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 50: Celebrating 50 Episodes with Jeff Shore!

Kevin Oakley 00:10

Welcome to Market Proof Marketing, the weekly podcast where 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 on a very special 50th episode is the Ad Dr. Andrew Peek.

Andrew Peek 00:31

number 50 with a big number and we also have

00:34

Jackie Hi, everyone. It is big. Halfway there, halfway there. I think we’ll be done

Andrew Peek 00:40

at 200. That’d be fun, right?

Jackie Askews 00:42

Well, how many times have we gotten on and we’re like, oh, what episode number is it? That’s me every week. I don’t know

Andrew Peek 00:48

how but

Kevin Oakley 00:48

maybe that’s what we do. We stopped counting the episodes after 50 because it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re over the hill. We’re official. We’re probably not gonna go away. We’re gonna keep doing episodes

Andrew Peek 00:58

stop when they stop building home. Awesome. Well, Jackie,

Kevin Oakley 01:01

you want to get us started

Jackie Askews 01:02

on storytime? Sure. I’d love to. I’ve noticed a lot of builder clients are doing website refreshes and redesigns, which is very exciting in our world just and I know how long they tend to last. So it’s always nice to jump on and see a new update to those. And diving in to some of them, I had a chance to really see a lot of common web design trends across a couple of the new ones. And I was going to dive into a couple of those because they’re really, really fun to see right off the bat I’m starting to see a lot stronger user interface and user experience design, which is really refreshing and nice to see consistency with that I’m starting to see a lot more user friendly. And with that, I don’t know about you guys, but I have gone on to my fair share of sites that it is like a wild goose chase to try to find certain information. So I’m starting to find now with a lot of the cleaner laws. And whether, you know, with the dynamic scrolling design and whitespace, it’s starting to be a lot easier to find what I’m looking for. So, you know, I’m scrolling down, boom, I have a giant map with a call out of where certain communities are and where they’re building. And it’s, it’s really nice, because I’m getting what I want relatively quickly than I had been before.

Kevin Oakley 02:23

Yeah, even the simplified menu structures, too. I feel like a lot of them, just thank goodness, they don’t have 12 different places to try to choose from off the bat. It’s like, Are you looking for a house? Yes. Great. Push this button, and you’re there.

Jackie Askews 02:35

Yeah, the math thing is huge for me, because I know how hard you know, those can be told I’d click on them and then they take me right over the page. I’m like, Oh, no, I want to go back and then I’m all the way back to the homepage. Again, it so now I’m starting to find there’s certain things we’re going back I’m going back to where I left off, or you know, same with like you said by then just the simplicity of the header but also the sticky call to actions to kind of stay with us. You’re going down Which is nice and seeing that mobile design integration being consistent with the website is awesome. I’m on my way. I’m on my phone. Now how many how many of us are looking on our phone? It’s nice. It’s not out of whack. I don’t see something floating up in the top. And I’m zooming in. It’s nice. Those are all starting to be consistent with the design and having the sticky mobile to actions, which are really helpful. I think that’s my my favorite trend or requirement is the sticky mobile call to action. Here’s a quiz time, which would you all prefer top or bottom as far as having that call to action? And that’d be like text or call or contact? Should it be placed at the top or the bottom? I don’t know the right answer.

Andrew Peek 03:38

I have a preference.

Jackie Askews 03:39

I think it is probably personal preference. But I don’t know about you guys. I tend to like the bottom of the basement just because it’s near my thought like my thumbs kind of

Andrew Peek 03:47

closest. Yeah, you aren’t having a stretch like

Kevin Oakley 03:50

closest to your thumb and also not covering main navigation. You’re making the navigation be in an unusual place. Yeah, right. It’s just the navigation. is typically going to be at the top. And if you put that top, you gotta move it to the side or the bottom. And that’s just something people aren’t used to yet

Jackie Askews 04:06

other things too, I’ve noticed our sites are starting to be a lot more fun with fonts I know before and maybe that’s just that I wouldn’t notice that I’d like a lot more scripting and a lot more of that custom look. And I know for with the colors is huge, you know, colors, one of the first things our brains perceive from a brand so it’s often the first thing that pulls me in and starting to see you know, less colors that scream at you think it’s always nice and you have a nice accent color that all your buttons are or personally I like the ones that when your mouse scrolls over, it changes to something else. So it kind of calls me into click on it. So I yeah, so websites

Kevin Oakley 04:48

are definitely no longer just interactive brochures and the only thing that’s negative and not about the ones that we’ve seen do relaunches that you’re referencing. Don’t Don’t fall into this trap. Sometimes where they’re using colors and fonts and the end the template or the layout of the site itself is exponentially more cool and distracting than the actual content in it and that’s two different two different kinds of challenges right but if you still have a hand drawn rendering from 1978 as your main image of a home and you stick it inside of this great site it’s just it’s very apparent that you’ve spent more time and have been more concerned about the site layout than the actual content living inside of it

Jackie Askews 05:26

yeah times very, very good point. I think also like sticking with the brand and having whether that is a consistency with your script font or having something still you know showcase all the same when you go throughout the site’s not too crazy or bold. Yeah, so yeah, that’s that’s something I’m starting to see. I’m very excited to keep seeing those refreshes. Those are always make my design designer heart happy my

Kevin Oakley 05:47

storytime is a couple of quick updates on some fun stats. I don’t look at them all the time. But now that this is a major milestone Episode 50 It feels like another day in the office but we have to pretend like it’s it’s extra special. It’s always a scarcity where geographically our listeners are located far and away the top five here outpace everyone else by a significant margin. But North Carolina number one, Texas number two, California number three, Virginia and number four, Pennsylvania number five. It’s interesting just to see the geographic spread there they’re coming from and just in time for Episode 50, we have hit 49 of the 50 states in the United States. So I think we kind of semi officially sent Jackie from American classic homes on vacation to Hawaii just so we could get those listener counts in Hawaii. All that’s left for some reason we even got Alaska but no Vermont. So someone needs to take a trip to Vermont or us and take a picture of yourself at the state line, download an episode

Jackie Askews 06:43

and add that to the list.

Kevin Oakley 06:44

Yeah, it’s like collecting quarters back when I was a kid, all the 50 states.

Andrew Peek 06:50

You need a spoon. They build homes and provide like it’s that’s when

Kevin Oakley 06:53

you would think they don’t they want to get some free advice. Yeah. So that was always fun. And then my other Part of storytime is I spoke at the epcon national conference on Wednesday this past week. And it was a ton of fun spoke on paid social strategies as well as pre sale without fail. And it just always cracks me up when there is a theme that gets created kind of by the audience, not by me. And the theme of this one definitely was I’m bringing in my business partner or the owner or somebody else with me, because I’ve totally believe in all this stuff, Kevin, and I’ve talked to other people who this all works for, but they keep screwing it up. And so it was just awesome. Because like, every 10 minutes, someone was giving someone else the hairy eyeball or saying, I told you so. And it was Yeah, it was comical to watch it unfold in each of the rows. Like you could just tell who was in trouble. And to their credit, the owners and the and the leaders who were got roped in, they came around. I mean, they were not defensive. They were definitely open minded. And in fact, one of the owners said, Hey, this is in the marketing track that you’re doing this are you talking about this again, and In the sales track in the afternoon, is I think there’s like a whole bunch of other people who need to be in the loop. It’s always fun just to see see what transpires as you’re giving a talk but also just a good reminder that this has to be a group, buy in type of a thing. You cannot just buy the book and just say this is what we’re going to do. It was really helpful get get him on one of the pre recorded webinars, we’ve done, come see a talk somewhere come to the summit, but you got to get everybody on the same page, you’re gonna have tremendous success with that kind of a program.

