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Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast Digital Marketing Podcast Hosted by Greg Bray and Kevin Weitzel

183 Home Builder Lead Management Tools - Heidi Schroeder

This week on The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast, Heidi Schroeder of ECI Software Solutions joins Greg and Kevin to discuss how effective lead management tools can help home builders facilitate customer relationships, increase customer satisfaction, and promote business growth.

One of the most significant tasks home builders encounter with lead management tools is being able to keep them up-to-date on a regular basis. Heidi says, “Mostly what I see is the challenge of consistency. Your database needs to be consistently updated with the right ratings, the right projects and communities entered into the system, I see that as the biggest challenge that people have. Being able to really understand how to clean that data and set aside time to maintain that consistently great program is the biggest challenge for everybody.”

An effective customer relationship management system will permit home builders to quickly and easily update them so that digital marketers, salespeople, and potential customers all experience accurate and timely data. Heidi explains, “A real CRM really should be able to automatically integrate your leads from your website or from other sources and allow you to set up dedicated follow-up processes, allow you to send marketing emails through your database, allow you to get great data. So, a CRM of a Post-it note doesn't allow for any of those things. A CRM of remembering in your brain where you're waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning, remembering you forgot to call somebody 2 weeks ago, that's not a real CRM.”

During day-to-day tasks, it's important for home builder sales and marketing teams to constantly maintain the perspective of creating a customer journey that is as smooth and as simple as possible. Heidi says, “Just keep your eye on the big picture. I think that it's so easy to get really deep into our work. Whether we're on the sales side or the marketing side, it's easy to get really deep into the details of our work and we forget that we have a very, very important job. So, each part of our business should be aligned with making a new home easier to buy or build...Keep that high-level view every day of how can we make this easier and make sure that our entire team is aligned with that path that we have in place to make this easier. Our customers already think it's too hard to buy a home. The news that they hear every day, don't give them the excuse to make that the truth.”

Listen to this week's episode to learn more about how home builders can benefit from the proper use of lead management systems.

About the Guest:

In her current role as Senior Consultant for ECI Software’s Lasso CRM product, Heidi helps builders throughout North America understand how to leverage technology to scale their business and improve the home buying experience for their customers. She empathizes with today’s home buyer and aims to drive the industry make buying and building a new home a painless experience. Heidi lives in Washington State with her husband and two sons.

Transcript

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 Zonda Livabl.

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to have joining us on the show, Heidi Schroeder. Heidi is a Senior Consultant at ECI Software Solutions. Welcome, Heidi, and thanks for being with us today.

Heidi Schroeder: Hi there. Thank you so much for having me today.

Greg Bray: Well, Heidi, I think you are a well-known person in the home building industry, but just for those few who may not know you yet, why don't you give us that quick introduction? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Heidi Schroeder: Of [00:01:00] course. So, I usually like to introduce myself as hi, I'm Heidi Schroeder and I love my job. But that's so true. I truly do. So, I'm the Senior Consultant at ECI Software Solutions, and in that role, I really help sales and marketing teams leverage technology and grow their business, but my particular focus is Lasso CRM. I know that most people know Lasso more than they know ECI, so I always like to put that in there. I'm the Lasso lady, Lasso lover. That's usually how I like to say it.

I live and work in Washington State. I work remotely and I travel quite a bit to work in person with our Lasso clients. And I'm here with my work-from-home buddy, my golden retriever, Willow. Right now my two teenage sons are home for the summer. So, they have been threatened with violence to not pop in while I'm on the podcast today.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, first I'm going to flatter you. Hopefully, it doesn't make your cheeks all turn red. But here's what we got. [00:02:00] In my years in the home building industry, I have been in practically every circle out there. There's a lot of people that know me either for my sideburns or just whatever, or just for how obnoxious I can be. But of all the people I've met in this industry, you fit into a very small bubble of people that not one person I've ever run into has ever said anything but positive things about you.

Heidi Schroeder: That's so nice of you to say.

