[00:00:00] Amanda: For us as home builders, we, we know like what’s going on, right. We know the lumber prices and the shortages and all these things, but consumers, we can’t assume that they know these things, right. We can’t assume that they understand what is going on. They, they know that. You know, there’s bidding Wars and houses are selling for significantly more than what they used to.

But I think that we need to do a better job of communicating to our buyers and everyone out there. you know, we’re not just charging more money to make more money. you know, we’re, we’re charging more money to, to cover the costs. And, I think that there. Builders can, can do a better job of explaining why and just being super transparent to buyers out there to help in that conversation from the very beginning

[00:01:00] Matt: Hi, and welcome to building perspective with Matt Riley and Mollie Elkman. We’re here

Amanda: to bring value to you and your team by exploring all things, sales and marketing

Matt: related all from different perspectives. All right. And welcome back to another episode of building perspective. Today, we are talking about.

This market sucks. It sucks people. And we’re going to talk about why, and I am joined by my illustrious co-host, Amanda Druschel and Alexis Udine , welcome ladies to the show. Hello? Thanks for having us. Yeah. Having us. It’s kind of like it’s all of our us, right. We’re all just [00:02:00] swapping out. We’re just swapping out, trying to keep our heads above water.

Okay. I was taking a sip of my, fancy, let’s see, Perrier strawberry flavored water. It gives me a little food, food drink. it’s okay. It’s okay though. I highly, I wouldn’t

Alexis: pinpoint you to be, that kind of fancy water guy, but you learn something every day, right?

Matt: Or are you supposed to drink that?

Pinky out.

Amanda: Meanwhile, I’m drinking my gallon of, my water for 75 hard here

Matt: out of your Mason jar out of my Mason jar. Where is that where you normally drink wine from, is out of your Mason jar?

Amanda: Well, I hopefully not this have

Matt: you. Well, you know, depends on the day.

All right. All right. Okay. So let’s talk about, why this. Market sucks. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna rant for a minute. You guys jump in at any given time. So why does this market suck? Well, it sucks for builders. it sucks for [00:03:00] buyers. and the problem is that we’re having right now is. That we’re not the builders and the buyers.

Aren’t seeing this from each other’s perspective, right? From the buyer’s perspective, the they’re seeing like prices are going up like absolute, crazy town. and they’re just thinking that that bar builders are just greedy, greedy people and just raking in the profits. And on the builder side, we’re like, okay, I just got a 5% lumber price increase overnight with no notification.

If my average sales price is $500,000, what’s the math.

It’s a lot overnight, right? Like that’s literally. Overnight. and so then we pass that cost on to the buyer. And the reality of it is if you take a 5% increase, you actually have to go up more than 5% [00:04:00] to cover your margin. Cause a 5% to 5% is actually a margin percentage reduction. That’s a weird math thing.

Don’t ask me how it’s like the law of percentages. So it’s weird. And so we’re just trying as the home builders over here, we’re trying to not lose money and it’s crazy that we can lose money in what is the highest demand housing market we’ve ever seen? So there is literally like the crashing or the they’re just completely missing each other from the two sides buyers are getting in.

Bidding Wars paying 50 to a thousand, a hundred thousand dollars over list price builders are saying, submit all your best offers by this date. It’s just insanity. Nobody’s really having, Nope.

Alexis: It’s funny. I was recently talking to one of my builder partners and they were saying that. They’re more stressed out now than when they’re not selling.

And so, you know, you’ll be kept up at night because you’re not meeting your goal and you’re not selling homes, but now they’re up at night because they don’t know how to meet the demand. And so you [00:05:00] think you’d be so happy with all the sales you have, but it’s a different kind of stress and, a whole, a whole, another thing to deal with.

Amanda: So what do they know if they’re going to make any money on the houses that they’re actually selling? Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. And then the, then the scare, the real scary part comes in is when, you start building these houses and people keeping your backlog together, right? Cause then you start having deals fall out and yes, we have like substantial, substantial, low inventory everywhere.

