Q & A Episode 31 - Sales: Tips + Takeaways #1
Episode #31 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | Sales: Tips + Takeaways #1
In this episode of The Curious Builder Podcast, Mark Williams gets into some seriously game-changing sales tips for builders. He shares insights from recent Curious Builder Collective meet-ups, where they chatted about everything from asking for referrals (seriously, just ask!) to using educational blog content and staying consistent on social media. Mark also highlights the magic of authentic storytelling and learning from both wins and mess-ups to boost future sales.
Listen to the full episode:
About The Curious Builder
The host of the Curious Builder Podcast is Mark D. Williams, the founder of Mark D. Williams Custom Homes Inc. They are an award-winning Twin Cities-based home builder, creating quality custom homes and remodels — one-of-a-kind dream homes of all styles and scopes. Whether you’re looking to reimagine your current space or start fresh with a new construction, we build homes that reflect how you live your everyday life.
Support the Show:
-
Mark D. Williams 00:03
There's that famous Maya Angelou quote that I quote all the time. It's basically a family quote at this point, we my wife quotes it so much. But you know, people forget what you say, but they never forget how you make them feel. And I think that's true in a home. It's why branding is so important. But anyway, all this shows up in Instagram. This shows up in LinkedIn.
Mark D. Williams 00:28
Welcome to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host, and today is Thursday, which is our Q and A, and this one is going to be called sales, tips and takeaways. So last week, nothing was two weeks ago now, we had the curious builder collective, which we have in Minnesota, Atlanta, Georgia, Austin, Texas and Phoenix. So if you're interested, you can check the website for these small groups that meet four times a year. But our Minnesota one was the topic was all about sales. So we met for three hours at Hennepin made in Northeast Minneapolis. We had a great group of builders. We had an expert there, Nate zolner from sales homey. It's always nice to have a kind of a sales expert, but obviously when you're talking about sales, but really the whole point of it was each one of us as custom home builders have spent the better part of multiple decades working our businesses. And everyone needs sales some way, somehow, whether you hire it out, whether you do your sales, there's always ways that the team, as well as us as owners, can affect sales and do a better job. And so it was really interesting to hear some of the takeaways we had. Usually at the end of these you have these great discussions on what people do, how they implement their process, how do they find sales to be successful? What are some new initiatives that they're going to try for 25 and beyond, was to really get everybody's feedback. So I think we got feedback of maybe 30 things that people had as takeaways. So I'll talk about those today, just the tips and takeaways. And we won't get through all of them, obviously, because there's a lot, but I'll just start at the top of the list. One of the best ways to do sales is, shockingly, ask for referrals. And speaking for myself, it's actually something I've done a very poor job of doing, and I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to focus on this. And I think in the home building space, especially new homes, more so than maybe remodels, is the cost of acquiring a client is really high. As for myself as a high end custom home builder, I'll likely only build one home for a client, and it doesn't mean that I don't have past clients. I certainly do, but and as I obviously have a longer career than 20 years, but it's really not like an everyday shopping occurrence. This isn't Amazon auto pay, and it shows up every 30 days, and so these are big purchases that often happen only once in their lifetime. Remodeling might be more obviously because you can sequence it out or phase it out, and it doesn't mean that you can't leverage your referrals within their family or generation, once it gets into their children, things like that, but largely you are building one off. And so it's discouraging sometimes to think of all the effort that we put into that sales process. And so the real question is, how can we have a super fan? We've done a great job building for a client. How do we make this person our ambassador? How can we engage our past clients? And so this is something that I actually I'm spending a ton of time in 25 to sort of leverage, and I have some ideas on how I want to do that, and I'll share that, but this ask for referrals is really shout out to Nate Carlson from Highmark Builders here in Minnesota. He has shared this over a cup of coffee last fall. I've mentioned it several times in our collective gatherings. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in podcasts or not, but it was really this thing of asking for referrals. He recently won Sales Person of the Year for Housing First Minnesota, which is a huge award. And I think the secret other than he's amazing at what he does, very personable, but it's how he asks for referrals. And I just love regardless of what industry you're in, how you ask for it and when you ask for referrals is very positive. And so the only way I can really convey this accurately is to kind of just walk people through my process and how I plan change. And so he says he I think he asks for a referral, like six times before a client, between the time he first meets them to when they move into their house. And a lot of them are actually on the front end. So you know, let's say Mr. Johnson, or Mrs. Johnson, calls me and I have my first 15 minute phone call whether they agree to meet for me for that one hour meeting, which is our protocol, I will ask him in that call. Thank you for this call, Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Johnson, I hope was really successful before we have this meeting, or if the meeting doesn't happen, because they're not a good fit, either way, I think that's the magic of this. You ask for referral. Was there anyone else that you would re that is in a similar place to you, that is considering building a new home or remodeling, or you think I might be a good fit with we'd love a recommendation. Is there anyone that comes to mind and then wait, see how they respond? So that's one. Let's say they do meet with me for this one hour meeting, and so we're talking to them about their house or remodel. At some point during that time again, whether they sign a design retainer or not, I really appreciate this hour to get to know you. You've gotten to know us a little bit better as well. Is there anyone that comes to mind that you think would be a good fit for our company that we could reach out to? And again, you're asking for another referral. Let's say you do begin the design you can see where this is going. That basically every interaction that you have, whether it goes well or whether it does, meaning whether they move down the road with you, with your company, or not. It's still a great way to ask for referral. I would be really impressed if somebody asked me for referral, even if I didn't go with them. To me, it would actually be a mark to their credit. And I would say, Wow, this is impressive. They really understand who they are, and they're very confident that, yes, not everyone is a good fit for each other. And I say that all the time, that's one of my value statements when I talk to my clients, is I might not be the right fit for you. And this is why we're having this introductory meeting, is to see if we are the right fit for each other. And the most important thing when you build a home or a remodel is making sure that your team, your builder, your designer, your architect, that you feel comfortable with them and that you want to work with them, because it's a big deal, and it should be with people that you trust. And so anyway, I just really appreciated that I think six people out of the 18 builders that were there all wrote down referrals. So this was a huge topic of discussion. One of the other sales tips was educating your clients, or education based sales. And I think this speaks to the power of a blog. You know, for a long time, I don't really read blogs. I like people. I'll find people that I trust, I'll listen to them on podcasts or books or I'll talk to them, but a lot of people like to read. And it's not that I don't like to read. It's just not a priority for me. And especially blog reading is not something that interests me, just personally, but a lot of my homeowners do. And I look at others in our industry that have phenomenal blogs, Morgan Moller from construction of style, or Katie Cath from J Cath, they have great blogs. And so about three years ago, I started doing a I have a lot of blogs now. So I hired a blog writer that helps me. They prompt me with questions, and I'll dictate them all into an AI software called otter. And so they'll prompt me with 10 questions, and I'll just talk about them for 1015, minutes, and then they'll be able to make a blog out of it. But the benefit of the blog, and this is client facing, is that a the SEO is awesome on your website. So you're telling Google who you are, where you are, as well as what you have to say. And so you can see why it becomes your website becomes much more searchable, and because Google and Pinterest are some of the biggest engines out there, for searchability you want to be on there, giving them fresh content. So I think the power of this blog is not only demonstrating what you care about, it's telling people about your brand, but it's also letting people know where you are. So someone might search remodel in Minneapolis or new home builder in Excelsior, new home builder on Lake Minnetonka. Well, if I have an article where I wrote about building a home on Lake Minnetonka, then that is going to be, you know, obviously searchable and very discoverable. And so you're using the fact that a client is trying to get educated about who the builders are, or maybe it's a specific topic. This is kind of a counterintuitive sale, but we had a client where they in Minnesota. Gets pretty cold, as you can imagine. But this morning, I think we had negative eight windshield, so pretty cold. If your relative humidity inside is too high, when it's that cold out, you will get frost on your windows. You will get condensation, and inevitably, you will have an uneducated buyer will call you and say, there's something wrong with my windows or something wrong with my house, when the reality of it is they just need to be educated that their humidity is too high for how cold it is outside, and then it's going to condensate on your windows, and that's very common. There are steps that you can take to prevent it. If anyone's interested, you can go to our blog and you can read all about it, because I wrote about it, and this was a way to educate a client so that it's up there. It's on our website. It's also for future clients. If they ever have this question has come up a number of times in my career. I now if a client calls me, I will actually go to my website. I'll click the URL, copy link on my blog, and I'll send it to them. I said, I'm happy to answer your question before we before I call you later today. Why don't you read this first? And if you have any more questions, nine times out of 10, they canceled the call. They don't need to talk anymore because they get it. And there's a huge if you are now an educator, not only to your fellow peers, but to your potential clients, that is a very powerful sales tool. It also puts you in the driver's seat, because most builders and remodelers aren't doing this. So I would say, in terms of a sales bucket, I think this one is a pretty powerful one.