Andrew Peek 08:27

I agree. Awesome. Sounds like I’m convinced the non believers

Kevin Oakley 08:30

well, and what’s interesting, the only other interesting part to that is if you know the material, like everyone had read the book, they’ve done parts of it themselves, but they had to bring in the owner to get the buy in to hear me and I’m not discounting the fact that I can be helpful to them in making the argument that this stuff really does work and giving examples but at the same time, it’s also a little bit of a check for yourself of why don’t I have more influence or why am I not able to persuade Is there a lack of trust or a lack of there’s a lack of something there to me if the person watching walks in originally with their arms crossed kind of defensive and then changes that fast I don’t think I’m that good of a speaker I think there’s just something different Does that make sense? I just think you should have a relationship with the people around you where you’re able to communicate and quote unquote sell your ideas internally better than it seems like a lot of marketers are willing to just kind of be a little too passive or not comfortable talking right about this

Jackie Askews 09:22

I definitely think that’s especially depending on certain environments are in I think that plays a huge role. So be brave Be bold. Hey,

Kevin Oakley 09:29

I tied in to our guests Be

Andrew Peek 09:32

bold, be bold. I love it. Yes, be bold and win the sale. There we go the pre sale when the pre sale.

Kevin Oakley 09:39

All right, Andrew, what do you got for us? Well,

Andrew Peek 09:40

I have two stories, but I’m gonna pick one. So I’ll save one for next week and do this one this week. Here. I’ll do the easy one because this is like I think will be some entertainment. So there are golf courses down here I am in Pinellas County. We have a lot of older people, of course, because we’re Florida. All the retirees come down this way. snowbirds from Columbus, Ohio, Kevin’s gonna move down here soon, right.

10:02

Well then I’ll

Kevin Oakley 10:02

become just another Florida man

Andrew Peek 10:04

I know just another Florida man you had do the Florida man challenge that’s that’s also fun yeah so there’s these golf courses and if you follow the news from 2019 2018 you know golf course engagement sales and they’re going out of business right as far as not all of them but some are especially once that and these were we’re at these aren’t like the premier places where they’re holding championships there’s no race name recognition, some are even like you see their views and like people don’t like lace or like they need to take care of their greens all this stuff you know, so of course business is going down and the developers want to buy the land and develop it and the housing there’s not much land down here at all but then there’s ones BB more it’s a higher end community the homes they’re like 600 to like one to 2 million already and the golf course you know is not busy and so they’re trying to sell it and it’s a big development and now it has a lot of money behind it as far as the people that live there that one will be interesting to see what happens but it’s Yeah, so I put the links out on full bowling comm or not but say borrowed more saved, save the tides. It’s it’s just Really interesting coming on by the horse just looking at it like why are people hating on this like it’s not your land yes you bought it and the home there and your backyard had the view of someone else’s property but that’s not yours of course have empathy for them like they paid whatever for their house with the expectation of like hey that’s our backyard it’s amazing but it’s like oh it’s how do you you can’t please everybody so be interesting to see what happens I click

Jackie Askews 11:22

the links it’s yeah they really try to pull the heartstrings when you think they you know threatened species and if you build you’ll all these like homes I know

Andrew Peek 11:33

and cry and all this stuff. It’s like okay, then some of the pictures Yeah, there’s a raccoon What’s happening here?

Kevin Oakley 11:39

Yeah, right here in the comment here cracks me up where they say it’s happening everywhere. We are under assault, the golf courses and went out of business. So two things that come to mind here. One is it is definitely a an insight into how emotional homes make people right. We’re not talking about a storytime but you A little hiccup on your house that you found out about yesterday evening and even though we’re all pretty confident that everything’s gonna turn out fine it’s like oh, they’re like the adrenaline spikes and you’re like what’s going on and has Yeah, you know and for these people home is the second most of most emotive word in the English language after mom so mom creates the strongest immediate reaction home is the second and these people feel like their home is the community which is also an interesting takeaway for marketers, right? The community is their home as much as the home is their home and they feel like they’re going to lose it. Now. The interesting thing is okay, so the golf course is not financially stable would go out of business. It would become overgrown look ugly, no one wants that. Could it be turned in other things? Sure. The town could buy the land and raise your taxes to pay for it. What No, we don’t want that. We don’t want to pay more taxes because we moved Florida for low taxes. So that’s what i think it’s it’s disingenuous where if all those people want to chip in together and buy the golf course Go for it, but 20 million that’s not what anyone right right. What’s one if you live in a $2 million house and there’s 100 of them, what’s the big deal everyone chip in a couple hundred grand and get to keep your perfect green views? Oh, you’re gonna have to maintain it after you buy it. So it’s definitely but we understand why people do this because it is so emotional. And the other thing that reminded me of is, when I was in Pittsburgh, the neighborhood that I lived in called the woodlands, there was a stub street that had been put in originally and a stub street for those of you who may not know is saying at some point, it was either planned or is leaving open the opportunity in the future to continue that road on to connect to either another future community or main road, whatever it is, it’s just that road with the signs on it that people kind of pretend as a quasi called a sec. One day, I was Saturday afternoon, my door, someone knocks on my door, I go to answer it. And they said, We would like to you to sign a petition because the developer is trying to continue this street and it’s not safe and it’s going to cause more traffic and we bought those lots built our house there eight years ago, and it’s been great to have that area for the kids to play and we’re going to lose that and we’d love for you to sign them. his petition and I just smiled at them. And I said, Well, one I work for the builder. So I can’t do that. 102 did you not know that that was and so it was interesting because I wasn’t coming at it from a condescending standpoint. I was just genuinely curious. I live here too. I am one of your neighbors. And so in terms of traffic and all that, right, I’m not gonna lose this area for my kids to play because it’s too far away. My kids don’t go down to that area play. I don’t lose that. But otherwise, I’m in this with you. And yet I don’t see the big deal because you chose to build there. I bought maybe the third remaining home site in the community. So everyone else had picked long before I did I was like the last one in and so those people chose that specific spot knowing that there is a street that kind of halfway ends here. I don’t know. So it’s people are people are people, which is another way of saying we’re all strange.

Jackie Askews 14:51

I was just saying that. A lot of people don’t like change. I think that’s a big thing, too. They get used to being in their bubble. Oh yeah.

Andrew Peek 14:57

Especially the older demographic or not.

Jeff Shore 14:59

Yeah. One more

Kevin Oakley 15:00

fun story. So the neighborhood I’m in now there is a path a walking path along the main road here and it terminates at a strange place like you can walk from here all the way down the road to a park and you would think it would continue on to let you continue to walk but no I just kind of dead ends about 50 to 80 yards before the main entrance to the neighborhood and the reason at that ends is it was supposed to turn and go through in between two yards in the neighborhood because the topography at the entrance is too rough for the walkway I guess so it’s supposed to turn in between these two homes and the person slash persons who live where they didn’t want that to end up being put in at the later date and so this person ended up planting I don’t know like 30 trees and gathering holders from all over the internet and like building this like rock garden slash forest as if to say like now for sure you can’t build this walkway here because look, I’ve spent all this time and energy creating this ugly rocker it’s just I got people are funny. Anyway.

Andrew Peek 16:00

People are great, what’s that some people are great.

Kevin Oakley 16:02

But social media also gives them an opportunity to communicate together and join forces in a way that is different. And it’s challenging for builders to deal with

Andrew Peek 16:09

public now.

Kevin Oakley 16:10

Yep, it’s out there. And this is also why we can’t have nice things. Before affordable homes. We can’t have affordable homes because we have to satisfy the mob.

Jackie Askews 16:18

Well, like one of these comments, they will try to tear us down but they will not when

Kevin Oakley 16:25

we have another one that we could use. We could do a whole show just Jackie, do you remember another person in Washington, Pennsylvania, there was a gentleman who started a YouTube channel. Yes, that when when trees were cleared, like for the homes to be built on so this was not like, oh, we’re gonna have to cut down more trees. But it was obvious. Like if you want to put a house you have to cut trees down. Yeah. And this was a grown person crying and talking about the trees are screaming out. And again, it’s not that I mean, who doesn’t love trees, but the act of I’m surprised or shocked or How could this happen? It is interesting, you know? How that hits people it does

Jackie Askews 17:01

and like we’ve talked about before about all this social media I mean, people are more apt to jump on and maybe say something negative quicker than they would positive. So yeah,

Kevin Oakley 17:12

and now look because of all this bad energy I put out there their Hoa is gonna announce they’re gonna put in a cookie Mark across the street from me.

