Looking for ways to generate more high-quality leads? If so, look no further—we’re here to provide the knowledge you need.

In the first part of our series called “Lead Generation for Builders”, we shared the roadmap to building a successful lead generation campaign.

The first stop on your trip is plugging your existing opportunity leads, or to put it another way, capturing more the opportunities you already have.

In this episode, we show you where to look for those leaks and how to plug them! By taking care of these areas with careful thoughtfulness, builders can ensure they are truly maximizing their hard-earned leads.

Watch/Listen/Read on to find out what are the efficient strategies for improving lead generation opportunities for homebuilders and remodelers.

Builder Lead Converter ATTRACTS, CAPTURES & CONVERTS high-quality leads for builders so they can pick & choose their clients & jobs. Find out how at https://www.builderleadconverter.com.

 

Transcript:

Rick:  Today in Conversations That Converts, we will talk about our continuing series of lead generation secrets, specifically part two here, “How to Plug Your Opportunity Leaks”. Let’s get started.

Welcome to Conversations That Convert. Every week, we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation marketing and sales topics for remodelers, home improvement companies and home builders. Conversations That Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter, your perfect sales assistant, and now here’s Rick and Daiana. 

Rick: Welcome everyone. Thanks for joining us on Conversations That Convert. Hello Diana, how are you? 

Daina: Hello. I’m doing great. Thank you. And how about you? 

Rick: Well, wonderful. Again, beautiful summer day here today. A little bit cool with the wind, but it’s nice to not be baking as we walk outside. So what’s our topic today, Daina? 

Daina: Today is part two from our new series of Lead Generation for Builders. And today we’ll plug in to see what opportunity leaks do you see or do you have or if you’re aware of that.

Rick:  Yeah, very, very good point. This is something where I always start with when we’re meeting with prospective builder clients and we always look at what do you currently have in place? How many opportunities are you losing, doing things the way that you’re currently doing them? So, this is all part of our series Lead Generation for Builders, and it’s all based on the results of the Association of Professional Builders Annual State of the Residential Construction Industry Survey, which said that the number one marketing challenge for builders is generating high quality leads, and I totally agree with that because it’s, it’s relatively easy to generate a lead.

It’s very, very difficult to generate a high quality lead. So the focus of this is generating high quality lead, and this is part two in this series called “Plugging Opportunity Leaks”. So, last time we met, we talked about building a roadmap. You have to have that foundation set for any sort of marketing initiative you do.

So, now we’re gonna move into how do you start increasing those high quality leads? And it all starts with looking at what you currently have and the opportunities that you’re missing. And one of my mentors came up with this line. He said, he asked this question, I guess more or less doing what you’re currently doing, the way you’re currently doing it.

How many opportunities are you missing? So oftentimes we don’t have to actually go in and change a whole lot of things that we’re already doing. We just have to look at improving them. And where we find that there’s leaks, in other words, there’s people coming and going they see you and then they leave you without being captured or converted. That’s where we wanna start. So today’s program, we’ll, we’ll focus on that. So what do you say, Daiana? Should we jump into it? 

Daina: Just let’s see what wants to happen today and how many leaks do you do? Do we see? 

Rick: How bad is the water spraying or the leads that we are missing spraying all over our client acquisition funnels. Okay. So we will start with online leaks. There’s really, if you break it down, there are two ways to generate a lead. It’s either gonna be online or offline. That’s it. So we’ll start with online leaks because they’re primarily the easiest to fix because oftentimes that’s simply the way that changing a little bit of your process, how you are structuring things.

Also, the format is a big one. So, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is what I’m gonna call your digital model center, the one that’s open 24 hours, seven days a week, and of course that is your website. The leaks that we find in your website are really threefold. 

The number one leak that we see is that when we see a builder’s website is formatted poorly or the wrong format. And here’s a really important statistic. When that new home or remodeling lead lands on your website, you have a very minimal amount of time to be able to capture their interest. You have to attract them. So, Daiana, we talked about this a few episodes ago, but do you happen to remember how long a, a lead will stay on your website before they lead if they don’t find what they’re looking for?

Daina: Yes. I always mix those numbers, so yes. So I can say two, two minutes. One minute. 

Rick: Well, one minute would be great. Two minutes would be great if we can keep ’em on the site that long. That’s usually when we can convert ’em. If we have ’em that long. It’s actually 19 seconds. 

Daina: 19 seconds. 

