Q & A Episode 32 - Sales: Tips + Takeaways #2
Episode #32 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | Sales: Tips + Takeaways #2
In this episode of The Curious Builder, Mark Williams continues his chat about sales tips from the recent Minneapolis collective meetup. He shares the importance of using CRM systems to keep track of leads and dives into building solid relationships with clients and partners like designers and architects. Packed with great advice, Mark makes it super relatable and helpful for builders trying to boost their sales game.
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About The Curious Builder
The host of the Curious Builder Podcast is Mark D. Williams, the founder of Mark D. Williams Custom Homes Inc. They are an award-winning Twin Cities-based home builder, creating quality custom homes and remodels — one-of-a-kind dream homes of all styles and scopes. Whether you’re looking to reimagine your current space or start fresh with a new construction, we build homes that reflect how you live your everyday life.
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Mark D. Williams 00:04
The reason that this is under the sales category is there is an opportunity to reassure your client. And I think anytime you have a difficult situation, it's an opportunity to make a sale and to prove to them again why they chose you. Ian, Mark,
Mark D. Williams 00:27
welcome to curious. Build a podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host, and today's Thursday, Q and A is round two of sales, tips and takeaways. If you missed the first one, you can go back one week where we did round one. There was just so much to cover that I thought we'd make two episodes out of it. There's other things to be gained in that one, and this will be a kind of a continuation of that sales topics. And if you missed that one, basically a couple weeks ago, we had our first curious builder collective here in Minneapolis, and the topic was sales. So there's 18 builders talking about that specific topic, which was sales. And what I thought would be interesting is just to go through there. I think there was like 30 or 40 takeaways that everyone submitted, of things that they learned from that. And we just have so much to learn from each other in these collective settings, not only the Podcast, the podcast is obviously a way to get out the message to a lot, much larger audience. The Collective is much more focused. It's meant to build a community. We meet in small groups of nine. So if you're interested, you can head to our website, curious builder.com, and under collectives, depending what state you're in, if you're in Minnesota, I'm leading it here. We've got Vince Longo and Brad Robinson down in Atlanta, Georgia. We've got the penskes down in Austin and San Antonio, and then Brad Levitt down in Phoenix. So if you're in one of those areas, you can join the collectives there, and you can be in person and be part of this great community. Otherwise, we're glad that you're here at the podcast. So welcome. Okay, so one of the things that came up in in our sales meeting was who uses a CRM system? So that's client relationship management. So basically, how are you tracking your sales? And I think for people that came from a corporate setting, or a much bigger company like this, is where systems and a bigger corporation, I think, really helps, and there's a huge advantage. But by and large, there are so many Mom and Pop builders, small remodelers, that if we're focusing on sales, we're going from one sale to another sale. It's almost akin to the paid living paycheck by paycheck. A lot of times, people don't know where their sales even come from. And I get it. It's hard on our website, under our contact page, we have, if people are reaching out to us, they tell us where they're finding us. Is it Google? Is it referral? Is it the Parade of Homes? Is it a show home? Is it an advertisement? And it's just, it's all over the board. And I think a lot of times, clients don't even know how they found you. If you've been doing a lot of advertising over decades, it's hard to know how far deep into their psyche, but you have gone, hopefully, really deep. That's great. But the idea that they'd be able to tell you where that first point of contact was so that you knew how to market better is highly unlikely. You know, people have to be seen so many times, but anyway, a CRM machine, and there's a number of them, there's Salesforce, is a big one. I don't think it's been advised for smaller I'd say companies under 30 or 40 go for that. It's too big of a operation. I know a lot of big companies that have hundreds of employees. They need a big database for all of their the people that they call on. But there are smaller ones, like HubSpot, I think pipe drive. There's a number I think builder trend has a CRM machine as well. And so there's so many places whatever you do, I think it's akin to, like an Instagram approach, be consistent. And so even if it's not great, even if it's your hot sheet, I've worked on a hot sheet for a number of years, which is basically just an eight and a half 11 by piece of paper where I've got a list of all like, my hottest topic are people. And I'm always reminded to look at it and think about when I'm going to contact them next. And I'm embarrassed to admit for myself, because I love sales, is probably one of my strongest attributes. And I, out of college, worked. I sold copiers for one year, we use CRM machines. There was 1000s of people in that system, and I of course, never met any of them. For those that aren't familiar with what this is, you'd put in a name, let's call it John Doe, and they work at whatever company. In this case, if you're looking clients, you'd put in, this is a person's you met them at. However you met them, you've got their contact information, and then you just set up a follow up. Is it you follow up with them once a month? Is it once a quarter? Is it once a year? Is there maybe a birthday or a special event? Whether you can enter in whatever you want, but you can pick a cadence so that you can stay with them. And the whole goal is that they're going to be in funnels. You've got a leading funnel. So this is just where all your leads come in. And the whole point is to move them through the funnel, to convert them to a sale. And to think about it, more of a