You’re going to be able to sell it, but you, you don’t want to lose, you don’t want to lose those deals. The whole

Alexis: time, you’re all thinking about your reputation and your brand throughout all this and how you shouldn’t be. And if you’re not, you know, that should be top of your list, because think about, how people are perceiving you and your experience.

I mean, that’s something that you really have to focus in,

Amanda: in this market. Yeah. And that you, you had said the, you know, for us as home builders, we, we know like what’s going on. Right. We know the lumber prices and the [00:06:00] shortages and all these things, things, but consumers, we can’t assume that they know these things.

Right. We can’t assume that. They understand what is going on. They, they know that, you know, there’s bidding Wars and houses are selling for significantly more than what they used to. But I think that we need to do a better job of communicating to our buyers and everyone out there. you know, we’re not just charging more money to make more money.

you know, we’re, we’re charging more money to cover the costs. And, I think that there. Builders can, can do a better job of explaining why and just being super transparent to buyers out there to help in that conversation from the very beginning.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. You’re you’re spot on. And so think about like rewind let’s rewind.

It’s it’s the date of this recording is April the 14th of 2021. This episode will go live. I think. Next [00:07:00] week, maybe if something like that next week, what day is today? Today’s Wednesday. So next week I’m going to go live next week in tax day,

Alexis: April 15th. Or did I make that up

Matt: on taxes? Well, tax days normally April 15th, but they extended testing.

Not during COVID, it’s not that’s right, but, but realistically, if we rewind a year, you know, all of a sudden we’re starting, you know, we’re basically almost 30 days out. Side of when our country started closing and there was, there was definitely a 30 day pucker factor. once the, everybody’s like you guys are like, we can see each other, obviously.

So they’re laughing at Alexis, always laughs at my stupid.

Alexis: I don’t know,

Amanda: you can

Matt: mix them both. So every, you know, there was that 30 day stop basically. And we’re like, we didn’t know what was going to happen. and then, you know, we as the collective industry, so [00:08:00] then we got into where we actually started seeing the demand and it was like, we’re like, wait a minute.

Like, and then there were builders and we had builders in all States where you. Couldn’t even go show homes, but yet everybody was selling homes and then it was like, yeah, this is awesome. Let’s go up on price, go up on price. Let’s it’s time to make some money. And then now we’re in this Holy crap. We have to go up on price.

So we don’t lose money because pricing is changing so rapidly. And so we’ve gone through this, like, you know, crazy cycle of last summer. We didn’t, you know, we were like, We weren’t sure if we could sell this summer, we’re like, we don’t know if we want to sell or have anything to sell or have anything. so yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s all over the place.

And so w what we’ve done is I think was we could kind of gone through that cycle. And if we think about. What we were doing a year ago. The point of that year ago, long story was to say [00:09:00] how we were communicating with prospects. And we were all over telling people, Hey, we’re open. We can sell you a home.

You want to see a home. Here’s how you can do it. Was plastered everywhere. Social media, the website, like every page on the website emails, it was going out everywhere. Now, what are we doing? The same thing. Well, should we be doing this?

Alexis: Maybe doing the same thing. I mean, I think you brought this up, in some of our conversations, so yeah, it’s being super transparent.

Put it in that message anywhere and being educational to everyone. So we were showing people. How they could tour our homes, how they could buy a home. And like you said, putting it everywhere and now, you know, it’s a completely different kind of message, but we should be treating it the same as we did back then.

So yeah, I guess that’s what they should be doing. Are we seeing builders do that? Not everywhere. And that’s why I think we’re seeing a customer journey and a customer experience that, you know, isn’t the best right now. And [00:10:00] so that’s where I think we can see improvement and opportunity for our builders to kind of turn this market around or make the best of it.

Matt: Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And I, we have to put the same level of attention and effort into being transparent and communicating, to people how, like the information that they need to know, they need to. They need to understand, why the pricing is the way that it is. They need to understand that this isn’t a housing bubble, that this is just a supply shortage as a whole.