Rick: 19 seconds. So if you land on a website, and this is, this is not just builders, this is any website you visit. If you land on a website and you cannot find what you’re looking for in 19 seconds, you leave and you look for it someplace else. So builders are no different and people that shop online they’re shopping by process of elimination, so they’re trying to cross you off the list. So if they land on your website, they don’t see what they’re looking for.

In other words, it’s the wrong format. It’s hard to find things that’s frustrating. The other issue we find is that it’s the wrong content. In other words, we find that a lot of builders are way too inner focused. They wanna talk all about themselves. Versus being outwardly focused or focusing on what the lead is looking for.

So, that’s the content that you need to attract that by providing the stuff that they are looking for. Important thing to remember here is that the lead doesn’t care about you yet. They have three questions in their head. They wanna know what they can build. They wanna know how much it will cost. They wanna know where they can build it or if you will come to their location if you’re a remodeling contractor. 

Those are their only three questions. They’re not always in that order, but those are their three questions until they answer those questions. They don’t care about your process. They don’t really care about your awards. They don’t care about your about us page. They simply wanna get those three questions answered.

Now, once they answer those three questions, they will look at that information that does become important, but not right up front. So a lot of times the content is too inner focused. It doesn’t provide the answers to their questions, and they will leave. 

And then the last one we see issues with website. It’s going to be a lack of or really no lead magnets. There might be a phone number, there might be a contact us form. But there’s no other lead magnets. So the way this works is you have to have the right content, the right format to attract them. You have the right lead magnets to capture them, and then you have to have the right follow up process to convert them.

So, lead magnets are very, very important. Again, that’s using a technique called controlled release of information. I give them enough to get pique their interest online, but then in order for them to get more of that information, they have to do something and that doing something is to fill out a form and opt in, giving me permission to follow up with them, of which I will continue to give them more information that they’re looking for. Any thoughts, Daiana? 

Daina: I think that’s it. A huge a huge, let’s say, missed opportunity if you don’t take care of the of the leaks and the more you become aware. So previously, I didn’t realize how, how many leaks I have in the system. So, just by being aware, I think you can just go and improve and see what can you do differently? And I didn’t pay attention to that. So I think this is very valuable to just know where to pay attention to and look for those leaks. 

Rick: Yeah. Very good. A good, using the analogy of I have a water leak in my home we wanna find where’s the source of that leak before we just start replacing things. Right? Oftentimes we’ll say, oh, I think it’s this, and you just replace this, or, I’m gonna throw more money at it. I’m gonna put a new window in, I’m gonna put a new roof on. But I don’t realize the leak might be in the walls or the siding or the roof and I thought it was the window. So marketing is no different.

When you’re gonna take on a marketing initiative, you are going to spend some money to do something, but before you spend the money, let’s first fix what you currently have. Because pouring more money on a problem, this creates a bigger problem. 

Daina: Right. 

Rick: Alright. The next online leak we will talk about is social media. And social media, it’s, I think it’s misused in a lot of areas. But what I find as far as the biggest issues with social media is number one, the wrong content. And I’m not gonna talk about how often you should post or if you should post videos versus photos. I’m just gonna talk about the wrong content is normally focused on, typically it’s all product related.

It’s just product, product, product. Whereas. What really draws people in is more that human interest or that lifestyle. So. Ideally talking about personalities within your organization that your, your clients get to work with, that’s a great thing to focus on. The customers that you have helped telling their stories, you know, as a case study as testimonials.

That’s that sort of thing. And then as far as the call to action in social media, there are two issues there. Number one is it’s either not done, not done enough. There is no call to action or it’s done too often. So you have to really be very strategic with your call to actions.

I find that you wanna do a call to action probably every three or four posts that route. I do love video. I think, you know, video is by far more powerful than than a photo. But of course, a photo is better than just a post without any visual. So you have to have that visual element, videos being the best, and obviously reels are hot right now. Anything about one minute or or less? Any thoughts on that, Daiana? 

Daina: I think that’s a huge one. We have the wrong content because sometimes, actually all the time we think that we are posting exactly what our client needs or leads need, and then we don’t have a return on investment. And we say, but I post a lot of content, but it’s not relevant for Right, for our audience. 

So, and yes, we focus on the product a lot and the sharing of the benefits, but they only carry, especially in social media, it’s about awareness and knowing that you are there and associating you with a specific product. And it’s more about lifestyle and human element than, and they’re there to, I don’t know, to scroll and have fun. Not to buy something. 

Rick: No. It reminds me of when I look at a lot of builders and they have an about us section and you know, every builder kind of says the same thing. We’re a family-owned quality builder, but when you go to the About Us section, there’s nothing about them.

