Disclaimer: This transcript was auto-generated using AI-powered software. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.

To listen to this podcast episode, visit Ep 32: Helping Sales & Marketing Get Along with Chris Hartley.

Kevin Oakley 00:12

Welcome to market proof marketing the weekly podcast for the marketing minds at Do you convert.com where we talk about the current state of all things digital and how they impact Home Builders and developers around the globe? We’re not here to sell you. We’re here to help you and to try and elevate the conversation. I’m Kevin Oakley and with me today, as always, is the ad Dr. Andrew peek. Hey, welcome to Episode 33. We have a special guest that’s always here with us, but now she’s actually on the podcast super excited. Our very own designer extraordinaire. Jackie, it’s exciting to have you on

Jackie Askews 00:44

Yes Hi everyone. We thought

Kevin Oakley 00:47

it’d be fun you know when we did our live recording Becca and Jackie were able to hop in and we’re like, why don’t we just get them in the rotation. So for the for the news and storytime segments will will swap Other other members of the DYC team in and out just so that you can hear a voice that’s not answered because we know you’re mostly bored with us at this point. And

Jackie Askews 01:10

it’s funny I I’m usually on the other end of it listening to you guys every week. So it’s kind of an honor to be able to pop in and, and talk with you guys on some of this

Kevin Oakley 01:20

just to you know, help you stay calm right? Don’t be nervous. There’s only about 15 people listening. So good to know.

Jackie Askews 01:29

And that makes me feel so much better. Oh, man.

Andrew Peek 01:32

Let’s go ahead and get started. JACK, do you have a storytime?

Jackie Askews 01:36

I do. I you know, I just wanted to mention something that, you know, is probably a lot more common than people think. And just the fact that some of our builder partners out there may be able to relate to I had someone recently come to me and have this situation happen where with new employees, they tend to be a little bit kind of not as familiar within the industry where they are and just need knowledge to be expanded. And the biggest thing was coming into it into the marketing departments and is with having a new community and then not having any content or maybe imagery to show for it. That never happens. Right? Right. Forever and meaning guidance kind of what to do when you want something done right now saying you know, I want to put together some tort type of social media a campaign or have some type of marketing piece of sorts email be put together for a new community or something being kicked off and nothing really to show for it. Which I think is a lot I think, I think that happens probably more times than not with some people out there not knowing it is

Kevin Oakley 02:53

and I think maybe if we’re just more experienced, we’ve we expect that going in and we know ways to work around But if you’re newer, and you’re like, well, what else would I do except for show images of the exact community that that I have no images for? So how would they how would they fix that problem?

Jackie Askews 03:12

What I would do is even if it’s the area itself that has some type of key interests or anything that is you think as a prospect that would intrigue them, that would get them interested in this new community or new phase, going out to the land itself, getting some really nice pictures, take a couple hours, get yourself out of the office, just be able to have something to show for it if you don’t have floorplan renderings or photos of that similar things to us.

Andrew Peek 03:45

Oh, definitely. Yeah, that’s that is a great idea. So they should really go out on their own, get the pictures and then find that they more than likely, that’s not a new product type, which is probably the hardest one especially we don’t have our own drains, but I’m sure there’s something they can reuse. As far as other photos from other communities have product already built, get it going to answer Yeah, my story this week if you all remember the house is going to be listed my home that we’re living in. Well it went up today. It’s been coming soon on Zillow for I believe eight days and then actually today’s Friday so I went up yesterday and we already have an offer wow super exciting it’s over list which is even crazier significantly overpriced Why do you think that because I cuz we pre sales without everyone you know, everyone’s already looked up the public information right? So they know all about your how much over list it is 16 K over list, which would be so it was listed at 269 offers 285. So yeah, and why do you think that is? Why do I think that is? is it’s a realtor give you an answer because I’m well, no, but normally that happens when they know there’s other competing offers coming direct where there multiple offers have showings all day. We’re not living there, fortunately, which is super nice. I could not imagine living in a home that you’re selling, that’d be really stressful. So we’re fortunate that we can do that. So showing us all day, but this buyer in particular, they got into two previous bidding wars and the past month. So they are like, we’ve already lost two. This is crazy. And then they saw this morning the layout of our houses a split floor plan, it’s only 1600 feet. So if you’re doing the math like 285 or 1600 prices, I think we’re a little little crazy down here. But it’s very livable. You know, there’s two different living spaces the kitchens right the middle kids rooms over this way so it’s, it’s nice for the size as far as the floor plan and it’s been moderately updated. And a new roof is going on, on on well. There’s no blue carpet I was doing I was doing some competitive market analysis on my flight from Seattle and I’m like, Okay, well there’s a house for 275 let’s take a look at that one. You know and the price range and it had like bright blue carpet from 1975 a

Kevin Oakley 06:04

mildly updated doesn’t do you’ve done. I mean, it’s all neutral and seems like it’s within the last Do you like the bathroom to see the bathroom? That bathroom is so nice, Jackie, if you were if your husband was remodeling a bathroom, and how long would you expect that process to take?

Jackie Askews 06:23

Oh my gosh, I know. I love my husband so much. I hope he doesn’t take this personally. But I feel like he would take so long to do something like that on his own without any help.

Kevin Oakley 06:35

Well, that’s not a funny answer. Let’s quantify it like six months. Oh,

Jackie Askews 06:39

yeah, I would say I would say within like the six month mark, it would just take No, I don’t think you’d interesting answer Are you better or worse than her husband’s fictitious

Andrew Peek 06:50

I’m like probably two and a half times worse.

Jackie Askews 06:56

That goes back to the master bath update that we didn’t have In the works Yeah, right. In the work

Andrew Peek 07:02

yeah, the but I was functional after I think five weeks the bathroom and then it was Yeah, I guess I better do the grout on the wall tiles yeah yes I better do that this was last details on when we finished our hardwood floors ourselves in our first house man. Everything was done except for putting back on the shoe mold. Yeah, I think that took me as long as it did to put down the hardwood throughout the first time. I believe it I believe it

Jackie Askews 07:28

and Andrew I will say hard to believe three kids and you guys were living there It looks so nice. The the photos Yeah. And I feel like that alone

Andrew Peek 07:37

the the realtor did hire pretty good photographer. I was I think she knew she knows what I do. So she was like, Oh, I better not cheap out on this stuff. And there’s some videos and everything. There’s I don’t even know if it was on the Zillow listing the big the big video, but she did it that well and she marketed a well within the area. So yeah, yeah.

Jackie Askews 07:56

Now Andrew, did you think it was going to happen this quickly. He said just yesterday it when we we thought

Andrew Peek 08:02

it would be quick with the school district that we’re in just the area. And this is the quote starter home. right on to Kevin, you were busy this week.