And then they also need to understand that, you know, the supply chain itself has kind of like broken down. I mean, we see it in the new, we saw it on the news just the other day. I mean, the white house is stepping in and the automobile as well. The mic was at the microchip. Did you guys see that? Did you guys see that news story?

So there’s like a microchip shortage. I think I might be getting the exact term wrong. but it’s like, there is a, so my dad works for Ford, right. And so, they’ve shut his [00:11:00] plant down for the next two weeks because they can’t get any of these chips and that power the car. So Ford shut down factories, GM shut down factories.

I’d be like. Apple is, you know, like all it, like it’s this whole domino effect, all these other industries that use like semi semiconductors or chips or something, that’s crazy. And so it’s, it’s a supply chain deal, right. And, but obviously we don’t build homes with microchips or semiconductors or whatever the heck it is that they have a shortage of, but.

The, our supply chain is still broken and, you know, it’s that kind of, stuff’s not making the news. It’s just prices are up 190% like this morning, Chelsea actually shared in our group chat, a CNET article that says, when is the housing market going to crash? Right. Did you guys, did you guys have a chance to read that yet?

Negative negative. I’m going to summarize it

Alexis: for us and

Matt: our audience. I’m going to summarize, I don’t want them to [00:12:00] summarize. but basically the whole point of the article is it’s talking about, one of the things that, is highly being searched. So you want to hear this? So here we go. there’s increasing concern among consumers that the housing is experiencing a price bubble and that the bubble may be ready to burst.

Google reported last week that the search question, when is the housing market going to crash? Had spiked 2450% in the past month. Wow. Why is the market’s so hot searches had doubled in just a week. Now I will say, I don’t necessarily think that there’s a lot of searching happening around the search term.

When is the housing market going to crash? Right. So I think that that percentage may be a bit. misleading. you know, because if you had two searches for how’s, the housing one is the housing market going to crash and all of a sudden you had 30, [00:13:00] you know, that’s, you know, taking into consideration of the entire United States.

That’s that’s next to nothing. However, This, it starts hitting the news. So the news whatever’s in the news becomes our reality, whether or not it’s, it’s true or not. So it is something that people, whether or not they’re searching for it or not, it’s now going to be something that they’re going to see, and it’s going to be something that they’re going to search for.

Right. And they’re going to be wise the housing market’s so hot. And then, another one and in the most telling indication that the market may be in a bubble. Quote, how much over asking price should I offer on a home in 2021 that jumped 350%. I didn’t realize that Google was that smart by the way that it could actually give me real estate purchasing guidance on how much I should pay for a home.

Maybe I should start looking at that for stocks. Maybe I, I don’t know, but like, I know that people search that however they do. And so their reality [00:14:00] becomes our reality. Now I think this whole, even though it’s a CNBC article, I think it’s a bit. It it’s a bit click baity. because when you go all the way to is click baity a word, by the way, when you go all the way down, basically it’s saying it doesn’t mean that there aren’t, it’s basically saying it’s a, it’s a, it’s a supply shortage and that’s, that’s the problem that we’re having.

It’s not a bubble. it does say, does that mean there’ll be some markets that are not going to have any PR any price growth or pricing’s going to cool off? Yes, of course it is. But that doesn’t mean that the bubble is gone. There’s a bubble on it’s going to pop. It was just have massive demand and unsuitable, crazy low inventory.

But knowing if I’m telling you this. Guys, if I’m telling you that this is what you’re finding in Google, this is what people are searching for. What do you do? So I

Amanda: think builders have an amazing opportunity to over communicate to their [00:15:00] buyers about what is going on in their market. And, and like you said earlier, Matt, the, at the beginning of COVID.

We all overly communicated, are our models open? Are they not open? you know, are we selling houses? Are we not selling houses? What are we, you know, what are we doing? And we updated all of that communication as that went along. And I think that we builders are dropping the ball now at this point of, of that communication, because the buyers still need to know what’s going on and they need to know, you know, why this is happening and how it affects them.