Kevin Weitzel: Everybody's got, like me, I've got the one or two people that I've offended with some of my off-color jokes or whatever, and it's only one or two people. It couldn't be more than that. But everybody has somebody that they've rubbed in the wrong way. Heidi, you're one of those people that just have never rubbed anybody in the wrong way. You are like that awesome person.

Heidi Schroeder: I'm sure they're out there, Kevin, just dig a little bit harder, but I try my best.

Kevin Weitzel: I should put out a questionnaire.

Heidi Schroeder: I try to stay positive, you know, without being a little too Pollyanna, but I think it's just my nature to be a helper.

Kevin Weitzel: Could I use Lasso to send out a questionnaire to all the [00:03:00] people in Home Builder Land to ask, Do you hate Heidi Schroeder?

Heidi Schroeder: Funny you say that. You could use a Lasso self-serve registrant update. You could ask that question. Please don't. Please don't. I don't want to see the answers to that.

Kevin Weitzel: All right. So, on a personal level, I just want to let you know that it's an honor having you on because I also appreciate you very much and have nothing but a high regard for you.

Heidi Schroeder: Thank you.

Kevin Weitzel: We're now at the point where you have to open up your kimono a little bit and let us know something personal about you that has nothing to do with the home builder industry that people will learn about you on our podcast.

Heidi Schroeder: I'm pretty much an open book with everybody for a lot of things. There's not a lot behind the kimono. I would say, I spend a lot of time with my family. I love my husband, my kids. We do a lot together with our little core group. One thing that we do that maybe not a lot of people know is I'm a winemaker. So, my husband and I took a winemaking class about 15 years ago, and we got totally hooked. We [00:04:00] love it.

We really don't drink that much of it. My husband's more of a beer drinker than a wine drinker, but we really love to share our wine with friends and family. I like to cook, he likes to cook, so we share a lot with our friends and family. So, we've tried a lot of grape varietals, but we prefer to make wine from fruit that we grow ourselves or forage ourselves, which is fortunate we live in the Pacific Northwest because we have a lot of blackberries right now.

Kevin Weitzel: Oddly enough, I'm a fall-down wino. I love me some wine.

Heidi Schroeder: Well, I can hook you up. I can hook you up. The challenge is traveling with it, really. That's the big challenge sometimes.

Kevin Weitzel: Sacrifice a couple of pairs of shoes at IBS and bring me a bottle or two and I will be your best friend.

Heidi Schroeder: I can do that. I'll check a separate bag just full of wine.

Kevin Weitzel: Greg's about to loop us back in. Just so you know.

Heidi Schroeder: Come on.

Greg Bray: Yes, and that concludes this episode of no. [00:05:00] Well, Heidi, I think ECI has been around for a while, and folks kind of have a general idea, but I think you guys also keep growing and expanding what you have available for builders. So, give us kind of a quick overview of ECI Software Solutions and what you guys have to offer, and where Lasso kind of fits in that opportunity.

Heidi Schroeder: Yeah. So, I think a lot of people don't realize that ECI is actually a pretty large company, that we work in all kinds of different industries. Residential home construction is just one of those. In our residential home construction division, we have six products. Lasso is our CRM. That's one of those. We have MarkSystems and a lot of our clients use MarkSystems. It's the back-end accounting and construction ERP. We have LotVue, an interactive online map tool, Insearch is an interactive online design tool, and then we have BuildTools for custom builders and remodelers, and Bolt, which is a management tool for trade contractors.

I know [00:06:00] that's a lot, but really, most of the customers that I'm working with are using the first four. And Lasso and MarkSystems, LotVue, Insearch, everything kind of talks to one another. So, as an example, if you update pricing in MarkSystems, pricing in LotVue and Insearch, update on your website, that sort of thing. So, that's our special niche is having this kind of global system.

Greg Bray: So, Heidi, how did you kind of come through the home building industry and end up working with Lasso and ECI?

