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How Builders Are Selling More Homes with Kevin Weitzel · Contractor Business Builder Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to another great episode of the Contractor Business
• 0:02
  Builder Podcast. So why do some builders
• 0:05
  consistently attract buyers and sell homes fast, while others
• 0:08
  are still relying on outdated floor plans, static brochures,
• 0:11
  and disconnected systems? Today we have the honor of
• 0:13
  having Kevin Wetzel partner at outhouse on.
• 0:16
  How you doing today, Kevin? Very good.
• 0:18
  Thank you for having. Me wonderful.
• 0:20
  So yeah, we're diving into a whole bunch of stuff.
• 0:22
  You guys have a really unique approach.
• 0:25
  I I feel to marketing and a little bit different than some
• 0:27
  other, you know, agencies out there and things like that.
• 0:29
  But can you tell us about your journey?
• 0:31
  You've been a professional cycler, you've been in the
• 0:33
  Marine Corps, among, you know, other things.
• 0:35
  Give us a little bit of a snapshot of of your journey to
• 0:38
  get to here. Yeah.
• 0:39
  So I come from a single mother family, so and we came from what
• 0:42
  we, what we refer to down here in the States as the South side
• 0:45
  of the track. So the four side of the
• 0:47
  equation. And I've worked my way up
• 0:49
  through every system I've ever been involved in.
• 0:52
  While I was in high school, I raced professionally bicycles
• 0:54
  from 83 to 89. I was an Olympic alternate in
• 0:57
  88. But alternate just means
• 0:58
  sidelines. It's all and from there, and I
• 1:01
  finished high school, I realized I wasn't making enough racing
• 1:04
  bicycles and I wasn't I was barely making enough to pay for
• 1:07
  rent that I decided that I was gonna go in the military.
• 1:09
  And for somebody that's never shot a weapon in his life, might
• 1:12
  as well go to the Marine Corps, right?
• 1:15
  So I wouldn't record. I was an 8541, which is a
• 1:18
  sniper. I was an 8541 for from 89 to 97
• 1:22
  and had a good time in the Marine Corps.
• 1:24
  From there I moved back into the bicycle industry of all things
• 1:28
  and I worked at a couple of shops, One that I've started at
• 1:31
  in high school, one that I helped the owner retire, and
• 1:34
  then from there open my own shop called Tribe Multisport, which
• 1:38
  was the largest triathlon shop in the western half of the
• 1:40
  United States. Found that in 2004, sold that in
• 1:43
  2011. There went back into the
• 1:46
  vehicle, the power sports industry, some motorcycles,
• 1:48
  cars, etcetera. Worked my way up to that
• 1:50
  industry. However, and I'm pretty vocal
• 1:53
  about this, that I felt that it was a very unscrupulous
• 1:57
  industry. It's one that you have to you
• 1:59
  almost have to be married to it, and it's hard to look at
• 2:02
  yourself in the mirror a single date doing that job because it
• 2:04
  really does look at people sometimes their most vulnerable
• 2:08
  to try to take advantage of just every last dollar thing.
• 2:10
  Glenmont to So so I left that I was invited to come over here to
• 2:14
  outhouse by one of the partners to help them set up their sales
• 2:17
  system. And I came over, set it all up
• 2:20
  and got everything rolling and they said, hey, adjust to stay.
• 2:22
  So there you go. I stayed in her sense about the
• 2:26
  whole building St. for about 10 years now.
• 2:28
  I love it. I love that the people that I
• 2:31
  serve in, you know, in my role, you're a townhouse because I'm,
• 2:34
  I concentrate more on the sales side.
• 2:36
  Matter of fact, I came on as the business development manager
• 2:38
  than the VP of sales. And then finally now I'm a
• 2:42
  junior partner. But what I really love about it
• 2:44
  is that the people that we service are selling the dream to
• 2:48
  people, the American dream of home ownership.
• 2:50
  It's not just a, you know, sticks and bricks.