And, and just keeping that communication. Open as much as possible. And whatever that message is, keeping it updated, is, is I think where builders have an amazing opportunity to, to be the informer and keep, keep buyers up to date.

Alexis: Yeah, and I think there’s multiple ways you can do that. So what does that look like?

How [00:16:00] do you do that? maybe it’s a series of blog, contents, educating people on the price increases. Maybe it’s it’s, e-blast just getting it out in different ways. A lot of builders, when COVID head did many, Not necessarily Facebook lives, but video and zoom chats. And they invited people to join them for these like no real time conversations.

Like this is what’s happening in the market. This is what we’re seeing. And that was very valuable and people tuned in, and it’s almost taking that approach again now as a builder, you know, with all the information and kind of conducting these, the zooms, whatever it might look like to kind of get in front of your audience.

And just be authentic and real and educational, not defensive. And so there’s different ways that you can get this message out there, to your buyers and, make it just for a better understanding of what’s going on. Yep.

Matt: Yeah, I agree. A hundred percent. And if you want a blog slash SEO hack, You go write a blog.

If it’s titled is the housing market in a bubble, and then you list out all the things of why it’s not [00:17:00] in a bubble and you do it in a, in a bulleted format. Like I’m telling you, you’re going to pick up some traffic. but yeah, I mean, we’ve got so. Can we know what consumers are asking. And this is where we talk about all the time about the importance of data, right?

And a lot of times we’re utilizing data to say, all right, we need to tweak this creative. We need to tweak this ad copy. this thing’s ineffective, this thing’s over-performing we can pull back budget. We need to add more money. But when you look at stuff like this, this tells us what consumers are searching for.

And it tells us the type of transparent messaging that we need, that we need to be focusing on. You know, when the pandemic first hit, when we shared a bunch of data slides, like almost on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, I don’t even remember. It was, it was, it’s like a blur. It was so much information we were trying to get out there.

but. We were sharing what search. Language, [00:18:00] what people were searching for that was housing related, but not like homes for sale, right. It was how to make sourdough bread. How did you know homes with gymnasiums or a home gym or w like a fitness studio, whatever it was. They were things that people were looking for to either put in their existing home or something that they may be looking for down the road.

But when you start, can start creeping into the top of the funnel with like telling people how to create, how to make sourdough bread and then linking them back to. You know, pictures of your kitchens, where they could make their sourdough bread loaf. but like, this is a perfect, this is another perfect opportunity for that.

Alexis, you keep laughing at my sourdough bread.

Alexis: I think it’s sourdough bread. And then like banana, I don’t know. It has banana bread, I think was the main line people did sourdough banana bread, or did you did about 25 banana breads, in [00:19:00] varying recipes throughout the pandemic. So I was one of those people, but wow.

I, I can relate.

Amanda: I suffered through one loaf of bread and that was it. It was just

Matt: regular. I made some bread last week. I tried to make some keto friendly bread. it sucked.

Alexis: Yeah, it sounds terrible. I’m

Matt: sorry. Yeah. Well, so, T ten second side note. What I did was it’s the recipe called for coconut oil and I went to the store and bought some, I bought a jar of some solid coconut oil.

Instead of, apparently I should have used the liquid, like cooking coconut oil, like olive oil kind of thing. And so that’s the only thing that I did differently and it sucked. So maybe it was maybe it was the hard coconut oil, so,

Amanda: so would it still have tasted good even if you would have used the

Matt: right oil?

I dunno, maybe. I mean, that’s the X factor here, Amanda. That’s what we don’t have to do it again. to see if it still [00:20:00] sucked. anyway, I digress. Okay. So we’re talking more about the housing market. This thing sucks. Right? And so, buyers are going, we talked about this buyers going through bidding Wars.

