148 How Sales Can Support Marketing - Keith McKinney Jan 18 2023

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: We want to give a quick special thank you to today's episode sponsor NterNow. Be sure to learn more at nternow.com. That's N T E R N O W.com.

And we're excited today to welcome to the show, Keith McKinney. Keith is the Vice President of Organizational Development at New Home Star. Welcome, Keith. Thanks for joining us today.

Keith McKinney: Well, thank you guys for having me. I could not be more [00:01:00] excited to join you two. I've been hearing a lot about this and listening a lot. So, long-time listener, first-time participant. I think that's how they say it.

Greg Bray: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, it's always good to know that somebody besides our family listens to it, so that's always great. Well, Keith, for those who haven't met you yet, why don't you give us that quick introduction, help us get to know you a little?

Keith McKinney: Yeah. So, VP of Organizational Development. That's all fancy. What does that really mean? That just means at New Home Star, I'm in charge of people, so all of our people. New Home Star, we're a national sales and marketing company for new home builders, and so we work with different home builders across the country. We're in 24 different states, in over 42 different markets. We partner with them and they outsource their sales function to us, and we staff their model homes with our agents.

So, any builder that we work with, you will walk into the model home, interact with that agent, and leave, and you would never know that the sales engine [00:02:00] behind that agent is actually a New Home Star agent because they wear the name tag of the builder. They carry the business card of the builder. They send emails from the builder's server. So, you would never know from the public who is the training muscle behind that agent until much later in the process. That's our business model is, we put our customers and clients first, just like both of you, and their needs and their customers take precedents, and then we're just the third party that makes sure that sales engine goes and revs as high as it can.

My job as overseeing people is making sure our training processes are in place, making sure training is in place. I always tell my job is to make sure the french fry tastes the same. If you're on one side of the earth to the other side, we wanna make sure our training processes and procedures are engineered in a way to where they're applicable and they're administered in every single place where we do [00:03:00] business

Kevin Weitzel: Number one, that's fancy pants. It's awesome. Number two, we cannot proceed and dive deeper into that whole onion that you just put in front of us, cause we need to peel it back, until we find out something personal about you, not housing related.

Keith McKinney: Not housing related. Well, live in Orlando, Florida. Married with two kids. My kids are grown, 26 and 23, but still live in the house with me. So, I am one of those people you read about. But they have their own jobs, trying to get a house on their own. Yeah. Not happening. So, like, I am the guy you read about in Builder Magazine all the time.

So, multi-generational housing and all of that. So, yeah, my daughter is a dancer for Disney. My son is kind of in the business. He is a junior underwriter for a mortgage company by day, but in the evening, he is a Christian music artist. I help him with his music as I am a music producer at night sometimes. So, yeah, a whole bunch of that. [00:04:00] There's my personal life in a nutshell.

Kevin Weitzel: And then before we dive in just a little bit more, you said something that was very interesting, that used to be a radical rule in print, and you said that you wanna make sure the fries taste the same no matter where you're at. In print, it's actually the same rule.

Like I know that we were the printing source for Taylor Morrison, east Coast to west Coast. They were very adamant that their printed material had to look the same in their Florida office as it does in the California office.

Keith McKinney: Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: So, I can 100% relate to that whole making sure that that process and the treatment and the A, B, C, D steps are all in place.

Greg Bray: Now see, Kevin, I have to admit, when he said french fries, I thought we were getting a totally different reaction from you.

Kevin Weitzel: No, I'm on a diet. I'm eating salads. I had a salad for lunch. I'll have a salad for dinner.

Keith McKinney: Yeah. French fries are kryptonite to me. So, I talk about them, but I stay away from them at all points.

Greg Bray: Well, and Keith, I gotta say that you can tell that you're a great father because when we ask you to tell us [00:05:00] something personal, it's all about your kids. That was great too. But tell us a little more about how you got into new home sales and training salespeople to make sure that they all taste the same French fries.

Keith McKinney: No, I don't chew people out that bad. Funny thing is, I was in education before I got in a new home sales. I was teaching marketing at a business college in Dallas, Fort Worth as well as part of marketing education for the Dallas Independent School District.