Heidi Schroeder: Oh, I'm going to try my best to keep this short. I had a little bit of a nontypical journey into this industry in that I'm a relative latecomer. When I turned 40, I was in a successful career doing something I was really good at, but in a terribly negative industry. I hated going to work every day and I decided that I needed a drastic change. So, I saw a job for an online sales consultant for an on-your-lot builder that was headquartered near where I [00:07:00] live and applied on a whim.

I thought it would be a good foot in the door where marketing was where I wanted to be. I did that in my early years. I was a marketer for a playground manufacturer of all things. So, I thought it was a good foot in the door. Ended up loving the industry and never wanted to leave. But, just like everybody else, COVID kind of changed some things. It actually shut down all building in Washington for 3 months.

When the pandemic hit, Washington state was the one state that said no nonessential. So, everything came to a halt, allowed us to take time to reevaluate where I wanted to be. And when the opportunity with ECI came up, it just kind of felt like divine providence. It just felt like this was the natural progression. I was born to be in this position. I'll never leave this industry. That's for sure. Mark my words. I'll never leave this industry. I love it.

Kevin Weitzel: Was that on-your-lot builder, are they still [00:08:00] around? They weren't a victim of COVID, were they?

Heidi Schroeder: They were not.

Kevin Weitzel: Who was the builder? Do you mind me asking?

Heidi Schroeder: No. It was Lexar Homes, in the Pacific Northwest. It's an on-your-lot franchise builder. So, it kind of allowed me to learn how building works. As an OSC for on your lot stuff, you have to know all the parts and pieces. So, it allowed me to just kind of accelerate my learning a little bit with how the industry works. Lexar was great to work with, and I love my folks there, but was really happy to move where I am so I can help more people.

Kevin Weitzel: Before we take a deeper dive into kind of what your actual role is, did you find being at an on-your-lot builder, especially now that you train so many varied builders, that there is a different way that you have to skin a cat, so to say, as an OSC, when you're talking to an on-your-lot builder versus a community home builder or more of a conventional builder?

Heidi Schroeder: Absolutely. An online sales consultant fields all the questions, right? Well, the questions that come up with on-your-lot [00:09:00] home building, even those really initial early questions are things like, can you build with SIPs paneling? You know, really wild questions that are thrown at you daily. So, it really forces you to learn about building and what it takes to build the home at the same time learning about how to serve your customers and push them to the appointment to make the sale. Right. So, I learned a lot about building.

I had a boss that really sat with me every day and would really impart knowledge every single day. And I think that that made all the difference. You know, I had to accelerate my learning about this industry because I came in late, and that really helped me to do that. I'm a learner. I like learning. So, soaking up all the podcasts like yours and webinars and books and everything I can helps too.

Greg Bray: So, Heidi, today, as you work primarily with the Lasso software, right, which is [00:10:00] CRM, helping people manage their leads. You help builders implement that software and optimize their use of it. Correct?

Heidi Schroeder: You're absolutely right. I help them just maximize what they're using. I help them choose other technology if they need to implement that, and just help them align the expectations of a customer experience, what your customer is expecting, help them align themselves with that, and leverage the technology to do that.

Greg Bray: So, in that role, I can only imagine that you go into so many different builders and you see some messes behind the curtain. We want the dirt, right? What are some of the messes? What are some of the challenges that builders have? Because they work so hard for leads. We all want more leads. We want more leads. We need more leads. We pay money for advertising, digital, traditional, whatever it is, and then they just blow it, right?[00:11:00] What gets in the way for so many builders in just taking care of these leads and managing their leads effectively?

Heidi Schroeder: Well, first of all, I'd love to say that there is no shame in having a mess. We've had such industry ups and downs over the past five years or so. In looking at all of our Lasso databases, I have insight into everyone's, and I can see behind the curtain. With doing that, I would say 5% have it down, 5% have everything dialed in and nailed. Everybody else has room for improvement.

