Jen
Melissa in the Ops Studio today. Happy holidays, friend.
Melissa Fort
Yes, happy holidays! It's almost here.
Jen
Are you in the spirit?
Melissa Fort
I think so. mean, my house is decked out, the halls are decked, everything's ready to go. It's a busy time of year though.
Jen
Man, it is so busy. I just wanna take a minute and say, send some love to our busy, hardworking online sales specialists out there as you're gearing up for the holiday season. We're gonna get into some of those things, but yeah, I'm excited, Melissa, because today my Old Dominion University Monarch football team is playing at a bowl game.
Melissa Fort
That's exciting!
Jen
So exciting, 5 p.m. tonight, kickoff. Go Monarchs, University of South Florida, down in your neck of the woods. And they're gonna get their butts kicked. However, I did hear this morning on ESPN that the University of South Florida's coach went to Auburn and took a bunch of the coaches with him.
Melissa Fort
Who are they playing?
Melissa Fort
Okay. Yep. Yep.
Jen
So I'm like, we have a chance now.
Melissa Fort
There's a chance. There's a chance. That's exciting. I know I'm headed to Texas this weekend for my son's college. Yeah, Harding is in the D2 championship game, so it's sold out stadium. That should be fun too.
Jen
I know.
Jen
Let's go.
So what, so you're going to Dallas, right? So you're going back, back to where you came from.
Melissa Fort
Yes. Back to the roots in Texas. Yep.
Jen
That's awesome. Well, and so is Josh going to be, I guess he's gonna be there as part of the band, like halftime show?
Melissa Fort
Yes, yep, yep, the band is performing. So yes, yeah, in the stands, all the fun things. We're excited.
Jen
Now, Texas football is, you know, something special. So like, how big of a stadium are we talking about?
Melissa Fort
So it's a high school stadium and it probably holds like 12,000. So that is why like the D2 colleges use the Texas high school stadiums for their national championship because it's bigger than any of the D2 stadiums, which is crazy. Yeah.
Jen
Okay.
Jen
Wow. All right, and who is Harding playing?
Melissa Fort
They are playing against Ferris State, which is in Michigan, I learned.
Jen
So Michigan and Arkansas are traveling to Dallas to play in this game. Okay, well that's exciting.
Melissa Fort
Yes. Yes. Yeah, it should be fun. It's going to be 76 degrees too. So that's beautiful weather for football. Yeah. Thank you.
Jen
Awesome.
Jen
Well, that's amazing. Well, have an awesome time.
All right, welcome to episode 52. With me today is online sales coach, Melissa Fort. And we are excited to get into this conversation today. But first we have some housekeeping items. Melissa, let's start off with something awesome, which is our Tito shout out. Tito stands for top industry talented online sales specialist. And we have a group.
Tito announcement. What are we what do we have to announce, Melissa?
Melissa Fort
This is so exciting. over, I guess it was about a little over a week ago, they announced the Silver Awards for the Nationals at IBS in February. So the gold winner will be announced then, but we had a lot of familiar faces up for Silver Awards.
Jen
Yes.
Jen
Heck yeah, so we're gonna take a minute and give you guys a shout out on Opt because we are so excited for you. know, the Nationals is the one time a year where the efforts of online sales are highlighted and showcased in the industry and we just get, we get so excited when we see your faces up there, so.
For OSC of the Year, the Silver Award winners are Lena Bergen of Level Homes, Emily Tucker of Roebuck Homes, Amrita Ramdahal, I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name, of New Home Star, and Felicia Berry of Viera Builders. So kudos to you guys. We'll be excited to celebrate you in Orlando coming up in February.
And then OSC team of the year, lots of familiar faces here, holy cow. Melissa, some TriPoint peeps. Right off the bat, Irina Tracy and Karlyn Hanisch. Way to go TriPoint. Tristan Nixon and Marilyn Maldonado of Braun Homes. Karen Sheeb and Jennifer Womack of MI Homes. Tilson Homes team. We got Faith, Mia, Carrie, Jana, Lucky, Taylor.
Melissa Fort
Yes.
Jen
Carolyn and then MI has another team up for the award, which is Brandon Patton and Nicole Marcangelo. I totally hosed up everybody's name. I'm sorry. We love you. And then, know, Melissa, on a personal note, my son, Sam Barkin up for rookie online sale or not online sales. What am I saying? Rookie.
Melissa Fort
I think you did good.
Melissa Fort
Thank you. No.