It’s just some generic statement. And so it’s like, hey, if I’m gonna entrust you with hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions in some points dollars of my money, I should be able to know a little bit about you. I mean, at least have a little, a photo, a video is even better, some background information. What are your values? What do you, what do you believe in? All of that is really lacking from a home builder standpoint. And I get it. 

It’s like we don’t like to talk about ourselves. I understand that. However, the human element or the human connection is what your lead is looking for. So yes, after they opt-in, after they start that relationship, their next step will be trying to find out more about your background. And you need to put it out there because if they connect with somebody else better than you, guess what? You’ve just lost that sale. Thus another opportunity leak. 

The third one for online is paid ads. Now I see a lot of builders running ads and they have the wrong offer in the ad. In other words, the ad is typically it’s not hitting the target as far as helping people determine what they can build. How much it will cost and where they can build it? That’s, again, those are your three offers or some variation of those, which are the most powerful. 

And, by the way, offering something to give someone a free bid is not a good offer. That’s, you’re gonna attract the absolute wrong type of client there or I should say lead. They will not become a client because they’re simply price-focused. So the other issue is no tracking. I’m just gonna run some ads. I’m gonna drop them on my website. What happens after that? I don’t know, but I’m just dropping them on my website. Well, if your website’s not set up to convert leads, it’s essentially a waste of money.

And then funnel, I’m a big proponent of funnel in that when you run an offer, you follow that offer all the way through, which means thinking of the journey of the lead. If they see an offer, they like it, they click on it, then they will go into a funnel or a landing page. There would be some compelling reasons there about why they would want to take the next step.

So whatever that opt-in is, if it’s a download, if it’s a scheduling a call, you’ve gotta give them a compelling reason to do so, and then you need to track the results for that. You know what, again, are your conversion rates? Final thoughts here on online opportunity leaks, Daiana. 

Daina: Actually no tracking. I think it is something very common because we are, oh, let’s do some, some paid ads, but we sometimes think about the offer that it’s what is right and what is wrong, but, I don’t think we think about the tracking part and the funnel. So I think those are two new, new things an important one.

How do you track, how do you look at numbers so that you can use the numbers in your favor? And then where do they land? Do you have a clear funnel to narrow the audience to a specific offer? So . . .

Rick: That’s right. Yep. And that’s the whole point of tracking, you’re exactly right, is that if I can’t manage, I can’t manage something, I don’t measure. So is it successful? Am I getting the return on investment, like you said, well, are you measuring it? Do you have a baseline? And then also are you comparing different offers against one another? We call that split testing or AB testing. So you can see, hey, B’S performing 10% better than A, okay, let’s put more ads like B on there.

And you’re always trying to make those small improvements. So it’s a slippery slope in that it’s very, very expensive. And if it’s not done correctly the results can be disastrous. Because if you’re going to spend the money and it’s not going to work, at a very minimum you should learn, Hey, it didn’t work, let’s not do that anymore, and let’s try something different. 

All right, let’s move on to offline leaks. So, offline, again is any sort of lead that comes at you, not, not online. So there are really three different ways that they can get to you. The most common is, of course, the phone call and the leaks here come into play where I really don’t have a good qualification.

So in other words, a call comes into the office. I. Let’s say you have an office administrator or somebody just picks up the phone, hi. They, they lead say, oh yeah, my name is I’ve got, will you guys do this type of project? You know, how much does it cost? No basic questions, that sort of thing. If there’s no formal process to go through to qualification and that process is in the form of a script, you are going to lose opportunities here. 

The other one that I see is that the person answering the phone is not necessarily due to the qualifications. So they take a message or a voicemail is left and then it takes too long to get back to the lead. Another big no-no. So in this case, what should happen is the lead should get an opportunity to book a follow-up call with you immediately.

So if they call into the office, they go into voicemail. There should be an automated process of getting back to that lead. Usually, it’s via text and or email to get them to book a call with you so you can actually have that call, or if someone’s answering the phone they have to be trained.

They have to be trained to be able to go through and and deliver a script, go through the qualification process. Again, they’re trying to disqualify you, you need to actually try to disqualify them as well. So, what are those things you need to know to find out if they’re viable and if they don’t match your criteria? Any thoughts? 

Daina: You mentioned that you need to disqualify them and it’s good. So they disqualify me and I disqualify them. 