• 2:53
  It's not just, you know, pounding nails into wood.
• 2:55
  It is literally creating that envelope that people call home.
• 2:58
  And the fact that the builders, the people that I work for do
• 3:02
  that on a daily basis, that gives me a lot of reasons.
• 3:04
  Wake up every. Morning.
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  Definitely wonderful. Yeah, quite the journey and and
• 3:08
  a wide variety of experiences there.
• 3:10
  Same here with the building industry.
• 3:12
  It is very fulfilling to to see a building go up and it's going
• 3:16
  to be someone's home. And it's typically, you know, a
• 3:18
  lot of memories and good times there.
• 3:20
  And yeah, like you said, they're not not buying bricks and
• 3:23
  sticks. They're they're buying, you
• 3:24
  know, the the future for, for their family or, you know,
• 3:28
  personal endeavors, what whatever may be.
• 3:30
  Now you had some sales background before I owned a
• 3:33
  business. What do you find is maybe unique
• 3:36
  challenges or missteps that builders take or are not aware
• 3:41
  of when it comes to their their marketing and sales?
• 3:44
  There, there's several we can go, we can have a couple of hour
• 3:47
  long sessions on just the subject along.
• 3:49
  I think this step number one is that everybody thinks their
• 3:51
  product is unique. When it all comes down to it.
• 3:53
  If you have a 30 wide, 50 deep, single, single story home, it's
• 3:57
  the same plan whether it's from builder ABC, do RE.
• 4:00
  They're all using the same contractors, They're using the
• 4:03
  same framers, they're using the same roofing companies.
• 4:05
  They're buying their fixtures from the same, you know,
• 4:08
  resources from the same distributors.
• 4:10
  There's not really a lot of magic when it comes into it.
• 4:12
  So then it comes down to the process of the story.
• 4:15
  Is there much of a story? Do people really care that the
• 4:19
  Smith family owned, you know, XYZ builders for the last 80
• 4:23
  years and they've been passing it down from generation to
• 4:25
  generation? Some people do.
• 4:26
  Some people that might give him comfort.
• 4:27
  But, but I do believe that where most builders misstep as they
• 4:31
  think they need to tell a story that a lot of people, one don't
• 4:34
  care about and #2 that they're the misstep they're making is
• 4:37
  that they're not telling the story of, here's our process.
• 4:42
  Here's how we make the journey easier for you.
• 4:45
  Here's how we make it less obtrusive into your life.
• 4:47
  Here's how we make this easier for you to or less pain,
• 4:50
  painful, painless, I should say. I think that's the mark that the
• 4:54
  builders miss. And you know, you can show a
• 4:56
  floor plan, you can show elevations of a home, you can
• 4:58
  even do virtual tours. But when it really comes down to
• 5:01
  it, it's how easy is it for you to work with?
• 5:04
  This is really what it comes down.
• 5:05
  To yeah, definitely selling the missus or not to stake, if you
• 5:08
  will, of, you know, at the end of the day, it's, it's a
• 5:11
  building, it's got walls, got a roof.
• 5:13
  But what's unique is the, is the story that the client of how you
• 5:16
  will help them produce this home that they can have memories in,
• 5:19
  they can invite people over, whatever that that means to
• 5:23
  them. So how would you advise builders
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  or how do you help builders tell that story and keep this mindset
• 5:31
  or mind frame of their clients of like what's in it for them,
• 5:34
  right? The not just telling the builder
• 5:36
  story, the story of the client and and what they're going to
• 5:39
  experience. Well, one that could have
• 5:41
  transparency. You know, we, we have a product,
• 5:43
  an interactive floor plan tool that allows a builder to put on
• 5:46
  their website or on a touch screen in their sales centre
• 5:49
  where a client or a home buyer at their own time frame, you
• 5:53
  know, their comfort of their own home can configure their home.
• 5:56
  Now you can actually have that tied into your ERP for real time
• 6:00
  pricing or from a Google spreadsheet for real time
• 6:02
  pricing. So when you're configuring the
• 6:04
  home, you can see this $500,000 with the options that I want.