Kevin Oakley 08:13

Yeah, yeah. And you know, we obviously did not put up an episode this past week apologize for that. But you know, between our summit ending trying to catch your breath, keep up with with workload over investing and family time to make up for being gone for four and a half days, and then hopping on a plane and flying out to Seattle and the other on the other coast or Zillow’s conference. just didn’t have time to make that work. But yeah, the summit, you know, just final takeaways for me is that there is a bunch of new people there on the market and about 70% of the audience had not been to our summit before. Yeah, it is. What was great is seeing the people who had been there multiple times or that you know, we work with or have worked with for many years take a lot of those people under their wings. And make those connections. And we always talk about networking being such an important part. But it was just, it was awesome to be able to see those folks interacting and so quickly connecting with other people there. The the Zillow conference was fantastic as well, a lot of new things coming down the pike product line, they kind of gave us almost like a two to three year snapshot of where they hope to hope to go. They wouldn’t let us take photos smartly, because I would have just livestream that whole session but they’re they’re doing a full redesign of zelos website and an app experience a lot of awesome stuff specifically for new construction coming like the ability to swipe on a new construction to be built listing on Zillow. Right now it it kind of functionally interacts like a regular listing. You’ve got pictures and and descriptions but having an extra kind of interactive bar where you could swipe and look at the different elevations of the home. Instead of having to have them stuck just in the gallery make a little bit more I think the way they talked about it was just highlighting the fact that with new construction, you have options. And so how do we start to visualize that the the super big, I think impactful thing is they’re going to start overlaying the site maps of new construction communities over the satellite image. And that’s going to be loud. No longer. Yeah, you’re not just gonna see an empty cornfield and think, well, what is that? Like? Why are there homes in the middle of the cornfield. And just visually, they will stick out much more clearly, as you zoom into that lemmya, then the current little red dot that says, you know, 10 homes in this location does now so I think you’ll just get a lot more visibility. So that was, that was fantastic. They’re working on a lot more attribution tools to help you see the impact of the people who walk in your sales office, how many of them saw one of the ads and potentially were influenced in that direction. So a lot of a lot of awesome stuff there. And as true data freaks that we are they also gave away the first advanced copies and And had extra talk about their newly released new construction consumer housing trends report. And we’ll link Yeah, we’ll link it is like gold that no one, seemingly no one in the past ever references or talks about. So it’s like a hidden treasure that is right in front of your face. And we’ll link to the full PDF. You can go grab that and look through it. But I just wanted to highlight a couple of things that I thought were particularly interesting. There’s a lot of talk right now about how Millennials are taking over real estate and are the biggest portion of buyers right now. And that’s true for both new and existing homes or use Tom’s as we like to call them. But us homes have 44 44% of us homes are being purchased by millennials compared to only 32% in new construction, so new construction has a much bigger percentage still a baby boomers and Gen Xers whereas the millennials have kind of kicked Everyone else at the curb on use films. And I think a lot of that has to do with price point. Yes. Yeah. New Construction homes having more expensive makes Another interesting fact is that new construction specifically, those buyers are 53% of them move from a different city, state or country. So you know, relo buyers are a big deal. And that’s, that’s incredible. Yeah, we talk a lot about you know, five to 10 mile radius is super important and making sure you dominate that but you still have to make sure you have avenues for people relocating to find you on Zillow, Google, Facebook, etc. So far, and that’s definitely the harder of the things to be doing when it comes to social because paid social especially. We want to stick to that geography to help our budgets. And then two more quick facts that I thought were great, but there’s hundreds more in here is that 71% of new customers buyers are a repeat buyer, meaning this is not their first time they’re purchasing a home. So a lot again, price point, a lot of move up buyers. The other one that I wanted to highlight was that new construction buyers, on average, spend 30% more than their initial budget for a home. Wow. Yeah. And that’s compared to 22% on existing homes. So in both cases, there’s a little bit of HGTV syndrome where like, I want it all and I expect to get it for $110,000. And then reality hits and you have to make compromises but new construction, they’re willing to stretch further, which is good news because they often are more expensive. At least the initial sticker price seems more expensive operating costs and you don’t have to remodel a bathroom. I know. Yeah. No remodeling bathroom, but make sure you go and check that out. We’re going to be partnering with Zillow to try to get a lot more of these insights out. Maybe have one of them back on the podcast. That’d be Fun. We did a fun game show on some of this data at the summit. Maybe we can find a way to do a total aside. I would love to hear both of your feedback on this because I talked to some of our builder clients who were at the Zillow conference about idea I think we should find someone to build us and a cell phone game where you are like a brand new digital marketer for a home builder like the story mode is you know, we’ve got this brand new coming soon community and then you’ve got to decide like a choose your own adventure with eight bit or 16 bit graphic. look like something do you put out the sign now? Or do you wait until the day before it opens to announce that it even exists? Or be human? Have I like run real time? Like there’s this game? I think it’s Yeah, if it’s called like lemonade stand or something. It’s old, but you run. Oh, yeah. Again, and you’re like more sugar or ice or water. You have the weather soda. Is it the same? How much lemonade Are you gonna make and then sometimes you have too much or not another thing except For homebuilders even buy land oh my gosh this would be all the owners are playing it they won’t be doing anything anymore that’d be amazing. Yeah and then random disasters can happen right Florence Yes, her Oh her I was that Yeah, for sure I was just thinking oh sorry we’re gonna delay that community that’s taken up 20% of your budget by three yeah so here’s how

Jackie Askews 15:22

to make it realistic we have to make this realistic we don’t even have it Yeah, I was gonna say something like that whereas I think that’d be really cool to do.

Andrew Peek 15:32

Make it yeah make it like real making you could compete against other builders on the map in the air and the guys I call Okay, this is yes, love it. All right. Let’s hop into the news. First one here from gizmodo.com. Andrew, tell us about this moto what this this is some speculation but it looks like Facebook is going to get into some trouble again. If, if it catches the news. So most of us know you can export your customer list or from your CRM. You could upload it to Facebook, and they call that a custom audience. And then what it does is takes that information and matches it against Facebook accounts. And then you could target those people. What this article is speculating with their belief is and it looks like it’s true, it’s hard to tell that they’re also using the two factor authentication. So your number that’s not actually your account number, or contact info. And they’re letting people target by that. So in this example, the person uses a landline as their number as for the two factor, because it’s right there in office, they can’t maybe it’s harder to do that or something versus the cell phone number.

Kevin Oakley 16:41

And they uploaded that someone else was able to target them in a custom audience. It was within partnership, so they kind of both knew what was going on. And then they he was shown the ad. There’s a lot of smart people who still think that Facebook and Alexa and all these other devices are absolutely spying on us and get giving information back all the time. And even though everyone involved in any way with this keep saying absolutely not, there’s still a lot of skepticism around that. I am. I’m not certain how I feel about this. I think if I take a what I think is realistic view, Facebook doesn’t want to have personally identifiable information, get into the wrong hands. And I think they probably have a way of abstracting some data before they give it to their AI algorithms that are looking for how to find a look alike audience or someone who is similar to this individual. You know, I think about my kids, right as my kids have an iPad, they have an I an old iPhone that is now bricked and they they use it to do coloring pages. But when I install an app on my phone, it still gets installed on theirs until I uninstalled it to dumb setting I need to change but there’s absolutely no reason that Facebook wouldn’t assume that I have that all set Have those devices are mean? And I think similarly, if, if I’m using two factor authentication why would that not? Why would the number in there not be the number associated with me so part of me thinks they’re just naturally going to not be so precise to only target one individual. I think a lot of these cases is targeted individual and similar folks in the same household even right like, why would I get an ad for lipstick? There’s lots of speculation about that, but probably because my wife was was you know, looking for the latest lip sense product and it’s coming from the same household and Facebook knows that and so then I get shown an ad for you know, sweaters or lipstick or whatever. I don’t do any clothes shopping online myself, but I still see those ads.

Jackie Askews 18:53

I mean, personally, I think I’m in that sense. Granted, I could be biasing this but being on a social Any type of social media or social network and information nowadays with with what you can do with remarketing, and I think there’s that privacy trade off with that, and the fact that I know some people who aren’t as familiar with it, or it like we are within the industry, I think get so afraid and scared of the their own personal data that is out there that can be accessed and used. But at the end of the day, I think there is that, that personalized experience, you know, what you see that really is correlated to what you’re googling or what you’re interested in, for sure.

Kevin Oakley 19:38

And I’m just skimming this last paragraph of the article, it says Facebook has claimed that users already have extensive control over what information is made available to advertisers, but that’s not entirely true. I think there’s a little bit of an axe to grind here like yeah, whatever you put in Facebook is by its very nature, going to Facebook, so they can use that for anything and At the end of the day, this other person trying to target the person in the article, Mister security guy. So the author set up a campaign to target this known web privacy security person was I don’t have his name. Yeah. and is able to and they put in this landline in Facebook. And so if you’re gonna, you’d have to know that, right? Like, whether Facebook knew it or not this individual knew that that landline was connected to this person. And there’s no way that Facebook can prevent that. I mean, if I’m, I just Yeah, but it is interesting that there could be some blowback for Facebook not being more open about it, but I think I’m pretty sure Zuckerberg said in his testimony a couple of times, like if you share it on Facebook, that is your opt in to share it with the world. They’ll put it on there if you don’t want to be sure,

Jackie Askews 20:55

exactly.