Andrew Peek 17:21

So you can pay right across the street. I needed the you know, whatever. Parking lot in your parking driveway.

Kevin Oakley 17:27

Oh, my goodness, that was that was entertaining that I hope. Wrapping up. Before we switch over to the news, we are announcing the guest speakers for this year’s online sales and marketing summit. So this year, we’re going to have three different guest speakers all kick off with around a 30 minute keynote on day one. And they’re all going to be coming from different perspectives because they all have different backgrounds about how does marketing technology and salespeople and storytelling how does that all intertwine and work best in today’s world. We’re going to be joined by Jeff Turner. Now Jeff has been on the podcast before We’ll link to his episode in the show notes. But Jeff Turner specializes in helping technology startups understand and navigate the complexities of the North American real estate market. That’s fancy language for he’s incredibly smart about how to use technology and apply it to real estate. He’s been involved in multiple startups many that have gone on to be extremely successful and have been sold to larger organizations. And currently Jeff is the entrepreneur in residence for second century ventures and na ARS reach program he’s also head of strategy at mo viewer an advisor to front door This is a guy you’re gonna want to hear talk from the stage we’re all gonna be joined by Elena money, big money, many of you as well know her and love her she’s going to be talking about how she has intentionally worked to make her builder different not just in product but in every sense of the word similar to how Starbucks very exciting differentiates itself from everyone else that sells coffee, and then we’re also gonna have Steven Pacinelli, the CMO at BombBomB talking about humanity cutting through the clutter and use of technology and storytelling and connection in Great new content that none of you have heard before it’s going to be a great way to get started super excited. So we’re going to be talking a lot more about the online summit in weeks to come because VIP tickets will go on sale in early night Hey, we’ve been selling out for the last two years and under three hours so make sure you’re on yes all right on to the news and we’re going to start off with a low note then an NPR headline housing department slaps Facebook with discrimination chart I’m bom

Jeff Shore 19:27

bom

Andrew Peek 19:29

Yeah, this is this is a follow up from last week when we talked about switching to conversion campaigns because Facebook is taking away a lot of our targeting and so this is really the same story except before it was the Facebook had settlements with I think it was ACLU and a few other Yep, I don’t know the names. I don’t watch enough news few other rights organizations that to Facebook and now here’s to get an official with the government getting involved. And yeah, and it’s gonna be really interesting to see how far this goes.

Jackie Askews 19:56

Yeah, I agree. I mean, were you very surprised. Oh, No, I was gonna say it’s as curious how long it would take to this point for this to finally happen.

Andrew Peek 20:06

It’s to me it’s interesting. So they’re Donald Trump. If remember moments this year and half ago we’ve talked about Donald Trump’s Facebook campaign versus Hillary’s Facebook campaign and their strategies and Donald Trump guy used conversion campaigns and all this super fancy stuff to target the right person to make their spend like exponentially more efficient than Hillary’s even though they spent I forgot who spent more or less but you know the results were on the Facebook side the data just ridiculous because they were doing a using the system better. And that’s when like Facebook kind of won the election so I don’t know if I’m like that. That was my only surprise as far as like yeah, you know, you use Facebook and you got like his Facebook marker guys kind of out there in the news has been on with interviews and stuff. I do remember

Jackie Askews 20:45

that’s the big thing for them. Yeah, social media aspect of it.

Kevin Oakley 20:48

I’m surprised it’s taken this long because I started in 2003. It was very common to hear stories 2003 2006 of people continuing to be hit with housing discrimination lawsuits from newspaper ads from signage stuff all the time, right? If you didn’t have your logos in the right spot saying we will sell to anyone, you were going to get nailed. And it was easier because people could drive around. And as people are out doing life, they’re seeing it. And I understood that it was harder for HUD and other folks to work on enforcement of that, because you may not see the ads yourselves. And they may not be progressive technologists, technologists who are even maybe even using social media. So all of a sudden there’s less ads maybe to get caught. But I’ve always found it interesting that there hasn’t been more people getting nailed or doing stuff wrong and even now it’s like we’re not we’re not talking about who are these specific companies that are using the tool wrong? It’s the tool that’s getting in trouble whereas newspapers were not the ones getting in trouble when it was like no you the builder you’re getting you’re getting fined you’re getting sued. Yeah, you’re in

Andrew Peek 21:54

trouble is reverse in the article. This is interesting. I’ll read the quote basic added hood insisted on access to sensitive information like user data without adequate safeguards. That’s interesting that I wonder if they will try to look and see what advertisers did discriminate? Well,

Kevin Oakley 22:07

they did say in a different article that I was reading last night that they are pledging that they’re going to create a separate tool for housing that will let everyone be able to see what ads for housing are being run to kind of sell police. So kind of not necessarily retroactive, but in the future government or an agency of some sort would have the ability to let’s just go see what everyone’s doing and how they’re doing the idea of if I know what works I should just do more of that and less of everything else right that that is Yeah, if you go down that too far you can discriminate so I understand the need for protection and safeguards as well and it’s also not in your best interest to be as efficient as possible. Usually, you have to find that balance of being efficient and effective because that’s why we all heard the folk tale anyway of the multi millionaire going into the BMW dealership and getting terrible service because he looks like a hobo right so that you can’t be sale efficient that you only want to work with the best type of prospects that you only want to market to the absolute best kind of person because you you and even when we talked about an age targeted community, we in the past that always tell people don’t just pick 55 and older on because one Facebook doesn’t know. And two people lie about how old they are all the time. So why not go ahead and advertise to people who are in their 40s for that age targeted neighborhood even back then, like this is my years ago.

Jackie Askews 23:25

And it’s like fantasy. Yeah,

Kevin Oakley 23:27

yeah. So you can’t over maximise on efficiency or you’ll end up losing and sometimes even just going into a place that you never intended in terms of discrimination. Anyway. Very moving on to the next one there. We got a cool tool. I love a new cool tool comes to town

Jeff Shore 23:41

say that five times faster, right? Yeah.

Andrew Peek 23:45

I can say. So. Yeah, it’s called crowd tangle. And it’s a Chrome extension. So if you’re using Google Chrome, while the link, you click it, it installs and then you could go to your website and see where on Etsy. It’s Facebook and you pull the list up Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit, where you Your blink. So if it’s home builders calm is on those social networks where it was shared very interesting. So you could see if like, okay, we have this community has is anyone talking about it or a competitor community? Is anyone talking about that competitor community? And you’re like, Oh, well, they have 40 people talking about it, we have zero. What’s going

Kevin Oakley 24:15

on? Yeah, this is not a one to one comparison. But it kind of reminds me maybe it still exists, but you used to be able to overlay your click through percentages and analytics on top of your actual website. I haven’t done that in forever. It may still exist, but it’s it’s just really cool to be able to see the data contextually with the site that you’re on or the page that you’re on. Yeah, that’s what I think makes us so and it is super easy. I mean, very easy. You just put it on the show notes and like two minutes before we got going, I just installed it when someone clicked it like that works. Okay, that’s

Andrew Peek 24:45

Yes. And it’s it’s free and yeah, so it’s cool. And then Reddit is interesting, because that’s, you know, where you as millennials, I guess would would hang out some of us weirdos and Nielsen haters. Yeah,

Jackie Askews 24:56

that’s right, like rabbit hole trolls,

Andrew Peek 24:58

the trolls and haters. So you could Look at that. And of course, if you put a say a big builder in there because they’ve worked with 10s of thousands of hundreds of thousands of people, you could see like, Oh, look, those people are talking about that experience with that builder on there and those issues so it’s it’s more on the positive side, you’ll see the positive things that people are saying as well. So it’s, it’s pretty cool. It’s fun, another

