Jen
If you could only see us now, we are dancing because it is Thanksgiving week and we're just, you know, we're just talking about Thanksgiving. Melissa, this is your first Thanksgiving where your son has been away at college. How are you feeling about this? Is he coming home? What are you looking forward to?
Melissa Fort
Yes, that is like personal. That's my personal most thankful thing is spending time with family. We're going to have 27 people at our family Thanksgiving, so it is going to be huge, but only one of those. I mean, they all matter. The one that matters the most though is the kid coming home from college, so I'm so excited.
Jen
Wow, 27, are you hosting at your house?
Melissa Fort
No, my aunt's hosting, I'm co-hosting with her. So I'm the party planner, but not the party hoster, thankfully. That's a lot of people.
Jen
And I know you're not doing the cooking, because you've said you don't do the cooking. Your hubby does the cooking. So is he responsible for cooking some of the stuff?
Melissa Fort
He's smoking a turkey. I think my uncle is deep frying a turkey. We're gonna have like every version of turkey, ham. Somebody's bringing gumbo, which is not traditional, but hey, if you're gonna feed 27 people, whatever you bring, the more the merrier. So it should be fun. I'm excited. I am doing some desserts. So baking some cheesecakes and I do like to bake. So I got a dessert, baby. I mean, I can, I can, so.
Jen
Nice.
Okay.
Jen
So you're a cheesecake baker?
Melissa Fort
It was a special request for some people. So I'm doing like a regular one and a Nutella cheesecake. So everything's better with Nutella.
Jen
Okay.
Jen
Cool, that's exciting. I am excited too. Both of my children will be home in the same house this week. So I just cannot wait. Although Amanda Martin lovingly reminded me, she was like, yeah, that means everybody's gonna be using the toilets in your house. And I recently like, side note, I had some plumbing issues that...
Melissa Fort
you
Jen
I didn't know we're there because half of my house is being, you know, not used because we're empty nesters now. And I think I've got it all fixed, but stay tuned. the toilets and the showers will all be in use. So maybe it's time to buy a new home. I don't know.
Melissa Fort
Well, Amanda's going to be chasing a new puppy on Thanksgiving, so she'll be busy over there.
Jen
Yes, that's true. Do you have any family traditions that you do at Thanksgiving?
Melissa Fort
no, actually like this is one of the first years we've lived close enough to do like we've been able to come back a few times and do the big family one. So I'm just excited to live local and be close and spend time. We're definitely a more casual family. So hopefully the weather cooperates because outdoors is where we like to be. What about you?
Jen
Well, yes, so we host at our house and we have, I think, 23 people coming this year. And I'm just praying that it's nice enough that people could be outside. I think we're gonna set up a projector where we can put football on outside. And so some people will be outside, hopefully. I'm praying that it all works out. Last year it rained and that was...
Melissa Fort
Well.
Melissa Fort
That's a good idea.
Jen
very tough, so.
Melissa Fort
Yeah, that's our biggest concern.
Jen
All right, well, we've got some fun things planned to talk about. Let's get into it. Welcome to episode 50. It's 50.
Melissa Fort
Whoa, that's awesome. It's like the golden one. That's great. How exciting.
Jen
Yes, with me today is online sales coach extraordinaire Melissa Fort. And we are excited to talk to about some stuff today we have planned. But first we have some housekeeping to get through. So Melissa, we have our online sales academy coming up to start the year off fresh, right? The end of January. January 28th, yes, kicks off for three virtual half days together.
Melissa Fort
January 28th, right? That one kicks off.
Jen
It's an eight week program. So if you're new to the role or need a refresher, definitely check that out. We are excited to host you for that. We also have an online sales Academy leadership edition, which I am super excited, Melissa, because we are going to kick that off in person. In sunny Orlando, Florida in February and listen, I don't know about you, but I mean,
Melissa Fort
Yes.
Jen
We like to have fun. We like to work hard, learn together, but also have some fun together. So if you're all about learning and having fun, you definitely as a leader want to check this out. This is the only online sales leadership academy support group out there. So this is definitely for you. Okay, Tito shout out, top industry, talented.