We talked about transparency. We talked about how to create content that answers these questions. And we’ve talked about how a GRA, like we’d had the same effort and energy she put into communicating the why of what’s happening right now. The same type of energy that we put into letting people know that we were still open and they could buy a home from us a year ago.

Right. So that’s, that’s the key. I think the key takeaway there now let’s talk about, like, we start coming down. People are, are looking at houses, let’s get into like the nitty gritty, like the wheat into the weeds of, you know, the experience of a customer looking at a house right now. So. I went and looked at, some, some homes a couple of weeks ago in [00:21:00] Raleigh.

and Raleigh is, there’s lots of publicly traded home builders here. I think like 23 different publicly traded home builders in the Raleigh market. I did, I did maybe three or four. I’m not going to give any names, but there definitely. Definitely names you would know. and so, anyway, that’s all I’m going to say, but so as a consumer, I was like, I want to figure this out.

Right. And so I want to go see what this whole experience looks like. I went online and all of them, I did the self tour. Right. But so first off I upgrade grass set an appointment. It was easy to do by the way, it was easy to do online. and then I show up and, one of them was, was, Secondary model home.

So you had the model home with the little fence trap and everything. And then across the street you had directly across the street, you had a secondary model home with no model trap, no sales center in the garage. None of that, it was literally just a furnished model [00:22:00] home. I actually thought I was coming to see an inventory home.

Cause it didn’t say that on it, like came up under the first sale houses, but it wasn’t actually for sale. So there’s your first problem. Very confusing. so then I go in, I arrive a few minutes early. and I can’t get in my code’s not ready yet, but like, it doesn’t give you your code until your appointment time, which that was fine.

I just hung out for five minutes outside in the rain. It was totally fine. but I get why. Right. And so then 11 o’clock, I think it was 11:00 AM comes my, my screen refreshes. I get my like five or six digit code a punched in. I go in. House is all lit up. It’s nothing wrong with the model. All that’s great.

And I’m like, okay, cool. This is, this is nice. I get the tour of the house. again, I said the sales office is behind, like across the street, directly across the street. There’s cars in the parking lot. Well, a car in the parking lot, assuming salesperson. so I’d go, I’m touring the secondary model. I do my [00:23:00] thing.

I come out and I’m literally looking around and going, okay, this is the model, not an inventory home. I have questions. What am I looking at? Right. There’s I have no idea what I’m looking at. I don’t know the square footage of this house. I don’t know the price of this home. I don’t know the options that are in this home now that it’s a model and it’s not for sale.

I take that back. I believe there was a price on the website, but it wasn’t for sale. It was ended up being the base price of the model. There were structural options that were added. There were designer options. There were, you know, there were options. It was a model. No idea about any of this. And I like come out and I’m like looking around all of the, all of the windows in the sales office garage had blinds on them.

They were all pull close, pull closed all the way down. You couldn’t see in her out

100%, maybe they saw and they’re like, I’m not going to talk to that dude. and so they got so. They have an [00:24:00] A-frame sign that is positioned in front of the door, that you would walk in to go into the cell center, by the way, the door was locked. And they had an, a for like, literally like blocking the door.

Like they did not want to talk to anybody, but I go up and like, Knock knock on the window. And then I take like 47 steps back with my mask on just in case like the person in there is like terrified. and so I back, he comes out, we have a really quick conversation, and I leave and he gave me, he gave me a folder, a packet of information with a price list and all their floor plans and their site plans and their lot premiums.

And if I were a builder shopping, then that’s great. I just walked away with everything that I needed to know. but. As a consumer, I was left like, well, what now? I got zero follow-up. I got nothing after the fact and I will say it wasn’t all that way for all the builders, but I will tell you it was similar.

So [00:25:00] I’m painting the picture of worst case scenario here. but that’s the, that’s the experience that a customer had on self guided tours in this, this market sucks market.

Alexis: That hurts my heart. All of that.

Matt: I just have to say, though, I did a lot of talking and now I’m going to stop and you guys talk, but I wanted to like frame in that horrible story.