Mostly what I see is the challenge of consistency. Your database is consistently updated with the right ratings, the right projects, and communities entered into the system, I see that as the biggest challenge that people have. Being able to really understand how to clean that data and set aside time to maintain that [00:12:00] consistently great program is the biggest challenge for everybody.

Greg Bray: Okay. So, you're giving people some love saying, It's okay if you have a mess, because most people do. You're not alone, right? You're giving them some love there, but at the same time, that means there's some real opportunity to differentiate and to grow if you can clean up some of this mess and you can get better at it. What have you seen some builders achieve when they really focus on getting better and trying to implement this CRM? What happens to them when they do that?

Heidi Schroeder: Yeah. When they're able to simplify their CRM, they're getting better by it from their sales agents. That's the biggest thing. The sales agents sometimes see the CRM as this burden of what they have to do. Somebody's forcing them to put notes into the system without having the real understanding of what that's used for on the marketing side. So, I see an improved adoption of the system once they have proper training [00:13:00] and some of their system cleaned up.

 I see that they're able to get good data out of their system. That's massive. Data can be used for lots of things. Using their data for future marketing, using their data to make staffing decisions. On the sales side, that's a big thing. Do we need another salesperson? We can really see that with the data. So, cleaning up allows you to fully use what you have. That's a big opportunity.

Greg Bray: [00:14:00] Hey everybody, this is Greg from Blue Tangerine and I just wanted to take a quick break to make sure you know about the upcoming Home Builder Digital Marketing Summit that Blue Tangerine is hosting together with OutHouse, October 18th and 19th in Denver, Colorado.

This is gonna be an amazing event full of digital marketing insights, knowledge, best practices, and most importantly, some fun. So, be sure that you get registered today and come hang out with us, an amazing team of speakers and presenters that are gonna be together. Again, that's October 18th and 19th in Denver, and you can learn more and get registered at buildermarketingsummit.com. We'll see you there.

Now, I've heard Kevin, in some of our other conversations, not be very nice to salespeople who refuse or don't do their job in the CRM. I mean, Kevin, this is your chance, man.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh. In my automobile days, it was called Traffic Log Pro. That was what most auto dealers and motorcycle dealers were using. They called me the TLP Nazi. Why? Because you better put your data in there. You better put every conversation you ever had in the CRM, or I don't want you on my team. If you don't have the time to put in that interface with the customer, with the client, then find another job.

Heidi Schroeder: Yep.

Kevin Weitzel: Seriously.

Heidi Schroeder: I get it. I get it. A good sales manager sometimes has to draw a hard line like that. I've worked with plenty of salespeople that say my Post-it note system has been working for me for 30 years. [00:15:00] I'm not going to change now. I'm going to give a really short anecdote. I worked with a sales agent that was in his seventies. He'd been in the game for 50 years. He knew his stuff. His Post-it note system worked fine, he thought. I didn't really push him to use the CRM because of that. I just showed successes from other people that I was managing, how they were using it, and how they were becoming successful. And about a year of that, he came back and said, All right, teach me how to use this Lasso thing. He begrudgingly learned it, but he saw the value in that.

You know, if you can consistently show the value, eventually a good salesperson realizes that they can leverage this to their ability. I'm going to tell you all a little secret. You don't have to work longer hours. Even if things are super, super busy, if you leverage your time and use the [00:16:00] tools that you have to leverage your time, you can work less and get more. Eventually, when there's that aha moment for a salesperson, I see them just immensely be more effective in what they're doing, so they're able to make more sales, have a lot better experience for the customer.

Greg Bray: You know, your comment about the Post-it note system. Everybody has a CRM already. They have one, right? It may not be electronic, it may not be software, but you have one. It may be just in your head trying to remember. It may be little scribbled scraps of paper or Post-it notes, or maybe it's an Excel sheet, or maybe it's just your email, you know, in your Outlook that you go looking around and try to remember, but you're managing that data somehow. So, it's all about stepping back and going, How can we manage this better? What kinds of tools are out there that can help us get more use out of these leads and take care of them better?