So, I started out in education, but my degree was in communications and marketing, and so I was in that marketing world. And I happened to have to teach a couple of courses in professional selling. Now, mind you, I had never sold anything in my life. I'm a military brat. Only shopping we did was at AAFES on base.

I didn't know anything about selling anything, but I told them, Hey, is there an instructor's teacher handbook? And they said, Yeah, there's an instructor's [00:06:00] textbook. I said, Okay, gimme that and I'll teach it. Well, apparently they thought I did okay. There was just somebody that was in the class and said, you should talk to my brother. And I said, Oh, okay. Who's your brother?

Well, their brother just happened to be a division president for a home builder in Dallas Fort Worth. I ended up with a gentleman from a home builder in Dallas Fort Worth, and literally within a month I was sitting in a model home. I sold a house my second day of work by accident. After I sold that house and saw the commission check I was due, I was like, whatever I got to do and whatever I got to learn, it is about to go down because they don't know what they've created. I literally set off, and that was in 2001.

That was when the round of sales trainers that were going around, Tom Richie, Bob Schultz, Charles Clark III, Nicki Joy, when they were [00:07:00] traveling the country, and our builders would bring them in. Greg and Kevin, you know how they take a break during an all-day training session? I wouldn't let 'em eat. I wouldn't let 'em drink. I wouldn't let 'em go to the bathroom. I was just killing them with questions because I just wanted to know more.

I volunteered to drive them to the airport. I picked them up. I carried their bags. I did everything I could to spend every lick of time I could with anybody who was talking about new home sales. So, I just wanted to get better so I could sell a bunch of homes. My VP of Sales, which we all love her, Mar'Sue Haffner. She was my first VP of sales and she got busy one time and she said, Keith, I'm busy, I need you to go teach model demonstration to the new people. I said, Okay, that's my jam. You want me to go teach model demo? All right, good. Honestly, Greg, that's kind of how this whole thing started.

Mar'Sue came back to me the next week, said, what did you do? I was like, I just went and taught. [00:08:00] You didn't give me anything, so I went and taught model demo. She's like, I've spent all week, but all they're talking about is your freaking model demo class. So, that kinda cracked the door a little bit to where I got exposed to the training world. I just started training people within my builder, and then of course it grew to training people outside of my builder. And then years passed on, it came to helping out Tom and helping out Bob, and it just went from there.

I tell everybody, I just grew to where I am because I mean, I played 21 years of football and as a quarterback, you had to study everything and you had to know what everybody was doing. So, I just treated this the same way. I was a student of the game. I'm still a student of the game. I still try to learn from every single person I can, and that's kind of what's helped propel my career. And then I joined New Home Star 14 years ago and here we are.

Greg Bray: Now, Keith, when you step back and [00:09:00] think about teaching and training and helping new home sales professionals, when you look at the last few years, a lot of 'em didn't have to work very hard, and there's a lot of new ones that have come into the industry. That's all they've known is kind of the last few years until, of course, the last six months, or nine months or however you wanna look at it. So, what do you tell these folks that are just really in shell shock mode with the changes that have been going on with the market, interest rates, and everything else? And what kinds of tips do you have for trainers who are trying to help their teams kind of work through this into the quote, new normal end quote?

Keith McKinney: Yeah. I've been telling leaders and trainers that the first thing we all gotta admit is this is our fault. The mindset of a sales agent right now and where they are, this is our fault because, respectfully so, when COVID happened February of 2020, we were all freaked the hell out. We were [00:10:00] all scared to death that our livelihood, this thing we've dedicated our lives to, was about to go away.

When the market literally two months later took off, all of us were like, thank God, let's just ride this wave. And we all just sat back and just said, Go, people go. We kind of knew what was happening, but that fear of this was all new. This is a new world. We just said, Listen, just go with. It ended up being so much better in terms of sales than what we originally feared in February.