Amanda: Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely, like I said earlier, it’s an opportunity for builders to communicate it. And when you have these. You know, self guided tours through your models or inventory’s homes, you have to make sure that you are creating an experience for those buyers walking through there, they’re different than an online lead they’re different than, you know, they.

You have them at a different place in the, in the buying process and you need to meet them where they’re at and we’re, we’re failing miserably. I mean, obviously you, you saw that when you, when you walked through and, and, and I think that [00:26:00] just goes to literally every other stage of the process. I mean, I’ve been doing, a lot of, secret shops lately.

With the builders across the nation and like, it’s horrible, but we know that, I mean, right. Like that is, it’s not new. but, but when, when are we going to make that change? Right? Like we, we say this all the time and, and you know, we, we provide the resources and, you know, they’re, they’re definitely, they need to figure out how to, Communicate to buyers where they’re at, when they’re there and, and do so in a way that’s very specific to you have a hot person that’s in your model right now, walking through, and nobody’s there to answer the question.

Right. Right. And you know, that people are buying houses left and right. And they have no way to contact you. And. You, you have their information because, you know, they had to fill out whatever form to get access to your model. And, you know, it’s a perfect opportunity [00:27:00] for the OSC to send them a quick text.

Hey, I, you know, saw that you’re, you’re just walked through her whatever model. Do you have any questions? Do you have time to connect, whatever, whatever that is. And. It’s

Alexis: hard. That’s the sad part about it. you know, it’s easy and it’s just really taking a step back, I think, through all of this, no matter what the scenario is, self tour selections design center, it’s really evaluating your processes and make ensure that you have these processes in place.

Because I think what we’re finding out is people are scrambling and realizing that they need to refine their processes and build in these efficiencies that they didn’t have. So it’s just really comes back to. Fine tuning these foundations and making sure that you have everything set up in place for these different scenarios.

And I think what people are finding out is the processes aren’t there. And so we’re being reactive instead of proactive. And I think that’s kind of what we’re

Matt: seeing across the board. I have to say, like, I think if you were to, anybody were to go back and listen to the last 12 months of [00:28:00] building perspective episodes, you might hear some version of dial your process in now.

In every single episode, there might be 50 episodes of, you could hear something said about like, get your processes, right. Get your processes. Yeah. While you can invest in your invest in a CRM, invest in a new CRM, invest in the tools to make your CRM better. Invest in, invest in, invest in yourself, while you’re selling more houses than you want to, because it’s a lot easier.

Anyway. I’m going to stop, because again, you could go back and listen to the last 50 episodes of building perspective, and you’re going to hear a version of that somewhere. but yeah, we’ve got, like you said, Alexis, we’ve got to meet the buyer’s expectations and the, the other reality there there’s Rona rewind two seconds here, but there was a key, another key element that I said, I stood in the rain.

While I was [00:29:00] waiting to get in the house. I don’t care about standing in the rain, but it was raining there and I was still out looking at homes. Therefore, you were a hot buyer. I was not right. I mean, I was kicking tires, but I wasn’t going to

Alexis: lose here. Yeah. Not someone looking for a decorating idea,

Matt: right?

Yeah. That’s like someone giving you your phone number on a website li on a website form that doesn’t have to give you their phone number.

Amanda: Yeah, I was, I actually shopped some builders today and one of the forms had, like preference of how, how I wanted to be contacted. And so it was email, I think call or text.

And so I selected texts cause I was like, all right. Go ahead and text me nada, nothing. And now it’s probably, I don’t know, six hours ago, like, all right, cam on. Even if you were on a phone call, when I submitted that form, you could have texted me by

Alexis: now. Yep. That’s right. [00:30:00] And it goes back to maybe this market sucks for online sales counselors too, because they’re handling more leads than they,

Matt: for sure.

Absolutely no question. Excuse

Alexis: me, B but then again, it goes back to again, I’ll say it one more time. Processes and efficiencies built in place to be able to manage those leads. And do we need to bring on a second online sales counselor? Like these are all the questions that we need to be asking ourselves during this time.