Online sales specialist this week. This shout out goes to Nicole arms of Empire Homes in Canada. This was so cool, Melissa. So she was telling me she as an online sales specialist got a five star Google review. Yeah, I mean, how often does that happen? Like I just thought.
Melissa Fort
Wow.
Melissa Fort
I mean, builders beg for five star reviews in general. for like an online sales specialist to get it, that's awesome.
Jen
She was so excited, she was telling me about it. was actually her and her sales person that got this shout out in this Google review about just the amazing customer experience that they had. It was so cool, she was so excited. so, great job, Nicole. Way to get that Tito. Hey, Melissa, I wanna take a minute and just have a moment of gratitude. Like I said, it is...
Melissa Fort
Yes, awesome job, Nicole. That's awesome.
Jen
Thanksgiving week, I get sentimental, you know, when I think about how grateful I am that we have the opportunity to work with so many bright online sales specialists out there. We're grateful for the hard work you're doing. You're on the front lines. We see you and you you really have taken what was kind of like a luxury that a builder had.
you back in the day, was like, if you had an online sales specialist, that was a luxury. You've taken this role to be a necessity for builders in the home industry. And it's really through all of your hard work that you're doing. you know, we just want to take a minute and say, thank you. We appreciate you. Melissa, what are your thoughts on this?
Melissa Fort
I know that, I mean, this has been a fun year for me, like getting to be on the coach side and getting to like be the cheerleader for all the online sales people that we work with. But I am so grateful. I'm grateful for the new ones who are eager to learn and some of the OGs that, you know, it's been an interesting year this year. So trying some new things that maybe they hadn't done before. But everybody is, you know, so great and supportive of each other, of the industry. Like we all just want to see each other succeed.
So, very grateful this year.
Jen
Yes, thank you guys. Keep up the hard work. Speaking of hard work, what are online people talking about right now? We're talking about secret shops. now, Melissa, have you ever been secret shopped in your career?
Melissa Fort
my gosh, more times than I can count. Absolutely. Yes, I worked for builders who love to do them at least once a year. So.
Jen
How did you feel about that?
Melissa Fort
Oh, anxious, nervous. I'm like an overachiever. I always wanted to like have a perfect 100. So anytime I knew we were like around shop time, I was very, very honed in on every single call that came in.
Jen
Yeah, I remember the first time that I was shopped, I definitely felt initially kind of defensive about it. And again, I'm like that too, overachiever. I want to get the top score. And if I didn't get the top score, I want to defend it or I want to know why. And I can remember just having that mindset shift about it.
to be like, actually, this is a great insight into how I can get better. And we hear that too from online sales specialists, you know, that get shopped and initially they're like, you know, and they get a little, they get puffed up about it, right? But it's really a great, not only just coaching tool, but just really an insight into what you're doing well. You know, it's kind of that like,
at a boy like, okay, you're doing that really well, but then also like, okay, here's some areas that, you know, take note, check yourself that you could improve. And, you know, every year at Do You Convert, we shop the top builders across the country. And what does that mean for you listening? It's really a great roadmap to see like one, what is the criteria?
that you can use to evaluate your own program. It helps us identify as industry experts to, where are the bright spots? What are things that builders are doing really well? And then what are things that we really need to focus on to provide that strategic approach to how do we improve? How do we be the best in the industry? How do we gain market share? How do we keep online sales moving forward?
So that's really why this is relevant for you. And we've been doing this at DeConvert since, gosh, 2012. I think, Melissa, the only year we skipped was like 2021. And I was like, well, nobody's following up because there's too many leads. So we're not even gonna do it this year because we knew that the results were gonna be crazy. Now, Melissa and I are not gonna go through the full.
Melissa Fort
You
Jen
survey and the full report for you on this pod. We're gonna give you just those high level things that we think you need to hear, that you need to know. But we encourage you to go to, we'll put a link in the show notes where you can go to the website, you can fill out the form to get that downloadable report sent to your email. And we encourage you to read through that full report, but we're gonna give you the highlight reel.