• 6:08
  I don't know, you're in Canada, aren't you?
• 6:10
  Didn't even have $500,000 homes anymore up there.
• 6:12
  Maybe in Edmonton, I don't know. Yeah, not, not around here in
• 6:15
  Vancouver, but. Yeah, Vancouver and Toronto, I
• 6:18
  think that's those days are long gone, but but they can see that
• 6:21
  that $500,000 that's starting from price is now 610 because of
• 6:25
  the options they chose to have. You know when you look at it,
• 6:28
  when you look at the old school advertisements that you would
• 6:30
  see in like a magazine or a newspaper and it shows, you
• 6:34
  know, Ford Mustang as low as 13990 five.
• 6:38
  Well, guess what? When you get to the dealership,
• 6:40
  there's not going to be on one on the floor for 13/9 and five.
• 6:42
  And if there's one, it's gonna be the one that they have to
• 6:46
  have by law to say that they've had it.
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  But to the one that you want isn't 13995.
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  The one you want is going to be 21672, whatever the number is.
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  And the home building industry lacks that transparency as well,
• 7:00
  because starting from the low 400, starting from the low 6
• 7:04
  hundreds, doesn't tell the story of what that home is going to be
• 7:07
  when it's all said and done. Yeah, usually it's a couple of
• 7:09
  things left out, you know, as far as land and transfer fees
• 7:14
  and all that kind of stuff, but also just, yeah, base model, few
• 7:17
  people want the most base model. They're going to want, you know,
• 7:20
  some upgrades or additional space or what have you.
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  So what what do you feel has changed over the last couple of
• 7:27
  years? You mentioned interactive
• 7:28
  floorplans. There's obviously you know, new
• 7:30
  technologies. Has the buying process or the
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  the mindset of the buyer changed or what do you feel the the
• 7:37
  differences from years past? I think the necessity of the
• 7:42
  purchase of the home is that is relatively unchanged.
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  You know, people change jobs, they move from one of the
• 7:48
  country to another. They want to live closer to
• 7:49
  family or farther away from family depending on what your
• 7:52
  family dynamic is. So they might want to just be
• 7:54
  leaving home for the first time, you know, so that that need to
• 7:57
  have that home that hasn't changed.
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  And people are always going to be transient across the United
• 8:01
  States and move from place to place to place and need to have
• 8:03
  a new place. But what has changed is how
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  people, one, research the home, how people interact with the,
• 8:09
  with the offerings that a home builder will have.
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  And then three, how they actually will contact the home
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  builder. You know, there's all these
• 8:16
  different variants that come into place.
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  It's not that old school funnel where you've got this 100 people
• 8:21
  entered here. Then it trickles down to 70,
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  then trickles down to 60, trickles down to 10.
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  And then we sell these last five people out of that hundred.
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  It's not that predictive anymore.
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  Now it's like this pinball game of different places they can
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  find you, whether it be social media, print ad, Internet, your
• 8:35
  website itself, your Google ads, I mean all these different
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  facets of ways to reach out and touch somebody.
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  Then you exacerbate it by throwing AI into the mix.
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  It's completely a whole different ball game.
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  So I think the way the builders are making a mistake is not that
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  they need to be at the bleeding edge of technology, but the old
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  school ways of let's just wait and see what everybody else is
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  doing. Those days are gone because in a
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  very short period of time you can go from being the considered
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  to being the left completely out of the equation just based on
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  where you are and with your embrace technology.
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  Yeah, things moving quicker than ever.
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  We always hear that it's speeding up, but it's quite
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  true. And just as you wouldn't expect
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  to not be able to be found on Google, that is going to soon be
• 9:20
  AI and it's going to be a combination.
• 9:22
  It's not that Google search is going away, it's that there's
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  just this, as you mentioned, the pinball effect of these people
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  could be finding you or bouncing around from a lot of different
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  spots. So you need to be have exposure
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  in these in these different areas.