Matt: Well, we were just, we were just talking about this, last week, I think with, beacon Beth and Corey over beacon, and we were, were, you know, Corey was talking about how she’s getting a ton of realtors that are calling in asking questions and it’s like, okay, is, you know, you start to have to, you start having asked the questions.

Is it too many calls from a volume perspective? Is it taking away from talking to other. Prospects. Right. And is it the same questions over and over again? Well, yes, it’s the same questions over and over again. So then you talk through like, all right, how do we think our way into more, into better efficiency?

And I was [00:31:00] like, well, you’re, we’re using call rail is our call tracking system. You know, we can, we could add, instead of press one for sales two for warranty three, for whatever we can says, if you’re a real estate agent, Looking for updates on communities and inventory, press three. And there’s a prerecorded message that says we have no inventory.

if your question is anything other than inventory, leave a message and we’ll call you right back. You know what I mean? Like, so there are obviously I’m making that up, but. There are ways that you can quickly and easily become more efficient, especially when you’re getting the same things over and over and over again.

Right. And if you’re getting them from customers within specific communities, then add a pop-up message to that community page, change the copy on the website. Put the put more different copy on the actual form that they’re clicking on. That basically says, please, for the love of God, don’t click on this.

Don’t submit this form unless you need this, this or this, [00:32:00] you know, or take the form off your website, you know, but there are ways to do it and you just have to think through it without, because the reality is is Amanda, if you were the. Prospect. You’re like, yes, I prefer to talk via text and you select texts because you asked me what my preference was and then they don’t do anything.

I mean, game over

Alexis: onto the next one you lost. Like I

Matt: already

Alexis: 9%. I just, I didn’t say it every time, 9% of builders are utilizing texts as a, as a platform, which, Goes to show you, you know, what we’re seeing out there. So, and that’s, that is probably the preferred method of communication for most people in the beginning, at least while they’re gathering information and, knowing that and knowing how many people aren’t using it, just showing that, that the need for that and the opportunity that’s being missed.

And if your competition is sending a text message, that’s who you’re going with. And so, need to [00:33:00] keep that in the back of your mind and be texting, especially when it’s checked off as a preference.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay. So we’ve really had a couple of main, like key points, right? One is this market markets, right?

We talked about this market sucks. And so what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to set up and B provide good, transparent, believable information. that’s not. You know, written in a way that makes it sound like everything’s all rosy, just gotta be straight to the point. You got to tell people what they should expect.

why, why the market is in the current state that it is, because I mean, You’ve got to put that information out there. We are not doing it in the same way that we would be communicating when we’re trying to sell homes. Right. Think about interest rates are going up. Okay. Well, we’ve got to put stuff out there that, you know, you can still buy a home at your everything when you’re not selling is all geared around [00:34:00] communicating with people, how they can still buy or what they can still afford.

Right. But now we’re like, please don’t buy anything. And we’ve got to communicate to them. Otherwise they’re going to submit a form they’re OSC or the sales person, or however the leads are distributed. Nothing’s going to happen. And it’s a big, massive letdown, and it’s a bad customer experience. And then they’re not, it just it’s bad for your brand.

So we’ve got to transparent. Be transparent.

Alexis: And to me, I almost see there’s a huge opportunity here, right? Let’s say we don’t have anything to sell. We have no inventory, but there are people that aren’t ready to make a move today. They’re they’re not ready to make a move tomorrow. They’re top of the funnel.

They’re just kind of doing the research. This is the time to invest in our brand and our reputation and build that brand recognition, build that trust so that when they are ready to dive in you’re top of mind for them. So you have to be thinking about that too. I’m just building your reputation for the people that aren’t ready to make a move tomorrow.

