Creating a Stellar Online Sales Program - Ingrid Ricks

Greg Bray: And we are excited to have joining us today, Ingrid Ricks, formerly known as Prince, the founder and chief OSC at Convertly Solutions. Welcome, Ingrid. Thanks for joining us today.

Ingrid Ricks: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Always a pleasure to be here.

Greg Bray: Well, Ingrid, I guess we do have to acknowledge before we get in any deeper in introductions or anything else, the name change. [00:01:00] So, I think it's rather new and so folks are confused, so please remove the confusion.

Ingrid Ricks: That's right. It's very new, five days new. So, actually I just got married this past Sunday. Hence the name changed. So, it happened relatively quickly, but all absolutely perfect. We had a super intimate wedding in Sonoma. Closest family, very few friends, but it was exactly how we wanted to go and it's been pretty amazing.

Kevin Weitzel: One, if it's Sonoma, was there lots of wine? Follow up question. Do the people in the office call you the artist formerly known as

Ingrid Ricks: That's right. Yes. I have actually had two name changes. When I started my career in home building, I was Ingrid Estrella. That was where Ask Ingrid was born. I've been a US citizen for decades now, right? And so ,when I became a citizen, I had to change my name from Estrella to Prince. And then, so that was a whole thing because again, ask Ingrid was Estrella. And [00:02:00] so, now most people know me as Ingrid Prince. So, for those of you who are following, please know that it's now Ingrid, formerly known as Prince, Ricks

Kevin Weitzel: Boom.

Greg Bray: Well, Ingrid, for those who don't know you, give us a little more background about yourself and an overview of some of the things you've been working on.

Ingrid Ricks: Yeah, absolutely. So, I've been in home building now and this is going to age me, you know how that is with women, I've been in home building now for about 20 years. I actually started my career in onsite sales in Tampa, Florida. From onsite sales, did that for several years, then went into online sales, which is kind of what planted the seed of this passion of mine. And after online sales, after I had my son, wanted a little bit more challenging role, went into sales leadership. Did sales leadership for quite some time.

I was a sales leader for a local home builder here in the DFW area. Then worked my way up to [00:03:00] becoming a regional VP of sales for a national home builder for the entire state of Texas. Then, what was really calling me, was obviously online sales. So, I've had the full experience when it comes to home building and sales. So, I feel like that's what makes me and Convertly a little bit different now moving forward.

Kevin Weitzel: For those of you doing the math out there, Ingrid did start when she was 10 years old, so add those years to 10 years old. Boom. There you go, Ingrid. You're welcome.

Ingrid Ricks: I was going to say, this is why I love Kevin, and this is why I'll always keep coming back because they make me feel and look good, so.

Kevin Weitzel: All right. Now, before we get into hearing a little bit more about Convertly Solutions, please, even though we've got some good juicy tidbits outta you in the past, please give our audience one interesting factoid about yourself that has nothing to do with family, work, or the home building industry.

Ingrid Ricks: So, I actually ran the New York City [00:04:00] Marathon without any preparation.

Greg Bray: We're speechless. We're both like, What do we even say to that?

Ingrid Ricks: Yeah,

Kevin Weitzel: With a finish too, right?

Ingrid Ricks: And I do have to say this. So I finished the New York City Marathon without any proper training, and I beat Chris Hartley in time, so.

Kevin Weitzel: What?

Ingrid Ricks: Hopefully, if he's listening, he won't be too upset, but, you know, I kind of gotta put that out there.

Greg Bray: Chris, hope you're listening.

Kevin Weitzel: Chris is listening. Chris is not only listening, but he just went, Dope.

Greg Bray: Well, Ingrid, tell us a little bit more about Convertly Solutions, what you guys are doing, and kind of the services you offer.

Ingrid Ricks: Yeah, absolutely. So, here at Convertly Solutions, we offer turnkey online sales solutions for home builders across the country. Primarily, we focus on refining your online sales program if you currently have one, and if you don't, that's totally okay because we are actually experts in setting up your online sales program. So, everything [00:05:00] from start to finish.

What really that entails is for us to do a deep dive and review of how you currently operate as a home builder, so that we can customize a solution that best fits your needs. Because we believe that not all online sales program is a one size fits all because not every home builder is the same either. So, for us, we really like to customize the solution for each and every home builder that partners with us.

Greg Bray: So, you are helping builders create a program or improve a program all about online sales. What have you seen over the last few years that's been changing with that role of online sales, that OSC, sometimes it's a counselor or concierge, depending on who you ask what that C stands for, but this person that's responsible for the online sales, how has that role evolved?

Ingrid Ricks: Yeah, that's such a great question. Over the last few years, obviously, I think it goes without saying the utilization of AI has been a big [00:06:00] change within the online sales role. For buyers, we all know that they all start their home search online, right? So, online is where the buyer starts. That's effectively the builder's model home.