Jackie Askews 25:15

another useful Houston, maybe get some interesting stats,

Kevin Oakley 25:19

I agree for sure. And you can look at at your competitors if you go on their stuff as well. So you don’t have to just look at your own in any website. You’re gonna you’re gonna get some data from it. Speaking of social media data, let’s go back to the piece that we teased on last week’s episode. This is a report from Draper DNA. They are an agency dedicated to helping home and building businesses overcome their greatest marketing challenges. So 50 Bob, brought to you by Draper DNA, but this great piece, it’s 43 pages in PDF format. So this is a monster of a lot of words, a book, but I just wanted to come through and let’s just talk about how they did this. They use a tool called rival IQ to analyze social media posts across all social channels. For the top 50 Home Builders as defined by Hanley Woods big builder report the data from August 1 2018 through January 31 2019. And as far as we can tell, the one thing that’s important for everyone to know is we do not believe that paid advertising data is included in this report. And that makes sense, as we were kind of poking our nose around AD data is only available when the ad is actually running it. So when you go to a Facebook page on your desktop and see click the info and ads tab, you can see the ads that are running, you can get a sense of engagement amount, you don’t know how much they’re spending, you don’t how many total people they have reached, but you can see all the comments, engagements and details there. But if the ad is turned off, you’re not able to get that data. So it would make sense that they’re not able to create a tool where they can promise you they’re going to grab all the add data on top of the organic. So this is mostly probably organic data, but still interesting. Let’s look at the first one which which talked about last week cross channel engagement total. So this is just total engagement across all channels. And this does match much more closely the big builder article button. Lamar number one by a long mile Taylor Morrison number two David Weekley number three Toll Brothers number for Habitat number five and linamar is again like twice as much total engagement across all channels as Taylor Morrison but the other interesting thing one of the things you have to understand is how many times are they posting so when we look at cross channel engagement rate per post so how much are people actually engaging with our posts that are out there then we go back to the villages number one Bloomfield homes number two true homes USA number three number one villages 6.2% engagement rate the lowest one on this screenshot that I have right here is NVR point six one in but they’re still in like the top I think it’s top 10 so it drops off again rather they

Andrew Peek 27:39

have a jingle don’t think that’s a side Don’t they have like a jingle the village

Kevin Oakley 27:42

they have a song? Yeah,

Andrew Peek 27:43

yeah, the song America’s friendly. So now why that stuck in my head. I don’t know why I remember that or seen that interesting. So engagement rate, some clarity is this Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I think those are the three YouTube social YouTube. Okay, okay.

Kevin Oakley 27:56

Literally everything. Okay, cool. Yeah, pretty much everything exactly. Six bam. If they do break it out, we won’t go in depth because it’s 43 pages but the Facebook engagement rate specifically proposed the highest is 2% true homes USA Long Lake limited 1.6 Dan Ryan point eight nine and then it rounding out on my screenshot here. Beazer homes at the bottom with point 00 5% engagement rate per post on Facebook not as high as the overall percentages of those look like. But then the other super interesting one to me was the amount of Facebook posts on average made per day. This is a medium where your organic posting is not reaching anyone to the to the same amount and beaser leads the charge with 4.43 posts on Facebook every day.

Andrew Peek 28:41

I’m looking that up right now to see Wow,

Kevin Oakley 28:43

you should look up and see what agency is doing their work because they’re probably paying someone a lot and I we haven’t looked at it. I could be totally wrong. It could be a team in house who’s doing a fantastic job pushing out amazing content, but my hunch is that it’s going to be watered down content done by an agency that they’re paying a lot of money or

Andrew Peek 28:59

it’s all So it’s all product focused it’s not to say the villages has an advantage on the engagement rate because their community you know, living there and it looks like 80% of the villages stuff is community focused events things going on but it gives you a feel for what it’s like to live there if you like and let’s see And no wonder it’s you know, I forgot they’re still like top 10 selling currently and it’s been there forever, right? Yeah, but yeah, so it’s Yeah,

Kevin Oakley 29:23

product users mostly product so then it could be an internal team and because they’re geographically so spread out, they might have a policy of just we want every division to get a post every thing so that that might be driving the high number. Let’s go find an average in still in the top 25 of one post a day Neo communities one post a day David Weekley one post today Dr. Horton post today, so it’s not not crazy.

Jackie Askews 29:46

One seems to be the average. Yeah,

Kevin Oakley 29:48

YouTube views of all time as of January 31 2019. This one is also interesting. And I think we should spend some time seeing what type of content is there but l&r again, way ahead. 31.5 million to Toll Brothers 21.6 million then beezer basically 5 million KB homes three and a half a Taylor Morrison 2.6 Perry homes 2.37 million. Eric Clayton properties 1.3 and Fisher 612,000. So you got an interesting I mean, I just how much content is there? What type of content is it? I don’t know. But we should all spend some time checking those guys out and see did they get the viewership from paying for it? Is it fantastic content? Is it high quantity of content? Yeah, definitely worth digging into when you got someone who is 30 million more than

Andrew Peek 30:37

number. So YouTube is it could be a little sneaky because that will include if you have ever advertised so I’m looking at lunars just because they were the outlier and that like they’re happy holidays from Lenore, which they probably I’m assuming they set up as like a remarketing ad to everyone around a holiday and that’s 75,000 views but then you go to say video next to it which was not advertised home versus rent we realize it’s time to move on so buying versus renting 126 views and it’s like Yeah, same timeframe. So that’s to say that’s which isn’t

Kevin Oakley 31:09

surprising no right? It’s not because most YouTube videos for homebuilders are not watched unless it’s either integrated into an email follow up process as a kind of a PSA check this out look at this video or used in a in an ad somewhere because most time people are sticking their videos in a separate video section that only 2% or less of their website viewers are going to go to so it’s not integrated content within the community and home pages no one’s no one’s looking at it big so 43 pages of awesomeness that’s we will I’m guessing this is public if it’s not public, we’ll just put it in a dropbox folder. So you get it or else you can go to Draper DNA comm all one word, the

Andrew Peek 31:47

disclaimer, I think it’s probably a lead gen piece. So

Kevin Oakley 31:50

yeah, so it is or it will help Good luck. We’ll make sure they well know we’ll help him get leads.

Andrew Peek 31:55

Get some leads, but have fun and have fun getting sold. If you get so natural. I sound so negative but Like, that’s the intent they do. The research is awesome. It’s this very in depth, and then you want to have

Kevin Oakley 32:04

stations with them. This is one of those rare occasions where I feel like it’s worth giving an email address for it’s pretty cool. And he did a great job with Yeah, all right, let’s take a break. And when we come back the one the only Jeff shore will join us and we’re gonna we’re gonna talk about some things that you may not have ever heard him talk about before how he got in homebuilding his journey through it when he knew it was time to take the leap, some entrepreneurial types of types of stuff that’ll be fun. And then of course, we’ll dive into psychology of sales and marketing. We’ll be right back. And we’re back with Jeff shore, the one and the only. This is amazing. It’s not just the 50th Episode but we have no lie the biggest name in our industry with a please today as well as you all know him you all love him. I truly think he is there’s no better talent in our industry not just at speaking and and training salespeople but at creating new relevant content on a consistent basis. I think that’s a super powerful. We’ll see what he says later. But Jeff is the founder and president of shore consulting and he like everyone, do you convert comes with amazing experience behind him and we’re going to dig into that and a lot more. He’s not just someone pontificating in the clouds, but he does have that background and still at times is on the sales floor himself. Unbelievable. Jeff, thanks for joining us.

Jeff Shore 33:40

I really appreciate it. That was very, very kind of Thank you, Kevin, and Andrew, appreciate that. Thank you.

Kevin Oakley 33:45

Absolutely. We are creators of content as well, but we’re always looking at I mean, you’ve written how many books now? Seven, eight. See when you lose count, that’s when you know you’re a mastermind. Well,

Jeff Shore 33:57

the problem is I have I have I have one One under works right now and and one that’s being rewritten and updated right now. So it all just sort of jumbles together after a while.

Kevin Oakley 34:06

Yep. It’s easy for me, the answer is one. And that nearly killed me. And you’re like, Yeah,

Jeff Shore 34:11

but you know, it’s but do you remember Kevin, though, when you first opened that, you know, they shipped you a box of whatever, 40 books, whatever. Do you remember opening that box for the very, very first time?

