Jen
All right, Jessie. Random question. What is your current skincare routine? I have a reason. I'm asking you this, but I want to hear what your answer is first.
Jessie
I feel like I'm calling myself out here on this platform. My skin care routine is subpar at best. You know, I go to sleep with a clean face.
Jen
I'll be the judge of that.
Jessie
I don't do it. I don't do the whole scrub and the this and the bad and the peel. And I take my unscented dove bar of soap and I rub it in my hands and I rub it on my face and I rinse off in the shower because I'm a night shower.
Jen
Okay?
Jessie
Or at night or at night to wash my hair. And then I get rinse off and then I do my hair because it's drying this wig. And curling it is takes a long time. So I break it up. So I take all my stuff off at night in the shower. If I am lucky, I will put on a little bit of lotion, but that's it.
Jen
Okay. So no toners lotions, balms, scrubs, nothing like that. Okay. Okay. All right. Mine is similar. Now, I am a little bit older than you, so I do need to use like the old lady, like my cream. So I do put moisturizer on and things like that. However, I took my nieces out. Some of you might have seen my pictures where I was dancing on the basketball court, so I took them out for a night out with Aunt Jen.
Jen
And at dinner they there are 11. Okay. They're 11 years old. They proceeded to tell me their skincare routine, which consisted of all of these things from Sephora, you know, bombs and like, do you use this kind of toner, do you use this kind of thing? And they were talking about the stuff, and I'm sitting there just like floored.
Jen
And they're like, My mom won't let me get the, you know, drunk elephant bronzing drops from Sephora, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, my gosh, what are the drunk elephant bronzing drops anyway? Then they look at me and they go again, What is your skincare routine? And I said, Girls consist of Neutrogena. Yeah, you know, Cetaphil Yeah.
Jen
Cetaphil you know, face like wash in the shower. Neutrogena eye makeup remover, maybe. Right. Sarah V Connor And then Neutrogena moisturizer. And they just were like, really? And I said, Yeah. So going back to your going back to your word of the year, you know, less. I had a whole we had a whole discussion about maybe you don't need all those things, right?
Jen
But the kids these days are so extra.
Jessie
Either that or they're going to look like amazed. Now they're 60. I mean.
Jen
They're so extra with all the stuff they do. And I'm like, How do you have time with all the things?
Jessie
How do you have money to buy all that from Sephora at 11?
Jen
Yeah, well, they save up. They save up their allowance and they go buy makeup. That's the thing. That's the thing. So, okay.
Jessie
Well, it's a different breed. I had blue eyeshadow and like, juicy lips, Dr. Pepper Chapstick when I was in middle school. Okay, so.
Jen
Well.
Jessie
We're not the same.
Jen
Hold on, hold on. Hold on to your butts. Because at Stanley Cups, Lululemon and Sephora.
Jessie
Still never own Lululemon. I know. I'm going to get some heat for that because I know it's good.
Jen
A Amazon, Amazon, Lululemon dupe. I tested it. I tested them and they're they're pretty good. They're not exactly the same, but they're pretty good.
Jessie
So I'll.
Jen
Trust you. Check it out. Trust me.
Jessie
I'll trust you because I'm an old Navy. Old Navy girl.
Jen
All right. You right. Are you ready to do this thing?
Jessie
I'm ready. Let's do it.
Jen
Steal it. All right. Today on online, people talking, I am joined by the amazing online sales coach, Jesse Saks alone. You and I want to officially on the podcast give you a happy three year work of our 3od convert.
Jessie
Yeah, what an awesome three years it's been.
Jen
Yeah, my speech. Speech. What are you.
Jessie
Emotions right now?
Jen
You know how these three years have been for you as a coach?
Jessie
First of all, I don't know. I can't describe it in one word. You know, usually I like to just, like, summarize it, but I really can't because there's so many different things that I've learned, so many different people that I've met, so many different experiences that I've been able to have having been in the seat now. But it's just been truly life changing, you know, coming from the front lines to now being able to help make an impact like others have made on me.
Jessie
It's really rewarding. So it's been amazing. It's been fun.