So, now we fast forward another year and now this past year interest rates then all of a sudden there was a jolt to the whole train and now those agents are like, You didn't prepare me for this. The honest truth, the answer is, No, we didn't. So, I think what I could tell everybody now is you gotta put your real [00:11:00] training gloves on, and you don't get to just tell people, Go do this and go do that. If you go to a boxing gym, they don't just tell them Hey, go practice over there. Most of the time they have a trainer holding those other set of gloves and saying, Okay, you need to hit here. Okay, now you need to hit over here.

They need real-time sales trainers and sales leadership that's out in the models, out in the field with them doing hand-to-hand combat and teaching them how to make it through this. You're not gonna be able to lead them through this being a ivory tower. Ooh. I said, I just said that. Sorry. But being a ivory tower, armchair sales manager, sales director. That's not gonna be the way you're gonna move your sales team.

Kevin Weitzel: You can't just wave a pen around and be like an order taker.

Keith McKinney: No. No.

Kevin Weitzel: Step right up folks. Step right up. I got houses ready to rock and roll. Just come on down. I gotta wait list out the ying yang. Let's do this. No?

Keith McKinney: In 2020 when [00:12:00] that's what happened, we were all so happy to have sales, we just let it happen.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah.

Keith McKinney: We were grateful and trust me, everybody was grateful. We said let it happen cause we were scared to death on what it could have been.

Kevin Weitzel: But Keith, when you jump on a surfboard and you get on that ginormous wave, next thing you know, cause you don't wanna get off that wave. It's huge. It's the biggest wave you've ever been on. Next thing you know, you're on a deserted island with seven people and having to ask Gilligan, you know, where things are. That's not good.

Keith McKinney: It's not good, but while you're on that wave, you think it's never going to end.

Kevin Weitzel: That's right.

Keith McKinney: You know, all of the training that we're working on is not just geared for the salesperson, but we are gearing it towards the sales managers. So, that way the sales managers know how to be effective when they go out and meet with their salespeople one-on-one and help them push through everything that we're dealing with right now in terms of inflation, supply and [00:13:00] demand chain, and interest rates, and all the economics, and affordability crisis that's no doubt coming. So, that's already here. But the demand for housing is still the highest it's ever been. We're going to be okay, but it's going to take real leadership.

Greg Bray: So Keith, looking back, you mentioned that you got started in new home sales in the early two thousands, which meant that you had the joy of going through 2007, 2008.

Keith McKinney: Yep.

Greg Bray: And some people have compared what's happening now to then, but as someone who's been through both, what's kind of your comparison there between those two events and how do you see that?

Keith McKinney: The comparison that I make between the two is that the true difference was the demand for housing literally just plummeted in 2007. In 2007, 2008, the true demand for housing plummeted and [00:14:00] because everybody, and I say everybody, every builder had overextended with their land buys and their inventory that they had on the ground.

It was an absolute opposite of what we have, where there was a huge supply that was out there, and don't add all the foreclosures and everything else that was flooding into the market. So, you had a huge supply and the demand for housing was plummeting down at the bottom. For a salesperson, you're trying to go find people and talk them into, Hey, now you need to buy a house. When they finally did make the decision, they had choices that were not just at your builder, but the builder across the street, the builder down the street. Oh, that $50,000 marked-down foreclosure down the street. They had choices galore.

The difference now that we're feeling is the supply is super [00:15:00] low. The demand is really high, and so anybody who really wants to buy a house, their choices are very few. The difference is right now, Greg is the best-dressed girl gets to the go to the ball. That's what's happening.

That's what we tell our agents is when you walk your inventory, if you have an inventory home, you make sure that thing sparkles because if it sparkles, it's gonna sell. The best-looking thing is going to fly and it's flying off the shelf. Even though we have all these other factors that are playing this negative part, there are still some overwhelming market factors that still make it favorable. You just have to take the time to express that to your customer.

Kevin Weitzel: There is no excuse for a funky model home. If you walk into any Harley Davidson dealership in the country, I challenge you to find a fingerprint on the chrome. You won't. Because when you're not helping a [00:16:00] client, you are wiping the chrome with your microfiber cloths. I mean, it's just the way it is. So yeah, if salespeople don't have that model looking pristine all the time, shame on them.