Jen
on-site salesperson of the year. So go Sam.
Melissa Fort
It's gonna be a fun night. I'm excited, lots to celebrate.
Jen
Yes, we can't wait. You guys are all Tito's in our book. The other housekeeping thing is that Melissa and I have two academies coming up, online sales academy starting at the end of January and an online sales leadership academy kicking off in February. So I just wanna put this out there that...
There's no other training out there like this one. in a tough market is when you need to double down and invest in your online sales program to make sure that you're doing all the things that you need to win in this market. So we're gonna close out those registrations like mid January. So if you're still thinking about it, don't delay. And if you have questions, just shoot us an email.
and we'll be happy to talk to you about that.
Holiday voicemail. Melissa, do you think everybody should have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off out there?
Melissa Fort
I mean, absolutely.
Jen
I did too. know there's some, there's some people working on Christmas Eve. But you know, listen, when, when you have time off, we want you to make sure that you really do have time off. So take some times if you have a call tracking system, you want to set up a, you know, holiday voicemail that sets the expectation that you are going to be out of office, that your company is closed.
for Christmas and that you're setting that expectation that nobody's gonna be calling them back until you return to the office. And we encourage you to take a step further and make sure that in your call flow, when the call comes in, it just goes directly to the voicemail. That way your phone won't even ring. Melissa, I can remember when I was an OSC, I didn't have a robust call tracking system like that.
So I was always like, is my phone gonna ring? Am I gonna have to answer my phone? And being able to fully unplug during the holidays is huge. So make sure you take some time to investigate how to do that, set that up, and get that holiday voicemail set up. Any other thoughts on that, Melissa?
Melissa Fort
I mean, just take it, take the time. I remember as an OSD, I had call rail. I just didn't use it to turn off. mean, I'm not gonna lie. I've definitely set appointments on Christmas day, but you know, taking that time to pause and spend time with your family is super important. So take the time. The world expects you to be off. So take the time.
Jen
Ha!
Jen
Wow, hardcore.
Jen
Yes. And it's, listen, look at it this way. You're doing your customers a favor by setting the expectation on that voicemail versus it just ringing in, going to a regular voicemail that doesn't set the expectation. So, okay. What are online people talking about, Melissa?
Melissa Fort
It is goal setting time. We're focused on next year already. It's only halfway through December, but we're ready for 2026.
Jen
Woo!
Jen
Yes, so, you know, it definitely takes some time to do goal setting. Why, Melissa, do we feel like goal setting is so important? We do it ourselves as a team here at Do You Convert? Why is goal setting important? Why is this necessary?
Melissa Fort
Yeah.
Melissa Fort
I mean, and I think this year too, just speaking personally, I've been a lot more intentional about setting those goals and planning for next year. And so I feel like I'm going into the year with like peace of mind that I have a plan. setting the goals is like step one for coming up with your game plan for the year.
Jen
Yeah. So Melissa and I want to just kind of walk you through some things to think about as you sit down, because it is a process. I mean, you need to sit down and really take, you know, an hour to two hours to go through this. And I love the word intentional. Like you said, Melissa, like be intentional about it. So we want to give you this framework. And one of the first things to do when you sit down is a victory lap.
And this is hard. I don't know, Melissa, if you've kind of noticed this with people when you start talking about this, like, what are you proud of this year? It's hard. Have you noticed that it's hard for people to think about that?
Melissa Fort
Yeah, it is. But then once you sit down and like take the time, because you just get stuck in the like crazy of here and now and, you know, get mucking through what you're going through. But when you stop and push pause and like really think about what's happened this year.
Jen
Yeah.
Jen
Yeah, you know, I think our brains immediately go to, well, this was hard, or, you know, this is a challenge, or, you know, man, I feel like I could have done better on this, you know, and that's good to address, like, what are the challenges and what do you need to get better at? But you gotta force your brain to go to the positive and pat yourself on the back for all of the good things and...
Like I said, we sat down as an online sales coaching team here at DeConvert. And I just want to point out like some industry victories, I think that we see across the board. What was one that stood out to you, Melissa?
Melissa Fort
Probably my favorite, which I think is such a telling story of just the resiliency of online sales is the benchmarks and how they stayed pretty level throughout the whole year. So despite everything that was going on in the market, our online sales specialists like dialed in, did what they needed to do, took care of business, and we saw those conversion metrics stay steady.
Jen
Yeah.