Jen
That's awesome. What's your favorite thing about being a coach?
Jessie
My favorite thing? I don't know. Really. Probably the relationships. And I know that sounds silly, but that comes naturally with having hard conversations. You know, when you have this conversation with somebody, the other day who plays sports and I said, you know, you used to play sports. Who was your favorite coach? And it was never the person that was like, Great job.
Jessie
You just got killed out there, but keep it up. You know, it was the person that was like, let's roll back the tape. Let's look at things over again. And so to be able to have hard conversations but watch people grow from that is so awesome.
Jen
So it's not all about being a cheerleader. Sometimes you've got to be the you've got to give some tough love. You got to be the the instructor, too, and hold them on to the challenges that you've given, given them. So I love that. And that's exciting.
Jessie
Yeah. And happy work anniversary to you, Jen.
Jen
We share the same work over.
Jessie
I'm telling you first, it's magical.
Jen
It is, Yes. Mike shared on our internal Slack a video of me when I first started, and I said the word excited about five or six times. And I'm watching that. And I'm like, Yeah, I'm still excited. I'm so excited to be here seven years later. Holy cow. Holy cow. So, so good. We are. We are here to serve.
Jen
That's what this online People Talking podcast is about. We're here to serve our online sales specialists and industry, and that's what we're in the business of doing, being successful and seeing you guys be successful. So a couple of housekeeping items. One, we have the Builder show coming up and the Nationals Awards are going to be at the end of this month.
Jen
My colleague Julie Jernigan and myself are speaking at IBS, so we're excited. Several of the DIY team is going to be there. I think we can put in our show notes a blog that shows you kind of where we're going to be. So if you're coming, definitely stop by and see us. Yep. Jessi We have online Sales Academy that we launched.
Jen
Were open registrations open. We're filling seats. So when is that again?
Jessie
It's in April. April the third and the fourth. So there's a in a Friday for two days of in-person virtual. So it's all day. And then we'll be together for an additional eight weeks with some on demand trainings and things that you can do during or even outside of business hours. And then we'll have some one on one as a team, too.
Jen
Yes.
Jessie
So much good stuff.
Jen
And the national holiday. February 9th. Where's my sticker?
Jessie
I know. I was just looking for mine. Are you in my brain, Olivia?
Jen
Where I put. Okay, Jessie's got it. I just had my sister and I. here it is. Yes, yes, yes.
Jessie
I was heartbroken for a minute.
Jen
National Online Sales Day is coming up on Friday, February 9th. We're actually going to go live. We're going to have an ops live because we want to hop on on the night and just share some love. We love online sales specials out there. So remind your leadership that it's coming up as maybe they forgot. Yeah. Or just take the day off.
Jen
No, just kidding. Don't just take the day off, but talk to your leadership. I hope you do something fun. Yeah. Jesse, have you seen anybody do anything really cool out there that you can share?
Jessie
a lot. I mean, leaders who acknowledge this, they go big. I mean.
Jen
Yeah.
Jessie
You know, just a lunch maybe, or even like, a DoorDash and pay. Get yourself some lunch. Treat yourself to lunch, to flowers to. For me, this would have been, like, the best thing ever. Like a massage or a manicure or something like that. Maybe you wouldn't invest in otherwise. But I think the coolest thing that I saw from one of the teams because it took effort, you guys know I've talked about this a million times.
Jessie
I'm an old person at heart. Like, I'd rather get a handwritten note in the mail than a big present. And so it took time to prepare this. But a manager got all the on sites to shout out the SC Yes.
Jen
It's.
Jessie
Video that they put everything together and I was just like me. And that's special. So that was too.
Jen
Yes. Love it. Love it. So we look forward to celebrating with you. I think there's a blog that Olivia can put in the show notes as well with some ideas and things that we've seen in the past. We're excited. Also a little teaser. We will have a special award announced on online people talking on February 9th, so you'll definitely want to tune in to that.
Jen
All right. Let's get into what are online people talking about right now. Jesse. This keeps coming up on my coaching calls and I'm getting the vibes like, hey, we are we've been asked to take on some of our on site leads back into our buckets, rework them, try to resuscitate them. You know, our on sites aren't the best at doing lead follow up post appointment so leadership has asked us to kind of get in there and see what we can do.