system, versus just willy nilly or just, hey, if they're hot, great. It's, I think a lot of builders, and actually, I think just a lot of industries in general, do not get real scientific about their sales. I think most people, myself included, am guilty of this where, you know, we are just simply attending to the hottest fire, which I understand. It makes sense as a firefighter. In this case, we want fires for this analogy, because we want a sale. If you've got someone who's really hot, like you're giving them a lot of energy, because you're trying to convert that into a sale right away. It's a little bit like a short order cook you are. You're not worried about the eggs. You're going to grill at 11 o'clock. It's 9am you're grilling eggs right now. And so if someone comes through your Parade of Homes, or your show home, or something like that. You're trying to capture them immediately, while they're they came to that house for a reason. If they came to that house and are interested, you've got 45 days to close them down, or they might go elsewhere. And if they're a longer term prospect, be the first person to make sure that they're in your system in terms of email, Cadence, letters, gifts, however you want to show up for that client, and however you want to interact with them, whatever your sales process is from the point that you first made contact with them, that sales kind of 101, so anyway, most of the people at the table did not have a CRM system, I would say, only like two did. And so that is something that our industry could probably use a huge jolt of help with. And so anyway, that was one of the takeaways. I think the other one is making sure that you have consistent feedback with your with your clients. I just was talking to someone today who is the operations manager for a company, and she actually is on the job site with the project. She acts as a project coordinator as well as a client liaison. And I thought we like her, every two weeks, keep a meeting with the client. So we're on a bi weekly schedule. We meet at the job site. We've got the designer, the architect, depending on if they need to be pulled in for this meeting or not. Then we're just walking the job site. And I we usually send out an agenda the day before, and this is a hospitality thing. We're saying, Hey, we're going to talk about your trim profiles. We're going to talk about cabinetry. We're talking about tile. There's a few selections that we're missing. So each one, each time we meet, the form is the same, but the topics are different. I appreciated how this Operations Manager, theirs is different. Theirs is a very static way of going through it, which I like the repeatability of this. And they basically the first thing they do is talk about the schedule, and they use builder use builder trends. So they've got, here's our schedule, here's what we've done the last two weeks, here's our look ahead, here's what's happening the next so they, I think they get into the questions a little bit later, but right now, they're really just sending the table of like, Where have we been? Where are we going? Where are we at right now? And then she asked right in that meeting, how are we doing? On a scale from one to 10, give us a rating in front of them. And I appreciated this. I think we're going to add this to our agenda meeting, because I think if you send, if you at one point I was I wanted to send out an email to my clients once a month, and say, on a scale from one to 10, rate our your project management, your design and whatever else you want to come up with, because you just need to keep it short. And basically it was explained to me that if it's anything above an eight, the project manager or like a nine or 10, you don't respond. It's great. They're happy. Great. If it's an eight, the project manager reaches out and says, hey, what can we do to make it a 10? Anything below an eight, essentially, or whatever number you want it to be your threshold, the owner calls so in this case, it'd be me. We empower project managers to take the lead. I'm at those meetings too, so they see me a lot. But let's say you got a three. That's three is bad. I'm going to call them immediately. Hey, Mr. Johnson, what's going on? I saw that we got a three on a recent report. What happened? Oh, you just went through drywall. Yeah, I'm sorry. You know, if you look at your emotional roller coaster, drywall is one of the lowest parts. Is there anything we can do to make your experience better? I think the reason that this is under the sales category is there is an opportunity to reassure your client, and I think if you react, I think anytime you have a difficult situation, it's an opportunity to make a sale and to prove to them again why they chose you. And so it's an awesome opportunity to really level up your sales and really making them a great place to refer people and be happy during the process as well. Actually, gonna make a note. I gotta add that right now.
Mark D. Williams 08:58
Outside of the podcast, we have the curious collectives. This year in Minnesota, we had three curious builder collectives. We had a curious builder Collective, we had a curious designer collective, and we had a curious architect collective. Basically, what this is, is we get small groups, no more than 30. You get into tables of nine, and we have set topics of discussion. You can see everything that you want on the website, at curious builder podcast.com you can also find it in other cities. So the collective is going into Phoenix. Brad Levitt is going to be hosting a curious collective down in Phoenix, Arizona. We're going to have Brad Robinson and Vince Longo leading a collective in Atlanta, Georgia, and we're going to have David and Angela Penske down in San Antonio, also leading a collective, and a few other states are coming online later this year as well, of course, as Minnesota. So if you're interested in getting together with like minded individuals, this collective is kind of somewhere between what we do at the contractor coalition that you hear me talk a lot about. It's also kind of a hybrid of what you see at builder 20s. So it's really Oh. And format, very much embracing collaboration of competition. If you want to further your education, if you want to increase learning from each other, you definitely want to find out more about these collectives.