Kevin Oakley 20:57

This is done everywhere. You know, Google has a customer match? same type of thing? And yes, right? We’ve talked about this before and true. Amazon actually knows what you buy, which is way more like, you know everything and everywhere I ship and ever I’d like everything. My Yeah, you’ve got Apple being the white knight saying that they are really concerned about privacy, but they don’t have. They don’t use it for anything the same way that these other networks do. So I always find that interesting. They’re always the first one to jump in politically and say, we want to give our users more privacy. We think it’s a basic human rights like well, you don’t make billions from it the way that other companies do. So of course, you have no problem keeping it, keeping it prey to. Alright, let’s take a quick break. And when we come back, we’ve got Chris Hartley here to school us marketers on the importance of sales. Of course sales are important. Now that’s what he’s going to school us on. He’s going to talk about his experience coming up in the business and a lot of that experience was as a sales leader and he’s moved on to even bigger and better things now. But I’m just picking his brain of how do you work well with sales as a marketer what a sales need and get that unique perspective from him. We’ll be right back. And we’re back with Chris Hartley, the VP of operations and marketing for Dunhill homes and Nathan Carlisle homes in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas area. Chris, thanks for joining us.

Chris Hartley 22:42

Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m a big fan of your guys’s podcast and it’s exciting to be on.

Kevin Oakley 22:48

I’m a big fan of your gifts, sir. Say here so you may have seen pictures of the gift. We’ll post a separate one higher rez in the market. Perfect. Marketing Facebook group, but tell everyone what, what what did you do for escrow services?

Chris Hartley 23:04

Yes. So what we did here and you know, I’ve been friends with Kevin for quite a while now and I remember him talking at a conference one time about the best gift he ever got was some customized maple syrup from Zillow, and I was like, I gotta beat that I could beat that. There’s got to be there’s got to be something better that’ll cover pancakes or waffles. What What better idea, right, so I’m a huge fan of shark tank. And on Shark Tank one time was a gentleman by the name of Fleetwood Hicks and he was a custom bike designer. And I thought to myself, that is just the coolest idea in the entire world to have a custom bike. You know, they’re making bikes cool again. So one of our brands with the company is Nathan Carlisle homes and it is an active adult brand. We have these new active adult communities come in, we’ve just completely rebranded we got a new website come in, we own our own font. we own our own active adult photography. We put we put a lot of money into this thing. And we reach, we reached out to just did a Google search on custom beach cruiser bicycles and up pop the episode from shark tank with Fleetwood. So I sent him an email, you know, it’s one of those little info things info at Billy custom. And I said, I’m looking to buy some bikes and I got a general inquiry said, How are you thinking? And I said about 600. And I got, I got an I got an immediate response back that said, we’ll call you and I think they were probably trying to see if I was pranking them or not. So, you know, fast forward, you know, months after months, and we have our own custom beach cruiser bicycles for every single active adult buyer who purchased one of our homes and they’re beautiful. And so I was working on this, and I said, There’s got to be a cool gift that we can do for Do you convert and so I had Jen Barkan, send me your logo and your colors and I said, you can’t tell anybody what I’m up to. But I got a really cool gift for you that I’ll present for you guys at your summit. And the bikes turned out phenomenally turned out way better than I could have

Kevin Oakley 24:58

imagined. They were awesome and By the way, good call not asking me because if you want to freak out a marketer or branding person, ask them for their vector format of their logo and their colors, and just be like, what are you going to do with my logo? Right? They would have terrified me. But yeah, you know, they, they are awesome bikes and they’re phenomenal.

Chris Hartley 25:18

And I asked Jen, I said, Well, what did you think I was gonna do? And she’s like, maybe make a T shirt. You know, in Texas and you know, I’m not from Texas, but in Texas, they always like to do things bigger and better. So you know, why not? And you know, we built a great great friendship with Fleetwood and the team over there ability custom and we’re super excited to give every one of our active adult buyers our own custom beach cruiser bicycle in our in our brand colors.

Kevin Oakley 25:42

We’re going to talk a little bit more about that in a minute but first, so Chris was teasing me for probably the last two or three months he’s like, what do you think something bigs gonna happen at the summit? And it’s gonna be my fault and I was like, Oh, no, again, my fault. You are getting me more scared than excited. And then Chris was like, no, it’s it’s gonna have something to do with a celebrity. Meaning, you know, this guy was on Shark Tank. And he’s, he’s now you know, well known company and personality. And I remember I was like, he’s like, what do you think it’s gonna be code? And I said, Alright, are you gonna have I know you’ve been part of the Jeff shore leadership roundtable and all of you know, all of the different programs. He’s like, the only celebrity I know in this industry really is Jeff shore, like, are you going to have him show up or pre record a video? So this was definitely not I would have loved to have that too. We love Jeff and all the content that he and his team do, but this was not expected. And also my kids are completely spoiled. Because I showed them the picture of the bike. And their response was, that’s awesome. He got for one for each of us. Like these were for my kids. Like, no, no, it’s just for me. And you can’t have Why can’t we? I was like, the Oompa Loompa Willy Wonka, like I want a bike now. It’s like my goodness, I have failed. Let’s circle back. And then I want to dig into your history, your superpowers and all the rest. But the bikes are for everyone who buys in this active adult community, or is this part of like a founders club to get things started or tell me about how the bikes are practically going to be used? Because that’s pretty unique thing.

Chris Hartley 27:17

Yeah. So anytime you have an active adult community, and anytime you’re trying to make anybody moving, and especially active adult buyers, you have to make it fun. I just recently myself moved into a new house two weeks ago. So I totally know what Andrew was talking about. When you’re fixing things in your home and your wife is like, Oh, that’s, that’s really nice of you to do now. We got our windows cleaned right before we listed the house and my wife’s like, Oh, that’s what it looks like to have clean windows. And I’m like, yeah. And she’s like, well, maybe we can do that more than every four years in the new house. And you know, we’ll get on that I put it on the list. Right. So sounds like that would happen. Yeah, they could be friends. So you have to make it fun for these active adult buyers to move and when you’re doing something for them. You’re trying to make it Socially involved and the word active is in the type of homes that you’re building active adults. So with the bikes, we thought of just making the first 25 purchasers in the community get a bike. And we’re like, you know what, that’s not a lot of fun. Let’s make sure that everybody gets a bike. And we told the developer about it, and they got really excited. So our amenity center is going to be full of bike racks throughout the communities full of bike racks. And so the first 25 people are going to be called the cruisers. Those are the people that you know, are the founders of the community, they’re going to have a special blue bike blue is one of our colors, and then everybody else so roughly 325 other people within the same community will have an orange bike. And so you say, Okay, how in the world if you’re going to have 340, some plus bikes that are the same color, how are people going to know the difference between whose bikes shoes, because when they? Yeah, right when they close on the home, they’re actually going to get a personalized license plate that goes on the back of the seat that tells whose bike is whose. So we’re super excited about it. We’ve got a lot A lot of really great things going on with it. You know, we got our custom photography done with the bikes and it’s going to be great. That’ll be all over the gram.

Kevin Oakley 29:07

Absolutely all over the gram and why so much effort? Tell us a little bit about what what is Dunhill versus Nathan Nathan Carlisle and why so much effort into these new community launches that you’ve got going on, just to kind of the shift of, of how the company is is changing a little bit I think would be interesting for people to hear.