Jen
You just wrote a blog about this.
Jessie
I did, yeah.
Jen
And so talk a little bit about why we don't recommend that. So just be just be clear. We don't recommend online taking those leads back. So talk about what we've seen and why.
Jessie
Yeah. Taking them back, whether they're a walk in that they've never managed before or an appointment they sent out that just didn't write a contract. And I think it comes from two different places. I don't think there's ever a time in the sales world where everything's at an equilibrium, like it's never just a straight cruise control. Either it's too slow or it's too busy, and that's the bad four letter word.
Jessie
But I said it because it's true. It just is what it is. And so if it's slow, it's like, okay, these people excel in nurturing these leads. I want to make sure that the couple of people who are like, still potentially interested are getting like top tier communication. So that's the theory. Or when it's super busy, it's like, well, our onsite sales executives need to be focusing on the quick turnaround.
Jessie
So those people so let's take the low hanging fruit and give it back sale. So like there's a premise for both situations, but neither serve the new customers coming in. So the people who have already committed their time to coming out and meeting with somebody, it doesn't make sense. And, you know, we talk about our funnel, the new Convert logo, the top of the funnel is people who are looking and as they move down the funnel towards the middle, it's the appointment and at the bottom it's the sale.
Jessie
And if they're in between like the bottom to the middle and you're pushing them way back up your decrease in their customer experience for a number of reasons, because now they've met with somebody and either to them in their psyche, you're saying you're not worthy of my time. Let me pass you back to somebody who can hold on to you until you're ready to talk with me and ready to buy, or they just go back and they're totally confused like, wait, I was I went out there and I met with Jenn.
Jen
Like, who were you?
Jessie
Yeah, I thought I was supposed to talk to Jenn. We already did the handoff process, so it messes with the buyer's mindset on like, who is who, where should I go? But it also messes with your numbers and your metrics. And when you talk about online sales, if you start a blended average of walk ins coming back and setting additional appointments, or you're taking back online leads and setting back appointments, all of your ratios kind of go out the window.
Jessie
So in their time at this point in time is best spent with new customers, like being able to provide a quick access to new people and get those in the door.
Jen
So now we obviously have strong feelings about this. And it's not just because we feel like this is not the best use of an online sales specialist TIME It's because we know, because we track it. So we we've looked at this. We you know, we've we've got numbers to support this. And, you know, Jesse, when you know the numbers that we have, like if we go back and we we look at the conversion of these older leads to appointment, it's like, well, 1% or something.
Jessie
Well, we did a little because I was like, Man, I wonder if anybody does this, like, how do we do this? So we we took one specific builder who attempted this strategy and we tracked it because we'll try anything like I guess I'm a questioner by nature. Yeah, I can get behind anything as long as it makes sense.
Jessie
And I know why. And so one builder took and I'm going to give you I'm going to pull some stats from the blog, but you can find it in there as well. This builder took 50 over 1500 leads that were taken from on site. Move back online. And of those 1500 leads, only 16 appointments were made. Again, all be back appointments at a 1% conversion from lead to appointment, which sucks.
Jessie
That's not a.
Jen
Good.
Jessie
Use of time but from mayor for sales came from it. So that's only a .02 conversion from lead to sale. So it's like yes, we captured four more sales, but your on site sales team can do that and they could probably at a higher level. You see what I'm saying.
Jen
Yeah. okay. No, I mean listen and I, we know the whys behind why you guys might want to do this right. I've got more bandwidth, like I've got some time. I could go in and help. I would rather you use that, that extra bandwidth that you might have to train on sites. Right. Be either, you know, teach them to fish, teach them to fish so that they can do this themselves in adult Swim.
Jen
But, you know, and and the other point that Jesse made, this is a big one because we're going to talk about benchmarks in a minute, but a big one is, if you are doing this, make sure that you keep the numbers separate. You have to track this separately. If if there's being leads given back over to you, those are not new online leads for you.