So, with the OSC, it shouldn't just be the automated follow-up that we're used to. And I think that has shifted significantly over the last couple of years because we think automation is the key to getting engagement. But that's not really it. It's shifting to personalization, which is really the coin of what the OSC role is today.

Kevin Weitzel: Oddly enough, as many conversations we've had, I've never asked you this question. Because I have a very strong opinion on this and I've had some heated discussions, not arguments, but heated discussions with Leah Fellows about this before.

Ingrid Ricks: Okay.

Kevin Weitzel: I'm a firm believer that you poach people that are good with people, good people, people, good people, persons from like service industry, like, you know, waiters and waitresses and concierges, [00:07:00] and then you put them in that OSC role. And then the next national transition is to go from that OSC role into a sales role. Because you're going to have the most militant CRM user you've ever had in your life with a former OSC. They know your product inside and out. They know those communities inside and out. They easily can transition that role. What is your opinion on that evolvement, if you will?

Ingrid Ricks: You know, that's interesting because there's this thing out there that people say that OSCs are unicorns. Right?

Kevin Weitzel: They are.

Ingrid Ricks: They are because it's so difficult to find a really good one. So, it's a unicorn that you have to find that's going to be exceptional at what they do. Primarily because let's face it, the OSC does a lot of the nurturing and it's all repetitive work, right? So, you have to find somebody that's passionate about being able to nurture that lead, but also be able to think outside of the box to be able to engage them, to get them to elicit a response from that lead, that non-responsive lead.

So, when you're [00:08:00] looking for an OSC, to your point, you can encounter somebody that's in the service industry that may be great. I've done this as well when I've done my recruiting. Sometimes they work out really well and sometimes they don't. Because when you find somebody that may have been in the service industry, whether it's restaurant or whatever the case may be, a lot of the times they don't understand the difference in how a buyer thinks from a home buyer's perspective.

So, they miss out on a lot of the discovery that you really need to have and be really good at when you're in this role. And especially relative to building the rapport. Building the rapport is critical for an OSC, and when you're building that not face-to-face, it makes it 10 times more difficult. So, being able to be personable while over the phone and being behind the screen is the challenge in finding the perfect OSC.

Kevin Weitzel: I agree. I agree.

Greg Bray: [00:09:00] So, Ingrid, then, is the OSC just an appointment setter? You talked about nurturing. What is the end goal of this person, this role that we're trying to define and help them become?

Ingrid Ricks: Gosh, I love this question so much because when I was in OSC, that was my role, was to nurture the lead, schedule the appointment, and forget about it, right? Convertly firmly disagrees with that. In my opinion, and the way that we actually train and work with our OSCs is the handoff is just the beginning of our role. So, the discovery and qualifying that lead is absolutely important. You schedule the appointment, second most important thing. But the third most important thing is the follow-up and follow-through thereafter. So, for us, once we schedule the appointment, we have a specific follow-up process that makes sure that [00:10:00] we follow that lead or prospective buyer until they make a decision to either purchase or move on. It's continual follow-up until they make the decision to purchase.

Greg Bray: I think that's a differentiator. Right? And I think a lot of builders aren't quite there yet. They're still in that appointment setting mode where this person just handles the chat, they handle the emails, they handle maybe some of the phone calls depending on the situation. They schedule and they're just like an assistant who's scheduling, and you're describing something very different.

Ingrid Ricks: Yeah. And I think where a lot of builders struggle with that is because of volume. They have too many leads that are coming in, so they want to make sure that their OSC is getting to the leads fast enough. Because we all know speed to lead leads to better conversion. So, when you have a lot of leads, then the only way that you can monitor that and keep that on track is if they are just making sure that they discover, qualify, and set the [00:11:00] appointment, and then let the onsite sales team manage it from there.

But what really needs to happen is you should really be evaluating one, the volume, but the size of your online sales team. And a lot of the times right now, a builder could just have one OSC because they think that they don't have the lead volume to add on to their OSC team. When the reality of it is, when you're looking at the entire sales cycle, even if you're getting 250 leads per month, which is what one effective OSC can handle, you could afford to have two OSCs because then you're managing the entire process. But more than that, you're also not forgetting about the age leads, where we are very passionate about. That is where the goldmine is.

Greg Bray: And by age leads, you're talking about the folks that talked to you at some point in the past and didn't progress.

Ingrid Ricks: That's right.

Kevin Weitzel: The ones that your typical sales person flushes because they're like, Ah, they're lost. I didn't get the deal. They [00:12:00] went somewhere else, blah, blah, blah. They're just to make those assumptions, whereas the OSC keeps fighting for that lead.

