As the competition in home remodeling and custom home building continues to be fierce, it’s becoming increasingly important for builders to understand where they are vulnerable to losing sales.

In this fourth part of our series “Why Builders Lose Sales to Competitors and What They Can Do About It”, we dive deep into what experts consider some key mistakes many builders make when following- up with new leads—and how you can avoid them!

So if you’re ready to find out how you can stand out from other local contractors, read/watch/listen to this episode and get started!

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 on Conversation that converts, we’re gonna be continuing to discuss why builders lose sales and what you can do about it. And today specifically, we’ll be talking about follow-up and conversion. 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. Welcome, Daiana, to conversations that convert. How are you? 

Daiana: I’m very good. Thank you. Welcome, and you?

Rick: I’m, I’m just learned about Chicory Coffee, and so now my interest is peaked. I think I’m going to try it. Daiana was telling me about how good it is, so Chicory Coffee is the new alternative to coffee.

Daiana: Yes it is. And it’s a healthy one. It improves blood sugar and it’s good for health. 

Rick: All right, well I have the old-fashioned one right here, right now, but we’ll be moving on to chicory. So what are we talking about today, Daiana? 

Daiana: Today about follow-ups and conversions. And of course, this is part of why builders lose sales to competitors and what they can do about it. So that’s one thing that we can do about it, and I truly believe that the fortune is in the follow-up. So maybe we should start following up. 

Rick: The, it it is, it’s in the follow-up. And you know what, you know what it’s all about is you work so hard to grab that lead.

Daiana: Right.

Rick: You capture that lead and then you don’t follow up properly. And it’s like all for not. So yes, follow-up is huge. And then we’ll be moving on to our sales process. This is, is part of our Why Builders Lose Sales series. And again, this is part four. The previous three have been marketing and tracking leads and capturing leads. And now we’re talking about conversion here.

So this is where we’re at. You have captured the lead, now what? So now I just call ’em or send ’em an email, or I text them, or you know, what do I, what do I do? So the conversion is a process of moving a lead to a phone call using various follow-up techniques and tools. Techniques and tools are the important ones here.

So we’re gonna walk through first, what are the mistakes that builders make that cause them to lose sales in the follow-up process. And then we’ll, we’ll finish with some strategies, some tactics. I’m not gonna get too much into the tools here, but if you wanna know more about that, you can always click the link below, and schedule a call with me.

We can, we can discuss that. So here’s the question, what mistakes do builders make that cause ’em to lose sales or do not convert? Daiana, I bet you are just on the edge of your seat, wondering what are these mistakes. 

Daiana: So maybe one, one mistake is to wait. To wait for the, wait for the lead to close, the sales itself, himself or herself.

Rick: That, is mistake number one is slow or no follow-up after an inquiry is received. So once you, that lead opts in contact you, whatever that method is, the clock is ticking. And what we see leads to our loss, probably more, more often here than anywhere else is that there, there’s just a lack of follow-up completely.

It just gets lost or somebody gets busy and they just miss it, or it’s very slow, it’s delayed. I have to keep in mind that when you get an inquiry, your competitors are getting inquiries as well. So it is a race and the clock literally is, is ticking. So mistake number two, only one type of follow-up method was used.

So this is the idea. Somebody calls you, you just call ’em back, somebody emails you, you email ’em back. Somebody might send you a text message, you text ’em back, or let’s say they me, they reach out to you on social media messaging and you just message them back.

We, we don’t know, just because the lead came in and they used that particular type of form, or excuse me, tool or, or, or platform. So they sent you an email. We don’t know if that’s what they’re gonna respond best to. So when we only use one type of follow-up, oftentimes we, we may, we maybe miss the lead and or they miss us, and then we lose the opportunity to convert them into a sale.

This was a big one here and a lot of people overlook this. being unprofessional, in how you follow up the tools that you’re using to follow up. There’s just way too much of that going on in this business, and they can turn people off immediately. And then the last mistake is poor formatting. In other words, we just follow up.

There’s no rhyme or reason. There’s just a garbled mess that we send back to people, and we really don’t give them a compelling reason to want to get back in touch with us, to have a conversation. So let’s talk about some of these tactics that make sales, shall we, Daiana? 

Daiana: Yes. I’m, I’m curious about. 

Rick: So the question, question number one is if I get a new lead during business hours, how soon should I follow up? 

Daiana: Less than two minutes. 

Rick: Less than two minutes, exactly. So, Immediately in some cases, such as within, with an email but less than two minutes, that lead needs to hear back from me. And the reason I do that is that I want to try to catch some water that’s still on my website or perhaps still on my social media page.

I want to, I want to get ’em while they’re, while, while they’re hot. So next tactic is to use multiple platforms to follow up. So what do you think, Daiana? Have an idea of which ones I should be using?

Daiana: So one is the, one they reach out to. So if the email reaches out again by email.

Rick: Email.

Daiana: Phone call, phone call, I think it’s a good one to see. Hey, did you get my email? Just wanted to check out. And the SMS I think that’s something that works in the states very well.

Rick: Does. Yes. Yes. And so there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Yeah. Number one, email. An email you can automate, you can send it immediately cuz people expect that it’s really more of a receipt. As we have received your inquiry. We received your information but an SMS or a text message that should be done within two minutes. 

Daiana: Yes. 

Rick: Do you wanna make that look organic? And this is again, during business hours. I, I’m still gonna text them after hours, but I’m gonna format it differently. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. The phone call should be made within an hour, and this is during business hours.

So if the, if the lead comes in at eight o’clock at night, I’m not gonna call them at nine, but I will call them at, you know, nine o’clock the next morning. And then after hours, we can send an email in a text and we can do that right away. But we’re gonna format the text message of the SMS after hours to disclose that we are an after-hours booking service.