So Melissa, first, what are the logistics? Who do we shop? When do we shop them? What did we, what did the shopper say? Kind of run through that.
Melissa Fort
Yeah, absolutely. And I think one thing is so important that you mentioned, like, everybody takes it so personal for a shop, but it's really a program shop as well. It's your like whole online sales program. So there may be elements that I think this year's shop really showed this. Like sometimes it's like zooming out and it's the big picture of like, where do adjustments need to be made in the whole online sales program for a builder? It's not just up to the one person in the role. It's like thinking about
Jen
Yeah.
Melissa Fort
Like as a builder, how are we running our program? So getting to the details of what we are going to ask and go through. So we are reaching out to 30 of the top 100 builders and we're making it fair. Like we want, we don't want to trick you. We're going to do this like nice, clean, easy. So we're asking about a specific community and we're going to ask a very pointed question like,
Jen
Mm-hmm.
Jen
Hahaha
Melissa Fort
What are your incentives? Do you have lots available? Pretty easy, top level questions that any online sales specialist should be able to answer. We're gonna fill out all the information. So we're gonna give it to you. We're not holding anything back. You get our phone number, email, easiest way to get in touch. And then also providing, like I mentioned, some specific personal information that we're wanting you to utilize in the follow-up. And so we shopped the top.
30 of the top 100, Monday through Friday, normal working hours, nine to five, not during lunchtime. Like I said, we're not trying to like catch anyone. We're really trying to do this as fair and give everybody an opportunity. Like we want people to respond. We want to see what good work is being done out there. And then also the timeframe is like the months of July to August is when we conduct all these shops.
Jen
Right, because seasonally it's, you know, typically lead volume is a little bit lower during that time and we want to give everybody like, hey, you've got more bandwidth. These shop results should be better than during a busy spring selling season for sure. Over a 30 day period, you know, we really look at quality of follow up, quantity of follow up. We kind of break it into sections where we measure that for 30 days. Then we do a
phone call, the shopper will reach out, call. And this year was new. We added text and chat because, you of course what we hear all the time is I'm doing more texting, you know, in my process. So we said, okay, let's measure those results. And we have more builders utilizing chat and even chat bots on their website. So we said, okay, let's see what the customer experience is there.
So let's get into some results. So initially, when we submit that inquiry, we're really looking for the online sales specialist or the builder representative to reach out via the three amigos approach, right? Phone, text, and email, right, on that initial inquiry. So what were the initial results, Melissa?
Melissa Fort
Yeah, so initially we heard back via email from 73 % of the builders that we sent our request to. Only 56 % of the builders we reached out to picked up the phone and called us and use that number we gave. And then 33 % of them sent a text message.
Jen
Hmm, okay. So definitely some areas for improvement. You guys can't look at what I'm looking at, but I'm looking at the graph. And unfortunately, all of these areas were slightly worse than last year. right? So we've got a little bit of work to do on those initial results. Now,
That was the initial results. We tracked this over 30 days, Melissa. And so we're really looking at response also over a 30 day time period. What were the results for phone, email, and text over that period?
Melissa Fort
Yeah, absolutely. 57 % of the builders, over half of the builders never sent a single text.
Jen
But everybody says they're texting.
Melissa Fort
I know that's they say. They're like, I'm texting all the time. That's how I capture everyone. I'm texting. 36 % didn't use the phone number we gave them. We didn't get any phone calls. Like, I just can't wrap my head around that one. Like as an OSC, a phone number was gold. you're gonna trust me with your number, you're hearing from me. And then I don't know what happened to 27 % of them, because they never even sent an email. We didn't even hear back at all.