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  So can you maybe walk us through a client journey without house?
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  Like what is a builder thinking about or what, what position are
• 9:42
  they typically in? And then how do you provide the
• 9:45
  right services? What type of services to to help
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  them improve the marketing and make sure they are hitting the
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  market in in the ways that their clients are looking to to buy
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  homes. Absolutely.
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  So the one thing I want to make sure that I, I put as an
• 9:58
  asterisk ahead of this is that there are lots of people that we
• 10:00
  compete with. There's, there's tons of
• 10:02
  different companies out there that provide digital assets or
• 10:04
  drafting or printed collateral or interactives or visualizers.
• 10:08
  There's tons of different suppliers out there.
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  One of the few things that makes us different 1 is that we have a
• 10:13
  full drafting contingency. So we have a full CAD
• 10:15
  department. Matter of fact, seven of the top
• 10:17
  ten builders in the United States use our drafting
• 10:18
  standards to this day, which we're proud of.
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  We never monetized it. I wish we would have monetized
• 10:22
  it, but it is, it is true. But 2 So not only do we can we
• 10:25
  draft plans, we understand how homes are built from the
• 10:28
  architectural aspect and that that standpoint, we also can
• 10:31
  translate got into the other digital assets like virtual
• 10:34
  tours, renderings, and interactives all on the fly
• 10:37
  right from the CAD files directly.
• 10:38
  Another thing that differentiates us is that we
• 10:41
  are, and this is not to be a sales pitch for outhouse I mean,
• 10:44
  I want to be more educational, but but one thing that is
• 10:46
  different from us is, is that we're transactional.
• 10:49
  You know, you can choose to shake hands with us to do, you
• 10:51
  know, part A, Part B, part C, just renderings, just an
• 10:54
  interactive site map, just a virtual tour of a custom home
• 10:57
  that you did. And you can shake hands and part
• 10:59
  ways. And it's all done with the
• 11:01
  majority of our competitors. They've switched over to this
• 11:03
  subscription model to where you are married to them for life.
• 11:07
  Because when you stop paying their subscription, buy assets,
• 11:09
  they disappear, they drop, they go away.
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  So you have to understand who owns the assets and what happens
• 11:15
  when you no longer want to pay a tech fee or some sort of hosting
• 11:19
  fee. So those kinds of
• 11:21
  differentiations really separate us rapidly from a lot of the
• 11:24
  other players out there. Plus, do as little or as much
• 11:26
  with us as you want. You can do everything soup to
• 11:29
  nuts, you know, from drafting all the way to printed marketing
• 11:32
  collateral and literally everything in between.
• 11:34
  We don't do websites. All we do is we do all the stuff
• 11:36
  that you put on your website that helps you market and sell
• 11:40
  your product, but you can also do just a single item.
• 11:42
  So that's our big calling card that we do so much of that.
• 11:45
  Another thing that differentiates us is that we
• 11:48
  developed one of the first, if not the first interactive floor
• 11:50
  plan back in 1994. We've been raising the bar ever
• 11:53
  since and I can arguably say that we have the industry's best
• 11:57
  interactive floor plan. Perfect.
• 11:58
  And for builders out there who maybe show their floor plans,
• 12:02
  but they're not interactive or or don't have the, you know,
• 12:06
  level of, of details that, that you have, where in the sales
• 12:09
  process does that plug in? Or how does that like, what's
• 12:12
  where, where is that house? How does it look?
• 12:14
  When does the potential client see it or interact with it?
• 12:18
  Where does it fit? All right, let's let's go to the
• 12:20
  world of who I consider to be a very evil human being, but the
• 12:24
  Bezos of the world, the creator of Amazon, not just an investor
• 12:28
  in, but actually the creator of the the the guy behind the idea
• 12:30
  of Amazon that will prove that people don't want to shop with.
• 12:34
  I'll find out later before I actually pull the trigger.