Keith McKinney: Yep. Yeah. So, it's a lot right now. We have a lot, I mean, a bunch of agents in our industry nationwide that have been doing this, Greg, for less than, what? Four years. So, they don't even have a point of reference of what 2007, 2008, 2009. They don't even understand what that was.

I know we have a lot of sales managers that are in sales management that was not in management in 2007 and 2008. The only thing I could tell them is, Man, don't just be out there trying to coach somebody through something and you don't know the history. Go find somebody that actually went through it, that are still in it. Don't get me started on the many people who left the business in 2008 and [00:17:00] now I'm getting phone calls trying to get back in. Yeah. Just between us, I ain't got time for that.

I was there, a group of people that I know that we were dedicated to this industry. We were passionate about our jobs and we were gonna push through anything that happened. Listen, I was ready to do whatever February 2020. That night when everybody went home, I looked at my family, I said, Okay. So, it was some real conversation that night. I was prepared, if I gotta go help construction dig the ditch for the foundation, so be it. I was preparing for whatever came our way. But, you know, our market prevailed.

Greg Bray: Back to, uh, making french fries taste good.

Keith McKinney: If I gotta go cook the fries, I will go cook the fries.

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[00:18:00]I appreciate the perspective, Keith, cuz I think you're right. There's a lot of benefit that comes from the wisdom of experience. That's how we politely say we're getting old, but we've got the wisdom of experience. There is some, okay, this too [00:19:00] shall pass. This is different. It's not the end of the world. There's some changes we need to learn how to do differently and there's some fundamentals we need to remember and apply.

Keith McKinney: Yeah.

Greg Bray: But it's not the same type of doomsday crash that was going on back then because there's fundamentally things that are different in the market right now.

Keith McKinney: Yeah.

Greg Bray: I think those are great reminders. Thank you.

Keith McKinney: Yeah, of course.

Greg Bray: Now, one of the things that's really different, of course, right now is how digital the sales process is compared to then. As you come both from a marketing and a sales training background, how do you help new home sales professionals kind of evolve with the digital piece of the buyer's journey that they don't necessarily get to tell them everything? They're learning stuff on the website or from other sources. How does that play into your sales training?

Keith McKinney: First thing is I make them grateful that they're not walking around with this little small black box on their belt clip that beeps all the time. I never forget when they gave us beepers as salespeople. [00:20:00] That way they could tell us when to call the corporate office. So, I make sure that they're grateful that we are past that. That was our form of digital marketing back then. But no, as you think of digital marketing, the smartphone change everything in our world today.

Even as late as last night just watching a couple of sporting events and you literally watch people in the crowd. Half of the game, they're watching their phone instead of actually watching the sporting event. If people in their leisure time and their work time are always using some type of a digital interface, you gotta understand when they are about to make a purchase as big as this, they're gonna spend a lot of time in that digital space to make sure they arm themselves.

I think digital marketing at its core, is just manufacturing results based on the consumer fear that they're gonna make the wrong decision. The reason why we go look up reviews on Amazon [00:21:00] before we buy anything, cause we don't wanna make the wrong decision. The reason we go and see what all the different choices and what builders saying about this, and we compare floor plans is because we don't want to make the wrong decision.

Digital marketing is literally about how do you give the right information to your customer in the way that they need to digest the information. So, they feel like that by choosing your product, they are making the right decision, and not just the best decision. They gotta feel emotionally that I'm making the right decision. And that's why most customers go to the digital space cause they're trying to get as much information that they believe they can trust. You and I as digital marketers know that not all digital marketing people put truthful information out there.

Kevin Weitzel: No. No.

Keith McKinney: But that's where that saying came, [00:22:00] Oh, I know what it is cause I Googled it. People believe whatever they see in a digital space as their third-party truth. That's what makes the importance of your digital marketing for a home builder so important because what? Ninety-six now? Ninety-six percent of all sales start online because they go and look it up and all the stuff.