Mark D. Williams 09:51
We're excited to announce that the curious builder collectives are going into three other states. For those not familiar with what the collective is, it lives between what the contractor coalition. Is and a builder 20 group. What we do in each state is we have a group of 25 to 30 builders that get in a room, and you break up into groups of nine. You spend 45 minutes talking about a set topic, whether it's branding, marketing, contracts, whatever that set topic is for that day. And then you talk for 45 minutes. You get up, you mix up the groups, and you do it again, and you're out of there. You'll be out in under three hours. We're going to be going to Phoenix, Arizona. Brad Levitt is going to be leading a curious collective in Phoenix, Arizona. We are going to San Antonio. We've got David and Angela Penske from Penske homes, leading a group down there. And we have Brad Robinson and Vince Longo in Atlanta, Georgia, also leading a collective, as well as obviously me in Minnesota as well, for our second annual collective. So you're interested in collaborating with other builders. If you really want to dive deep on your business in a person to person relationship, ask a lot of questions. The collectives are for you. We also have in Minnesota interior design collective as well as the architect collective. Check out the Events page at the cures, builder podcast.com, another one that came up was LinkedIn, sales and marketing strategies, and let's call it Instagram, well, social media. So what is your plan with social media? Are you run and gun? Do you just record and put it up there? I think that's a great place to start. So I don't think, I don't think there's any right or wrong in any of these. I think whatever you do be consistent. That definitely came out in our conversations. If you post twice a week, twice a month, whatever it is like, just be consistent, because it's hard to build a base, or it's hard to tell your story. If you do five, one week and then nothing for a month, and then three and then 20 it just there's no rhythm to it. People don't know what to expect. They tune out. So whatever you're going to do, do it consistently. And I think there was some consensus that doesn't have to be daily. I think some of the algorithms and some of the search ability, I think they refresh every 24 or 48 hours. So if you do something every other three times a week, seem to be a good metric in a consensus of the builders that were out there, and everyone has different abilities in terms abilities in terms of what they want to do, how much content they have. There's some companies that have so much content that could post seven days a week, no problem. And there are some that are like, Oh man, I hate posting, even if you hate posting just doing a day in the life of whatever you're doing, people want to know. There's a great appetite for understanding what people do on a day to day basis. People are interested in people. I think one of the things I found is that in one things that we've tried to leverage is whatever we can do to highlight people like obviously we want to highlight great work, but that's kind of what the website is for, steering people to our website, steering them to our craftsmanship. But I like the stories behind it, the people, the not only the educators, but obviously the craftspeople that are working on your homes. I think that's really engaging and really interesting. And I think people respond to that, those kinds of that the storytelling, if you will. And I think specifically, I can say for myself, maybe other builders and remodelers out there do a better job of Instagram than I do. I think we do a good job, but I have never gotten a single job off of Instagram years ago, very well known builder. This was probably six, seven years ago, and I was just starting to dabble in Instagram. And I said, but you've got a pretty good following. Like, does anyone build five, ten million homes off of Instagram? And his comment was really interesting. He said, I am, this is planting seeds for the next generation. This is, I am future proofing my business by the people that are watching our feeds and looking at it are in their 20s and 30s. They're they can't afford, or maybe they can. Stereotypically, a lot of our homeowners are in their 40s and 50s, 60s, whatever it might be, just because the homes are expensive and they have to build up their net worth. And his comment was, is that I am putting this out there for the people I want to build for a decade from now. But decade from now, they'll have been watching and feeding on my content for such a long time that when it comes time to build, they not only know my story, but they know and I thought that was that really resonated with me a lot. I often think about that in terms of how to sell and why storytelling is really important. And I think if we can convey a sense of who we are as people, as well as what we do, I think you really have got a good story to tell. There's that famous Maya Angelou quote that I quote all the time. It's basically a family quote at this point, we my wife quotes it so much. But you know, people forget what you say, but they never forget how you make them feel. And I think that's true in a home. It's It's why branding is so important. But anyway, all this shows up in Instagram. This shows up in LinkedIn, specifically with LinkedIn. It was Brad Levitt had mentioned about three years ago at our first contractor coalition in Nashville. He had just said he has a huge following, 30 some 40 some 1000 connections or followers. So just massive. But he basically said, post every day for a year, and then let me know what you think. And again, I haven't gotten any actual builds out of it, but now I post probably three to five times a week. Not every day, but a lot, and there's I've learned so much by doing it. One is connecting with other