The first half of this year has been super positive for new home builders! We’ve seen strong traffic to websites, a slight increase in leads, and sales goals achieved across the board. 

Lead to appointment numbers ticked up slightly to 41%, which wasn’t a big change from Q1 despite an increase in leads. A steady appointment conversion with a slight increase makes sense. As teams got busier with more new leads in April and May, it left less time to prospect to older leads. Not to mention, a lot of the leads coming in have been Realtors. 

It has been exciting to see the appointment to sale number go up from 19% in Q1 to 21% in Q2! This tells us a few things:

1. Marketers are doing a good job with content and information on websites. Lead quality has improved.
2. Online Sales are setting more qualified appointments and expectations up front, and those who have the bandwidth are continuing to double down on prospecting.
3. Builders have inventory! And they’ve provided some easier buying options for customers where affordability may be an issue.
4. With limited used homes available, new construction is the best option!

Overall online sales contribution is steady with a slight increase at 46% compared to Q1, which is still down a bit from last year. However, this is totally fine! In fact, we have returned to a more normal market with a healthy mix of walk-in, Realtor, and online traffic. For comparison, in 2019 the average online sales contribution was 39%.  

When we extrapolate our long-time well-established programs, the online sales contribution is still at 50%. The biggest difference in teams that consistently hit this 50% number is: 

1. All lead sources funneling through online sales, including all CTAs on websites 
2. Consistent training around the handoff
3. Good communication between online and onsite
4. Tenured Online Sales Specialists are skilled and are executing 100% of the process, 100% of the time. 
5. Involved managers who understand the role, offer open communication, accountability, and inspiration.

* The benchmarks that we provide are based on data across a sampling of our builder partners that count leads, appointments, and sales by the same criteria. It is a mix of small, medium, large, and on-your-lot builders.