually. You have to automate part of this process. And the number of times you respond, I see builders giving up way too early. Or they say, oh, I don't want to bother somebody. It's like, no, they came to you and they raised their hand. You gave them something, they gave you permission to follow up with them. So somebody tells you to stop following up with them or unsubscribes from your email. I said, that's great news. You just figured out that somebody. You don't have to chase anymore, go to the next one. And that's why we have those things in place. And then the last one, I would say in here is, is is utilizing all available communication channels. And by that I mean we're texting, we're emailing, we're calling and we're using voicemails, you know, voicemail drops. So we can get into social media and things too from that. But just those three. I see an over relian on email, not enough texting and then I see people that where they're calling and not leaving voicemails either. So you know, email's easy and everyone wants to send an email but it's probably the least effective of all the follow up methods.

What does the future of lead generation, you know, sales and marketing for building companies look like? You know, what do you anticipate is.

Going to change the landscape moving forward, speed through systems. So if you're familiar with co construct and build a trend, they came on the market and you've got all these guys out there that are doing manual estimates. They have no scheduling built in, they have no client communication platform and it's just a mess. You got these people that are building these custom homes and the experience is horrible. And essentially the industry for the most part had a really bad name. So you get a couple of guys that go through this process and they're software engineers and they say, you know, there's got to be a better way to do this, right? So they build co construct and they build builder trend and now pretty much every builder is using that software or a variation of it. So what it has done is now completely change the way I provide estimates, it streamlined that, it's allowed me to scheduling, it's allowed me to have client communication with my trades, with my customers. They have an app, they have a login, they have a portal. We actually have a schedule that we're working off of and something that we're, we're sticking to, we're all working together, revolutionized the fulfillment process of going from contract to completion. So on the front end what we are doing is trying to do a co construct and buildertrend did the fulfillment process we're trying to do on the front end process, have such a good experience that we can very quickly get that lead to see the value in what you're offering, build that trust in that relationship. And this is the thing Bosco, that I remind builders of all the time, is that you're not being compared to your competitor. So when that prospective client reaches out to you and two of your competitors, you're not being compared to your competitor, you're being compared to their favorite place to do business. So that could be a clothing store, it could be their local coffee shop, it could be their grocery store, it could be their auto dealer. But wherever their favorite places do business, because of the customer experience that they get, the way they're taken care of and followed up with, the way that they feel like their needs are being, you know, are being met and exceeded, that's what you're being compared to. So we just want to go above and beyond every everything else by covering all of our basis and making sure that we can very quickly determine if this is the right fit and either say next or move them into our pipeline. So speed, definitely speed through systems is where I see the future.

It's interesting you say that. We actually had Dan Houghton for Build a Trend actually on our podcast episode as well a few seasons back. And yeah, it was an insightful interview about how technology and systemization is changing rapidly and it's moving a lot quicker than build is anticipated. So what should be building companies be focusing on when it comes to growth as well? We talk a little bit about marketing and sales and everything else, but when we talk about growth, you know, long term, how do they sustain themselves moving forward?

It's counterintuitive, but it's specialization. You need to stop doing what is not profitable, which you don't enjoy doing what you're not good at. And you need to specialize on those things that you are that are profitable, you do enjoy doing and you are good at. So less is more when it comes to growth. So it's completely counterintuitive. But if you have a menu item of 10 services, you do, and you're really good and profitable at four of them, 60 to go. I remember when we were building homes, we had, I think at one point we had like almost 60 floor plans we were offering. And we did an analysis once, like, what are we selling? What are we making money at? And we figured out we were selling like 13 out of 60 floor plans. So it's like we were spending all this time and energy maintaining pricing and design on 47 floor plans we weren't selling. And so what do we do? Get rid of them. You know, we'll get rid of those. We'll take the 13 that are selling, we'll do some tweaks to them, maybe do a couple extra elevations. And that's where our bread and butter was, you know, so stop trying to be all things to all people and just focus on what you're good at and also what people appreciate. You target those people that want to Work with a builder like you.