Kevin Oakley 34:21

I definitely do. In fact, the first one was the press proof of just a single copy. Man, my mom who I love, she tried to take it to go home and read it herself. And I was like, give me that. You’re not kidding. That’s mine. That’s, that’s going under glass right there. Yeah,

Jeff Shore 34:36

I got back from a business trip. And Karen said you got to go to the garage and went to the garage. And there’s a pallet. This is how stupid I am. There’s a pallet of 2000 copies of the book deal with my very first book. And I remember just and Karen was out there with me. I said you need to leave I need a little time. And it was just standing with this pallet and a box cutter in my hand. You know, just just and it took me the longest time just to open it up. And I’m thinking, What am I? I only have five friends on the planet and they don’t want to read this book. What am I gonna do with 2000 copies of this book, but my hand was literally shaking when I opened up that first box, but I’ll never forget the moment it was really, really cool.

Kevin Oakley 35:12

And then do you remember the moment that you saw your first typo or grammatical thing that wasn’t caught through the 10 proofs? About three about three minutes

35:19

later? I mean,

Jeff Shore 35:23

it’s Yeah, I still have kept a copy of that first edition of that first book. Because there I think that book was updated a few times but are that first copy? Oh, my goodness. It was all throughout. It was it’s it’s I look back. It’s funny now. But hey, I had a book. I had a book and people actually bought it. Go figure that Jeff,

Andrew Peek 35:38

do you have a favorite book that you’ve read? I’m sure you love them all. But is there one that really rings to you? Like, hey, that’s definitely my favorite one.

Jeff Shore 35:44

Well, you know, for business purposes, the for to formula is really our it’s our curriculum. I mean, it’s the textbook for what it is that we teach, and so many people over the years when, if I’m speaking and they come up and ask me to sign it, and it’s not just that I’m signing the book, but but I’m saying Finding a copy that has been dog eared and highlighted and falling apart and as an author that that’s not there’s no greater joy that you have in signing somebody really well Mark book but there’s no question about it be bold and when the sale about comfort addictions in the sales process was so much of a journey not just writing a book it was a it was a life journey that I’m still on and I can’t that book changed me it really really did and and there’s more to come on that as I’m I’m looking at my goal board right now in my office and that the whole comfort addiction concept is not I’m not done on that I’ve got more work to do and I’m really looking forward to it and that’s one that is going to if you if you apply those principles it’s impossible to keep it confined to the sales arena which is why I’m not done right there’s a whole there’s there’s a whole live bold concept out there that that I need to explore it. It’s sort of

Kevin Oakley 36:52

Hey, I am trying to go check GoDaddy and see if livebold.com is already getting I feel like that has to be taken anything

Andrew Peek 37:00

That sample it’s being parked right now. So who wants to buy it? I’m sure it’ll be 2030 $40,000. It might be worth Oh,

Kevin Oakley 37:06

well, Jeff, we often use superhero analogies on the show and of course with you and especially Fitz and is relevant. Tell us a little bit about Jeff shores origin story. How did you get into this crazy business of homebuilding?

Jeff Shore 37:18

You know, when I was when I was young, in my early 20s, I was kind of strange. I had I knew I had an entrepreneurial spirit, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it. I was really a dreamer without a dream and everything caught my eye, everything didn’t matter. I’m just gonna, I was gonna move to New York and write music and I was, I mean, I didn’t matter if I had an idea day. And then I was waiting tables, which is what dreamers without dreams do I guess, and I was late at night and I saw this infomercial about how you can get filthy stinking rich using other people’s money buying real estate and I took whatever money I got scrambled together. $200, whatever it was to go to a conference on how to buy real estate with no money down. And as it turned out, it was all highly illegal and

Kevin Oakley 38:07

extremely sketchy. But they say filthy rich, right? Yeah,

Jeff Shore 38:09

that’s right. Exactly. And it’s the guy literally went to jail. I mean, it was just it was crazy, but it put the taste in my mouth of, of real estate. And I started in resale and I was not good at it. I was when I got a client. I was great at taking care of the client, but I was not good at lead generation lead generation was just not my thing. It wasn’t until I switched over to new home sales and found out that I was gonna sound horribly arrogant. Oh, well, I was great at lead conversion. Lead Generation was not my lane, but lead conversion when you put them in front of me, man, I was efficient water. It was really really great. And I knew that this is it. I found my place. This is where I want to stay because the builder took a lot of the weight off your shoulders from the lead gent like people were just walking in the door. Right? What year was that? When you started working with a builder roughly. That was let’s see. That would have been 1987 though. I’m so new old person everybody. So all I had to do was run that $15,000 full page ad and people walked in the door that’s pretty much the way it worked. And and my first couple of years in the business, most people don’t remember this because they’re just not old enough to remember this. But the first couple of years in the business it was a sharp incline up it was going it was going really well. The economy is strong people were buying homes, and I was like, it took no time at all before and I was wearing a nice suit. I the plaques on the wall. I was driving a BMW it was all good and and if you know I’m sure the market had something to do with it, but mostly it was me. And then what happened the market just fell off the cliff it all went south on us and and I was almost out of the industry I was it went so bad so fast, and I had to completely reinvent but I’m glad I obviously I’m glad I went through it. I learned things in that tough market that I couldn’t learn any other way.

Andrew Peek 39:51

And how long did you did you sell new homes in that format

Jeff Shore 39:54

before I lost my brain and went to sales executive leadership as it is is about Yeah, it was about eight years. Oh and 500 homes or so later and made the move into a sales manager?

Andrew Peek 40:08

And how about the timeframe between between management to going to consultant and trainer?

Jeff Shore 40:12

Yeah, I was your sales leader, VP of sales, that sort of thing. And then I was National Sales Director for a very, very large home builder. I’m not going to mention the name but the initials K and b are in there somewhere. So you probably figure it out.

Kevin Oakley 40:26

Hey, Andrew is building a KB home.

Andrew Peek 40:30

I literally had my pre drywall walkthrough like an hour ago. That’s That’s fantastic. That’s great. And it

Jeff Shore 40:36

wasn’t called KB at the time old schoolers remember it as coffin abroad, which was the company that I worked for, and that was up until 1999 or late 19 1998 is when I actually look up.

Kevin Oakley 40:50

Okay, so I was a junior in high school with a twinkle in my eye, we just take over the world. All right. So what was it that made you decide to take the leap from from being inside homebuilder to try to tackle making change happen from the outside.

Jeff Shore 41:03

Well, it was interesting. I got a taste of training when I worked for the builder. So I knew that I enjoyed it. And I had the opportunity to speak at a couple of home builder conferences. And I was like, Oh, this is, this is fun. And so I knew that there was that thought out there. But it really wasn’t until there was a big reorganization in the organism in the company, when they bought another builder. And there were just too many bodies and not enough chairs. And they offered me a position that I just would not take because it required yet another relocation, I just simply was not going to do it. And I just stared across the table at the head of HR and we started the negotiation. It’s like, Hey, thanks for your 11 years here you are some lovely parting gifts. Enjoy the rest of your life. And so it was one of those things where I did not have the guts, frankly, to do it on my own. But I got you know, I got a nice severance package and that sort of states me into where I was going to go next. I interviewed For a couple of other positions that my heart was not into, and then I just picked up the phone and I made a couple of phone calls to people that I had worked with who now are repopulating the leadership staffs at other builders and before you know it, I needed I needed a fax machine, I need business cards, I got to learn QuickBooks. And it wasn’t like I had gone to a career counselor and said, This is what you need to do. And here are all the steps. I just stumbled into it. And before I knew it, my calendar was absolutely full. And it just sort of never looked back, like all good origin stories, a lot of good drama there, but I had not heard that entire story. So thanks for sharing it with us. It’s, I look back on it now. And I realized that I had, I had nine good years at KB and I was there for 11 years. So it was it was two years too late in the coming but and I’m not blaming KB on that. That was me. Sometimes it’s time to move on. But once again, there’s that comfort addiction that sort of locks you in. And I mean, I had three kids, it was a steady paycheck. There’s there wasn’t a lot to complain about, but I also knew deep down this is not what I’m supposed to do for the rest of my life,

Kevin Oakley 43:02

we get asked myself, I feel like maybe more than others just because they know that I’ve taken the leap recently. But I get asked quite a bit by folks who are still early in their career, even if they’re older. they’ve not been in homebuilding very long, but but they kind of feel like they’re frustrated or see the opportunity to go off and do their own thing. And they’ve only been in the business for maybe two or three years. Do you have any advice for them? Or for people who mean we live in an entrepreneurial time, right, anyone who has the opportunity and the tools with with a computer in front of them to do anything?