Rick: So yeah, we’ll talk more about that actually. Right now with walk-in traffic that’s where I started out my career in walk-in traffic. So we worked on a model home, and we drove traffic to the model home. Now the traffic comes in the lead comes in. We need to get into a conversation with them in order to qualify them. So you may not have a mob home. You might have a retail office where you might get walk-in traffic, or you might do home shows or things where you have people in front of you. Same issue, no script.

And, I think the big one here is the wrong mentality. So let me explain. Most of the mentality is that when people come to me, they’re not a lead unless they tell me. Okay, so how do you, why will they tell me? I have to start asking them questions. So I go through my qualification process and try to understand if they are a good lead.

Remember though, I always look at it this way. The lead is trying to disqualify you as a builder, so they’re trying to disqualify you. So why shouldn’t you have the same mentality? You should want to disqualify the lead. I’ll give you an example. Working a parade of homes. We are a home builder. We are trying to build homes for people who come through the door.

So the parade of homes is obviously there’s a bunch of model homes on display that people can come and walk through the homes, get ideas, talk to builders. And if everything works out well, I am going to sell several jobs off of that event. Okay. How do I go about doing that? Well, my mentality has to be, I need to disqualify them.

So one of the things I used to do is when people would come to a parade of homes, they were always very guarded. They were on the defensive. Say, Hey, Daiana, are you thinking about you know, building a new home? They would say, oh, we’re just looking. If based on the question I asked, that always elicited the response because just like a salesperson would have a script, buyers have scripts too.

We’re just looking, we’re in no hurry, that sort of thing. So, here’s what I would do. They would walk into the model home and I would say, hi Daiana, welcome to our model home. Are you getting remodeling ideas? So they would do one or two, and they could give me two answers. Yes, we are considering remodeling, which we did not remodel. I would say, great, go get some ideas next. Or they would say, oh no, we’re not remodeling. No, we would, we’re, we’re considering building. Bingo! Okay. So they just qualified themselves that yes, this is somebody I should continue to talk to. So I think you gotta, you gotta have the right mentality. Have the mentality of the buyer. In other words, I’m trying to quickly disqualify you. 

And move on to the next one. Last but not least is the referral partner, Daiana. I got a potential client. They contacted me and they said, Rick, we need more leads. We don’t have enough leads. We’re thinking, well, we should run ads. We should do SEO. We should just do that other thing. I said, well, what about, how do you have a client list? Do you have people that have reached out to you that never purchased? That’s where you start. That’s where you start with your referral partner leaks. And so here are the issues that most builders have. 

Number one is it’s the best lead source and it’s the most overlooked. So in other words, when we get a referral lead, that’s the highest converting lead source. It’s the most overlooked because builders just let it happen organically. There’s really no formal program. So number one, you need to have a referral partner program for both B to C. So your past clients, but you also need to have a program for your partners.

In other words, the people that work with you, your vendors, your suppliers your subcontractors, people that work with you in the industry. ’cause they are also a referral source. So you need to have a rewards program for that. In other words, what incentive is there for somebody to send somebody your way?

And there should be incentive for both the referer, the person sending you the referral, and the referee the person that is potentially going to build or remodel their home. And I see the biggest issue with this, Daiana, is that there is a lack of networking and consistency. So referral program is a lot more about just sending out a postcard or an email.

It’s networking. It’s that grinding thing, it’s calling people up, it’s sending them a text message. It’s, you know, reaching out to them with a small gift. It’s staying top of mind to let them know and, remind them of your referral program. And if they are happy with you, you know, you want to incentivize them to send someone else your way, that can also be as happy as them. Final thoughts from you? 

Daina: Well, I have so many things to pay attention to right now. So many things, so many leaks say, so many leaks to pay attention to. So if you work, I think only on one, you’ll be even more successful and you’ll increase the rate of sales. So just by paying attention to only one. But if you pay attention to all of them, imagine what the possibilities are.

Rick: That’s right. Yeah, and I, this is where I would start first actually with your getting the referral program set up, getting a consistent networking and outreach put together for for both B to B and B to C referral partners. And then I would move on to look on the front end, your online leaks. And then at the same time, I would be working on your offline leaks, getting your sales scripts down, qualifying, you know, focusing on improving your follow-up and your sales process. 

So if you would like to schedule your strategy, call and find out how we can help you attract, capture, and convert high-quality leads so you can pick and choose your clients and jobs. Go ahead and just click on the link below. Schedule your strategy call. It’s absolutely free. Be happy to take a look at your website, help you with any questions you might have, and see if you might be able to, again, grow revenue and profit and become that company that you’ve always wanted to be. 

For my brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. Always. We’ll see you next time on Conversations That Convert. Bye-bye everyone.