Chris Hartley 29:24

So, my previous role being vice president sales and marketing for Dunhill and Nathan Carla Holmes Dunhill as a traditional home builder, probably like 99% of the home builders that are throughout the country. And Nathan Carlisle is our active adult brand. And for the longest time, Nathan Carl was a very, very smart a small part of our organization. You know, we’ll do 400 homes this year in Dallas, and 400 homes in a lot of the markets would put you as the number one home builder 400 homes in Dallas Fort Worth puts you number 25 out of 94 Home Builders so it kind of gets things into perspective for you on you know where Where we rank in a size. So when you’re competing on the Dunhill homes level, traditional side of the business, in communities that have as many as nine to 13 other competitors and a model home alley, so to speak, you you’re really just competing against price. And although we are the number one housing market in the country, there are parts of our Metroplex that feel like it was when I was in Arizona in the recession. The I got an email right before I jumped on this podcast with you guys with a notification that 11 home builders are paying 6% to 9% Commission on standing inventory. Oh my

Kevin Oakley 30:42

goodness,

Chris Hartley 30:43

and incentives up to $100,000. Now, that totally reminds me of Phoenix, Arizona, circa 2009, nine and 10 when I lived there, and so when you’re when you’re competing and you’re a small privately held homebuilder, I say small because number 25 But of 94, even though we’re doing 400, margins matter, margins matter to us, you know, we’re not the large home builders of the world because we do have Dr. Horton in our market that does 6000 homes. We can’t afford to give our homes away for free. So what we turn around we looked at as we evaluated our brand in general, both brands, both the act of building the traditional and we looked and we said, okay, which side is making the most amount of money and who has the least amount of competition? Well, that’s, that’s an easy one. We didn’t even need to study that it’s the active adult brand because we in essence, have Del Webb and we have ropes and ranch and we do have Taylor Morrison just entered into our market too. So we have very few competitors in that market and our margins are almost double in the active adult side than what it is on the traditional side because the competition is not there to beat each other up. But again, if you’re if you’re going to do something with active adult, you have to make it fun and that meant a complete rebrand of our colors. That is custom font, custom photography. You name it where we even have the first ever freestanding sales center in Dallas that’s going to be built here soon and I’m beyond pumped for people to see it and I give it very, very short amount of time before the idea and the concept is ripped off for the next home builder. And it’s not anything new for places like California and Utah and you know Colorado but for here in Dallas, we’re a little bit behind the times and a lot of stuff and it’s going to be very futuristic for for the market here and I’m excited to showcase it.

Kevin Oakley 32:27

And it makes sense. We’re always frustrated that these 55 plus active adult buyers are harder to sell to. But you make a great point Chris, that’s most time we make it really boring. And this is like their, their prime of their life. The golden years, you know, this is going to be what you’ve always dreamed of. And they don’t want to wait and see they want to they want the amenities and upfront they want you know, a great sales center experience up front, not a trailer, you know, with tumbleweeds floating by I think you’ve got a great point about it has to be fun and emotionally exciting. Of course, the product has been great too. But that’s awesome. Let’s step back a few years. Chris, how did you get your start in homebuilding?

Chris Hartley 33:10

You know, I started, I went to University of Kansas, and there was a gentleman that was handing out and I look back on this now, and I just have to laugh. But knowing the gentleman it makes perfect sense. It was a career fair at the University of Kansas, and he was handing out hundred thousand dollar bills with the pulti homes logo on it. And it said, it said, This is what you can make the first year. Now, I wasn’t any different than any other college kid. I graduated with credit card debt, and it was supposed to be student loans. But it was probably more pizza and the bar and I graduated with a graduate with a journalism degree and at the time, the average journalism student came on I graduated college 2003. The average journalism student was pulling in I think it was 26 to $32,000 A year in salary well I had more debt than that. And that just didn’t didn’t make any sense to me. My dad had this philosophy that you pay now or you pay later so he worked very, very hard. And he always said if you work really hard, young in life, you could enjoy the later years or your life a lot better. You don’t want to be working the rest of your life and that just really stuck with my sister and and myself. And so when this guy is handing out these hundred thousand dollar bills, I’m like, I gotta, I gotta get into this interview and see what I can do. You know, fast forward, I ended up getting the job and started my career in Kansas City with pulti homes and my sister who was a year and a half younger than myself. She also took a job with Pulte Homes in Dallas. And then when I moved over to Ashley woods, she moved over to Ashley woods and she’s been there now for 10 years and we kind of follow and mimic each other’s career. But it’s been a great one. And you know, sales she used to make fun of me Kansas City being a very small market. You know, pulti their best year there ever did. 242 homes She always said I was a big fish in a big fish in a small pond. Well, you know, being a big fish in a small pond really allowed me to have some really awesome opportunities that I guarantee I wouldn’t have had if I was on a sales team in Dallas was 78 people, you know, I had 10 salespeople for sure when I started.

Kevin Oakley 35:12

Very different. Yep. But those are both two great places to start meaning either one has its pros and cons. I always thought, you know, the best place to cut your teeth in the country is probably pick your market in Texas in terms of just the amount of activity and companies and competition product types. I mean, just there’s just I feel like if there was a tagline for Texas that wasn’t, you know, bigger and better, or what is the what is the everything’s bigger in Texas? Yeah, everything’s, they would be Texas we build we create homebuilders or something. So there’s definitely pros to that. But I also completely agree with you. I mean, my favorite years are in Pittsburgh, not much of the Kansas City in terms of you know, It’s just kind of steady. Nothing incredible happening here. So that’s, that’s, that’s awesome. So you started cut your teeth in sales at pulti. And then take us on the journey from there. How do you go from being sales at pulti to VP of operations and marketing for PR homebuilder?

Chris Hartley 36:20

You know, it’s been a heck of a ride. I’ve been very fortunate to win a lot of awards this past year. Yes, I may have had a great year, but it took me X amount of years to get here. And I’ve been in the business for 15 years, I’ve learned more in the last three that I did in the previous 12 but the ride along the way, has been fascinating. And you know, 2003 started in the business 2005 I was asked to be a selling sales manager. And

Kevin Oakley 36:47

for we don’t want to pay you much more but please take over. So yeah, exactly.

Chris Hartley 36:52

Yeah, go ahead and make the majority of your pay be commissioned based? No, by the way we need you in the office managing everybody else. So I don’t know how you’re gonna sell any houses. You still need to be in the top 10% of sales. So somehow figured it out. I had the unique opportunity to go open up Ashton Woods homes brand new division in Colorado in 2007. And that’s where I really fell in love with marketing because I got there. And you know, working for pulti being a publicly held homebuilder and moving to Asheville, what’s privately held starting a new division? And I was like, okay, where’s the graphic standards book? And they’re like, well, we don’t have one. And I said, What is the logo need to look like well contact this person, this division, they can send it to you. And it was just, it was an interesting deal, because Denver was the first division that Ashley was had opened up for quite some time, and there just wasn’t a process and a policy for it. So I implemented that set it up and No kidding. I closed on my house in Denver, Colorado in September of 2008. In October of 2008, they came in and said, Hey, by the way, we’ve let go of everybody at the corporate office, the only people that are still employed here as of right now. Is yourself in the construction manager, and we’re shutting down the division. And my mouth was just dropped. And I remember telling the CEO at the time, do I still have a job because I just closed on my house and put a relatively large downpayment on gutting the house? And he says, Oh, yeah, you’re good. How much do you make now? I told him, he said, Well, we’re going to take care of you. And we’re basically going to double it. So I had a tremendous amount of loyalty to ash and woods for, you know, saving

Kevin Oakley 38:29

a great move on their part.