Jeff Shore 43:34

Do you have any thoughts on that at all? Well, I think my first piece of advice would be to get lots and lots of advice. I think before we make these moves, we sometimes we’re not as self aware as we think we are. And if you have people in your life who are willing to really give you the honest truth, who were really willing to tell you, you know the truth about what they see in you and I know for me, I remember sitting down with a gentleman by the name of Eric elder, he had been the senior vice president Marketing for Kaufmann abroad before he went over to a great career at Rylan. He’s out on his own now. And we sat down at Jerry’s deli in Westwood, Los Angeles. And I remember asking him the question, I was still at KB at the time, but I remember sitting there and asking the question, Eric, if I ever now hypothetically now, just I know this is why this is stupid, this stupid, okay, it’s really stupid. But Eric, if, theoretically, if I ever decided I was going to like, go out on my own on my on, on, on on on my own. What do you think anybody would hire me? And and Eric looked at me across the table and he said, first of all, you’d be a fool not to go out on your own. And secondly, call me first because I’ll hire you on the phone. And it was that piece of encouragement that I really needed to be able to do it and and then I talked to I actually paid to go to a career counselor to say, hey, do I have the skill set? What does this look like? I think too many people just look at it and they go, I have a dream. I have a vision. Well, maybe you have a dream and maybe you have a vision but do you really know the hard truth about what it’s going be? So I say talk to people who are willing to be honest not to people who are going to give you platitudes. Talk to people who are willing to be honest. And then from there, you got to answer one overriding question, especially if it’s one thing if you’re going to work for somebody else, but if you’re going out on your own, you’ve got to be able to ask the question, How do I get revenue and that was one piece of advice that I got early on was you’re gonna want to, you know, you’re gonna want to learn QuickBooks, you’re going to want to design your own cool logo, you’re gonna want to do all this stuff, forget it, get revenue, get revenue, get revenue, if you cannot figure out your path to revenue, it is the lifeblood to what it is that you’re going to do. If you’re a startup. If you can’t get revenue, you don’t have a company and I think a lot of people when they think about going out on their own, they think about all the cool ins and outs of what they want to do. And they stopped short of really understanding how they get revenue. That was that’s a magic potion and one of the cool things that you get to do from my own experiences, you get to go shopping for groceries at four different stores, right I mean, when I when I when I made the leap to come to convert I was going to all the for some things, Walmart for Another target and then Kroger because it was just how do we live on a number because before revenue comes in you also have to be willing to eat dirt as simple say, right just control those expenses. And if you’re not willing to make that type of commitment, then that’s probably another sign that there’s yet more work to do. But but that’s the way it should be. Kevin right. It’s the idea that if it’s if there’s no cost involved, that it’s not worth anything right. That’s that’s Thomas Paine once said that which is easily attained as lately esteemed when you have to pay the price. Man, there’s, there’s, there’s something appreciated about that, that you’re not going to get in any other way.

Andrew Peek 46:34

Awesome. We ask this question to almost all our guests if we remember, what is your superpower? And in other words, what do you think you do best? Well, those are two different questions.

Jeff Shore  46:44

a superpower I don’t know about.

Kevin Oakley 46:46

You can give two answers. Yeah, to answer.

Andrew Peek 46:51

Anything you want.

Jeff Shore 46:52

Well, I’ll tell you. It’s always weird because it sounds arrogant, but I’ll just say it anyway. I think I have exceptionally Good short term problem solving skills, I think I can size up a situation in a hurry and offer a reasonably sound solution. And that skill is really, really critical when you’re in a consulting or training environment where you just never know what you’re going to have to deal with what’s going to be thrown your way. But I think I’m pretty cool under that problem solving pressure. But I think the other thing is that I’m just a very curious person. And I don’t know if I would call that a superpower. I would call it something that I’m absolutely dedicated to, but I like to study and I know how to repurpose the work of people who are much smarter than I am. So I can read something really wonky and deeply scientific by somebody like, you know, one of my heroes, Daniel Kahneman, the founder of behavioral economics, or, you know, you know, Dan Gilbert or, you know, Martin Lindstrom any of these guys and then repurpose it for application to the sales industry. Yeah, because most of these guys they’re not sitting around thinking about what does this concept mean to sales and If I can step in and stand in the gap, and I give them credit for the thought, and and how they spur me on, but I like to think that I can take what they are saying, grip my head around it and then make it approachable for everyday practitioners. And that’s the gap that I love standing in. And I completely agree that that is something you do really, really well because it’s It sounds very, it didn’t sound arrogant at all because when you say it, it sounds very simplistic, right? I’m just taking a thought that one person had and proven science and I’m filling that gap. But that gap is not it’s a Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls kind of gap and people don’t know how to cross it. Well, I’ve learned that even in my podcast, the buyers mind where I’m talking oftentimes to, you know, neuroscientists, and and, you know, behavioral economists and, and they write these extremely wonky white papers that have all of these charts and graphs that I can’t begin to understand. And and then you look at you go you guys have you’re sitting on gold mines out here, but it’s not approachable. There’s no way to be able to apply this to the real And, and that’s what I at least try to do is step in and find that connection and I find it so thrilling. I find it so mentally stimulating to be able to take those concepts and turn them over. And in fact, you know, in the Fortwo formula we teach we teach this formula that people buy when their current dissatisfaction times their future promise is greater than their cost plus their fear. So, that that is the fundamental aspect of what we teach in the Fortwo formula. Well, that started in reading a Harvard Business Review article when I was in college, I still have that textbook I could point back to and it was a it was actually a formula that the guy was writing about organizational change. And I said, you know, if you tweak this, and you change this over here, and then I just sort of put it up against the sale and it just never failed. I could identify why anybody buys anything according to the formula. And it started by reading a Harvard Business Review article in college and to this, I think, I didn’t really realize at the time where that was going to lead but I still do that today. There. There are a lot of people that are much smarter than me, and I’m Frankly, they need my help.

Kevin Oakley 50:02

isn’t making it approachable into the sales world. That’s so interesting, Andrew, how that sounds exactly from a different side what we’re trying to do when it comes to digital marketing? Yeah,

Andrew Peek 50:12

it is exactly it is without because you can’t water it down too much, because then no, like you really lose important, especially, you know, of course, I’m not as familiar with the sales side. But on marketing, there’s a lot of nuances where you can’t leave out those details and understanding and understanding the context of say, the data or why this platform works this way versus that way. You kind of have to know the detail, but it needs to be easy. You have to bridge that gap where it’s actually understandable by leadership to understand how Google Ads work versus Facebook ads in just spending the money is that could be like, I think we had this conversation this week. It’s like a 20 minute conversation, just saying how do we spend Google money versus Facebook money?

Kevin Oakley 50:47

Yep, definitely. And you have to make it easy so that they make the change. Sure. But then you also have to go circle back around that you do and so that’s why people like me pay people like you because we look at it in a way go. Don’t don’t know how this Tell me, tell me tell me tell me. I don’t want to have to go figure out the efficacy of a Google Ad versus a Facebook. I don’t want to know that you tell me. You’re smarter than me in this, you figure it out. Okay. Now you’ve led me down a path that I have to ask this question, which is how do you feel inside when someone’s reaction to you sharing that is one of complete and utter disappointment of I thought you were just going to make this super like, I thought I was paying money just to solve my problem, but I still have to apply myself to it. Do you? Maybe you don’t see that at all, but I’m just curious how you’re sure we do. Is that frustrating? Is it sad? Does it make you angry? What what? What kind of emotions rise up?