• 12:37
  They want every bit of any kind of information they can to self
• 12:41
  educate before they have to go talk to a salesperson.
• 12:43
  Nobody wants to talk to salesperson people.
• 12:46
  I'm one of the few exceptions. I love hearing the sales pitch.
• 12:48
  I love hearing the razzle and the dazzle.
• 12:50
  I want that steak to sizzle. That's just because that's the
• 12:53
  type of shopper that I am. However, the average consumer,
• 12:56
  especially this younger consumer doesn't want to deal with sales
• 12:59
  people. So if you put your floor plan
• 13:02
  even in a static format on your website, do you have options?
• 13:05
  Are those options to scale instead of being blown up so you
• 13:10
  can see the detail in it when it doesn't actually match the scale
• 13:12
  of the floor plan itself? Builders that don't think they
• 13:15
  can afford to interactive floor plans are not looking at the big
• 13:18
  picture. What it cost to builder to put
• 13:20
  the static graphic of a floor plan on their website is only
• 13:23
  slightly less than what it costs them to put interactive floor
• 13:26
  plans on their website. So very, very little difference
• 13:29
  financially. And there's the saying, and I
• 13:33
  don't remember who I picked this up from, but it's one of those,
• 13:36
  you know, like 7 best rules of selling this process or
• 13:39
  whatever. And it is the, how much does it
• 13:42
  cost? No, how much does it cost you in
• 13:45
  lost sales, not having this? Because with a static floor
• 13:47
  plan, people can figure out as much or as little as they want
• 13:50
  to from that static floor plan collateral on a website and then
• 13:53
  bounce. They're gone.
• 13:54
  They didn't leave you information, they didn't leave
• 13:56
  you a phone number and e-mail. They didn't leave you any bread
• 13:58
  crumbs as far as a way to get back in touch with them
• 14:01
  whatsoever. Whereas in the interactive floor
• 14:03
  plan, people engage with it, they'll emotionally connect to
• 14:05
  it, they'll take time on it. You know, the NHB says that
• 14:08
  there's an average of 2 to 4 minutes of time spent on the
• 14:11
  average home builders website. And this is production and you
• 14:13
  know, semi custom home builders across the country, 2 to 4
• 14:16
  minutes total time to captivate this person, this potential
• 14:20
  client to buy what buy it is what it is that you're selling.
• 14:23
  OK. And interactive floor plan, just
• 14:26
  that alone can double, triple, quintuple the amount of time
• 14:29
  that people spend on the website.
• 14:31
  And there's boatloads of data that supports that.
• 14:33
  The longer the people spend on your website, the more likely
• 14:35
  they are to self educate and self close.
• 14:38
  So I guess that's the very long way of saying you can get a lot
• 14:42
  more out of of very little spend by putting them on your website
• 14:46
  So people can play with them, engage with them, see even see
• 14:48
  pricing of them. If you want to have pricing, see
• 14:50
  it real time square footage changes and see variations of
• 14:52
  layout. So that is one, just one tool
• 14:55
  that people can utilize for a very, very small budget.
• 14:58
  Yeah, wonderful. I know with like SEO and Google
• 15:02
  and all that stuff, the longer someone spending on your website
• 15:04
  to the more stronger, you know, the website is essentially in in
• 15:08
  search rankings because people are spending time there.
• 15:10
  They're obviously getting value interacting and what have you.
• 15:14
  And I can see that from a sales standpoint, those clients, when
• 15:18
  they do reach out or you connect with them, are much more
• 15:21
  educated. They already have ideas.
• 15:23
  They're they're kind of brought into your system, if you will,
• 15:25
  of like, Oh, I like this House plan, but I want to change this
• 15:28
  or, you know, this is what works for me.
• 15:30
  Instead of having to ask you all of those questions there already
• 15:33
  somewhat educated and probably I would assume is is a much
• 15:36
  quicker easier process to then kind of move forward with you
• 15:40
  know getting them into some sort of design or preconstruction or
• 15:43
  or what have. You let's look at remodelers,
• 15:45
  you know, because I, you know, I, I talk a lot to production
• 15:49
  and semi custom home builders and even custom home builders.