Heidi Schroeder: Yeah, and you bring up a good point too. [00:17:00] There are a lot of CRMs out there too. Despite what our internal CRM is, right? Our Post-it note system or notes on your cell phone or whatever you use, there are a lot of CRMs, we'll put that in quotation marks, out there that are really just a Rolodex. I'm dating myself a little bit, right? Remember the Rolodex that we had of names that we spun through and got our little card out?

A real CRM really should be able to automatically integrate your leads from your website or from other sources and allow you to set up dedicated follow-up processes, allow you to send marketing emails through your database, allow you to get great data. So, a CRM of a Post-it note doesn't allow for any of those things. A CRM of remembering in your brain where you're waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning, remembering you forgot to call somebody 2 weeks ago, that's not a real CRM.

Kevin Weitzel: No, and the crazy part is you [00:18:00] mentioned phones. So, I want to bring up two points. One is that our memories are not the same as what they used to be. When I was a kid I knew all my friends' phone numbers top of head. I didn't have to look them up in a Rolodex or on an address book or anything. They were just in my brain. I could call up Joey's house, Jimmy's house. Boom. There they were.

I could literally hand write out, back when we hand wrote postcards, I could hand write out postcards or letters to people. But these phones have dumbed us down to where we don't need any of that memory anymore. We can use our brains for other things. But on top of that, does a CRM or shouldn't a CRM also tie to your cell phone? Is there any kind of integration there?

Heidi Schroeder: Yeah. You should be able to have an app on your phone where you're able to pull up your CRM on your cell phone. Yeah, absolutely. Good point. You know, it's funny. My kids are both going to summer camp tomorrow. My boys, they're teenagers, they're 17 and 15. I have to write down my phone number for them because I can't trust that they remember the phone number to call me if they need something. It's just saved in their phone and they won't have their phones with them. Isn't that [00:19:00] insane?

Greg Bray: I've experienced that myself. Yes. Yes. Just in the numbers I can remember. It's great to step back and realize that you know what? Our memories aren't the best place to store lots of information. Because we might think, oh gosh, yeah, I, I need to follow up with so-and-so tomorrow or next week or whatever, and I'll remember. And then like you said, you wake up and you go, oh man, I forgot to do that. How many of them did you forget to do and you don't remember that you forgot to do?

There's the ones who go, oh man, I forgot to do that. And then there's those other folks that are just gone if you don't have a place to go back and review them. And you work so hard to get those leads to start with. And maybe they're not like ready to buy today, but home building is one of those places where people take some time to move through that journey and you may interact with them at various stages, and it might not be sign the contract day the first time you talk to them.

Heidi Schroeder: Yeah. Yeah. You're exactly right. It's funny, because I entered this industry as an online sales [00:20:00] counselor, I have a typical sales brain in that I'm all over the place. I think a typical salesperson is a little creative, and maybe doesn't have an accounting-type brain of we need to call this person on this day. Processes are maybe a little bit foreign to us. But if we can take our creative brain and create processes around our creative brain, we're able to have something really, really top-notch. Those times where I wasn't leaning on the CRM, I'm waking up in the middle of the night. I'm definitely doing that. Just that mental load can be draining. You know, that mental load of having to remember everything all the time can be draining.

Greg Bray: I think that's a great insight though, Heidi. There are different types of people who connect with different ways of doing things. And that often the folks that enter into sales have a certain type of personality and set of traits that make them really good at engaging people and [00:21:00] talking to people and not being scared to just have that conversation with the stranger and treat everybody like a friend and all of those kinds of things and wanting to be helpful, don't always translate into that, oh, I need to document all of this and I need to run a query and I need to, you know, set up my reminders. And all of those types of tasks don't always feel to them as useful just from that personality standpoint. And so we have to bridge that gap in order to make the tool as helpful as possible for them, regardless of their experience with it or anything along those lines. That, hey, this will help you sell more which then impacts your life in a very good way and helps you help your company and helps you help the buyers.