Jeff Shore 51:37

Yeah, I think the corollary there is when we’re working with a client who thinks that a one day training session is going to fix all of their problems. And so for me, it’s really a matter of the pre work and understanding and being gutsy enough to say to a customer or potential client, we are not the solution for you. We aren’t we are simply not going to be able to give you what it is that you are looking for, and so early on Right, it’s when you’re a new business, you just take, take the business, whatever it is take the business. And then what you end up with is a business. It’s based on transactions, but it’s not based on transformations. And I’ve just at this point, it’s been 20 years for me at shore consulting, I have no interest in taking that job anymore. It’s just, it’s not stimulating. It’s not fun. It’s not rewarding for anybody. And so, you know, but but that’s the idea that it’s it’s the exact same concept is that if I can prevent that from happening upfront, I’m a happier guy. And I think ultimately, my clients are better served when I say no, than when I say yeah,

Kevin Oakley 52:31

yeah, it’s completely selfish question that may not make sense even to put on air but to me, you know, we’re happy to take your money and to just perform great digital marketing services for you but that’s it. Like you said, it’s not fulfilling to me. It’s always shocking when someone whose title is director of marketing for a homebuilder says, Yeah, I don’t need to know how the sausage is made. Just make sure that it’s made it’s made really well and I look good for it. I’m always just surprised by Don’t you want to know your own contribution, don’t you want to increase your Your contribution and value to the organization and grow and but there’s just a lot of people who don’t have interest in doing that.

Jeff Shore 53:05

But the corollary here and I think it is worth airing, quite frankly, is is the sales manager who doesn’t attend the sales training that we would know that any company puts on right on. I look at that, and I just go You got to be kidding me. How could you be so detached and so disinterested to not want to know what your people are being taught? And of course, then any thought of coaching after the fact it’s dead in the water? It’s never gonna happen. We want nothing to do with that type of organization.

Kevin Oakley 53:34

Yeah, exactly. Right. Okay, get back on track. So when I was on the buyers mind, or we recorded the buyers mind, last week, he asked me this question. So I want to flip it back to you because I want to hear your take on it. In your opinion. What do you think the difference is between marketing and sales? today’s world so all right, the tables just got turned on here.

Jeff Shore 53:53

By the way, you were fantastic on that show. That was such a good interview. I love that it was blast. You know, look, if I I know that it’s it’s it’s gonna be a oversimplified, but I would look at it and say that I think marketing is about lead generation and sales about lead conversion. So I’m not into the idea of marketing as casual that includes, you know, branding an image and design as ends unto themselves. So no, I don’t just I think that no company should ever care about branding, except that it leads you to an opportunity to sell something.

Kevin Oakley 54:21

And I know that means that I see the entire world through a sales lens, I get that, but I think small companies get this wrong a lot. They go for cool, for cool sake. But if marketing cannot take a neutral observer and turn that person into a lead, they’re wasting their time. So I look at it from that that oversimplified perspective marketing generates leads sales converts the same lens that we see it to. I mean, I didn’t give you that same answer on your show, knowing the audience of your show, but we completely agree. In fact, we were just talking last week about one of the questions we got the show, which was are you saying that branding is not as important and one of the first things it’s a sensitive question, because that’s more fun and And happy and right quote unquote challenging even though it’s relatively easy, you look at colors and you say I like that one and then you have to create all sorts of vaults psychological reasons why that is more powerful than worth the millions of dollars to change it all course mess. Now my sarcasm is coming out full bore. But one of the first things I have to teach a marketing person when I’m coaching them is you need to understand that I think the view that you just said, Jeff was not from a sales perspective, it’s from an ownership it’s from a entrepreneur a, I’m paying something and I want a return on my investment perspective. And if marketers don’t understand that, that that that is how they’re being judged and will be judged for all time. It’s not just the CFO, it’s, it’s anyone with a see in front of their title expects a return on their investment and colors and branding and stories. Don’t cut it.

Jeff Shore 55:46

That’s right. When’s the last time somebody came up to you and said, Hey, cool branding, here’s $100. It’s not gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen. Exactly, exactly.

Andrew Peek 55:55

So do you see any common dysfunctions between sales and marketing that either yourself or your team here when working with builders, you know, all across the country, how much time do we have? We could

56:04

spend really

Kevin Oakley 56:06

question behind the question, Jeff is you get in deeper way deeper on the sales end than we ever do. So inside of that circus tent, what are they really saying about us? Yeah.

Jeff Shore 56:16

Well, look, I think what it really comes down to is that this and this isn’t exclusive to sales and marketing. We see it with sales and operations sales in Atlanta, because we see it over and over again. And it’s thinking that ultimately that the sale is about the home itself, or about the neighborhood or about the builder or about the features without stopping to constantly reset with the idea that everything Everything must be seen through the eye of the customer. So I’ll give you an example of that. I was I was in Charlotte, I was working with a builder. We pulled up to one of their community. We did a community tour. We went to several different builders, but we went to their own community and we were on this little little mini buses there and we get off the bus. There’s there’s ton of us managers We’re standing across the street from their model home. And I’m asking them, so just don’t first impression just be a buyer right now. What do you think? Do you like what you see? Do you not like what, tell me what your first impressions are? And they’re sitting there going nice? Well, we like it as good as good design is good architecture is good lines. It’s clean, you know? So I said, Great, good. Now do me a favor, count the signs.

57:23

Count the signs, how many? So we

Jeff Shore 57:25

had the main ID sign, and we had the parking sign. And we had a handicap accessibility sign. And we had two different signs on the front door. And then the art alarm company had a little posted sign there and the land company landscape company on the side and the models that we counted from where we were standing, we counted 10 signs as soon as you got out of your car. Yep. And so we just look at it and we go, what what, what are we trying to what message are we trying to send here to our customer right from the very beginning. If this is not about your experience, it’s about what we have to just throw in your face. Yeah. So it’s just one simple example but it’s an example of You know, this is all about the home the product, the features, it’s just his jam, Jam Jam down your throat without really thinking through what is the customer experience? What does that look like? So I would I would say that that is this all gets sort of wrapped up into the idea of the disconnect between seeing this about the builder about the brand about the home itself without looking at it through the eyes of the customer. Just yesterday I was in Las Vegas working with a builder went into a model home right across the street from this model home in this brand new community. And in the vacant lot that was right directly across the street, all of their roof tiles and a bunch of mud building materials stacked up. Now they had they had lots everywhere through the community, but the builder decided that that was a good place to be able to put all of their spare materials and I looked at I go Is it like it is a deal killer? Maybe Maybe not. But to me, that’s not a builder construction issue. That’s a marketing issue. That’s the idea that we are not paying attention to the impressions that will cause somebody to want to move from an interested party into an actual buyer. I like like a moth to a flame, I have to ask you this question to sale sheets for individual inventory homes strewn out across the kitchen island. I was a builder two days ago and walk in the walk into the model. It feels good, looks good. It’s all good until I reach the kitchen. And then I feel like a filing cabinet threw up. There’s just transactional information with factual data all over the place. How would you feel about that? And I would say in the frickin

59:25

kitchen. Exactly. Right. I mean, some people suggest some people suggest that

Jeff Shore 59:30

the kitchen is a fairly important room in the house. Now look, I’m no genius on this. But where do you want the eyes going? It is just it’s insane. But listen, I feel the same way about sales offices. I don’t think it has to be just in the kitchen. I walk into sales offices all the time. And it’s the same thing. It’s like how much data how many information points can we put up on our walls, if Oh, wait a minute. I just found eight square inches over here. We could get something in there. And it’s all just In an assault on the senses after a while, and your customer cannot begin to take it all, and they don’t have the cognitive strength to take in as much data as we throw at them. And Andrew, you talk about this all the time, even if the brand is great, and you understand the story of the builder, if your current dissatisfaction can’t be met, the brand doesn’t matter. So why put all that money and effort into that when at the end of the day, it has to meet their current dissatisfaction or they move on. Alright, for those who stuck around to the end, let’s get nerdy here. Are there any particular

Kevin Oakley 60:29

both of you my favorite? Exactly. Are there any particular psychological insights that you’ve discovered over your career that you think marketers in general are not doing a good job implementing or using things that you teach salespeople that when you look on the other side of the fence, you’re like, I wonder why they don’t don’t do that call sound? Oh, yeah. Well,