Jen
Those are leads that have you've already counted possibly in the past. Right. Or they're walk in leads. You want to track that stuff completely separate from your new online leads coming in and the appointment that you're setting from those and the sales that are happening from those. So again, you don't believe me. You don't believe us. Now, I believe Jesse track track it, track it and see because yeah, we're all about try anything for sure.
Jen
All right so that's a great segway into our topic today, which is Jesse, our 2023 online sales benchmarks were just released. Definitely. We'll put the link to the blog. You can go read all of the details behind that. But for, you know, we track track three different things or actually four different things we're looking at lead to appointment capped.
Jen
We also track the show rate. So appointments made to cap right and made ten nine showed up 90%. For example, we track appointment to sale, appointment kept to sale, and then we track overall online sales contribution right out of your company sales. How many were coming from online sales specialist appointments? Right. For the year, we looked at the results of 112 online sales specialists that reported their numbers.
Jen
We looked at 35 states across the country. So different markets, you know, over 200,000 leads, you know, collect that we were looking at. So it was a pretty good sampling. And, you know, to keep the data integrity in line, we only looked at builders that we could definitely we felt good about how they were quantifying their data, meaning like Jesse saying like they're keeping walk in and online sales traffic separate.
Jen
They're not combining. They're not blending those numbers. They're counting leads the same way. They're counting appointments, the same way they're counting sales the same way. Right? Because not everybody does. So we want to make sure that we're giving you those. And we look at averages each month. Right. What are the average numbers? And then for the year, we're kind of taking that collective average.
Jen
So we're not mathematicians, but this is how we come up with those numbers. So where were we at? Jesse? Let's talk about the lead to appointment. Where are we at? And how is that different from 2022?
Jessie
Yeah, well, the data always tells a story. You know, I always preface this to say, like, if if you're hearing this and you're seeing this, it's it all tells a story. Because if one is not in line, there's a reason if maybe you're your lead to appointment is low, but your appointment to sale as high as a leader, you might go, okay, let me look into that.
Jessie
Let me see what's happening. If your lead to appointment is high and your appointment to sale is low, it's like, where's the quality? What's happening? And so it all tells a story. They don't have to match up exactly to these benchmarks. It's just like if you're a new program. But watching the trends that happen from year to year or quarter to quarter, well gauge the success of your program.
Jessie
So that was a long answer to lead to appointment kept conversion was sitting at 41% compared to last year, which was 36%.
Jen
Yeah, that's.
Jessie
A pretty significant increase.
Jen
Yeah, I love seeing that. In fact, when we pull out our top, you know, this is an average of all, you know, those builders I was talking about that count everything. But these are new programs, existing programs on your lot programs. You know, it's a mix of a lot of different builders. And so when we actually pulled out our top tier, that was closer to 50%.
Jen
Jesse when I asked Bradley to appointment. So, you know, I think with, you know, lower leads but more quality, right? So we had there was no surprise that we had a dip in leads overall for the year, but better quality, so less leads, better managed with more with more bandwidth to be able to do prospecting. Right. You would expect an increase in lead to appointment.
Jen
Well.
Jessie
I think I always like to highlight how the online sales specialists can contribute to that specific conversion metric. So when we're talking specifically about lead to appointment capped, it's all about speed of response and personalization. Like that's how your online sales specialists can increase that in addition to of course, process setting to capture any of the stragglers. But the bulk of your leads, speed of response is the name of the game.
Jen
I love where this is going. Yeah, because. Because if you're listening to this and you're like, okay, where am I going? I'm not at 41%, I'm not at 50%. What can I do to increase that number? Right. Just saying, yeah, speed of response, personalization. Those are two things for sure. Right off the bat. Okay. Appointment and sale.
Jen
Where were you at there.
Jessie
This one time? I think my favorite one appointment to sale 20% up from 18%. So we saw an upward trend and you're like, okay, 2%, what the heck does that even mean? 2% a lot for that conversion metric?