Ingrid Ricks: That's absolutely right. So, from online sales leads, but even walk-ins, to your point, Kevin. For us, the way that we build out here at Convertly, our follow-up process, just to give you guys an example. We actually have 16 different follow-up processes based on where that lead is at in their buyer journey. So, a lot of the times an age leads becomes an age lead when they're nonresponsive. Right? When I was an OSC, I know that my follow-up process was 30 days, and then they become an age lead right. F

or us, where we differ is we have the first 30-day initial follow up in an effort to elicit a response, but then after that we have a long-term follow-up that extends for about another six months. Then we deploy our age lead follow up that then extends to another year. So, effectively, you could be following up with this lead [00:13:00] for, you know, two years before it even goes into your loss bucket. But I have team members that actually just are relentless and will not give up. And believe it or not, we have been able to procure sales from leads that have been in our builders pipeline for three or four years.

Kevin Weitzel: And doesn't that come down to just the average timeline that it takes for initial touch to final close, you know, that gap? Because in the bicycle industry, if you didn't sell somebody, you didn't close a deal in two weeks, you lost the sale. In the motorcycle industry, if you didn't sell somebody a motorcycle in a month, or a car for that matter, you have a month. If you didn't sell it in that month timeframe, you don't have the sale. It's gone. In the home building industry it's a much larger window, isn't it? Do you know of some of those stats off the top of your head?

Ingrid Ricks: They are a much larger, you know, window. And I'll give you an example. So a lot of the builders that we work with are in the active adult arena, so 55 or better. And we all know that their buying cycle is a lot longer than the traditional home buyer that is not an age restricted, right? So, [00:14:00] typically when it's traditional home buyers, they make their decision within 60 to 90 days is what we see, historically, right?

But active adults, they typically will start their home search two years ahead of time. Now we're honing it in to where they've narrowed it down to one year. But the leads that those builders are putting into their pipeline today is not going to convert until next year. So, if you are only following up with them, or your OSC is only following up with them for 30 days, then they're going to forget about you a year from now when they're ready to make the decision.

Greg Bray: So, Ingrid, when a builder comes to you and says, Hey, we want some help improving our program, understanding where we could make changes, what are some of the questions you start with, some of the things that you look at first as you try to evaluate where they're at and what opportunities exist for improvement?

Ingrid Ricks: Yeah. So, for us, when we initially have the conversation with the builder who [00:15:00] wants to improve their online sales program, it's really important for us to do our own discovery. We really need to take the time, and for us, it's a 30-day discovery program to understand how they operate. Because I can't effectively diagnose where the gaps are in your process if I don't fully understand how you're operating as a builder.

That's not just submitting a form online and seeing where the lead goes. It's me really doing a deep dive and seeing, okay, what happens when we submit a form? Where does it go into the CRM? How many touch points do you have? What other technology do you deploy? Do you have UTour, NterNow? Do you have RingCentral, CallRail? All of these different technologies needs to be working seamlessly together in order to make sure that your online sales program is working efficiently.

So, at the end of the 30 days is when we effectively say, Hey, these are the gaps that we've figured out in your process, and [00:16:00] these are the recommendations that we would make to efficiently relaunch your online sales program. Now, to your point, if you're wanting a quick answer, Greg, a lot of the time it is primarily the way that their CRM is set up. That's the quick answer. More often than not, I would be comfortable in saying that a hundred percent of the time that we have reviewed CRMs, they are not set up efficiently to manage leads in a way that you can continually convert them.

Greg Bray: All right. Give us one thing they need to fix in the CRM. Just one.

Kevin Weitzel: One, just one. A juicy one.

Ingrid Ricks: Follow-up process. Have one.

Greg Bray: Have one. Okay. Yeah,

Ingrid Ricks: That's right.

Kevin Weitzel: So, with that said, let me ask you this, because I am unabashedly an artist, formerly known as Prince, Ingrid Rick's fan. I always have been. I think of you as a friend, not just a work colleague. I truly value the [00:17:00] expertise that you bring to the equation. So, let me ask you this. With Convertly Solutions, obviously, I'm a believer that anybody can benefit from a relationship with you, but what would you say would be your optimal client? Or what pain point would a builder need to have to say, You know what? Let's reach out to them.

Ingrid Ricks: Yeah. Well, one, if you obviously do not have an online sales program, please reach out to us. And two, I think there's this misconception that you have to have X amount of leads, or you have to sell X amount of homes to start an online sales program. It's worth a conversation even if you don't believe that you need one or if you don't believe that you have enough leads. Because again, I want to impart this on builders, however big or small you are, your initial point of contact with buyers is your website, and if you don't have anybody there that is dedicated to answering the calls or answering those lead inquiries, you're losing buyers right off the bat. So, [00:18:00] please do yourself a favor; it is worth a conversation.