Chris Hartley 38:30

Yeah, yeah. And then, then from there, we shut down the division, and they sent me to Arizona. Now, this was fairly early into the recession. So I don’t think anybody really realized how long we were going to be in there. So I moved to Arizona and the CEO of the company says whatever you do, don’t buy a house and if you can rent month a month, because you’re not going to be there that two years later, right. Two years later, I’m still in Arizona, and some life situations happened. Finally, Myself moving back to Kansas City, and fell on some hard times started my own business with my former VP of Sales over at pulti had some personal things happen that that weren’t in the right direction that I always say is is best over a drink. And long story short, made really great money in the in the recession, believe it or not to living in my parents basement at the age of 30. And now this was living in your parents basement at age of 30. Before it was cool to live in your parents basement at the age of 30. This was like because I’m not I’m definitely not a millennial, right? I turned 38 today, so I missed the millennial status by I think a couple months or whatever it may be. But I found myself living in my parents basement, and my dad, then I was very, very hard on myself. Because I made several hundred thousand dollars a year before, put a lot of money into starting my business, some personal situations that I went through and not having anything left. So my dad came downstairs one time and we were in the basement and he always likes to say make sure you tell people what the real Nice basement, which it was it was a very nice finished basement in Kansas, right? It’s not like I was living in a concrete shelter. And and he said, what’s going on and I was just really down on myself and he said, Look, he goes, you’re 30 years old. You have your whole life ahead of you. This is a really small blurb in in your in the scheme of things you had. You made a really bad decision. You paid for it and move on because you’re healthy, you’re smart, you know what you’re doing, and I didn’t raise a quitter. So from that moment on, it just really hit me that I had an opportunity for a second chance and was given an opportunity to be hired on with a company called Highland homes in Dallas, Texas. Now it was

Kevin Oakley 40:43

Yeah, I love Highland homes. My first boss was a former division president for one of the Highland markets. And so even though I never worked with them directly, I always feel like I went through their training program because they were just always Talking about a lot of the processes and, and culture there. So now they’re more interested to hear your story changes.

41:09

So I, I got, I got a interview set up in Dallas, Texas, and they flew me in, and I get picked up in a limo. And I’ve never been picked up by a limo before. I’ve never had anybody stand with my name on a board. And I was like, Wow, I didn’t even know because Highland is only in Texas. I didn’t even know much about them. And I said, What in the world is going on here? This is pretty cool. And the driver was like, Hey, what do you what do you do? And I was like, I sell homes, and he goes, You must be really good. And I was like, I sure hope so. Because, you know, I fell into this personal rut that it was I was just in a bad place. And I ended up meeting the owner of the company Jean and and we hit it off. And we talked for almost five hours in that in that interview where she looked down and she said What time is your flight? And I told her and she said, You better get out of here and and you know next thing I know I’m moving to Dallas. And keep in mind I didn’t have any money. So I leaned on my sister who was living here and I said, Hey, I don’t have any money. I’m embarrassed ask mama dad for some. Do you care if I move in with you? Now? She doesn’t

Kevin Oakley 42:15

have a basement because it’s Dallas.

Chris Hartley 42:17

Right? Exactly. Yeah. Now keep an eye. Here’s the good thing with this is, you know, she was very smart and bought her house in Dallas A while back where you could get a 4000 square foot home for 200 grand. So she had a huge home. So I moved in with her and talk about having to really Swallow your pride where we used to joke about who was going to make the most amount of money every year to pay Nikki. I’m flat broke. I can’t even afford to have an apartment. Do you care if I move in with you? And she was pregnant at the time with with their first and her husband’s a phenomenal guy. He’s a firefighter and they’re like, Yeah, not a problem. So they lived really far south and in Dallas and I was working really far north and it took about two hours to get to work. Every day, two hours there two hours back. Oh, wow. And she, it got to the point where she was like, Look my kids about to come do you mind getting out of my house because we would we would like to have some private time before you know before the baby comes. So it forced me to get an apartment, which was which was all good. But, you know, it was a it was a great life lesson that it’s okay to fall on hard times if you have people around you that care and to swallow your pride into recognize that you don’t have to do everything yourself. Because without you know without my sister I could never have made it. you fast forward about seven months after being here in Dallas and I was hired on to eventually be a sales manager for Highland homes, but because I was never in the Texas market. They wanted to throw me in sales. Now keep in mind, I haven’t just sold homes like that was my only job since 2005. It’s now 2011. So take it six years, and I’m in there selling homes and they put me in this community that sold six homes In the previous 12 months, and I was like, Oh my gosh, I thought I was poor before I’m really going to be poor now. You know, how am I going to how am I going to make this happen and I just put my, you know, everything I always knew as a manager I just put into place and I sold 42 homes in seven months. And I totally turn that thing around and got some attention on it and people were very impressed with what I did. On the flip side for me, I sat back and said, this is the easiest job I’ve ever had, if you know selling houses and not to take away anything for people to sell houses. Because it is a very difficult job and it’s very time consuming. But when you only have to worry about yourself and not have to worry about an entire team. It was a different mentality for me, and I absolutely loved it. Well, I was dating a girl at the time and she had moved to Dallas and when you’re in sales, as you know you work weekends and in Texas, you work till seven o’clock at night. It just it just wasn’t working. She didn’t know anybody. I didn’t know anybody when it was time for her weekend. You know, I was working and when it was my weekend she was working and I just knew that if I wanted the relationship to work, staying in sales, regardless of the fact that I could have easily made $500,000 selling homes that year, it just didn’t make any sense. And so Dunhill how Dunhill homes which at the time was only about six months old came came knocking on the door and the CEO of the company is a former regional president of polti Del Webb and he kept asking me to go to coffee with him while he was asked me to go to coffee for free advice on how he should run things. And finally, he said, you know, you should just come over and run run my sales team, and I just laughed, and I said, Well, how much you’re gonna pay me? And I’m not even going to say the number because it’s embarrassing that I actually accepted it. But let’s just say he got me for one heck of a deal. And

Kevin Oakley 45:46

yeah, well, you were you’re willing at that point to make the trade off. That always happens. And this is for the marketers listening who don’t have this sales growth, often is a trade off of commission versus While not even freedom, or you are free from the chain of a model home and model home hours, you still have to put in the time, but you’re usually making less and that that’s a like you have to make that choice and be okay with it. When you’re when you’re shifting into the next gear gear in your career in sales.

Chris Hartley 46:19

You nailed it. I mean, you. There’s definitely the top salespeople in my organization, double what I make, even as a vice Vice President of Operations or sales and marketing. And that’s just the way that it is really within the organization, but really here in Texas, and so fast forward and inside of my office, I wish this was a video podcast because I actually have a superhero that’s on my wall and he’s in a Dunhill homes cape, and he’s given me the thumbs up right now. And I keep it there because it was one of the first things that I worked on, and we his name was purchase power, Phil, and we did this. We did this really horrible marketing campaign about interest rates are going up in with the purchase power that Phil can give you. By buying a home today you can afford this much more of a Dunhill home. And I thought it was such a good idea at the time that I made almost life size superheroes and put them in the backyards of all of our models. It was such a bad idea that this thing sits and stares at me all the time. And why keep it because people come in laughs like, Why do you keep that thing? And I said, it’s a reminder of where I’ve been, and how far we’ve come. And one of the great things about Dunhill is that the CEO gives me a really nice budget, and he just gets the heck out of my way. And he lets me do anything I want. And as long as he’s making money, right, let’s put the caveat. As long as we’re selling houses, and we’re profitable, he lets me do anything I want. And we’ve been very fortunate that we are the seventh fastest growing company in all of Dallas Fort Worth. We’re the fastest growing homebuilders in the country. And we’re getting ready to expand into five new markets here in the next two years. And it’s exciting. There’s great things to watch. Oh,

Kevin Oakley 47:54

yeah. Great things. Awesome. rolling back you have the marketing background and sales background. Which one do you at your heart? getting emotional here? Which one? Do you really relate to more? Like Which one? Which one?

