Anyone who has worked in a cyclical industry, like new home construction, has at some point heard from their boss, "I'm sorry, it's just not in the budget." What that often really means, though, is that the full value isn't being understood. And if it's something you truly believe in, you must help them understand its true value.
Let's talk about, for example, the
Online Sales and Marketing Summit. The average cost to attend, including airfare, meals, a coffee if you're feeling like splurging, Uber rides, and the ticket to secure your seat, is around $2,670. To put it in perspective, that's what your home building company, if you have over 40 employees, probably spends on coffee over a month in the office.
If that is looked at as an expense with an unclear payoff, then how can you blame anyone for saying it's not in the budget this year? If, however, you view it as an investment with the likelihood of an expected return, that's when things can begin to change.
Valuable by Design
This is our 10th Online Sales and Marketing Summit, and as you may already know, it features two distinct tracks with different areas of focus. We spend the first half of day one all together talking about things that impact both sides—and that's intentional to encourage engagement and that connection that has to be there between sales and marketing. Then we split into each track for content focused on what each group does every day.
So I'm going to look at two different scenarios of investment return. Let's start with the marketer.
Scenario A: The Upgraded Marketer
If that marketer manages a digital advertising budget of $250,000 a year and, before attending the event, their average cost per click is $1.40, then in any given year, that math works out to being able to get 178,571 visitors from their digital marketing efforts.
Marketer Scenario - Pre-SummitAnnual Advertising Budget: $250,000 Avg CPC: $1.40 Visitors: 178,571 Leads: 1,250 Expected Sales: 90 Profit* Expected: $2,700,000
*calculated at $30k per home |
And this is relevant whether you do ads in-house or you work with an outside partner. In either scenario, a large portion of the responsibility falls on the builder. Even if you partner with someone from the outside, it is your direction and the data and feedback that you give to that outside partner that helps them make decisions in your best interest.
So, in either scenario, whether you do this in-house or you partner outside, the improvement can still happen from what you learn at this event.
If you just hit the low bar of improvement—let's say that you just improve from $1.40 a click to $1.35 on average—that means that you can now afford to get an additional 10,296 clicks for the same ad spend, which at a 0.7% conversion rate from traffic to lead would get you an additional 46 leads that year. And on average, that's going to get you more sales.
How many more sales? I'm glad you asked because we just released the latest
Q2 online sales benchmarks. If we assume the current benchmarks are running at
40% lead to appointment conversion, that will get you an
additional 18 appointments for the year. And on average, at an
18% conversion ratio, which is the current benchmark, that would result in
three additional sales.
For a cost of $2,670 and the bare minimum improvement you're likely to see, you'd gain an additional three sales if you manage a budget of $250,000.
But if you take what I believe to be a more realistic 15% improvement in ad efficiency—and again, this is whether you do it in-house or whether you partner and are able to give better feedback directly to your partner—that then gives you a $1.20 cost per click average. Instead of 178,571 visitors from your ad traffic, you can now get 208,333, which will end up delivering 208 more leads over the course of the year, which will deliver an astonishing additional 14 sales.
Full ROI Calculation from Expected Summit Marketing ImprovementAnnual Advertising Budget: $250,000 New Avg CPC: $1.20 Visitors: 208,333 Leads: 1,458 Expected Sales: 104 Profit Expected*: $3,120,000
*minimum expected for a small builder |
14 additional sales for a $2,670 investment. If we assume an average profit margin of only $30,000, that will result in a return of over $400,000 in profit. Check my math. I know it seems too good to be true, but that's the way it works out.
Rate of ReturnInvestment to attend: $2,670 Additional Profit* Realized: $400k + Rate of return: $150+ per $1 of attendance expense
*minimum expected for a small builder |
Scenario B: Where Appointments Become Gold
Now, let's look at online sales, because no one does online sales training and development better than the team at Do You Convert.
If your current number of appointments per month is 55, then that means, on average, your cost per appointment from digital ads relates to an average appointment cost of $379. (And just to say this out loud—organic traffic, direct traffic, referrals, all those things work together with ad traffic. But because we don't spend direct funds on anything other than advertising and content, we're focusing on that measurable piece.)
Online Sales Scenario - Pre-SummitAppts per Month: 55 Ad Cost per Appt: $379 |
If you do the minimum improvement that we would expect and move up just an additional five appointments per month, from 55 appointments to 60 based upon what you learn from the speakers on the stage and the other online sales experts around you, that would reduce your expense per appointment to $347. Those additional appointments would, on average, result in an additional six sales every year.
Six sales for the cost of $2,670, just from an improvement in online sales. This half of the scenario doesn't assume that marketing efficiency is improving at all.
But here's where it gets really interesting. If you go from an average of 55 appointments a month to 79 appointments—that's a 30% increase in appointment volume for the same dollars spent—that drops your cost per appointment to $264.
Full ROI Calculation from Expected Summit Online Sales ImprovementAppts per Month: 79 Ad Cost per Appt: $264 Addt'l Sales Annually: 10+ Annual Profit from Improvement*: $300,000+
*minimum expected for a small builder |
We have seen over the years that people with the right training and process can improve their lead-to-appointment ratio from 15% to 20% to 40% or 50%. The lead number doesn't change. It's the appointment number that changes due to the process and the training.
And do you want to know how many sales you'll get? It would be somewhere between three and four additional sales per month above my first scenario. That's right. If you get 79 appointments a month versus 55, it works out to be closer to four or five sales every month gained because of that investment.
The People Who Make It Happen
The speakers aren't motivational fluff-merchants or generic "sales gurus."
They aren't sharing theories. These are battle-tested strategies from people who've been in the trenches and emerged victorious (and profitable).
Take a look at a few of our featured speakers' bragging rights:
- Ronda Conger - VP of Sales for CBH Homes, Idaho's largest builder, Ronda has been flourishing in leadership over multiple departments for over 20 years
- Brian Boero - Co-founder of 1000Watt, Brian brings deep expertise from real estate media, marketing and tech and unmatched industry data and insights
- Ryan Taft - Ryan leveraged his background as a realtor to become National Sales Training Manager for a $10B Fortune 100 homebuilder before starting his own training company, Impact EightyEight
See all speakers on the Online Sales & Marketing Summit website.
Your 100% Satisfaction Safety Net
Still nervous? Not sure your going to be able to get the green light to attend? Here's the ultimate trump card: We offer a complete, 100% money-back, satisfaction guarantee on your ticket purchase.
That's right. If your team attends the summit and somehow, impossibly, learns nothing that can improve your online sales or marketing performance, you get every penny back from your ticket to attend. No questions asked. No forms to fill out in triplicate. No waiting for approval from a committee that meets quarterly.
I know detailed math in an article might not be the best way to explain this, but I think the math is compelling enough to give it a try.
For the cost of what your company spends on coffee in a month, you can potentially:
Increase your lead generation efficiency by 10-20% Improve your appointment conversion rates by 15% or more Learn strategies that could add multiple sales to your monthly numbers Network with the best minds in your industry
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And if none of that happens? You get your money back.
This isn't an investment. It's not even a calculated risk. It's practically free money with educational benefits attached, especially when the market is difficult.
The only real risk here is explaining to your leadership team next year why your competitors who attended the Summit are outperforming you. I almost erased that sentence three times while editing this, but I can't because I know the impacts of attending - or not - are real.
Ready to make the easiest business decision of the year?
Register now, because the only thing more expensive than investing in your team's education is watching your competition benefit from it instead.