And when people say, you know, I don’t have anything to sell, [00:35:00] I don’t have any inventory. There’s still plenty of opportunity to get your name and your

Amanda: marketing out there. Yeah. And I think it’s important too, for maybe some builders to hear that, like, we can’t shut things off right now. Like it’s not something that you can just shut off and turn back on when you want to turn it back on, it doesn’t work like that.

Right. You have to keep things moving and your messaging changes. Like you just said, Alexis, it’s more branding right now. And just brand awareness and keeping your name out there. So for those people who are kind of laying low right now, you know, when they’re ready, You and you have houses to sell. you know, they’re gonna, they’re gonna find you and they’re gonna

Matt: come to you.

And I would say that that like, to piggyback on what you said from a brand awareness like that doesn’t mean throwing your logo out there and like spending money, you don’t have to spend a lot of money right now. but brand awareness can be being re being a resource, right. And, and providing content that answers people’s questions and answers people’s questions about when they see [00:36:00] CNBC putting articles that says, when’s the housing market going to crash.

And then you see Google’s reporting. This is what people are Googling. then you are searching for you. You got to respond to that, and you’ve got to answer those questions. And then you have the last part is. It is, that’s a freaking broken record. You gotta focus on your processes. You got to focus on your people, get them the right training that they need to deal with the problems that they have that they’re having.

don’t stick your head in the sand and say, This, you know, we’ll just deal with this when we have more stuff to sell, it is not the way consumers think. we don’t wanna, we don’t want to burn those bridges. you really have to have these conversations internally about what are our pinch points, right?

what. What is the friction that is happening between our customers and us, our suppliers and us are trade people in us are our own team members within the organization itself. What are, what are the friction points? along the [00:37:00] way. And we have to manage everyone’s expectations, right? It comes down to wait lists and, you know, website updates and the content, and just all of those things are friction points.

And you have to, it can be as simple as saying, well, wait a minute, can’t we just add a press three, if you’re a realtor and listen to this recorded message, or can we just put a message, a pop-up on the single singular community page that we don’t want anybody to submit information for? You know, like those are the kind of conversations.

You need to be having internally to, to make sure that you’re not like killing your customer experience and therefore killing your brand.

Amanda: Yeah, you, you made a good point, Matt. I, the internal communication, I think we talked a lot about like open communication with consumers, but I think that first and foremost, you need to make sure that everybody internally on your team is on the same page.

Right? We were making assumptions that buyers. No, what is happening in the market with everything? [00:38:00] And that’s bad to do that because we know that they clearly are not educated as much as what we are, but same goes for, you know, internal, employees. Like we shouldn’t assume that they all understand, everything that’s going on and make sure that everybody is on the same page with.

What is being communicated, how it’s being communicated and when it’s being communicated, where it’s being communicated and make sure that you have a solid plan in place, to, to communicate what you want to

Matt: communicate, communicate what you want to communicate. I love it, but it’s the truth, right?

You’ve got to. It goes all the way through. It’s like, you know, here’s a, here’s a mat is you got to pull the thread all the way through the needle. So like, you know, it’s got to, it’s got to come all the way full circle from your customers to your team members and everything, everything in between. So, yup.

Okay. Well, this market sucks. [00:39:00] hopefully it doesn’t continue to suck much longer, hopefully, our prices on our framing and supply, you know, our supply chain increases and hopefully we can get back to normal. and in this case, normal Lithuania, let’s just get back to like 2019, right? Like that’s. Yeah, by the way, which is like a 45% drop from where we’re at right now, I’ll take a 45% drop.

so anyway, this market sucks. Let’s hope it doesn’t suck much longer. focus on the key points that we just talked through. And it’ll suck less for your customers. So that’s a wrap on this episode of building perspective. I, I don’t think I’ve ever thought I would use the word suck this many times in a podcast.

Alexis: I have to say. I think it’s my favorite title to date. It’s very attention getting, I mean, who wouldn’t want to listen to this?

Matt: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you guys. And thanks for humoring me as I ran and as always. Thanks for your great input. Have a great [00:40:00] week, everybody. Yeah.