Chris Hartley 48:10

I have, I have two phenomenal. I have two phenomenal marketing gals that work for me, Lindsay Bryson and Melanie Clark, and these two gals are my world at work. And without them, we wouldn’t be where we are. And it is a constant battle to you know, and I know my sales team is going to hear this. So I apologize to them up front. It is a constant battle to have those two girls stop calling the sales team names because, you know, they’re they get so passionate about the marketing and they don’t understand why the salespeople just won’t do it, or why they will just won’t record it and why are they Why are they putting on the registration cards that everybody coming through the door saw a billboard or a sign or, you know, why aren’t they just doing the CRM system like they’re supposed to and why won’t they mark their buyers and last though, is purchasers and you know, very, they get very passionate about what they do and then I have to remind them hey, salespeople are odd people. These are people that work 100% on commission. And so cut them some slack. They’re not good at paperwork, they’re not good traditionally, at CRM, they’re not good at a lot of things that from a marketing standpoint, we just want to wring them around their neck and say, it’s not that stinking hard. So, you know, Andrew, you ask me which one do I which one do I lean towards? Um, I would probably say more towards the sales side, because that’s where I come from. But I also know from the marketing side, that without good marketing, we’re screwed. And marketing has changed so much in the last three years for the previous 12 years of my business, that if you’re not constantly evolving, or changing or networking or reaching out or going to conferences and learning, you’re going to be you’re going to be jobless very, very soon. And I mean, I can’t even I can’t even imagine where we’re going to go in two years with marketing. It’s, it’s awesome. But you know, there’s this thing that we always tell our salespeople technology is not going to replace the salesperson to the a salesperson that utilize this technology is going to replace the one that doesn’t. And where that comes into play, as is that much of marketing today is technology based. It’s not putting ads in the newspaper anymore. It’s not throwing a billboard up. It’s not, you know, it’s not printing marketing slicks. It is the back end of a website, it is the SEO, it is the SEM and the analytics and understanding social media and understanding how a buyer ticks and you know, you name it. It’s so different today that if you graduated college, I would imagine any older than five years ago, you weren’t taught any of this stuff we’re learning as we go.

Kevin Oakley 50:36

Now, we’re even seeing recent college graduates at the past year. They’re not getting it. They don’t even talk about Google Analytics or looking at data and not analyzing it in the way that it’s really used. So, Chris, what I heard you say and what I do believe but I’m curious how a you know, at the at the end of it, I would say you’re you’re a leader first, but you’re still there. A lot of your thought process may come From the sales side, but you’re balanced with the marketing. But, you know, 810 years ago, I remember the very first sales manager that I ever saw where his name is john ceramic and Miranda Holmes, I think he’s still there. And he would talk to the guys about, you know, guerilla marketing and get out your business cards and you’re responsible for all of your own traffic. And yes, we have newspaper ads, but you better get out there and hit the streets and pass out your business cards, put them on the cork boards, at all the coffee shops and, and even then, I just, I was thinking like, I don’t, I have not sold a home myself at this point. But like, really, like they have to do all of it. And now, I think, partly because of the role of technology and how it’s used in marketing, but also just because that’s the way it should have been all the way along is you’re highly specialized. You’re highly good at this one skill. And maybe even saying that sounds like the wrong way to say it’s not. It’s the biggest A range of skills that lets you interact with other humans in a very specific way. Make emotional connections, build trust, build rapport, help them make decisions that are hard, and have fun doing it like that. That’s enough. And so now where I feel like marketing used to be that top 10% and the other 90% was up to sales. It really has flipped, like you’re saying is that marketing is now responsible for so much of the messaging and interactions with customers before they walked through the door. I feel like that’s a great thing, because it lets sales focus on the those areas that they excel at naturally. But I’m curious how you as a sales leader, see it similarly differently, just what you think. Yeah,

Chris Hartley 52:47

you know, that’s a great question. And as you were talking, and you were explaining that, I think what has actually happened and I agree with you because I’ve been doing this for so long. That a long time and a long time ago, we were tasked with five New guerilla marketing ideas from the sales person’s perspective and marketing simply printed flyers and put up a billboard and put an ad in a newspaper, right? Whereas today, you flip that 15 years. And I feel like my sales team thinks that 90% of the people coming through the door should be marketing’s responsibility, and they should only be responsible for 10% of a realtor relationship, but they have a referral, which is a very frustrating thing from my side of as a sales leader or an operations leader is, is you look at this, and you say, yeah, marketing is still very important, and they’re there to drive traffic and sales. But so should your relationships with real estate agents. So should your relationship with your customers so you’re building referrals? What are you doing to drive that and and I feel like it sometimes ends up in especially in a month when we’re not having a good month, people start to point fingers and it’s, it’s very easy for marketing to say if those Dumb Dumb salespeople just didn’t do what they were supposed to and then it’s easy for the salespeople to say what the heck is marketing doing up at corporate all the time? Are they just playing around on the internet, you know, if either Side never really saw what the other side did, there would be a completely new respect for it. And that’s where I see, you know, I see Melanie, and then Lindsey working, you know, really long hours. And I see how hard they work to try to drive the traffic to the team. So I understand their frustration when the response on the traffic report for the week is signage, you know, and then I see on the salespersons perspective, where they’re 100% Commission, and they have families, and they have to figure out a way to get it. And if they only see four people through the door, they’re gonna say, why am I only seeing four people through the door is this is this community getting more attention than I’m getting? It is a delicate balance. And as we’re starting to see things soften here in Dallas, Fort Worth and impossibly unnecessarily soft and maybe correct themselves throughout the country. It’s going to be those salespeople that are the best and those marketers that are the best that their companies are going to survive. Everybody else that’s been riding this wave is going to either be bought by somebody or they’re just going to go out of business.

Kevin Oakley 54:54

Yeah, that synergy has to be there and to clarify that 9010 that I was talking about. is I think, you know, once that customer comes in contacts, like you said, the salesperson has to own that relationship realtor or prospect 100% from that point forward. And the energy though has to be focused on that. Whereas before, I think just that initial touch, a lot of times Home Builders just said you’re responsible for the vast majority of those findings. If they don’t walk in you better go find them out in the ether. And so marketing is now tasked with getting those people there and I do think still salespeople are challenged with those four, four, the number four you said we have four people walking the model home. And this is a question we got at the summit we get all the time is well Kevin, my walking traffic is lower than it was last year or last month and that kind of the panic or worry and you know, you kind of smile and say get used to that you know the people coming through should, by all accounts be lower in quantity but higher in quality if you follow up and on In the relationship and that’s, that’s the difference is just trying to channel that sales energy mix. But it’s hard right, Chris, if, if you’re used to interacting with people face to face now we’re asking him to use all these other tools. And I want to talk a little bit about some of the other tools you’re testing right now with Atlas and enter now and all the rest, but it’s gonna be hard for a sales oriented person to not have that same face to face inflection of body language and tone to get excited about follow up.

Chris Hartley 56:27

Well, you’re exactly right. And what’s happening in the marketplace is people coming through the door are significantly less than they’ve ever been. But the people coming through your door, have run step eight of 10 whereas, you know, I look back to 2003 when I started in the business, you know, we barely used a website, you know, Pulte Homes had a website but I don’t even remember the website and remember, if you wanted to look at a floor plan in reverse, you held it up backwards to a light where now you know, now you push a button and so your traffic is coming through the door is a lot smaller, but you know, can conversion rates you know, you look at a conversion rate from a salesperson who say okay, one in 10 is a good conversion rate. So one in 10 people I’m going to see I’m going to sell a home too. So if your goal is to sell three homes a month, then you better see at least 30 people right? But if that 30 people is now down to 18, then your conversion rate technically has to get significantly better. So you got to hone your skills as a salesperson, but salespeople will know that if you go through an entire week and you see four people sometimes when that person walks through the through the door you’re completely caught off your game and you’re not you’re not ready to perform at your best You know, there’s a saying that the best time to sell a home is right after you just sold one because you’re on this high. Well if you haven’t sold a home in 3045 days and the people coming through the door you know I joke that there’s there’s certain types of thing people that can smell fear, it’s dogs, bees and prospects. And when I say prospects is you know, in Jeff short calls it commission breath, they walk through the door and they in a minute you say hello, it’s like you’re just breathing on and that you’re desperate. And it’s it’s got to be this fine balance but as the market changes is marketing is is going to be everything. And it is it is quickly going to be the only thing that’s going to keep a company in business and with our company being one of 94 homebuilders in DFW, and we have every national home builder you can think of it’s a dogfight to get somebody to pay attention to you, which then comes back to the customer experience. If you look at what’s changed the most in the last 15 years if we got a bad survey, and I don’t want to say we ever threw that thing in the trash, but we’ve probably had several trash bags full of bad surveys in the past to today It doesn’t take anything for somebody to blast you on Google or Yelp or Facebook and and then you’re reacting and you’re trying to change it because one bad statement can really hurt an entire backlog.