• 15:51
  But a lot of times remodelers, the ones that are left out.
• 15:53
  And if you think about it this way, if you take remodeler and
• 15:57
  remodeler B and remodeler A, let's just say they just do
• 15:59
  bathrooms. Both these companies just do
• 16:01
  bathrooms. One company says we can do
• 16:03
  bathroom remodel for as little as $5000.
• 16:06
  The other one says, you know, for starting at $5000.
• 16:09
  And this is a video. So now we've got a video on on
• 16:11
  builder or remodeler B and they have a video that says not only
• 16:14
  can we do your bathroom, but we can redo it when we're gonna put
• 16:17
  in copper pipes, not this plastic stuff we're gonna put
• 16:19
  in. And I don't know if the copper
• 16:20
  is better than plastic anymore, at least it used to be back in
• 16:23
  my day. I don't know.
• 16:23
  We're using the actual solid applying here, not appliances,
• 16:27
  but solid fixture. So they're gonna be placed in
• 16:29
  these are name brand of fixtures, not not some generic
• 16:32
  stuff out of China. You know, you're getting cooler,
• 16:34
  you're getting mowing, whatever it would be.
• 16:35
  And they have a video of them showing you the before and the
• 16:37
  after. That's way more engaging, didn't
• 16:40
  cost you much more time than just knowing what you're putting
• 16:43
  in and shooting a video of it even on just a cell phone.
• 16:46
  It doesn't have to be a fancy film crew, but that experience
• 16:49
  of remodeler B is far superior to remodeler A that's just has a
• 16:54
  Yep, I redo bathrooms. You know, I can turn your your
• 16:58
  old bathtub into a walk in shower with seat.
• 17:01
  You know, whatever, whatever it is they're doing with jetted
• 17:02
  tub, who knows? But with the builder side, it's
• 17:05
  a little easier. But the difference on the
• 17:07
  builder side is that you have big builders.
• 17:08
  You've got the Leonards, the Dr. Horton's of the world and you've
• 17:11
  got Chuck with the truck. You know, Chuck with the truck
• 17:13
  doesn't have the budget to do with these other companies are
• 17:15
  doing. Like I said when we first
• 17:17
  started, it's not about being at the bleeding edge.
• 17:19
  It's about not falling completely behind and looking
• 17:21
  like a hillbilly, you know, Do they have hillbilly some Canada?
• 17:24
  What do they call up there? You haven't.
• 17:25
  Got hillbillies? Sure.
• 17:26
  You got you just called Hillbillies.
• 17:27
  Alright, well I guess said hillbillies is kind of
• 17:29
  universal. I know in Australia have
• 17:31
  different name for him. I forgot what they called down
• 17:32
  there, but it was pretty fun. But you know, just because you
• 17:36
  are a small start off company doesn't mean that you can't put
• 17:40
  a little bit more effort into having some technology in your
• 17:44
  website that allows us to have that much more engagement.
• 17:46
  That can be as silent salesman. That person stands there and
• 17:50
  does that little bit of Carney, you know, that carnival Barker
• 17:53
  that's bringing people into the tent, put them in the seats so
• 17:55
  then you can sell them, you know, concept of, of using your
• 17:59
  remodeling services. Yeah, definitely.
• 18:01
  And the beautiful thing as you mentioned, these are assets.
• 18:03
  That's not something you gotta change every month or do a whole
• 18:06
  bunch of legwork for. Once you have them place maybe
• 18:08
  investment it'll continue to produce over time.
• 18:12
  Now 4, can you maybe give us a client story of a client that
• 18:16
  came and then some of the like these tools that you put into
• 18:19
  place and then what the outcomes were for?
• 18:21
  Them, yeah, I'll give you 2 examples.