Jen
Yikes, okay. Well, you the other thing I just want to point out here, you know, we talk about speed to lead being so important and we really were looking at, what builders got back to us within a 15 minute time period. And really on email, was only 13 % of the builders got back to us within 15 minutes or less. 10 % on the phone.
got back to us in that time period in 10 % tech. So there's huge opportunities here, right? To be quick, to be fast. You know, also side note, and you'll see this covered in the report. You know, one of the things that affects response time is when your leads are not automatically and quickly dropped into your CRM, right? Like as you're...
looking through this information and you're auditing your program like Melissa was saying, are there things that are affecting your response time? If we actually talk to these online sales specialists afterwards and we said, you took 12 hours to get back to us, was there a systems issue? It might not be the online sales specialist. Is there a systems issue or are there too many leads coming in for them to handle?
that they can't get back to people in a timely fashion. So again, we love you online sales specialists. This is not a, I gotcha, you're slow. This is a, sugar snaps. Like, is there something wrong with my process that I need to investigate, right?
Melissa Fort
Yeah, maybe it's a coverage thing too. Like, do you have coverage seven days a week or? Yeah.
Jen
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now let's talk about personalization because this this hurts my heart a little bit. But I want to talk about the bright spot first. OK, here's the good news, Melissa, is that we saw a huge uptick in builders that are using video email. Video email is one of the things that can really.
personalize the experience, you human-centered communication that we talked about. 40 % of the builders sent in a video email. It was awesome. Compared to last year, it was only 29%. Now, of those 40%, though, only one was personalized, meaning that particular builder representative used the, you know, customer's name, the answer to the question, addressed the community of interest.
That's really what we're looking for in personalization. Now, when you're sending an initial email or leaving a voicemail or sending a text, personalizing that at the beginning is so important, right? Because it tells the customer that their questions have been answered, they feel seen, they feel heard, you're acknowledging me, and we saw a big dip.
on that initial personalization down to only 43 % of the builders personalized that initial response. And I think why I have so much heartburn over this is that it's decreased for the last three years. It's steadily gone down. 2023, 88 % of the builders personalized. 2024, 71 % personalized.
and this year only 43 % personalized. What do you think that means? What's happening out there, Melissa?
Melissa Fort
I've tell you, like a lot of people are leaning into, I think what we saw was like the volume was high, but the personalization was low. It's like the automation, the AI solutions, you know, all the things that were just templating, set it and forget it. But I think that's so sad because, know, this year we've heard so many builders say, I need more leads, I need more leads. But it's like, if you're getting the leads you are getting are even worth more now.
Like we see the traffic and websites staying about the same throughout the year, but the number of people like willing to give their personal information and actually fill that form out and become a lead that has been lower. So if I do give you it and you don't use it, you know, I can see where customers have some trust issues with builders. So that's sad. that is, I think that's probably the biggest takeaway from the whole shop.
Jen
Yeah, yeah. That was, yeah, that was a really big one for me too. It was like, I mean, I was happy that the video email increased. I was like, oh, okay, like that's great. Like at least that is positive. But then to see that go down because, know, when is the lead at the, you when is the customer at their highest emotional, you know, altitude?
Melissa Fort
Yeah.
Jen
It's like that initial, they're on your website, they're initially looking, they're initially reaching out. And so that's our chance to make the big impact with personalization. okay. Melissa, after 30 days, the shopper then randomly selected a handful of the 30 to call. Okay, they didn't call all 30, they just randomly selected a few to call. And we weren't.
able to get in touch with all of them. In fact, there was 20 % of the ones that we tried to call that never answered the phone. Right? Got to answer your phone. We first measured greeting and then qualifying areas. know, greeting, looking for, you know, are we opening with an enthusiastic thank you for calling, happy acres builders, how may I help you? Using the name throughout, you know, getting the name upfront.
Melissa Fort
Yikes.
Jen
All of those things were pretty comparable to last year. In fact, better at getting the name up front, but actually worse on the greeting and friendliness. we got some cranky crankersons out there, unfortunately. But then we really looked at qualifying. The shopper is gonna wait and see if online sales asks the qualifying areas.
And the biggest opportunity that stood out to me was that only 38 % of the builders we connected with talked about price range. What do you think about that, Melissa?
Melissa Fort
I mean, that is probably one of the most vital areas of qualification. I mean, you can't assume that all leads are educated and know what they're inquiring about. They could have come from a multitude of different ways that they got to you. So I know that sometimes the financial conversations are the ones that can be a little bit harder to navigate and may feel invasive or awkward, but they're so important.