Kevin Weitzel: So, a follow up to that, because Greg and I have both run into this. We've seen it to where somebody says, Hey, we're looking at redoing our website. So, I'm like, okay, let me refer you to a couple people. And then when they do that, they follow that up with, Oh, well, I've got a niece or a nephew that knows how to use the internet, so we're going to put them in charge of that. Do you feel that you have that same kind of problem? Oh, well, I've got a niece or a nephew. They're always on their phone, so they could be a good OSC. I'll put them in the position. Is that a crucial mistake?

Ingrid Ricks: Yeah. And I think what I see more often than not is builders will say, Oh, well, we have a, whether it's a sales assistant or a marketing professional, or a designer, whatever it is, that doesn't have enough volume right now, so they can do this part-time as well.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah.

Ingrid Ricks: Right. So, that always makes me cringe because again, despite what you may think, that it's not a full-time position, it is absolutely a full-time position. That is a [00:19:00] critical mistake that a lot of builders make where they think that they can put a part-time person into this role and have it be split with something else. We see that all the time. And what happens is, because the role is split, they're not solely focused on speed to lead.

Greg Bray: So, Ingrid, you made a reference earlier to AI. Let's talk a little bit more about some of the ways that these newer AI tools might be useful for OSCs or where are some of the promises not matching up with reality on what's possible that you're seeing as people are trying to leverage these as an attempt to either get faster or to avoid paying somebody or all the different things that they're trying to do with it?

Ingrid Ricks: I think AI is a fantastic tool. I use it every day, for myself as well. Relative to the online sales role, I think there's so many uses for AI. You could use it for obviously automation, right? For those non-responsive leads, that's an easy plugin. But what you have to be careful of [00:20:00] is regardless of what AI or technology that you're using, there's no replacement for the human connection.

 The three of us know here, if you've ever tried to shop for anything online, or specifically when you're looking to purchase a home, you still have questions. A lot of the times, the AI or chat or whatever the feature is, can only give you such a small amount of information where you need a little bit more detail. Nothing can replace that.

Greg Bray: As someone who is digging in deep into helping these builders generate more leads, because obviously an OSC who doesn't have enough to do is because there's not enough leads coming through the website, right? You've looked at a lot of websites for builders. You've kind of seen what's working, what's not. What are some of the things that you recommend builders improve or change on the website to help with that lead generation to keep that OSC busy?

Ingrid Ricks: That's right. Well, I would say have a distinctive call to action in every single [00:21:00] page. I think that's where a lot of builders still miss, is that the call to action or contact desk button or phone numbers, the buyer is still having to search for that. When they do, they get really frustrated if they don't have it there instantly. So, have a distinct call to action. Make it easy for them to contact you.

But also on the flip side, this is something that Kevin and I have talked about, and actually we spoke on at the Builders' Show last year, is have it be responsive and meet your client where they're at. So, if you have a lot of cultural buyers, make sure that you have that functionality on your website to shift the languages on your website. I know here in DFW, that's something that's pretty big. We have a lot of cultural buyers here. I don't see very many builders who have that functionality on their website.

Greg Bray: That's one I wasn't expecting. That's good. That's great. It is something about meeting them where they are. For sure. Thank you for that. Well, Ingrid, for someone who is looking for a [00:22:00] couple of quick tips about how to make their online sales program or their team perform better, what are just those top two or three thoughts of, Hey, have you thought about this or that, and here's some things you should be looking at?

Ingrid Ricks: Yeah. So, I would say definitely, I don't want builders to assume that it's a people problem, first of all, when their OSCs are not performing to the standards. I think it's really taking a step back and looking at your process. So, reevaluating your speed to lead, how quickly your OSCs are able to respond to leads, but also taking a look at your follow-up processes. So, if you only have one follow-up process that engages with your lead for 30 days, then you're missing a lot of opportunity there. And then, also, I think a lot of the times, builders should also look at spot checking and pulling calls because that will be telling in how your OSC team is performing.

Greg Bray: Well, Ingrid, this has been a great conversation. We appreciate having you on with us [00:23:00] and sharing so many insights. Any last words or pieces of advice you want to leave with our audience today?

Ingrid Ricks: An online sales program is definitely the way of the future. If you're not already there, you need to consider it. I don't know what else we can say about that because I feel like we've said that over and over for the last five years or even longer. But if you're not already there, have the conversation or start the conversation.

Greg Bray: Well, Ingrid, if somebody wants to connect with you, what's the best way for them to reach out and get in touch?

Ingrid Ricks: Yep. Please visit our website at convertlysolutions.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn. And right now it's set to Ingrid E Ricks. So, Ingrid E Ricks is my profile on LinkedIn, so I will see you guys there.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you Ingrid, and thank you, everybody, for listening today to The Home Builder Digital Marketing podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. [00:24:00]