Kevin Oakley 58:48

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the the customers are in charge and you better treat them all. You know, we used to say all the time you don’t have to treat a bad customer who’s behaving poorly. You don’t have have to give them the most amazing service you’ve ever given any individual, but you still have to give them that minimum standard that you have as a company, because the story will come out. So you can’t just say this person’s an idiot, I’m going to treat them as such, you still have to hold that the minimum standard. So before I switch to sales and marketing tools that you’re testing out, how have you found? What ways have you found or been successful to get sales and marketing to stay on the same page? I’m sure that’s a big challenge as a leader of both organizations, but have you found anything that works? Well,

Chris Hartley 59:37

yeah, I would say and this is the same in sales management, you can’t manage sitting in an office. You can’t mark it sitting in an office away from your sales team. The the marketing team needs to go see what the competition is doing. There’s no secrets in homebuilding. If somebody’s doing something better. Let’s make it even better than that and throw our logo on it and say it’s ours. But the same thing with a with having marketing people sit down with the salespeople. Having the marketing team present in front of sales, has the sales team believe that they are being supported, whether the marketing teams doing anything different or not having them present in front of sales and making them part of the sales rallies, having them be a part of events or dinners or breakfast or whatever it may be making sure that the sales team knows that the marketing team is the same team as what they are. That’s that’s key. Yeah,

Kevin Oakley 60:26

yep. And I would say to the marketers listening, it’s really important for you to understand that just because the data is showing you one thing. And your sales team is giving you feedback that seems like it’s in. It’s not connecting with what you’re seeing in the data. It still is incredibly important. Like you can’t ignore the feelings that are being shared with you from your sales team. If they think that X Y or Z is preventing them from selling homes, you can’t ignore it. You have to address it and support In any way possible, like you’re saying, Chris, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to shift your budget back to billboards because they feel like no one knows who your company is. But it does mean that you can still empathize and say, Hey, I really understand that. And while I can’t put all the money back in billboards, because that wouldn’t be wise, try to find some way some middle ground to not necessarily with dollars, but with empathy and, and attention that proves you’re listening. I think that also just helps sales start to feel like they’re, you know, you are a teammate of theirs. Even if, like you said, Chris, they don’t have to act on at all. It’s just that that empathy and listening and taking the time to be in the field with them, so that they know that you understand the other completely agree. Completely agree. So what new sales and marketing tools are Yeah,

Chris Hartley 61:51

yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the as I said earlier, one of the coolest things about working at Dunhill Nathan Carlisle Homes is I get a budget and I get to more or less spend it anyway. I want to and I believe Kevin, you may have been the one in previous conversation, you say you should put X amount of percentage away for research. And that is for the for the cool new pet project that you want. Well, I almost feel like my entire budget is a cool new pet project. Because if something, if something if something comes up, you know, when you compete against, I think there’s 27 national home builders in DFW when you compete against the big guys, you have to do something different. And our advantage is that we’re mobile we can change and shift on a dime, we can try something new, we can switch the website, we can try new products, whatever it may be that the other guys are going to have to go up 12 layers to get an approval and by that time there’s probably already some really cool out. So a good a good friend of mine from destination home Scott lolly was working with a company called Atlas r TX and he’s like, dude, you’re always looking for the newest and cool thing to bring to your team. I think this is right up your alley. And Atlas RT x is a chat bot system through text messaging, and I was like oh, My gosh, for somebody like myself, who’s, you know, my wife hates this attached to their phone 24 hours a day, a text message always gets answered, but I get 600 emails a day, those do not always get answered. And so I reached out to the team over at Atlas r TX and I said, Okay, what do we got going on here? And at the time, they only had a few builders that were trying it out. And they were losing momentum on the homebuilder side. And I said, Well, there’s something to this, I believe that, you know, emailing prospects is we’re getting an open rate, maybe 14%. And we’re thinking that’s good, there’s got to be something better than this. So we worked with them on coming up with a beta test with a few members of my sales team. And with anything that we roll out, we do not roll it out to the entire team. Because I feel that if any anything in life, if you force it upon somebody, they’re not going to do it. But if you give a few players on your sales team an opportunity to play with something and they’re successful with it, then word of mouth is going to have the rest of them want to do it and then then they’ve self convinced themselves to follow what I wanted them to do all along. It’s it’s it somewhat looks somewhat looks genius. It’s not genius. It’s just letting people do what they think they want to do, right. And by

Kevin Oakley 64:06

the way, that is the only way that you will ever get CRM adoption in your sales really great. The only time I’ve ever seen CRM adoption really work across the entire sales organization. It’s twice, maybe three times of all the humbler and I, when I say that even I mean like 85% adoption, not 100% is when the online sales team starts using it first, and they get the results and then the sales team says I want that so just like you’re saying anything, you got to prove internally, not just third party out that it’s working. So I think that’s

Chris Hartley 64:39

it’s huge you got it you got to let them do that. And you know, my team is at 85% and last Oh, and it’s funny cuz marketing’s like 85% What about the other 15% I’m like, Hey 85% is really awesome, like backup Yeah, back offline obey, you know, don’t Don’t be so hard on them. But so we got with Atlas r TX and we started using the system and my sales team did Not take to it at first. And the reason they didn’t take to it is that because they were having to enter into a into the Atlas system, and then they were still required to enter it into last Oh, well, getting a salesperson to put a lead into one place is more is difficult enough muscle and have them do it twice, right. And so I said, Okay, well I believe in this and the results we were getting for the ones that were getting that the chatbot were amazing. And so I put the two teams together lasso and Atlas r TX at the International builder show this last January. And they immediately hit it off well for one because both teams are just full of incredible people. And they just built a relationship right there. And they said, Okay, what is your vision? And I said, My vision is simple. We put a lead into lasso, it automatically goes into Atlas and the system automatically fires out a text message to ask them how their experience was. And based upon their response, I want it to filter into lasso in one of my ABC or D categories. That simple, and they’re like, Well, that sounds easy enough. And it probably wasn’t even Six weeks later, and the system was working, and then the whole dang team is on Alice. And as a sales leader, I’m getting text message alerts. And I’m seeing people give us a score of an eight, nine or a 10, or how much they love us. And we were converting leads significantly faster. I mean, we were converting things within two weeks. And what’s funny about that, and I tell the marketing team this all the time, sales people pay attention to the bright shiny object in the room, they pay attention to, they pay attention to the A’s, they’re not paying attention to B, C’s and DS, they’re just not they want you to pay attention to those people. But the A’s they’re all over I mean, that’s that’s prime commission right there that’s that’s going to get them their next fun toy is is the a lead so they’re getting notified from a customer and we were getting response rates over 80% people responding 80% so responding to a text message 80% responding to an email 14% it’s a no brainer. So then we took it even a step farther and I kept getting an email from this company called enter now and you guys both know when you’re in this business, you get a Lot of solicitation to try new product and very, very few of them actually have me open the email even. But this one, this one guy and this company called enter now, I was getting emails all the time, I mean talk about almost a borderline Stalker and I told him this too, I said you should get into Well, you should either go to prison for stalking me or you should get an award for not giving up on me. But he sent me this video. And by the way, I think I think the world of the guy, he sent me this video and explained what inner now was. And it’s an essence a lock on a door that you can use an app or you can call to get into a completed inventory home without having to have the salesperson help you. Now some sales managers that just heard that probably freaked out and they said, well, the whole point is to have the whole point is to have my salespeople talk to them. But let’s be real and let’s think about this. I don’t buy my groceries by going to the grocery store. I do it by going online. Everything I purchase is true. Amazon through my thumb. I don’t even know the last time I went inside of a store to buy anything. Because I don’t really want to deal with the people that I’m running into. If you ever go to a car lot on a Sunday, it’s the busiest day because car locks are not generally open on Sundays. So I thought to myself, well how many times have I gone through a new home community went to test out the door and a spec home and it was locked and I just drove off because I didn’t want to talk to the salesperson all the all the dang time. Right? So we put these on we got seven locks and we put them on and we sold all seven of those houses within two weeks. And I said Holy cow, now we’re a 400 unit home builder that does 50 50% specs. 50% dirt that’s you know, 200 homes of mine will be spec huge. That’s big. I immediately within six weeks had 50 locks and you’re thinking yourself Holy cow, you have 50 completed inventory homes, well I don’t have 50 I have about 35 but various stages. My number one time of day when people are looking and walking into my internet home Is before church because here on here in Texas on Sundays we don’t open till we don’t open till noon everybody is coming between 10 to noon and then this give you this another one fourth of July we’re closing the Fourth of July we had 32 people into enter into enter now homes on Fourth of July and we sold six of them with follow up. Those are people we would not have been able to see before awesome. So what’s even great what’s even better about all this thing as I said, Okay, well enter now leads our text messaging me as a sales leader, the text messaging my sales people, but I want them to go into last Oh, so what do we do? We simply call lassa. We call Enter Now we call Atlas r TX. We say hey, we have a really awesome idea for you. Why don’t you all talk to each other? Yes, you guys get along. And you know what, as of last week, this past weekend, everybody that entered into an inter now house automatically went into last Oh, and we’re now working on a time delay. So we don’t want them to immediately get a text message from Atlas r TX asking how their experience was when they move into a house. We’re putting it on a 45 minute delay right and then based upon their response, my sales team is gonna know how to follow up. Now, a typical sales leader is just going to freak out about all this and say you just totally took the salesperson out of the prospect process. No I didn’t, I just made it that much easier for your salesperson, I made it that much easier for you as a manager to be able to track the leads that are coming through the door. And the buyers. If they really want to talk to your sales team or they’re really interested, they are going to engage your salespeople are going to spend time with the people that want to spend time with them. That’s what we’re doing here.