Jeff Shore 60:48

I think if there was an umbrella to all that it would, it would, it would fall under two words and the words would be cognitive ease, it’s we tend to think I think, I think in marketing, we look at it we go, the more information we can throw out you, the better off we’re going to be. And it’s it just confuses the brain. And I think we know this through psychological research that a confused mind is going to say, No, it doesn’t know how to process at all. So the idea of just trying to keep things clean and easy and not trying to intimidate because what happens is all of those data points that we’re throwing out there are appealing to the logical side of the brain. Well, that’s a problem because the brain doesn’t they’re not the brain. But the gut is where the decision gets made, right? The Swedish researcher Martin Lindstrom 85% of the decision is made in the gut. It’s supported by a 15% rationalization in the brain so when we’re just throwing the data out there we’re literally taking customers away from the part of their soul that’s that’s going to make the decision in the first it doesn’t make any sense to try and say this is interesting. Here you go. This is interesting. Here you go, unless it helps the customer to be able to step into their own future. So I think it’s the the idea that it’s what it’s about. Sometimes called the any benefit theory, is there any benefit to my customer knowing this? Oh, there’s there is there’s any benefit. Great, I’ll throw it out there. But we don’t stop and think is the benefit that we’re going to get that small as it might be worth trumping the emotional connection that they really need to have in order to make a decision? Is this making sense? In every homebuilder that we visit, for the most part, when you look at the standard feature sheet, the included feature sheet, whatever magical word they want to use for this piece of paper that has 189 different bullet points on it, one of which is a doorbell, and another is a mailbox, right? Thank

Kevin Oakley 62:36

you. That’s adorable. That’s amazing. And even worse, the only thing worse than that is when you have extra calls next to each one of those points to encourage them to go to their competitors and say Do you also have a doorbell and a mailbox that’s the only thing worse,

Jeff Shore 62:49

preach preach the dare to compare worksheet. It just drives me up the wall you want to you want to load cognitive strain onto your country. customer that’s the ticket. The dare to compare worksheet drives me crazy. Yeah,

Kevin Oakley 63:03

yep. Okay, we are out of time. But I want to quickly go to JeffShore.com to learn about everything that Jeff and his team are doing around the country and how they’re helping builders and other industries even outside of homebuilding. But there’s something coming up in August called the sales leadership summit. And this is why have you done this? A long time now? 789 years, keep going?

Jeff Shore 63:23

I think we did. I think I did my first one with 35 managers in a small little meeting room in Las Vegas back in 2005 2000. It was a long time ago. Yeah, yeah. So I’ve been we’ve been doing this long time but it keeps getting just I said better and better would be arrogant, but funner and funner. And I know funner isn’t a word but it should be So are you saying

Kevin Oakley 63:43

this is the most dramatic rose ceremony ever? You know? It does though. It gets better because it’s a well we find the same thing in our event our event gets better not necessarily because we are getting better do you converter because we’re bringing in other speakers that are better, it’s because when you go to the same event, over and over Merkin you have a different experience of that event because you That’s right, you can now you don’t have that same cognitive strain on your brain. That’s right. You know the rim, you know the presenters and you can absorb it in a different and better way. And look, if you’re a sales leader,

Jeff Shore 64:11

look, you need to get out of your office for a couple of days anyway, just for the purpose of getting a little sanity back into your life. But when you can meet with builders all around the country, when you can go in intentionally with the idea to work with your peers from not just around the country, we have people from around the world, we’ve had people from the Middle East and Australia and come to the summit, and just to be able to pick their brain and to be able to learn from them. The relational connections are amazing. This year, we’re doing a little different. We brought in a professional emcee. He’s He’s in the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame, a gentleman by the name of Brian Walter, because I really wanted to ramp up the fun factor this year. It’s we’ve got rock solid content of that, I assure you, but we’re not going to be afraid to have a little fun this year as well. Awesome. I haven’t tended before it is definitely worth your time and investment and there’s really nothing Or else again, back to the content that you guys are focused on when it comes to sales leadership in particular. Who else is going to have available content and experience? There’s just there is all right. Well, that takes us to the end. Jeff, thanks so much for joining us and giving us your valuable valuable time today. That was really, really fun. I had a great time.

Kevin Oakley 65:17

Thank you was awesome. Absolutely any parting message for sales leaders or for marketing leaders around the country who may be listening? It’s not about the home. Oh, I thought you were gonna say change your world with bold.

65:30

Yeah, it’s not about the home. It’s about the customer. So live bold and change your

Kevin Oakley 65:33

word. There we go. That’s short. That’s everybody. And that was proof that time flies when you’re having fun because we were felt like we just got started and I looked up and I was like, holy cow. We’re Jeff has other things to do. He can’t just sit and talk to us all day.

Andrew Peek 66:06

Yes, it was amazing. Yeah, holy Viviani and

Kevin Oakley 66:08

maybe 100. Let’s see and Andrew was so impressed that you did something while we were on it

Andrew Peek 66:15

I bought his book well I like to read and which

66:17

one did you buy?

Andrew Peek 66:18

Bought Be bold and win the sale even though sales but I think that’s a marketers if we get you know, we understand them more than that will help us and this Jeff did imply that this this is really for everybody. Even though it is on sales. Yep.

Kevin Oakley 66:30

Stop being a wuss is the right title essentially decided not on this. marker that out? Oh, goodness. Well, let’s, let’s hop over to the question of the week. Your answers your question the week from last week, which was are you using Google Analytics tag manager or you’re just not sure and you guys cracked me up? I love it. We love it when people added their own survey answers. So funny, but the leader was Google Analytics tracking code followed by Tag Manager which you know A lot of folks ended up updating to tag manager. And we’ve kind of forced a lot of our builders to reach out to their web developers and get Tag Manager installed just because it helped with some of the privacy changes that Apple did to their ecosystem to be able to still get some good data. And so there there is some advantages beyond just the code stuff. We talked about just being able to track a little bit more clearly with Tag Manager, but a good number of you have that installed. And then Kevin from outhouse added my favorite one he said, are nerds do it all like magic, I just enjoy the fruits of their labor and the data contained within and, and a whole bunch of other people just hopped on and said, yeah, that’s me too. So that’s too funny. And then Amy Alexander added a ha with three question marks and did that one as well. She said, I think I pay someone I get reports monthly, and we discuss what needs to be offline. So thanks for your feedback. Again, analytics. totally okay. But Tag Manager is something you’re going to hear about more and more kinda like the facebook pixel adverse to be like that. I don’t want to mess with that. I think pretty soon. It’s going To be with a lot of you are going to want to transition to have outlets right. All right. And new question of the week, Jackie? Yes. Inspired by you tell us

Jackie Askews 68:07

all excited. What design software do you use to edit images or create ads? So I’d be very curious. That is good.

Kevin Oakley 68:15

Yeah. Because for a long time, it was just Adobe or sim corral draw for those of you who have that kind of stuff now, or Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Paint all kinds of great tools, but now there is a bajillion apps out there like yeah, and others that so we’re just curious as we start creating content around this idea of how to optimize your images or get get stuff ready or just build your own ad creative in total. What are you guys using out there so we can make sure we’re

Jackie Askews 68:41

Yeah, anything I’ve put together any any quick tips for design how to so just be good to know what everybody’s working with? So I can touch all bases there. Good idea.

Kevin Oakley 68:50

Well, guys, that’s the end of Episode 50. It felt like a party to me that I feel like a party for you. Did you

Andrew Peek 68:57

take a nap not

Jackie Askews 68:58

the 50th. Yes, yeah.

Kevin Oakley 68:59

50 you guys got a little bit aggressive with the with the noise machines there but it was other than that it was great, great party. Great party. All right for publish articles, blog posts, videos and more, check out D convert calm. It’s also the best way to find out how to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and anywhere else that we are on social media. Have a great rest of the week and get ready for 50 more episodes.

Andrew Peek 69:24

See ya

The post Ep 50: Celebrating 50 Episodes with Jeff Shore! [Transcript] appeared first on Online Sales and Marketing for Home Builders - DYC.