The biggest point to answer your question, Greg, is I would tell a salesperson is, not just your builder website, go to your community page consistently and often. See what your community page is saying about you and make sure it has all the right and appropriate information and if it doesn't, work with your marketing director and get that fixed.

Greg Bray: I was just gonna say, Keith, that's marketing's job. That's not the salesperson's job to check the website content. Come on. What are you talking about?

Keith McKinney: Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: He's polishing the chrome. That's what you gotta do.

Keith McKinney: Yes. I always tell salespeople, especially the new [00:23:00] ones. I say, Hey, we're gonna talk about what you're gonna do with your downtime. Oh, I'm so busy. I was like, you forget I've done your job. I've done your job. Even at your busiest, there are three to four hours, and I'm being very conservative here, three to four hours a week, where you have this time that you either call your brother, call your mom, pay the electric bill from the model. Like, you're not fooling nobody.

We know that there's some time in there. So, what are you doing with that time? Could you take 45 minutes and go to your splash page for your community and make sure it's accurate? Maybe you sold the heck out of some lots last week. Is it updated on your website? Maybe you sold some houses, some inventory that still say available that should say sold. Make sure all of your stuff is tight every single week because you're getting visitors every day that are looking for the information so they [00:24:00] know that they're making the right decision.

Kevin Weitzel: Let me ask you a question though because something's kind of been bothering me since we almost first started talking. New Home Star manages the sales process for builders. So, they can outsource it to you, wash their hands of it, and just watch the magic happen. But that means that you have to work with the digital assets and the tech-savvy or hillbilly factor of various builders around the country. So, is there a builder that is so hillbilly that you wouldn't be able to help them unless they stepped up their game?

The second part of that question is there a sweet spot where you can fill in? Like, if they're lacking in tech, can you come in and say, We find that we have a lot of success with X, we find we have a lot of success with Y.

Keith McKinney: Yeah, so we have an entire suite of products. So, I'm based in Orlando, but New Home Star, our corporate office, our corporate support team, is based out of Chicago and we have a office there of what I like to [00:25:00] call just wizard-level type minds. So, if we meet with the hillbilly builder that just started his own home building company, and he's already sold all his houses to all the family and friends he knew, but now he realizes, Wow, I gotta be a big boy and I gotta actually do some real marketing, and he partners with us.

The first evaluation we do is, Hey, what are you doing for marketing? Here are our suggestions to you, and he says, Well, I don't know where to go for that. Well, okay. We have this star marketing depart. We can fill in these gaps for you. We try to run the gamut. And then we have some partners like Toll Brothers. Like, no, they clearly don't need our marketing help, so we just stand on the sidelines and say, Hey, if you need us, we're here. Otherwise, y'all got it. We're just along for the ride to do our part.

Greg Bray: I love Keith, the [00:26:00] continued theme here though that the sales team has some responsibility to help marketing and to be able to provide some feedback, provide, some overviews, some reviews, some help to make sure that the data is accurate with what's really going on the ground cause they're closest to it.

Whether that's, you know, your team updating it, the builder has a different team updating it. Being able to provide that feedback and feel responsible for it, and not just think it's somebody else's job and then complain when you don't get any leads. That's a great insight and I appreciate that.

Keith McKinney: Yeah. We do pass on some ownership to the sales agents. Let's just get real, like when the lumber crisis was hitting all the builders and the supply chain issues and costs were going outta whack, I know builders were looking at us sideways because they were going to closing where they were losing money, realtor commissions were cut. Builders weren't getting their bonuses because it took too long to get the house done, but the salesperson was sitting here making their normal commission.

[00:27:00] So, we understand the pain when that season happens. We want our sales agents to understand that they have ownership in this entire processes too, and so they have to do some of the work, doing the extra marketing things to help out marketing, doing the extra things that can make their construction guys' job a little bit easier. Yeah, we encourage and lightly push our sales agents toward that direction because that ownership in the community, at the end of the day, is what helps them sell more homes. By the time that ownership transfers to the customer, when the customer walks through the door, that transfer of energy, that transfer of that ownership, gets that customer to the ownership of their own house a whole lot faster.