Jen
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Melissa Fort
to setting those appropriately qualified and making sure that you're really truly helping the customer like get where they need to be and asking those questions. Yeah.
Jen
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, it is sometimes I do hear that from online sales specialists like, I don't want to really talk about financing because people are very guarded. And that's like, yeah, like people are maybe guarded. But we have to at least have that conversation. How can we set our sales team up for success if we're blindly, you know, setting an appointment where we haven't done our discovery on making sure that they can.
that that's a good fit for them as far as price range. Now the bright spot, Melissa, was that 100 % of the builders we connected with were able to answer questions. So that tells us that, man, we are super knowledgeable, which is awesome. Like we're able to provide information like the 411 answering line. Like it's really great. But
Write this down if you're taking notes. We need to work on discovering, not dumping. Don't get in the habit of like, let me tell you everything about this community and being able to answer all those questions without asking questions. In fact, we talk about asking, answering, asking. Asking, answering, asking, right? I think that's a t-shirt. Okay, now after the shopper, you know,
goes through, like they have the conversation, qualifying areas are discussed, or not. The shopper is then waiting for the online sales specialist to suggest the appointment or the community tour or the VIP visit. And we were excited, kind of, to see that 68 % were suggesting the appointment. That was great. Now, drum roll please. How many?
Melissa Fort
Hahaha
Jen
the OSC's we connected with were able to pivot the objection and actually secure the appointment Drumroll it was three three OSC's three I bracies were able to Do the thing now Melissa?
Melissa Fort
READ
Melissa Fort
I got a bright spot. Yes. So of those threes who overcame the objection, every single one of them, 100%, all three of them did their handoff steps and did a smooth handoff to onsite. So that's a huge bright spot.
Jen
You got a bright spot for me? Okay, tell us what happened with the handoff.
Jen
Yay. Heck yeah. Like online sales is doing their thing. And even on-site, two of the on-site sales, we're looking at all steps of the handoff. You we're looking for them on-site to reach out, introduce themselves. Two of them sent an intro email introducing themselves. Zero of the on-sites reached out by phone or sent a text. So some definite opportunities to revisit the handoff. Now.
we decided to, like I told you, you know, look at texting, evaluate texting, evaluate chatting. So again, after that 30 day period, we let it cook. And then we said, okay, we're going to text the OSC that initially, you know, reached out to us, right, or the follow-up happened. And I think the biggest takeaway I have on texting, again, you can read all the details about this.
40 % were responsive within 15 minutes. Okay, so we sent in the text, 40 % got back to us within those 15 minutes. I think the biggest area for improvement here is that only 20 % of those builder representatives followed up with us after we had that texting conversation. know, texting is that immediate, I I feel like you're,
Melissa Fort
Thank
Jen
trying to get more of an immediate response when you're texting, right? And you're expecting that response. And even if the customer ghosts you on text, you I think it's easy to be texting and then somebody kind of goes away. Online sales needs to be proactively following up post-text engagement. And only 20 % did that. So one of the key takeaways here is, you know, text is great for getting a response, having that initial engagement.
But phone is best for making a connection, going deeper. Try to move that text to a phone conversation. In fact, we measured that. We said, okay, did anybody ask us to go from text to phone? And 20 % of the OSCs did suggest moving to a phone call, which that was great. I was glad that there was some that did that.
Okay, chat Melissa. Are we better? Were we better than bots? What did you discover on the chats?
Melissa Fort
Um, yes. So I helped a lot with the chat side of the shop this year. Um, it became, uh, like once I started digging in and seeing it, I actually like audited the whole top hundred builder list. It was a rabbit hole and I had to know, I had to know what everybody was doing. Um, like you mentioned more builders are adding a, you know, they were looking for additional ways on their website to capture leads and that's what chat is. It's another way.
Jen
Hahaha
Jen
Yeah, it was like a rabbit hole, right, that you went down.
Ha ha.