Jen
Heck yes, I mean, that is huge. Like to Melissa's point, when you think about all of the ups and downs and craziness of the last few years, when we look at those benchmarks, online sales is the constant in the equation. You know, you guys like, okay, hey, leads are down. Okay, we got a double down on prospecting. You guys are killing it there and.
your benchmarks are showing that, your numbers are showing that. So kudos to you. I think the other industry victory lap is that, you know, we're seeing more builders staff up in this position. You know, they're adding one, they're either saying, hey, we need this position. We've never had it before. So they're adding this in, or they're adding to their current team that's there. Like, hey, I have a solo OSC. I need to get them more help.
I need to get them more support. And so that's a really positive that we're seeing across the industry. So that's really good. Okay, so you guys, the first thing you wanna do is write down three things that you feel really good about this past year that you've accomplished. Okay, Melissa, what's next? After you do the victory lap, what should they do?
Melissa Fort
The next step is going to be going through and doing an honest evaluation of your skills. time, like going through an assessment and looking at like, where do I feel like a rock star and where do I need to focus on improving my skills?
Jen
Whoa.
Jen
Yeah. So when you think about the skills to really evaluate, here's some things that you should look at. What's your response time like? What's your answer rate or miss call rate? What's your follow-up process like? Are you hitting all of your outbound calls, emails, videos that you should be doing? Are you doing personalization in your video emails? Prospecting.
You know, are you consistently prospecting every month? What does that look like? The number of outbound calls you're making? Are you evaluating your calls? What's your connection with your sales team like? You know, that is definitely a behavior, a skills check. And we always like to say, like, where are you one out of 10 on a scale of one to 10? 10 being you have perfected the skill. You're a rock star. One being
you you should be fired. Like you're never doing that. And so really you want to give yourself that honest evaluation of what are those behaviors or those skills you could improve. Make a note of that because you're going to want to use that as you're developing your goals. Okay. The next thing is reviewing metrics. So, you know, we talked about this before on previous podcasts about the metrics that matter.
in online sales and so knowing your numbers is hugely important. Melissa, why would you say it's important to take a look at your metrics?
Melissa Fort
I mean, first step, like make sure that you're measuring what and that you're documenting and you have a place like, do you have a dashboard that you're constantly referring to? What does your reporting look like? Like we still talk to builders who have online sales programs that don't know how to calculate their metrics. So I think that's like first step. Like if you're not measuring today, reach out, let us help you figure out what you need to be measuring and how to set that up. But being able to know
Jen
Yeah.
Melissa Fort
where you are seeing success in your program versus where there are holes in your funnel and you need to focus, that will help you determine what are the micro skills that you need to be focused on to really drive an impact. And sometimes looking at the metrics too, that's part of the victory lap. If you're making a huge impact in your company, you wanna be able to quantify that and share that with leadership and celebrate what's going right as well.
Jen
Yeah.
Jen
Mm-hmm.
Jen
Yeah, absolutely. So lead to appointment kept show rate, contribution, appointment to sale. You want to be looking at those things. You want to compare what you're doing to yourself. Like what what does year over year look like? You know, what did I do at the beginning of the year? Am I growing? Am I moving in the right direction? You know, taking note of the industry benchmarks that we put out, I think.
you know, using the 40, 20, 50 as kind of a general range, 40 % lead to appointment, 20 % appointment to sale and 50 % contribution and kind of how you compare to that. And something that Melissa said I think is really important is, you know, when you look at your metrics, you know, then you can kind of go back and focus on, okay, I want to improve, for example, I want to improve lead to appointment kept.
Right, like I wanna get that number up, right? That's the one that's the most in the online sales specialist control. And then you go, okay, I wanna improve this, how am I gonna improve it? And then you take a look at your skills evaluation and you go, well, what are the things that affect lead to appointment? Response time, you know, and if you gave yourself a five on response time, like that needs to be highlighted.
Like I'm gonna focus on response time, that'll help me improve my lead to appointment kept. Or I wanna get better at appointment to sale. How's my connection with my sales team? Could I do better here? Could I be more proactive in my approach? What's the handoff look like? So kind of using both of those things hand in hand.
The next thing on our framework list is, know, consider if you had a secret shop, you know, take that into consideration too. You know, what were your secret shop results? Was there anything that stood out there that you could put into your goal setting, right? So to work for next year. And, know, we did the, Melissa, we had the home builder followup survey, right? That we just did. And,
Melissa Fort
Yeah.