Mark D. Williams 10:11
One of the other things that came up as well, besides the referrals, is, how do we partner with designers and architects? And we're actually going to do a live podcast, I think, in the third or fourth quarter and talking about this particular topic, and we'll ask other builders in the industry as well, because everyone wants to work with everybody else. I don't think it's like everyone wants to work with builders, because guess what? Builders want to work with designers. Builders want to work with architects. Architects need builders to bid their work so that they if a client comes to them, they have good referrals. Designers same way, and every market is different. One thing that's been interesting on the podcast is every city and every state has a different hierarchy of what clients come to. And it's not always this way, but Minnesota, as I've mentioned many times before, I think we have the oldest Parade of Homes in the country, 75 years old. It's impressive. And so stereotypically, the builders have a lot of power here in terms of clients. Are aware that if you're gonna build a home, you go to a builder. That's not true in every other state. I've talked to some designers down in Texas, and it seems like they go to the designers first, but you go out to California or the East Coast, you go to the architect first. And there's no right or wrong way. It's just what is the culture of your area? I think the one thing that is really important is building your team, regardless of where a client comes from. I'm a big fan of building the team. Really. From day one, we just had a client fly into town, and we interviewed architects, interviewed designers together, and then we assembled the entire team. And now from the get go. The client doesn't have to repeat themselves a bunch of times, which sometimes they get annoyed with. And really there's a lot of continuity, because now the three partners can, you know, get together behind closed doors and hash out, Hey, who's doing this? How are we doing this? And really make the client experience much better, which is a great sales tool. There was some designers in the room at a recent collective as well, because we have a builder collective as well as a designer collective and architect collective. So right now I'm switching gears. We were talking to designers, and one of the questions the designers asked me, as I was the only builder in the room, they said, how do designers work with builders? And I can only answer that for myself. We have really great design partners, and I'm always open to new ones, but it's not like I can just displace the ones that have done decades of great work. They're obviously going to get a look if they're the right fit and feel for whoever the client is. But I think just being present, showing up for whichever business you're trying to be a partner with. I guess what I came away with was, in order to be a partner, you have to be a good partner. And what I mean by that is, I look at designers that like we're working with Melissa whole lot from Oh, interiors right now on a project, and I've known her for a decade, but this the first time we've worked with her. She was a wedding photographer for a while. I met her. When we actually gonna do some design work for her? We're gonna actually gonna build her a wedding venue. She actually took pictures of May my daughter when she was a baby. She's had quite a diverse background, and then as she got in design, we always just stayed in touch. And I just liked her as a person. She's great, and she's got now she's just got this amazing team around her as well. And so like that. How do I tell you exactly how I chose Melissa? In this case, that is a relationship that's been building for the better part of a decade, and it does take time. I think sometimes that can be discouraging, but I think it's actually encouraging. If you look at it differently, it's a way that there is a relationship, because it's real. You can't fake a decade long relationship, and that one's unique. I'm not saying everyone's going to be quite like that. You don't have to take builders baby pictures, but I think showing up to events, if a builder has a parade home or an open house or a design event or something like that, show up, show up where they want you to show up. And I think that's true of builders designers put on open houses and influencer events. I think they'll do webinars, all those types of things like show up, be there. And I think continually showing up for each other in a real way. I think that moves the needle more than anything else. And I there's this designer that for probably a year, every time I posted something on social media, she would interact with it. She would comment on it. I definitely know who she's, who she is, and when there's an opportunity, at some point, I'm going to recommend her to a client, because she's been doing this for a couple of years. That is not just by the flight, just on a whim. There's she cares. She obviously likes what we do. She cares to interact with it, because we all have time limitations, and I appreciate that. And I think one of my favorite lines I've ever heard, because I've I've heard it a lot people. You get the emails all the time. Hey, I'd love to do your siding, or I'd love to do your roofing, or whatever it is. It actually doesn't matter. It's industry agnostic. And I usually will say, I I'm really happy with my cabinet maker right now. I don't really, I'm not looking for another cabinet shop, but I don't want to discourage them. So I said, if you want to stay in touch, go ahead and call on me once a quarter. So I'm. Calling them to put that in their CRM machine, because I'm just having my sales background, 95% of them never will. You'll hear from again. And I'm not saying that with any sort of animosity or but it is a hurdle. Will they even follow up with me? Was this just, uh, they're just going to go through the phone deck and just on w? So they got all the way down to W. They called a lot of people to get to w. And is that it? Is that all I'm going to get because I don't know if I really want to work with a company that's either going to give up that easily or b not have some sort of system in place to keep calling. And I only give this