• 18:22
  One of them was, is Kudo Homes. There were a small custom
• 18:25
  builder out of Texas that was back in 2014 struggling a little
• 18:29
  bit. They were pretty honest with us
• 18:30
  saying that, hey, this is our last ditch effort to, you know,
• 18:32
  write the ship to, to put some things in place to go from old
• 18:35
  school to, you know, something more modern.
• 18:38
  And we did interactive floor plans and they saw a 40%
• 18:42
  increase in structural options sales.
• 18:43
  They saw 40% increase. And these are all average
• 18:46
  numbers. We call it the 4040 forty rule,
• 18:48
  but a 40% increase in leads. So people that were literally
• 18:52
  giving them, voluntarily giving them their information, hey,
• 18:55
  contact me, I want to talk about buying home from you.
• 18:58
  And then what they saw was even better, which is roughly a 40%
• 19:01
  decrease in the sales cycle timeline.
• 19:04
  So they not only have more people in the pipeline, but then
• 19:06
  they shorten the amount of time that they stayed in line to
• 19:10
  commit to and buying an actual home.
• 19:11
  So that would be #1 and they don't credit us with with saving
• 19:15
  their company. You know, we're not, we're not,
• 19:16
  you know, dying on the cross for anybody.
• 19:18
  But they do give us a lot of credit for that technology at
• 19:21
  that time bringing their company out of potential ruin into being
• 19:25
  the highly successful builder that they are down in Texas.
• 19:28
  Another example is a California builder called the Young
• 19:31
  Properties. And what they do is they use
• 19:33
  interactive floor plans in a very well thought out website.
• 19:37
  And we don't, we can't take any credit for their website or the
• 19:39
  way they market, but they mark it entire faces of communities
• 19:42
  and sell out in hours. What they do is they make a big
• 19:46
  event out of this community rollout and the fact that
• 19:49
  there's some scarcity to we only have 38 homes in this space or
• 19:53
  25 homes in space and we're taking deposits.
• 19:55
  They literally will sell out entire phases of community
• 19:58
  before they even broke ground or maybe right from a single model
• 20:02
  home or right from all the interactive tools they have on
• 20:04
  their website. So now they are also in
• 20:07
  California. California is a whole different
• 20:09
  piece. So you can get away with doing
• 20:11
  these pre launched parties and then having people come in and
• 20:14
  committing. Because they want to be on the
• 20:16
  right dirt in the right school district, close enough to their
• 20:18
  home, possibly close to the beach, who knows where they
• 20:20
  wanna be next to you, but that they So they have a different
• 20:22
  dynamic than what you would have and say Edmonton or what you
• 20:26
  would have in Kansas City, KS. You know, completely.
• 20:29
  Different market. That's great.
• 20:30
  I like the distinction of metrics there of it's not just
• 20:34
  morally it's a lot of you know, that's the easy one, right, like
• 20:37
  need more leads. That's what I want, what I want
• 20:39
  my marketing for, but it's it's the quality it's what kind of
• 20:42
  projects you're getting. What is the the length of the
• 20:45
  sales window there they that you mentioned of of the process and
• 20:48
  all that as far as like sales? Any tips or mindsets that you
• 20:54
  would suggest builders be using when they get into a sales
• 20:57
  conversation? Yeah, I'm personally a believer
• 21:00
  and, and I've, I've got a lot of data that supports this Amazon
• 21:04
  being #1 case study #1 be transparent with your
• 21:06
  information, be transparent with your pricing because there's
• 21:09
  nothing that T's offer takes off potential buyer if you advertise
• 21:14
  a certain price. And then you escalate then
• 21:16
  before they get out there. Well, cars, cars are great
• 21:18
  example. If you walk in and you're
• 21:19
  looking at, I don't know, a Hyundai Elantra, and they say
• 21:22
  they start as low as 22,000 and then you wind up walking out the
• 21:26
  door at 31,000. Well, guess what?
• 21:27
  You're walking out the door without the car because you
• 21:29
  didn't come there prepared to paint spend 31,000.