Jen
Yeah. You know, isn't it fun to go, okay, here's a fun thing you can do, right? If you're looking at your numbers and you go, okay, I'm at 18% or I'm at 15% and I want to get to 20%. What does that look like? If I took my current numbers and I said, okay, if actually I if I converted 20% to sale, how many more sales would that have been for the organization?
Jen
Times your average sales price. Yeah, right. Any. Hey, that could have been $20 million more revenue. That would have been X amount more sales. Right. And that's what you work towards. Right. I get excited when when we do stuff like that.
Jessie
I do too, because, you know, I always bring it back to the bosses. You've already done the work, you know, you've already all those people already in there. It's like, okay, why did why are we why do we have that 5% margin that we're missing? And it's again, how can you change that on the front end online sales qualification of the lead?
Jessie
Make sure you're sending them out to the right community. Don't take their request at face value. They're on the website for 2 minutes at best, most of the time before they initially inquire. They haven't seen all your options. There may be something better. And then, of course, you're on site preparing for the point.
Jen
Where were where were we at overall for your contribution for 2023.
Jessie
47%.
Jen
Okay.
Jessie
Which was down a bit from last year, 52%.
Jen
Right. So that made sense.
Jessie
So yeah, they might go, gosh, it's down.
Jen
Right.
Jessie
Reason.
Jen
Yeah. And not really, I mean, not really that much. I mean we saw more walk in, you know, more walk ins happening. We saw a lot of builders get excited and start like really pushing walk in to like, okay, I like this. My salespeople are saying, this is good. Let's start putting model in. Yeah, open houses, model, open hours on the website.
Jen
And so we, we kind of saw a little bit of a shift in more walk ins, you know, more realtors going directly out there, more use of like Utah, you know, self touring, things like that. When you have a normal a normal combination of traffic like that, you're going to see a little bit of a shift. So I think I think it's completely normal and totally fine.
Jen
But if you're wondering where should you be still 50% like we're still we're still going for that 50% of overall sales. So let's make some predictions for 2024. Okay. Don't hold us to it. But, you know, we've seen already, right? We talked about this last time already out of the gate, like pent up demand, like huge like increase in traffic leads, like people are like, whoa, I'm busy.
Jen
Right. And I think we'll see that continue. I think, you know, with with rates possibly dropping right. That we're going to see, you know, consumer confidence is getting back. They're feeling good. It's going to be it's going to continue staying busy for a little while, for sure.
Jessie
I think, too. Jen, one of the things that's playing into this and I'm all about, you know, we're nerds over here, we don't have science background. And so I like to go back to the psyche of the buyer because nothing happens until you understand what's going on in their brains and why they're not making those decisions. And in the years past, they did a survey, and I am not going to quote anything because I don't want to say anything incorrectly, but there was a large portion of buyers when they were surveyed on why they didn't decide to move forward with purchasing.
Jessie
And and one of the reasons was the fear of being viewed by their family or their peers as yet unintelligent, because they're buying in a market that.
Jen
Why would you buy at the height of the market. Yeah yeah they.
Jessie
Didn't want to seem and now it's more normal. And so they're like, okay, everybody else is doing it. I can do it right? Agree with you.
Jen
We're tiptoeing or, you know, we're tiptoeing back. We're feeling pretty good, right? my friend just bought a home. Okay. Like it's okay now. Yeah, I think that's a huge that that certainty that certainty that that people are talking about. So again, like we saw in Q4 and when you go look at the benchmark logs, we have our Q4 numbers in there too.
Jen
We saw in Q4 that return up to 50 plus percent. So definitely I think we think it's going to stay closer to that range. Moving into 2024, what are a couple of areas, Jesse, that we'll just go back and forth on these things to focus on based on what we've seen from the benchmarks, what people are talking about, what should we be focusing on moving into this year?
Jessie
Well, two of the important things I kind of already touched on, I think that are important are speed to lead and personalization. Like, there's nothing that can replace the human element better than being available to our customer and catering to exactly what they're asking for because speed equals eye care. If you they answer the phone and I know I've had this happen.
Jessie
I know you've had it happen. Jen, where you answer outside of standard business hours and your customers are like, my gosh, I expect to get a voicemail. So that experience is what helps them to trust you later down. Their buying journey is like, okay, they're going to be available for me. They understand me. They hear me, and there's somebody here that's going to support me.