Heidi Schroeder: Yeah. And that's what I'm here for is to bridge that gap, to help foster that understanding.

Greg Bray: I don't want to lose sight, Heidi, of the fact that you have been an OSC though before and you have been there on that side. Let's talk about the online side of this. Where does the online [00:22:00] sales counselor fit with the CRM, with the rest of the team, with the website? What's your view of that role and how it works today?

Heidi Schroeder: Aha. Yes. The online sales counselor roll, you know, when you have a CRM, is leading the charge. They have to have a clear CRM process in place just to handle the high volume of what they're doing.

I shop builders all the time, and it's amazing to me the difference when shopping a builder who has an OSC, the overall customer experience is more personal. The overall customer experience, they're getting their questions answered. As a shopper, I'm getting my questions answered by the OSC, and it's just an overall better customer experience.

It's pretty easy math, really. You know, when someone answers my questions, I trust them more than someone who doesn't answer my inquiry quickly or tells me to just drop in when I'm in the neighborhood and we'll talk about it, those sorts of things. So, [00:23:00] implementing an online sales role as part of the builder's process just really gives the prospects a much better all-over customer experience.

So, I'm sure that everyone's onsite sales agents are lovely and great at their job. I've met some amazing sales agents. They just can't be everywhere all at once. Having that online sales role in place that's the leader of your CRM, they lead the cleanup, lead the charge of use. I think that that's really become a very key role in our industry.

Greg Bray: One of the things that I've been seeing, I believe happening more and more, is that this journey of the lead from the website to the online sales counselor to on-site, we used to describe it very linearly. They talk, they make an appointment, we put some notes in, we do this little intro and handoff, and then they're off with somebody else. Right? But I think there's a looping, if you will, that's happening more and more.

And I'm [00:24:00] curious to see if you would agree with that this lead may interact with the OSC, they may go visit on-site, they may go back to the website for more research, and they may initiate a chat or some other type of outreach that engages with the OSC again, in which case they need to have visibility that they've already been on site actually, and already had that visit. Do I need to set up an appointment with somebody else? Do I just need to answer the question? Make sure to get them back to the same person.

Are you seeing more of that looping going around? I'm calling it looping. There's probably a better term for it, but it's not just a one-time OSC interaction and then a handoff and now the OSC never touches them again. I think there's this come back to the website, learn some more, go back through. So, I'm curious, Heidi, are you seeing that when you meet with builders and go through these processes with them?

Heidi Schroeder: Ah, you're speaking my language really. So many times builders are still seeing that as linear, but then when we dig in a little bit more, I can show them that your process isn't [00:25:00] linear anymore. It's spaghetti. Our buyers have led us into a spaghetti process, and that's okay. We're leaning away from this linear, this happens, then this happens, then this happens, and this happens, because that's not how buyers want to buy.

They're coming back to our website at certain points in the process, you know, in the past, when they were done with the process of the sale, that's not happening anymore either. At the sale, they're still coming back to learn more about the process of how to build a home, and they're still coming back with information for their friends, which wasn't happening as much before. I call it a full cycle, but it does look a little bit more like spaghetti.

Greg Bray: And that fact alone means that as the person with the Post-it notes, you have zero insight into the interactions they're having with other people on the team. And so if you don't have this place to store those interactions, because it's different people on the [00:26:00] team touching this journey at various stages, and you have to be able to see all of it to really help them. And isn't it terrible when they say, who are you again, and what do you want? You know, and we have to start over every time we talk to a new person. We don't want that to happen.

And so I just feel like, we have to recognize that, and now all of a sudden, this central repository of information is just obviously critical. So, maybe we'll have to start putting Post-it notes on everybody's monitors, just in case they talk to this person tomorrow when I'm out of the office and they come by.