• 21:32
  You came there to spend 22,000 plus tax, title and license.
• 21:35
  So there's those, those kind of gotcha moments, that
• 21:38
  transparency in pricing. If you're not at least in the
• 21:41
  ballpark, you are going to pick off a lot of people.
• 21:44
  So get rid of that mindset #2 your salespeople aren't giving
• 21:49
  anybody any more information for the most part, than what they
• 21:52
  can learn online. AI puts so much knowledge at
• 21:57
  people's fingertips. Now, Grant, there's some
• 21:58
  hallucinations out there too, but for the most part, that AI
• 22:02
  knowledge that's out there, people have it at their
• 22:03
  fingertips. So they don't need to go talk to
• 22:06
  Leisure Suit Larry and hear his story.
• 22:10
  Sometimes wrong information, sometimes right information.
• 22:13
  Sometimes he just needs to make that sale.
• 22:14
  He's willing to tell you whatever it takes.
• 22:16
  No, we don't have any sewage problems in this in this
• 22:18
  community, not at all. We don't have any water table
• 22:21
  issues of runoff food, who knows, you know any odors from
• 22:24
  the garbage processing plant a mile away.
• 22:26
  No, no problems with that at all.
• 22:27
  So have that information, have that full transparency and get
• 22:30
  it out there in the open. Put it on your website and
• 22:32
  capitalize on it. Once you have that information
• 22:35
  on your website, push that out with your SEO, your Geo E or
• 22:40
  whatever they call when you're becoming visible by AI now
• 22:44
  because there is a difference. It's about having those facts
• 22:47
  and without that you're you are literally numbering the days
• 22:50
  until you either one get acquired or two go out of
• 22:52
  business because you are competing in a world where
• 22:55
  people are leveraging those tools.
• 22:57
  So you know, bleeding edge, but definitely be somewhere in that
• 23:00
  middle to leading edge of getting some of that stuff out
• 23:03
  there and implement. It yeah, I think that that's
• 23:05
  quite on point with they're going to get that information
• 23:08
  from somewhere. It's a lot of it is online and
• 23:11
  if you can provide the information, especially for your
• 23:13
  specific area or type of, you know, houses that you build or
• 23:17
  whatever, AI will start to take that information too.
• 23:20
  So if you have good information for your locality or the the
• 23:24
  exact things that people are searching, it's not about
• 23:27
  having, you know, a website necessarily with that search
• 23:30
  term. It's about having the right
• 23:32
  information because I will find it buried somewhere on your
• 23:35
  website and you still got to be readable, but and, and utilize
• 23:39
  that and then hopefully credit you in the in the prompt so that
• 23:43
  at least you're part of the conversation or you come up.
• 23:45
  So thanks so much for coming on here today, Kevin, sharing all
• 23:48
  your your system of knowledge. And as I mentioned before, the
• 23:52
  the marketing approach that you have is I think one that's not
• 23:57
  really understood greatly with the interactive floor plans and
• 24:01
  the different, you know, digital assets that you can utilize on a
• 24:05
  web page for, you know, slightly more maybe than what you're
• 24:09
  spending right now on just your basic stuff.
• 24:11
  But it makes a huge difference for the client and the sales
• 24:14
  process. So what's the best way for
• 24:16
  people to get in touch with you and an outhouse?
• 24:18
  LinkedIn, obviously, come on there.
• 24:20
  I'm religious on LinkedIn. I'm there 24/7 it seems like.
• 24:23
  And then to Kevin W outhouse.net.
• 24:25
  Perfect. So we'll put some links in the
• 24:26
  description of this, you know, video, audio, wherever you're
• 24:29
  tuning in from and go check it out, connect with Kevin, check
• 24:33
  out what outhouse has to offer and, and get, you know, leveled
• 24:37
  up and gets better sales and, and better, better projects.
• 24:40
  Thanks so much for coming on here today, Kevin.
• 24:42
  Thank you.