Jessie
So being available, quick response and paying attention to what they want and need, not like a checklist, but let's unpack it, let's figure it out. Let's work together, I think is really important.
Jen
I love that so much. You know, I've said speed, I think is the biggest differentiator of anything you could possibly do. So I love that. Here's another one. Make sure that all of your incoming lead sources are going through online sales. We've seen this happen sometimes where like, that lead source goes to this inbox over here that nobody really checks.
Jen
Like nobody even like was looking at that inbox. It's like, why is it going there? Everything should funnel through to the online sales specialist dropping into the CRM, right? It can't be fragmented. So doing, you know, online sales specialist, this is on you like make sure you're doing a lead audit, you're checking your web forms, making sure they're all working correctly.
Jen
You're checking make sure all of your calls are coming through properly. Like if something seems off, it probably is. Make sure everything's coming through, You know, with a conversion of 20% from appointment to sale, we can't let anything get past us. We have got to jump on it, Right. You know, right away. We've got to make sure everything's coming through us.
Jen
With 50% of sales coming from online sales specialist, you guys. Right. It's huge.
Jessie
So popular opinion coming in, maybe not unpopular, but in I don't know what word I'm looking for. Hot off the press. Yeah, I don't know. You got to make sure you have the right AC in place, too, because if you don't have the person that's eager to want to capture those leads, to want to engage with those leads, to want, there's nothing wrong with that.
Jen
All of our listeners, Jesse, are right. Our awesome online sales specialists. This is for those.
Jessie
If those the couple that are lingering like in the corner. Right. But I'm just saying, I'm curious though, because if you don't want to do it, you're not going to do it. So you have to you have the right person in the seat that's eager and hungry and they want to find that stuff. And when they're told to do it, they act on it immediately.
Jessie
There's no delay. There's just complete obedience to the program. And this next breed I've already said this, I posted something on my LinkedIn profile. There are different breed of online sales specialists, like they're coming in ready to to get down. So I'm loving what I'm seeing. But if there's even like the slightest question, it's like, okay, what do we focus on?
Jessie
Is this the right person? I don't know. We'll spicy on a Friday.
Jen
For real? Well, listen, I've been talking about the word tenacious a lot, too. Like, you got to be tenacious. You gotta have some grit, You got to have some hustle. Don't give up. Don't give up. Like, if you're listening to us talk about these benchmarks and you're like, man, that's not where I'm at. Okay, What is it going to take to get there?
Jen
What can I do? Baby steps each day, showing up, get after it. You get knocked down by you have a bad call with a customer, whatever it was on the phone, not in your face. Hang up, move on. Like put it over here. You have that salesperson that is like, man, they just they don't value my appointments. Like, I've done everything.
Jen
Get up, try again. It's a new day. Keep after it. Be consistent, right? Make it a game. Yeah, I'm going to do What am I going to do to get this person to like me and listen to me? Got to be.
Jessie
Time. Yeah.
Jen
Okay. Jesse, I got so excited. I am. Is that all right? That's it. Okay, Jesse, we have a video mailbag. What a wonderful video mailbag. Let's see what we have. I'm going to share my screen. my gosh. This is Ady. She has sent in a message. Let's see what she has to say.
Ady
Hi guys, its Ady again!
Ady
I just had a good question for you. With the word.
Ady
Industry shopping in 2020.
Ady
What are your predictions for the week that we're going to be sitting in and how to be better prepared for it? Thank you so much.
Ady
And I look forward to your answers.
Jen
She is just a bundle of awesomeness. Yes. Just. Okay. What are your thoughts? So basically she's saying, hey, prediction is interest rates, right? Dropping pent up demand. It's going to get busier, our leads are going to increase. What advice do you have?
Jessie
My advice is this is what we've all been asking for over the past year, right? Like we're all like, give me more, give me more, give me more. Yeah. And so you've got to really prepare. Just refresh on the basic fundamentals as follow the process. But really, you just have to like take off that diaper, put on your big girl panties and just like, like you got to just focus.