So I could talk to you about sales all day long. Rick, it's been a very insightful interview, but, you know, I'm going to ask you my final question, and this is around one of your key strengths. You talked about the fact that you do strategy really well at the start of this interview. So holistically, if we tie this whole entity of building an effective sales strategy, what's the one thing builders need to be aware of when it comes to growing an effective sales strategy?

I think the first thing you have to do is you have to forget everything you think you know. And give me an example of that. Prior To March of 2020, it was pretty much business as usual. And, you know, it's just like, yeah, you would have a little bit of innovation here and there, but it was still pretty much business as you knew it. I remember in, like, July of 2020, talking to a client and they told me, we just sold a $1.2 million custom home where we never met the buyers. I mean, everything was done on Zoom. I mean, the pandemic and the lockdowns and the need for innovation was hit so hard and so fast. And not just, of course, in our industry, but every industry. Now, I. My kids need to go to the doctor. Half the time it's a telehealth call, right? I can just call that I'm on Google Meets or something with them. I don't have to go in. Everything has changed and it's gone so fast. So I think the first thing you do is you need to forget everything you think you know, and you need to really be open, have your eyes open to what the market expects today as far as speed through process, speed through systems, and also what's no longer going to cut it again. What hasn't changed, Bosco, is the way people shop. And people still shop by process of exclusion. If they're going to consider a builder. What they're trying to do is they're trying to cross you off the list. So if you make it on the list, their first goal is to cross you off the list. So you have to differentiate yourself by how you treat that prospective client from the very first time they make contact with you. You've got to be differentiating yourself and doing things that your other clients are not doing. Like I said, you're trying to emulate their favorite place to do business. The second thing is we have to use case studies to build confidence. And this is an industry that is so visual. I mean, what do we do we build these beautiful homes, we remodel these beautiful kitchens. I mean, we take something that is just this ugly duck home and we put this beautiful portrait across it with our. With our renovation. That is a case study. But what builders don't do is they just. They just like, oh, it's done. Okay, next. And it's like you just have a story there of someone that came to you and said, here's my problem. This is what we can't do. We can't visualize what we want to build. And you came in with the expertise and the know how. You worked within their budget. You designed this beautiful new part of their home. They're thrilled with it. That is a case study that you need to capture, and you need to get that on your social media, on your website, because that is a confidence builder. Your next lead that says, oh, our kitchen looks like that. And you know what? Those guys live in our community, and if they can do it for them, they can do it for us. I think the other thing is the thinking long term is that your best leads aren't ready to talk right now. This is still a long sales cycle process. And as much as we would like that lead to call us up today, that's ready to start tomorrow, we, more often than not, that lead is already in bed with somebody else, and they're just using us to try to justify going with that person. So we got to get our minds off of, I want someone ready, will, and able, and I want someone who's able to do a project but not ready and willing. And then I develop that relationship and that value and that trust over time. And then I'd say the last thing is, as far as building an effective sales strategy is that you've got to have three paths. If you're a home builder, three paths for model, it's really two paths. But number one is you got to show people the path of what they can build, what they can design, because they can't visualize. Number two is you got to give them some idea of how much it's going to cost before they have a conversation with you. That's a huge one they want to figure out because they don't want to embarrass themselves and figure out, well, I want to do this, but my budget is this. And then for you to tell them that, oh, no, I'm sorry, we can't help you. You know, you're crazy. You can't do it. You can't do it for that. So you've got to sort of work them through that. And there's different ways to do that. And then finally, if you're a home builder, yeah, it's location is, you know, help them find where they can build their home or offer FE on their lot. But those are the three paths that you want to build an effective sales strategy. You work everything through one of three of those paths and you will be successful.

Well, that was very insightful, Rick, and a pleasure to have you here as well. Thank you so much for your time today.

Awesome. Thanks Bosco. Appreciate you having me on.

Cheers.

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