Jen
you can kind of use that as a framework for auditing your own program. So definitely download that report, look at what was measured, and kind of evaluate your program against that. And that'll help you format your goals too.
Melissa Fort
Yeah, and think too, you mentioned this earlier, like in skills and another thing, like if there is one area to really focus on that we saw come out from the shop is like the element of like personalization is really looking at your program and making sure that you are not over automated and that personalization. I think when I think about some of the teams that I work with, the ones who are really excelling and continue to improve, they're hyper focused on that personalized element.
Jen
Yeah.
Melissa Fort
And so I feel like that's a good overall theme of areas we wish that we could wave a magic wand and fix them for 2026.
Jen
Yeah, yeah. One of the other things that you can kind of think about, before you get to the actual goal setting, which I promise we're getting there, but there's some things you gotta think about leading up to it, is doing a SWOT analysis of yourself and even your program. Like if you're a part of a team, what are your strengths individually?
as a team, what are your weaknesses, what are the opportunities and what are the threats out there that you need to consider? So that's something too, like just to kind of go through that process, it can be very eye-opening. And you know, I'm hearing from online sales specialists, I don't know about you, Melissa, but like, you know, the threat of AI taking my job, like, okay, that's a threat. What's the opportunity?
to kind of counter that is the personalization. What is the experience with a chat bot that might be less than great? Just really looking at those things and going, okay, if this is a threat out there, what can I do to discount that threat and what's the opportunity that lies ahead? Okay, once you kind of gather all of this information,
It's time to put your SMART goals together. Now, Melissa is very passionate about SMART goals. What does SMART stand for, Melissa? And what do we mean?
Melissa Fort
Yeah, are they specific? Are they measurable? Like how are you going to measure if you're finding success? Are they attainable? Like are they within reason? And then are they relevant to your position and time sensitive or time focused? So determining, you know, we recommend like one quarter at a time. Like for Q1, this is something I'm going to focus on and then measure at the end.
Jen
Right.
Jen
Yeah, so let's break this down. Let's do an example. I know that one thing that I've heard a lot of people say is they wanna do better at consistent prospecting. Okay, so let's break this out into a SMART goal that you're gonna put into action. So a specific goal here would be,
I'm going to send one prospecting email a month, or I'm going to make 20 outbound prospecting calls a day. Like that's how specific you want to be. How are you going to measure that? Melissa, how would you measure that goal?
Melissa Fort
Yeah, so if you're focusing on those outbound calls, you can measure them. Like if you have a call tracking system that you can use as a tool, you can also do like a prospecting log where you are checking off the calls that you're making, which is, you know, tactical and visual that you can use as well in your CRM.
Jen
Right, yeah, is that attainable, right? Is one prospecting email a month and 20 outbound calls a day, is that attainable? Probably, right? Like 20, it's gonna take you about an hour to make 20 prospecting calls. So do you have one hour a day to dedicate to this? Sure. Is that relevant to your job? Yes.
Melissa Fort
Absolutely. Yeah.
Melissa Fort
Definitely.
Jen
And then you wanna put a like a timestamp or a time, what am I trying to say, like a boundary on that. if you go, okay, I'm gonna do this consistently for 30 days. And then I'm gonna measure the results of that. Like Melissa said, you can measure it by tracking it in your CRM or your call tracking system. You can also measure, you know,
what were the results of this? How many people did I connect with? How many appointments did I get from that? Tracking your percentage of appointments that are coming from aged leads. And then you can kind of see, is it working? Does that number start going up? And then after 30 days, you can reevaluate, hey, that was pretty easy. I could maybe go up to 30 calls a day.
because I was able to get it done and I was able to see the success from that. So that's how you wanna walk through versus I wanna do better at prospecting. See the difference, like you wanna create that actionable goal. Okay, love it. Melissa, after we get the smart goals written out, what's the next thing that we do?
Melissa Fort
We're going to put it in the universe. We're going to publish it. We're going to find somebody, your manager, maybe a partner on the team, your coach, who is going to help you stay focused and accountable to the goals that you set.
Jen
I love it. I am big on like, let's manifest our destiny. Let's put it out in the universe. You definitely want to write them down, write it out, share it, talk about it, and revisit, Melissa mentioned this earlier, I just wanna double down on this, revisit it every quarter. Because, yeah.
Melissa Fort
Yeah, like go ahead and put that on your calendar. Put a date with yourself once a quarter.