Jessie
It might not fit the regular mode, but this is the busy season and you've got to capitalize on what you have. So just all of the fundamentals do all of the things and then watch it all the rest of your year falls into place because of what you're doing right now.
Jen
Embrace you. And well, first I agree. Embrace it. Like bring it on. Let's go. This is an opportunity. Online sales has been training for this. You were built for this. Let's go. Secondly, it really is like how much of a lead increase are we talking about? So what's the first thing I just want to say? Yeah, if we're like if we're starting to creep over 200, you know, to 50, like if it's like, well, guns a blazin.
Jen
Hold on a second, then you do need to make some adjustments like one, you know, looking at not just lead counts, but where are we going as a company? Are we increasing our sales volume to maybe it's time to staff up So like it? Yeah. Look at possibly adding to your team talk talk with leadership about that And then also if it's like, okay, well now lead volume is just crazy.
Jen
Hi, hold on. We don't feel like we need to staff up yet. Maybe you need to make some adjustments to your current process. Meaning, you know, you know, we always recommend personalized video email, but during a crazy busy spring market, use your templates. You know, use a template, right? And always remember to go. We hear this a lot.
Jen
I'm on the phone. I'm missing a call coming in. I'm rushing through that call. You know, I'm freaking out. Stop right. The most important person that you're talking to is the person that you're engaged with at that moment. So I would rather you have a great conversation, appropriately qualified, get the appointment with that person you're talking to, then Rush to get another call and then not happen to be a warranty call.
Jen
It's like, crud. I just rushed through that and it wasn't even I wasn't even a sales call for me. So just remember like there are some things, adjustments to your tools that you could make, right, to help you through this crazy time. And we've been talking about this on the last couple of episodes time blocking your day, making sure that you're having some time in the morning before you start.
Jen
I was talking with a team, Jesse, the other day that was like, Yeah, we don't start until ten. And I'm like, okay, well, you're starting at ten and your phone's already ringing off the hook at 10:00. Yeah, might need to start at nine and give yourself some time in the morning to catch up on activities and your CRM and plan for the day before you go guns blazing at ten when people are calling in.
Jen
So, you know, just think about some of those things that you could do to adjust. You know, when I get super busy.
Jessie
I think that's a good point because you're essentially investing in yourself whether you feel like you're not being paid to work those hours or whatever, you know that struggle is that you're Yeah, well, I'm paid to work 10 to 6. It's like, right, investing in yourself to start earlier, not only from a financial perspective and being able to provide a good level of customer experience your company, but you're investing in yourself and your mental sanity to not be continually playing the catch up game.
Jessie
All day. And then at the end of the day you're like, I have all this stuff I need to get to tomorrow, and then tomorrow comes and then it just goes and goes and goes. So it is an investment that you're you're going to have to make in yourself, aside from feeling like, it's because I'm an employee at this company.
Jessie
It's like that's the difference between just being an online sales and being an online sales specialist. Like there are two very different types of people and that's okay.
Jen
Okay.
Jessie
Lauren, you're not spicy right now.
Jen
Pause for a second. I just want you to say that again about about the being and the B, are you are.
Jessie
You just in online sales? Are you an online sales specialist? Like, is this your career or is this just a job?
Jen
Yeah, that is the question of the day. But I love it. I love it, man. Just spice today.
Jessie
I know. I just.
Jen
What did you have an enchilada?
Jessie
It was this haircut.
Jen
I think it's darling. It's absolutely darling.
Jessie
But I think it made me a little spice.
Jen
Made you a little spicy. I love it. All right, well, speaking of spicy, let's do a skills check, because you got to check yourself before you reckless self again. You got to stay sharp. You are an online sales specialist. Let's go. Okay, so our skills check. This episode is speed of response. Now, in order to know whether or not you need to improve your speed of response, you need to check yourself on speed of response.
Jen
So randomly select some leads in your database and look at what your average speed of responses right. Just randomly did the do the CRM roulette? I like to call it right. Go through, pick some nonresponsive leads that are come in, look at when you know they registered and look at when your first point of contact with them was and see what that that time that speed of response time is and then get your average the only way you're going to know whether or not you're going to improve it is if you get a benchmark or a baseline to go from.