brands, connecting with our peers across the country. That has been really helpful to see the work that they do. But actually, a lot of my hires have come through LinkedIn. I'm thinking of Leon my team and Joel my controller. They both came through LinkedIn. And so it's not just about when you're selling we think maybe, or at least I did. I think I'm selling a build job, but in this case, I'm selling our brand. I'm selling our message. And that's powerful, because you're giving people a sense of who you are. I had a coffee this morning with a general manager for another remodel company. She said, I've been following your work for a while, listening to your podcast. I found you on LinkedIn, and I just think I align with who you are as a person, as a company, and I want to work with you guys. And I was flattered I mean that it's a different kind of sale, but I still think it's really important. You can't build a team without good people, and if good people are coming to you, you need to provide them a way to see who you are. So that's the type of sales as well. I think this goes along with, if you're going to use storytelling as part of your messaging, is one of the things that came out as a sales tip and takeaway was, be authentic. You cannot fake who you are and whoever you are. It be that unicorn. You are one of one. You're the only. There's only one Mark Williams, there's only one Joe Schmo actually, there's a lot of Joe schmoes, a lot of John does and Tim and Joe schmoes. But anyway, the point is is be you find the thing that makes you special, find the thing that makes you passionate, find the thing that you are really excited to get out of bed for and just get after it and make that your thing, because people resonate so well to passion, and it's you can't. I don't know if you can fake passion. I think either passionate or you're not. I mean, you can be hard working, you can be diligent, you can be all these things, but passion goes a long ways. I remember, I've spoken about it many times on the podcast. One of my framers named Johnny, and he would take pictures every week on the job site. He was so proud of how far the house had gone each week, and it's one of the reasons why home building is so rewarding. But he was just passionate about his craft, and that show passion shows up in so many different places, in your work ethic, in your attitude with others. If you are passionate about something, it shows up everywhere. And you can have obviously negative passion. You know, you could passionately dislike somebody, and it'd be toxic to the team. Usually, I think we speak of, or at least I speak of passion in terms of a positive thing, and I think it is being aware of what our passion is, and then storytelling around it. So be authentic. Be whoever you are. And I think even like looking back at your past clients, one thing that came up as a sales tip was ask your past clients, why did they work with you? Why did they hire you? There's a lot of builders and remodelers that they could have the hired, but why'd they pick you? And I think this goes true for your architecture partners, your design partners. I think it's probably good advice, maybe every couple years, to pull everyone you've worked with, and ask them, Why did you refer me? Why do we work together? What is it about our relationship that you like, and why would you keep referring us as a company? And secondly, oh, what can we do to get better? I think it's a way for self improvement. And also, sometimes we're so focused on our future, or at least I am. I'm looking forward. I'm trying to push the company in new directions, better directions, to elevate. But it doesn't mean you weren't successful already. It doesn't mean you can't get better, but it means that there, you wouldn't still be here. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you weren't a trying to get better, or if you hadn't done something successful already, it's unlikely this is day one of your career. Listening to this podcast, if it is welcome.
Mark D. Williams 18:42
There's 100 episodes you can listen to before this one. But anyway, the point of it is, is you, you have a lot of successes. A lot of things have gone really well. And I think the building blocks of success is, you know, look back and say, You know what, I did a really good job at this, that and another thing. And now, as you look forward, you build on that and add to it. And I think that's how you build a successful company. And I think is being more aware of the things that you are already doing. Get rid of what doesn't work and move forward. Brad Robinson had him on the podcast. He's a good friend of mine down in Georgia. He's leading our collective down there with Vince Longo, but he had said that he wants his team. He doesn't mind failure, but fail fast. I think that's a great sales strategy, too. If something doesn't work, great, no problem. Now you learned what doesn't work, and now you can go on to the thing that does work. And I think there's a huge if you tell clients, I think the messaging has to be worked out a little bit. But the actuality of that being true is fail fast. Get better. And people, I think people can see innovation. People can see you striving for loftier heights, and I think that's very attractive. And I think that, in itself, is really good at helping you produce sales. So we're at 20 minutes, we'll probably do another round of this. There's just so many takeaways in terms of sales to talk about. If you're interested in this topic, please hit us up on Instagram. Com, or send us an email off our website. You can always drop in a question, and I'll be happy to answer it on our Q and A Thursdays, thanks again for tuning in the curious builder podcast. Thanks for tuning in the curious builder podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends. Like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in. You.