Jen
Yeah, because I mean, as we know, the market shifts, things change. We might find ourselves in a different, with different bandwidth and we need to readjust our goals and our metrics and our behaviors and things like that. So you definitely want to revisit those. Now, something that, know, Melissa's passionate about smart goals. I'm passionate about so goals.
which are self, others, and work. We take a very holistic approach to our coaching and training here at DeConvert, and we really want to focus on all the things. Self-development, others, or sense of community development, and then of course work and professional development. So we recommend that you take the same approach.
framework of victory laps and smart goal setting and focus on yourself too. What do you want to accomplish for yourself individually? That doesn't have anything to do with work per se, but maybe it's better health or reading more. These are some of the ones I've seen. Drinking water came up yesterday on a call that was kind of a theme, like I need to drink more water. I need to...
take some time, more time for myself to do some things that I want. So definitely take that same approach. Like somebody said yesterday, they wanted to, you know, exercise more. And it's like, okay, like what's a smart goal approach there? I'm going to take a walk for, you know, 30 minutes, five days a week. You know, is that attainable? Sure.
versus I'm gonna work out for two hours every day or I'm gonna go to the gym for two hours every day. Which, you a lot of people at the beginning of the year, they're like, yes, I'm gonna go to the gym every day. But is that really attainable? I don't know. Maybe for some people. But you just wanna make sure that you start out with an attainable goal and then you can readjust as you kinda go through and reevaluate.
Melissa Fort
Hahaha.
Jen
Others is putting yourself out there for another person, putting your volunteering, how do you wanna give back? And then of course you have your work goals. Melissa, do you wanna put out into the universe any of your SO goals?
Melissa Fort
Sure, yeah, I for me, like I feel like I'm a lot happier and healthier when I'm reducing my screen time and spending more time outdoors. And so being intentional about, especially on the weekends, I try to completely unplug for a few hours at a time and spending time out. And then for others, I host exchange students. So that's something where I pour a lot of my time into. That's a unique thing about me.
Jen
Hahaha
Melissa Fort
And then for work, a lot of it is focused on the intentionality of mentoring and pouring into others and spending time doing that.
Jen
Nice, I love it. I know that like yesterday, I wanna get back to something for others for me is I wanna get back to animal rescue, volunteering. Don't worry, Mike, I'm not gonna take in any more animals right now. I mean, there is room at the inn. I do have room at the inn, but I'm just gonna give back my time.
Melissa Fort
Maybe a couple.
Jen
and start volunteering some more. Okay, so there you have it. Victory lap, skills assessment, SWOT, consider the shot.
Put your SMART goals into place, write them out, meet with your manager, your accountability partner. Don't forget your SO goals, because it goes hand in hand, and evaluate every quarter.
Melissa Fort
Yeah, we did the vision boards for the SO goals too. I thought that was really fun. I've enjoyed seeing what other people. I know, I feel like it was like a flashback to like the old school where you would cut out of the magazines and come up with your goals.
Jen
so talk about that, because that was your baby. You were so proud of that.
Jen
Melissa, I had somebody actually do that on our group call. I was like, okay, share your screen and share your vision board. And she was like, well, I went old school and I just like printed it out. then I was like cutting. I was like, Melissa will be so happy about that. Yeah.
Melissa Fort
really? They physically did the cut? I love that.
Melissa Fort
Yes. That is awesome. I need to see that.
Jen
Okay, skills check because you gotta check yourself before you wreck yourself. You guessed it. Take some time and do your goals. You know, like we said, it's gonna take you a couple hours. Have some dedicated time, sit down and do it. I know it's hectic right now, but even if you... I'm not even gonna say this, because I started to say, even if you wait till the first of the year, but I don't want you to wait till the first of the year because...
Melissa Fort
Yeah.
Jen
The first of the year is go time. You guys gotta hold on to your butts, because I think it's gonna be busy. And take some time now before the craziness after Christmas and we get into the market real quick. So there's a lot of, you know, demand out there, lots of eyeballs on your website, lots of people thinking and doing their research. And I think there's gonna be, I could be wrong, but I think there's gonna be a flip of the switch and you're gonna get really busy.
So take some time now, do your goals and happy holidays. Melissa, close this out.
Melissa Fort
Yes. Yes, happy holidays and hope you guys have an amazing new year. And we are so excited for what 2026 is going to bring. We can't wait.
Jen
Heck yeah, let's keep doing this thing. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy new year. We'll see you at.
Melissa Fort
Okay, I'm gonna flip it this time. Jen, are you done with OPT?
Jen
Yeah, you know me.