Melissa Fort
to capture someone's information. But we were surprised to find out that like of the people that we used for our shop results specifically that a third of our chats were answered by bots. So 33 % of the chat that we started were responded to by fully automated bots. So no person didn't transfer us to a person.
Jen
Mm. Okay.
Jen
Okay.
Melissa Fort
Only the bot was engaging the entire time. And then the other 67, the other two thirds, they either started off as a human or it was just a bot screener that made sure I was in the market for a home and transferred to an OSC. And so we got to speak to a live human. And the bright spot is that the humans were better than the bots. So across the board,
We saw pretty comparable response times, whether I think that's super important. Like if you're gonna have chat on your website, people expect an instant, know, kind of like text, like the expectation is instant. And, you know, nowadays with everything being available at our hands, like definitely consumer expectation is I'm gonna chat and this is how I'm gonna quickly get my questions answered. So that was a bright spot response times were.
Jen
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Fort
north of 70 % under one minute. So within one minute, OSCs were getting back to us 70 % of the time. So that was great. When it came to staying active and engaged, so meaning that throughout the entire conversation, it felt like a two-way conversation when a question was asked, something was answered, and they kept the cadence of the chat going, the OSCs, 80 % of the time.
Jen
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Fort
they remained active and engaged and it felt like it was a one-to-one conversation. They weren't distracted. And the bots, only 60%. I'm not sure what the robots were doing. You would think that they would be programmed to be super responsive, but it seems like once they got through their initial basic programming of what they were trying to capture, they kind of faded away unless you poked at them again and asked another question to get them responding.
Jen
Mmm.
Jen
Yeah, that's interesting.
Yeah.
Melissa Fort
This is the part where human is always better than bot. So our chat bots, 0 % of them were able to answer our basic questions. And again, super simple, similar to our phone and email shops, just do you have any incentives that are not on your website? And are there lots available in this specific community? And none of the bots were able to
Jen
Hahaha!
Jen
Mmm.
Melissa Fort
answer those simple questions or like, you know, crawl that data to be able to give us an answer. Nope, they all were just like, sorry, can't help you. Nope, sorry, I can forge your information, but can't help you. And 50 % of the OSCs that we chatted with had that information at their fingertips and were able to be helpful.
Jen
answer questions.
Jen
Yeah, that's promising, but I take away, there's definitely an opportunity here to make this better. There's a lot of zeros on the report that I'm looking at. 0 % were able to answer questions. 0 % of the bots asked to move to a phone call, clearly. The bot is not, the bot, yeah, can't call the bot.
Melissa Fort
Yes. Yeah.
Melissa Fort
Yes.
Melissa Fort
Clearly, can't tell the bot. They didn't even try to phone a friend, so.
Jen
No qualifying questions asked, no suggesting of tours, all of those things that are important when you have an engaged lead to keep the momentum going. So very interesting. Well, let's move on to another bright spot. And that is prospecting. So this was so exciting, Melissa, because we did this for the first time last year. And so we're like, OK, we got to do it again.
Melissa Fort
now.
Jen
You guys are probably sick of us talking about how important prospecting is. We talk about it all the time. And you know what? You guys have listened. Because compared, we had 91 voicemails received to our aged shopper phone number and aged shopper email. We had 91 voicemails compared to six last year. So you guys are picking up the phone, you're making those outbound calls.
Melissa Fort
Wow.
Jen
We had 88 text messages this year compared to 11 last year. Nine videos compared to three last year. Now we had 3,425 emails received in that shopper email account. But only 3 % of them were personal looking. was a big old 97 % of them were marketing e-blast.
So there's a huge opportunity there. Doing great on the prospecting. Could we do better? Absolutely. Could we make it more personal? Absolutely. But I was really excited. I just got so excited when I saw those numbers. Like, yes, we're doing a better job. Okay, what does all of this mean, Melissa? We have spouted out a bunch of percentages, a bunch of numbers.
Melissa Fort
Yes, all the data. Now what's the so what?
Jen
What's the, so what, yeah, what do we do with all of this? So we wanna give you five things to be taking away from this report that you could be thinking about and evaluating yourself. So what's the first one, Melissa?