Greg Bray: Well, Keith, this has been a great conversation so far and wanna be respectful of your time. Just a few other questions. Since you're an educator by training and by actual craft, what are your thoughts on taking ownership of your own [00:28:00] education and what resources do you recommend people look to, to help them continue to grow personally and professionally?

Keith McKinney: Yeah. The funny thing is I'm part of the digital marketing advisory board for University of South Florida. One of the big things that come out of that is they have certificate programs, and I know Harvard, when everybody hears Harvard, they're like, Oh my gosh, that must be expensive. But actually, if you look at their certificate programs, and there are a bunch of universities that are starting certificate programs where you can go get a certificate of marketing. You can go get a certificate in different areas, leadership. You can go get a certificate in creating change.

I would tell somebody, especially if you're already actively in new home sales. A lot of times people go, Where am I gonna find time to go get a degree? Do I need to go get my MBA? Do I need to go get a higher degree? I won't say that it's bad. I went back and got my MBA about three years ago. I'm not [00:29:00] telling anybody that's what you should do. With COVID, and the distance education learning, all the universities have stepped up their game in terms of their educational offerings.

So, I would tell salespeople and leaders to look at the certificate programs at their local universities and their state universities and see what is offered that applies to their job. Most of the time, these courses they're online, they're virtual courses, and they're only two or three weeks long and you leave with a lot of fresh ideas. You're in cohorts with four other people in different industries, and it helps you all around.

Greg Bray: I think that's a great idea because you're right, so much of that's online now and education's more available than ever before. You know, yeah, some of 'em may charge a fee. It's not all free. You're not talking about tens of thousands of dollars for tuition. A few hundred bucks to get into some of these and actually do some great learning.

Kevin Weitzel: It's still a step above Velvet Jones's classes. [00:30:00] Just so you know.

Keith McKinney: It's not gonna make you go take a yoga class as an elective. You don't have to go find out what your filler courses are gonna be. The other thing I would just say is if there is a new home industry professional and you're not subscribed to some sort of e-newsletter, eMagazine, like a mortgage eNewsletter. Start there. If you're not part of something that's sending educational stuff and articles to your inbox, go change that today.

There's too many outfits out there that are spitting out just really good stuff that keeps you in the know and that'll keep your mind educational-wise to your profession at the top of your game. Rather than if we just have sales agents that just literally wake up, go sit in a model from nine to six and go home and never do anything else. That's not the industry professional [00:31:00] that we are all hoping to interact with.

Greg Bray: And you already told us we've got, you know, three hours a week we can squeeze that in, right?

Keith McKinney: I'm being conservative there cause everybody knows traffic is down. So don't get me started, Greg. It's probably much higher than that.

Greg Bray: Well, Keith, this has been great. Do you have any last thoughts or words of advice you wanted to leave with our listeners before we wrap?

Keith McKinney: If anything, is just that 2023 has the potential just because of decreased supply, the demand didn't go anywhere, now that our builders are figuring out their supply chain. A lot of builders are dropping, I've heard it across the nation, dropping more inventory on the ground. 2023, has the chance to be a little bit of a bounce back year from the second and third quarter of last year, as a lot of these levers start to level out a little bit. So, prepare yourself. Get prepared now so that way you can take advantage when the new normal sets in, and when the new normal [00:32:00] sets in but the demand for housing is still high, that will still add a good recipe for a really good delicious french fry since we're talking about fries.

Greg Bray: Well, I gotta hurry up and go order some lunch here pretty soon. Well, Keith, if somebody wants to reach out and connect with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Keith McKinney: You can reach out to me on LinkedIn, or you can just email me. You can email me at kmckinney, M C K I N N E y@newhomestar.com.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you, Keith, so much for sharing your time, and another thank you to our episode sponsor of NterNow. Make sure you learn more at nternow.com. Thanks, everybody for listening. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Wetzel without a house. Thank you. [00:33:00]