So we’re an after-hours assistant or booking assistant just to acknowledge that they sent there, the, the message in and that we received the message. And that’s, you know, ask them if they’d like to book a call to talk to one of our representatives the following, the following day.

And then finally, there are social media. So Instagram is full of so much garbage. So but we should still be responding, to those leads. Google My business also has a chat platform, so we should be responding to that as well, and so we can automate that as well.

So those leads do get a follow-up and we can continue the conversation there. Those you wanna do immediately as, as, as well. One thing I’ve noticed with social media is you almost want, especially Instagram, you wanna have a qualifier. So you wanna respond to the inquiry and say, Hey, are you interested in building a home or remodeling your home? And if they say yes, the conversation can go from there because you get so much spam and just crap there that you have to put some sort of a filter on it. 

Daiana: Right. 

Rick: Alright. The next tactic is being professional. And again, I hate to even bring this up, but I see so much of it that it’s, it is an issue. The number one area I see here being unprofessional is that you are not using an email address that has your company name in it.

So if your website is ABC Builders, your email should be Rick@ABCBuilders. It shouldn’t be Rick@hotmail, Rick@gmail, or Rick@Outlook. It needs to match your business address and everything else that’s very unprofessional. And actually, if you do any sort of marketing on a mass scale, use an email and the email address you’re sending from does not match your website address.

You will be more likely to not put into a spam filter, so you’re gonna have you, your reach is gonna be very limited, so it’s very, very important. Those two things match. Now the company phone is another one. You need to have a phone just for company calls. It should not be your personal cell phone.

You can forward messages to that, but all of your voicemails and things should be on a company phone. There should be options where if they can’t get ahold of you, they can get ahold of someone else on your team. There should be messages that say when you are available to take calls when somebody leaves a call after hours.

All those things. And so there are lots of different call services you can use for that, but it should not go to your personal voicemail. And you need that for work-life balance as well, don’t you think so, Daiana or Daiana? 

Daiana: Yes, I think so. That’s important in the how-to, to balance that. So when you, you, you shut down the computer, then you know that you can shut down the phone too. So you can go and wait for urgent calls if some, If you expect them on your personal phone, so. 

Rick: Absolutely. Yeah. You can always get messages after-hours messages, and you can determine if you want to call someone. But you know how this business is, is that people think you work 24/7 and you never take a break. And they will take advantage of that. So you have to have some sanity and it’s also professional.

Most businesses are not open 24/7. So you have to leave a message. You have to wait to hear back from that person, for business hours. You can still communicate with them after hours, that’s fine, but you’re gonna just let them know if they want to have a conversation with you or a face-to-face meeting when it will happen and when you’ll get back to them.

So setting those expectations. And then the third area where I see a lot of unprofessionalism is social media accounts. If you’re, if you’re going to, you know, have a Facebook account, make sure you have a business Facebook profile that is separate from your personal. Same thing with Instagram.

Have an Instagram account that is separate from your personal Instagram account. So again, you, you’re, you, you can bring some personal things into that business account, but, the primary focus should be business content in that social media profile. So Instagram, you can have a business page for Facebook, you should have a business page. Then you can have a business personal profile that manages and administers both of those pages. 

Daiana: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. But sometimes we confuse them and us, it’s, it’s a mess. Everything it’s in one place and you don’t know who’s who.

Rick: Yeah. You’re looking through and you’re making some sort of political comment or you’ve got your kids 

Daiana: Right. Exactly. 

Rick: In there, or, you know, it, it just, it gets, you don’t, you don’t wanna blur the lines, keep ’em, keep ’em separate. 

Daiana: Right. 

Rick: And the last thing I see here is formatting messages to get a response. A lot of times when messages are sent back, there’s just no rhyme or reason. You wanna format a message to get a response. In other words, you’re playing tennis. So what happened is, is the lead just served to you? Now you are replying and you want them to serve back again. So when that happens, we need to format the messages to get a response.

So what that looks like, four things. Number one, you want to create attention, so get the person’s attention. If it’s an email, that’s the subject line. If it’s a text message, it’s the first line of the text. Number two, you have to create interest. Why do they want to continue to read your response?

Again, remember, they’re normally reaching out to multiple businesses, not just yours, so you have to have a compelling message getting back to them. So create interest. Number three is desire. Create the desire for why they want to talk to you. And then finally tell ’em what you want them to do. Don’t say, Hey, you can text me here. You can call me here. You can stop by the office. You can send me an email.

Don’t give them multiple choices and say, what do you want them to do? Reply to the email, send you a text, call you just tell them specifically what you want to you them to do and make it singular. So that’s it. Daiana, any other thoughts from you as far as why builders lose sales when it comes to following up, or at least lack thereof?

Daiana: I think we always lose sales when we lose focus on those small and small things. Just, it’s simple, it’s easy, and, need to do them with perseverance,

Rick: And consistency. A very good point. You have to be consistent, which is really why you want to set up. You’re 50% of builders out there do not have a written sales process. 

Daiana: Right? 

Rick: You have a structured sales process, so you are consistently following up with every lead, every time, never missing an opportunity. And that is how you’re going to plug those opportunity leaks from, you know, plug those leads from going elsewhere because your follow up what, what was lacking. 

Daiana: Yeah, that’s true. 

Rick: So if you’d like to talk more about that, you can schedule a strategy call today. Find out how we attract, capture, and convert high-quality leads. So you can pick and choose your clients and jobs. And for my brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. Always. We will see you next time on Conversations That Convert. Bye-bye.

Daiana: Bye.