Kevin Oakley 70:30

Yeah, I think as long as the product is positioned, well the pricing is competitive. You know, the one thing that I always and concerned about is just that experience of and maybe you guys do this, have a solution. This is just walking into a dark home versus you know, that kind of experience that should be happening although we know it doesn’t where a salesperson is taking you into a all the lights are on. There’s background music, so just that that emotional feeling maybe a little bit different, but at the same time it’s kind of like coming home from work. The house that you know if you buy it, that’s what it’s going to look like when you when you come in, but just maybe then making some incorrect assumptions. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any data or perhaps stories of where people thought, you know, maybe the fridge is not included when it is or you know, any of that that you’ve seen, or am I now

Chris Hartley 71:18

you bring up a good point and it’s um, you know, where where we found our sales team actually getting lazy and I would caution anybody who’s looking to use this is a prospect was walking through the model and the salesperson was getting all of the correct information from them. And then they would say, Oh, well, that house has an internal box on it, you can just get in it yourself. Well, holy cow that freaks me out from a sales manager perspective. I’m like, No, no, no, no, no, that’s not the idea behind that lock is for you to be lazy. The idea behind that lock is for them to enter when either they don’t want to talk to you or it’s after hours or before hours if you have a live prospect that you want to go to or to their house and nothing is ever going to replace human interaction and and I want to make that known to nothing is ever going to replace the online sales manager. Nothing is ever gonna replace the on site sales manager because they can understand emotion, whereas some of the technologies today cannot. So the human interaction is so key. So you still have to have a rockstar online sales staff to be able to manage these. And if we have a good follow up system on that the sales team is taught to respond to these prospects to ask the question of, you know, what can I do to assist you in your house and then they follow the you know, the Jeff shore for to formula and then then we go from there.

Kevin Oakley 72:28

Yeah, I know, you’re right on AI. You know, if the response of Why are you looking to move, and someone says, I just got divorced, the AI does not know how to change the empathy and the right that’s still going to have to come from a human to say, Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry. You’re going through that and, and shift on a dime. Okay, Chris. We’re going long here. I’m going to call an audible Andrew. We’re not going to do any questions of the week or anything else. We’re just gonna close out here with Chris. But before we do, what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made? As a homebuilder, what’s something that you’ve tried that was total failure? We talked about, you know, at the summit, Becca’s takeaway was just, you know, try and fail and try and fail anything that you would just say, man.

Chris Hartley 73:13

That was that was a Wow. I mean, there’s so many of them over the last, you know, six and a half years working here I would think purchase power Phil was a pretty honesty.

Kevin Oakley 73:21

How about specifically from the from the marketing end since since this is a market?

Chris Hartley 73:25

Yeah, oh my gosh. I mean, we and not to say that direct mail is dead. But I think if you’re gonna do direct mail one, it’s expensive. You have to do it repeatedly. And we just didn’t have the budget to have the impact. Even here recently, we were tasked with getting a whole bunch of leads for our active adult outside of the Dallas Fort Worth market. So we hired an email marketing campaign so to speak, we got we spent, we spent a lot of money to get to leads and it’s it’s one of those things that you know, your CEO or your president will always task you with Well, you should try this and when they’re above you and they ultimately You know call the shots you’re going to try it even if you know for a fact it’s not gonna work those are some of the biggest mistakes and really website mistakes are the other the other thing is is big website errors on our site and, and you know us believing certain things without actually testing them. Very very, very foolish.

Kevin Oakley 74:21

Awesome. I can’t help myself. One last question. What do you what is your superpower? What do you think you’re uniquely skilled at doing?

Chris Hartley 74:30

I can go a really long time without sleeping and I know that that sounds really horrible. I know that sounds really horrible but I’m training for a marathon right now. Just moved into a new house have a baby on the way you know, new brand new job title new a lot of things and you know, we’re all given the same 24 hours a day. It’s just how you spend that 24 hours and mine is generally not spent sleeping.

Kevin Oakley 74:53

or watching TV I imagine.

Chris Hartley 74:54

Yeah, I don’t I do not watch a lot of TV that.

Kevin Oakley 74:57

Hey, Chris, thanks so much for hopping on with us. Yet you should go back and check out Chris’s podcast with Anya. I feel like you were somewhere else recently, too. If people want to hear more about your story, where would they go?

75:10

You know, like, I’m on LinkedIn. I’m not on Facebook. I’m on LinkedIn quite a bit. And then I’m going to be on another podcast here called the cannonball mindset here pretty So yes,

Andrew Peek 75:19

Instagram. Yeah.

Chris Hartley 75:21

Yeah. So Chad’s. Chad’s a marathon runner himself, and he’s trying to talk me into running an ultra, which is twice twice as long as the regular marathon, so I’m pretty sure that never gonna happen.

Kevin Oakley 75:30

No pressure, but he’s got real guests from VaynerMedia and guys running across the Sahara. So

Chris Hartley 75:38

yeah, well, you know, it’s funny, as I actually told Chad, I said, Dude, you need to bring on some losers before you bring me on. As he

Kevin Oakley 75:44

does that. He sent me I said, Listen, ya know, hey, you’re you’re far better than me. Trust me. So

Chris Hartley 75:49

I was like, I don’t think I’m qualified for your podcast.

Kevin Oakley 75:53

Awesome. Well, we’ll be on the lookout for it. Hey, thanks again, Chris, for joining us, everyone. You should go connect with Chris. You are a master on LinkedIn. think you’ve taken over that social platform, by the way,

Chris Hartley 76:03

you know, it’s the only one I’m on so you might as well be good at it.

Kevin Oakley 76:06

All right, guys. That’ll do it for us here. We’ll see you again next week. Be sure to check out Do YouConvert.com for articles, blog posts and more. Have a fantastic week. We’ll see you next time.

The post Ep 32: Helping Sales and Marketing Get Along with Chris Hartley [Transcript] appeared first on Online Sales and Marketing for Home Builders - DYC.