Melissa Fort
Personalization, like I said, if that customer is trusting you with their information, use it. Use it and you like you said, everybody's doing more, but are they doing better? And so that personalization is the key element for better when it comes to outreach and follow-up.
Jen
Yeah.
Jen
Yeah, across the board, like personalization on video, personalization on initial outreach, personalization and prospecting. Like it's all, like there's all areas of opportunity there. The second thing is linger longer. What I mean by that is, know, buyers are in the, they're in the research stage longer, they're taken longer to make a decision. We've gotta extend our follow-up. Only 47,
percent of the builders sent four or more emails in a 30 day period, or 27 % only made two or more calls in that period. We've gotta extend that, we've gotta do more and stay in front of them more. Okay, what's the third thing?
Melissa Fort
the discover don't dump, you know, like you said, a hundred percent of our OSC were helpful and knowledgeable, but we did not have a hundred percent asking questions. So, you know, we all want to be really helpful and show off how much we want to know how much we know. And, but what we want to is like shift our focus to be more customer focused, not builder focused. So.
Jen
Mmm.
Melissa Fort
Don't just share all the details you know about a community or about your builder. Like really ask those questions and make the customer feel heard.
Jen
Yeah, I love it. Number four is figure out how to make prospecting a priority. Just like managing your new leads, just like brushing your teeth. Prospecting has to be a priority and part of your every day. So figure out a way to incorporate that, work with your team member so that you kind of share in those duties and come up with a strategic plan so that you have an intentional
prospecting plan in place. Okay, what's the last one? Your favorite one.
Melissa Fort
I know, just be better than a bot. don't get, like the bots are not the right solution for customer facing. So as an OSC, like thinking about your customer journey and their touch points, know, builders out there, leadership listening, you know, really evaluate, like if you're gonna use AI and automation and things like this in your program, make sure you keep a pulse of what it feels like.
Jen
Hahaha!
Melissa Fort
from a customer perspective. So these leads are gold and we need to treat them as such. And if they're in the market for a home, they deserve better than a bot.
Jen
Mmm.
Jen
I love it. Okay, skills check. better check yourself before you wreck yourself. So first thing on the skills check, make sure you go download this report. Okay, it's really important that you, this is part of investing in your career. I say investing, it's free. It's a free report. But investing your time, go download this. It'll be delivered to your inbox. You just gotta put in some information on the website.
Melissa Fort
Yeah, investing your time, that's all.
Jen
you know, get in your inbox, look at it, read it, evaluate your program from it and figure out like, okay, what am I doing really well? You can give yourself a pat on the back like, my gosh, this is me, I'm doing this so well. And then are there any areas to improve? The second thing, which is kind of totally separate, but relevant to Thanksgiving and holiday time is if your offices are closed, which most builders are,
Make sure that you, in your call tracking system, set up a voicemail, a holiday voicemail, that sets the expectation for the customer. We are out of the office, closed for the holiday, Thursday and Friday, whatever it is, we will return your call, you know, upon returning to the office. And in your call tracking system, you can set that to where it doesn't even ring your phone, right? It just goes straight to the voicemail.
I know when I was an online sales specialist, I didn't have a robust call tracking system like CallRail. So I literally would be at home and trying to enjoy the holiday with my family and my phone was still ringing.
Melissa Fort
You have that anxiety. Yeah. You really relaxed.
Jen
Yes, I'm like, my gosh, my gosh, I'm missing a call right now. And it's better to set the expectation for the customer. We are closed for the holiday, we will give back to you when we return. So make sure you take some time to set that up. Investigate how to do that if you don't know how to do that. It is worth it so that you can have some downtime. Okay.
Happy Thanksgiving everybody. We are so thankful and grateful to you. Thank you for listening to us ramble on about the fun topic of secret shops. Melissa, are you down with OPT?
Melissa Fort
Mm-hmm
Melissa Fort
yeah, you know me. Thank you.
Jen
Woo. All right. Thank you, everybody.