Jen
So that's the first step. That's your homework. And then how do we what are some ideas for improving it? If you look and you're like, man, my stated response is 60 minutes, holy cow, what are you going to do to improve that?
Jessie
Well I think it depends on what's going on because you have to figure out what the issue is, is like why. Yeah. Why is your. Yeah. Is volume, is it meeting, is it what. Like what is it. Is it just that you're not aware like you don't not you know, notified like you don't always carry your phone with you if you're going in somewhere or whatever.
Jessie
Like you've got to.
Jen
Figure out.
Jessie
Why you might have a delay in general to be able to find that for it. So isolating that meetings are the biggest time suck. I mean, they're important to a degree, but if your phone's ringing or you've got a new lead coming in, you're hired to prioritize those leads. And so it's figuring out, okay, what makes sense? Where do I go?
Jessie
When do I need to be here? How long do I need to stay from a meeting perspective, but also being aware that a new lead has come in is really important. And some people, this is just me. I'm going to tell you what worked for me is I would put I had an Apple Watch and I had my work email on my personal phone.
Jessie
And a lot of people go, No, no, no, I'm not doing that. So if you're that type of person, don't take this advice. But if you are the type of person that doesn't mind that type of stuff and you can kind of tune it out when you're off because some people can't, you get an alert on your watch from your CRM that says you've got a new lead, otherwise you have to be actively looking at your inbox.
Jessie
So that's what worked for me.
Jen
Jessie
I don't know. What about you?
Jen
Well, I mean, you hit the nail on the head is the first thing is when you do this homework assignment and you determine that you need to work on this is okay. What's causing me from not being able to be responsive? We know it's not a lack of effort, right? It's not like you're sitting around like, well, I'm not going to respond to anybody.
Jen
That's there's usually a reason why. Yeah. And if I was a betting woman, I would say the reason is meetings. That is usually a big cause. Yeah. So don't be in meetings unless it is absolutely necessary. And on the ones that are absolutely necessary. Tom, for the first 5 minutes, get the download or the agenda, get, you know, give your two so you get the agenda ahead of time.
Jen
Hey, what are we going to be talking about? This meeting? Come ask your questions. Get the information and then buggy right. Sales meetings. Come at the beginning, give your update, shake hands, kiss babies buggy, go back to work. Right. The rules don't apply to online cell specialist meeting. If you're in a meeting, you can get up and leave.
Jen
Take a call. Right. So when you're in meetings, you're not being responsive. I think that is probably the biggest offender. So figure out what it is. And then I like the notification thing. Jessie. I think also clear the clutter, like make sure your inbox is like if there's anything that can is not necessarily important to have it go to a folder that you can then access later and just leave your inbox clutter free so that notifications for new leads are coming there.
Jen
Like make sure you are getting notifications for new leads in your inbox. First of all, like make sure that's like the main thing that's coming in to you on your work email versus all the other stuff. So couple of pointers there. But yeah, homework. Figure out what your speed of responses and then how are you going to fix it.
Jessie
I think the last thing, Jen, I think if you're a seasoned SC and you're like, Yeah, that's great theory, but my inbox looks like Jumanji Warehouse, it's okay to file bankruptcy if like you've got 4000 emails in your inbox, just keep piling up. If you haven't emailed them back or call them in a month, just remove it. That's clutter for you.
Jessie
You know, at this point, you're never going to get back to them and make a goal of Inbox zero so that, you know, when things are urgent, if everything's in there, nothing's urgent, you know what I mean?
Jen
That's true.
Jessie
Well, I see.
Jen
Well, yeah. And just remember, the priority is, are the new leads coming in. So if you're in the middle of doing prospecting and a new lead comes in, you stop what you're doing and you go over and you take care of that newly bright fire under your tush. Get after it. All right, Jesse, Fire under your tush. Get after it.
Jen
Let's go. Thank you so much, man. I just love being with you. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys for listening. And we'll see you next time. Bye bye!