Heidi Schroeder: It's so, so, so important. We all experience those frustrations. I was just online earlier this morning with Blackstone. I bought a Blackstone grill for my husband. I was asked no fewer than three times to put in my contact information because they didn't know who I was. Well, I've talked to them four times in the past with the same warranty issue. That's frustrating when we deal with that in our daily life. We need to address that with our buyers that if we have all of [00:27:00] that information, it prevents that restart, restart, restart that erodes that trust that we've worked so hard to build.

The other part of that is technology. We can have all of our technology talk together to give us some of this too. If our prospects are going back to our website to learn more, we should be able to know that. A proper CRM shows us when they're back on the website. You know, we can integrate certain outside technology, so we can see how they're going back to our website. So, I think that's really important.

Greg Bray: Well, Heidi, just looking at the things that you see when you go start cleaning up these messes, what's like some of the low-hanging fruit? What's something that they could do like tomorrow that would just make this lead management either for their online or their on-site folks just a little bit better? What's a quick hitter?

Heidi Schroeder: Yeah. Set up dashboards. In any CRM, you're able to set up some sort of a dashboard or gain a [00:28:00] report. Lasso, that's really easy. I know that with some other CRMs, that's fairly easy. So, set up a dashboard so you can have insight into how your team is using the CRM. Take a look at what they're entering is history. How much traffic you're getting a few of those things, how much walk-in traffic you're getting, and it'll be really eye-opening so you can see what you're working with here. So, I would suggest that first. That's a low-hanging fruit for sure.

The other thing is just make sure that if you have communities that have closed out, or new communities that are on board, let's make sure that all of our forms are working properly. That is something that I see gets overlooked sometimes when you make some website updates. Let's just make sure all those forms are working well.

Greg Bray: I would add that you should probably be checking those forms, you know, at least a few times a month, just have somebody checking them, if not weekly. There is nothing worse than [00:29:00] the fact that somebody is filling out a form and it just goes off into the ether somewhere and nobody knows, or it's going to somebody who's not with the company anymore and getting set on their name or some old email or something that's not getting notified. It's just. Oh, my gosh.

Heidi Schroeder: It happens a lot. I see it all the time. Check those forms. I always recommend a monthly health check. If you have an OSC, they know. They know because everything's coming to them and within, you know, a couple of hours, they'll say, I haven't received any leads. If you don't have an OSC, you'll see it less quickly. You know, it'll take a little bit longer for you to see it. So, check those, for sure.

Greg Bray: Well, Heidi, any last thoughts or piece of advice you want to leave with our listeners today before we wrap up?

Heidi Schroeder: Just keep your eye on the big picture. I think that it's so easy to get really deep into our work. Whether we're on the sales side or the marketing side, it's easy to get really deep into the details of our work and we forget [00:30:00] that we have a very, very important job. So, each part of our business should be aligned with making a new home easier to buy or build.

I've been through the process of building a new home. I know the particular pain that comes along with that. Keep that high-level view every day of how can we make this easier and make sure that our entire team is aligned with that path that we have in place to make this easier. Our customers already think it's too hard to buy a home. The news that they hear every day, don't give them the excuse to make that the truth.

Greg Bray: Well, Heidi, thank you again for sharing with us today. If somebody wants to connect with you, what's the best way for them to reach out and get in touch?

Heidi Schroeder: Yeah, I think the easiest way is on LinkedIn. I'm there on LinkedIn. My name is spelled H E I D I. My last name is S C H R O E D E R. Or you can also email me at [00:31:00] hschroeder@ecisolutions.com, same spelling. And most importantly, you're going to find me at The Home Builder Digital Marketing Summit in Denver this October.

Kevin Weitzel: Whoa!

Heidi Schroeder: Yeah! So, find me there in October and I'm really excited for that.

Kevin Weitzel: Make a summit plug!

Heidi Schroeder: Yeah.

Greg Bray: We're really excited to have you joining and helping with that OSC track, especially that we're adding this year, and training on that. So, it's going to be great. Thank you again, Heidi, for being with us today, and thank you everybody for listening to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with Zonda Liveabl. [00:32:00]

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