because we're talking about sales. I would normally not talk about it in those terms, but I'm trying to help those people. I just having a sales background, I pretty much try to return every time I get a phone call or an email. I know it's not probably the best use of my time, and I should just delete it, but I often will send a response. Thank you for your email. We're not looking for somebody. Feel free to call me in the future. Again, most people don't do it, and I think that is a hurdle that I think as owners is a good way to find out who really is in your corner and really you want to work with and who isn't. And if you're in sales, make sure you do what you say you're going to do, follow up. I think it's no different than a homeowner. If somebody comes through our parade home and says they have an interest in building I hope you set up a call with them. I hope you set up a meeting with them, because they literally just told you, like they wouldn't go through your house. They didn't randomly fall down the driveway into your house. They drove to your house. They took time out of their day. They went to go into your home like they have already pre qualified themselves as interested in every builder knows that. Yes, there's lots of tire kickers, and sometimes we dismiss that. Don't you never know where that lead might go, who they might refer now that our last episode last week about referrals, I've just never I haven't had a parade home in a while or open house, but now I have a great new line. If someone says, Oh, I'm not interested, great, that's fine. If you're not interested, do you know anyone else that might be interested? I'm going to start using that line as a referral. Ask for everyone, because the majority of people that are coming through your open houses are not buyers. They're just not especially if you're getting 1000s of people during a big tour. But that doesn't mean that they couldn't refer somebody, because we all know a lot of people, and I think leveraging our networks, it'd be really interesting to have to see if people would engage with you that way of you can either give me your email or you have to give me three other emails, your choice. It's an interesting sales approach. But anyway, I like it anyway, be a good partner by being a good partner. And I think you can, I think, by showing up for other people that you want to work with. Just apply the same thing to yourself. Our last question here for sales tips and takeaways would be, how do you know what architects and designers to align yourself with? I think this is a hard one, because I guess that's hard and easy at the same time. There's so many in Minnesota. In particular, we have so much talent here. I'm really proud of the talent we have in Minnesota in terms of both architects and designers, and for me, myself, personally, I just I don't build enough homes to work with every single person, even though I'd love to. And the opportunity over decades, you hopefully that you can. But I think we love our top 10s, ESPN top 10 list, so I guess let's make a top 10. I think, you know, let's say there's 100 200 architects. Let's say there's 500 designers. Hard to know. Narrow it down to your top 10 of people that you want to work with, and I think then go call on them, take them up for a cup of coffee, or bring coffee to them and start following their portfolios on Instagram. I always say, compliment the kids. I'm a dad of three. I think anyone that has kids can relate to this statement. If somebody compliments you on your kids like you'll remember it. You'll like them who doesn't want to hear that their kids are great. I have yet to met anybody in the history of mankind that doesn't want to hear that their kids are great. The homes that architects draw and create, in the homes that designers design, in the homes that builders build like we're all proud of the work that we do so compliment. It needs to be genuine. You have to actually believe what you're saying, because that's you can't be a fraud or just won't work. At some point it'll unravel on you. But be genuine, like, who doesn't want to hear that? Hey, you did a great at least specific. Hey, I really think that window detail you did on that bay window was really unusual. Find something specific to compliment people on. I think that is way more interesting than just saying, hey, beautiful work. I'm not saying don't say that, but I'm saying, Be specific. Relate a home to a person like maybe it's your kid, and you say, Man, Wow, your son is so good at playing basketball. But what really impresses me is how great he is at passing to his friends and encouraging them. That's way more meaningful than just saying your son is great at basketball. And I think that's true of a home you can compliment if you're trying to get in with architects, telling them, like, specifically, hey, I'm really impressed. Could you show me? Like, how did you come up with that? And be genuinely curious about that? Because, honestly, I'm saying this advice. I've not done it, but I'm going to do it now, because I think it's a way to interact with people on a real way and they want to talk about their work. Like, who would create that beautiful of work and then not talk about it. And I think then be open minded to when people call on you, if you're the builder listening to this, and designers or architects or plumbers, electricians, whoever calls on you, like, the same treatment is the same if they're calling on you specifically to ask about the work that you do. I think that is just a better relationship, and it's somebody that we would want to work with. So anyway, hopefully these sales tips were helpful. I know that even just talking about them, there's the things that I need to change and what I do, I have a great day. And again, for those that are tuning in for the first time, we do Monday episodes where I interview builders and designers and architects all around the country. And those are hour long Thursdays. There are 20 minute Q A. So if you have a question, you can head to our website. You can drop us a question on our Instagram feed, and I can find everything at curious builder.com thanks again for tuning in. Thanks for
Mark D. Williams 20:51
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