274 Examining Home Builder Lead Response - Brian Kernohan Jun 25 2025

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: And we're excited to have joining us today, Brian Kernohan. Brian is the Chief Revenue Officer at Lumin.ai. Welcome, Brian. Thanks for being with us.

Brian Kernohan: Yeah, hi Greg and Kevin. I appreciate the invitation. 

Greg Bray: Well, Brian, let's start off and just get to know a little bit about your background. Give us that quick overview about yourself. 
Brian Kernohan: Yeah. Thank you. As Greg mentioned, my name is Brian Kernohan. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer for [00:01:00] Lumin.ai. I have over 30 years of sales and marketing experience at both large-scale enterprise SaaS software companies, with Toshiba and Microsoft. And then in the second half of my career, I've spent a lot of time with startups bringing new technology and platforms to market, including AI. 

Kevin Weitzel: All right, before we get into all the AI and binary code and whatever we're going to discuss, could you tell our listeners one factoid about yourself that has nothing to do with work, the home building, or family?

Brian Kernohan: Okay. I'm a big fan of murder mystery novels. As a youngster, I really enjoyed classic authors like Dashell Hammond and Agatha Christie, Frederick Forsyth, and Dick Francis. And recently I've come to enjoy a genre called Tartan Noir, which are murder mysteries set in Scotland from authors like Val McDermott, Denise Mina, and Ian Rankin. And traveling to Scotland, both personally and for business, can really put some of these locations and characters into context, and it's really enjoyable. 

Kevin Weitzel: Do they all [00:02:00] end with the butler did it in the conservatory by poisoning the bagpipes? 

Brian Kernohan: No. Butler's in Scotland. I think that's an English thing.

Greg Bray: Oh, okay. Alright. 

What was that genre called again, Brian? That was a word I don't know. 

Brian Kernohan: Yeah, Tartan Noir. 

Kevin Weitzel: Just out of curiosity, have you ever heard of the murder mystery place in the country called the Poison Pen? They're based Scottdale? 

Brian Kernohan: No. I haven't.

Kevin Weitzel: No. 

Brian Kernohan: No. I'll have to Google that.

Kevin Weitzel: Definitely want to check them out.
 
Brian Kernohan: Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate that. 

Greg Bray: Well, Brian, give us a little more background about lumin.ai, the kinds of things you guys are working on, and the services that you provide. 

Brian Kernohan: Yeah. Sure. So, at Lumin.ai, our tagline is we accelerate lead conversion with real-time AI engagement. So, you know, we work with organizations to boost sales by automating their lead flow and scheduling by texting in real time. So, we built conversational AI engine ourselves, and that provides our clients with 24/7 responsiveness and a seamless integration to both [00:03:00] their calendar and their CRM, that lets basically the sales team be the first to establish that crucial human relationship by putting an appointment on their calendar in a completely automated fashion.

Greg Bray: Does this technology, Brian, sit on the website, or is it something that's part of the CRM, or where does it kind of fit in that process of somebody coming through to become a lead? 

Brian Kernohan: Yeah, great question. So, I'll give you a quick summary of the workflow. So, organizations like home builders, you know, they generate real-time digital leads either from portals, Angie or, Zillow, or realtor.com, or their existing SEO and PPC engines driving prospects to their website. When that lead is generated, it usually, but not always, goes into a CRM, and that CRM automatically triggers Lumin.ai via an API. And when we get that lead, there's certain information that comes with it. Obviously, it's the prospect's name, it's their mobile number. It's ensuring that [00:04:00] you've got opt-in in order to contact the lead via text, as well as email, and to call them as well. 

And then, if the lead information comes in with a sales rep assigned or it's an online sales coordinator, we'll be able to read their calendar. We'll be able to decipher with specific persona information whether a person wants to visit a model center or they just want a Zoom or a virtual appointment. So, we know that calendar availability. We offer that slot to the prospect in text, usually within 15 to 20 seconds after getting that lead, no matter what time of day it comes in.

And we work with the home builder to co-author the branding in the text. So, obviously, the home builder knows their brand, and we know texting behavior, and we basically engage with the prospect back and forth to automate setting up that appointment. And when the appointment is set up, we update the CRM, we update the calendar, we [00:05:00] send a meeting invite to the prospect.

If someone doesn't respond immediately to make the appointment, we have a reengagement cadence that we send over, you know, the next seven days, if you will, to continue to move the prospect forward to answer any questions. We use that as a white space marketing opportunity as well, in order to continue to position the unique value of the homes and the floor plans, and the communities. We make that appointment. That allows the online sales counselors who are following up with leads to know if someone was a landline so they can call them, you know, immediately or whenever they get in in the morning. But we use the conversational AI to completely automate that appointment-setting process.

Couple of other things that we do. Twenty-four hours before the appointment and one hour before the appointment, we text confirmations as well, and also to introduce the person that they're going to be meeting with in order to start building that relationship. Usually, it's a welcome video that gets [00:06:00] embedded in the text. If someone is a no-show for the appointment, the sales rep can just use the CRM to send a trigger that the person was a no-show. And we text him immediately that said, Andrew was, you know, prepared to meet with you right now. If you call in the next five minutes, he's still here, or you can use this service to reschedule. And we usually get them back about 20% of the time. 

But best of all, it lets your high skilled salespeople spend time selling and not chasing. From a results perspective, we always increase a customer's lead-to-appointment conversion rates. Basically, that's the top end of the funnel. And we've had, you know, tremendous expertise and experience in other verticals. Franchising as an example. You think of Kuman or Tropical Smoothie. Home improvement, we've got a lot of customers in high-value items, you know, doors, windows, roofing, and floors. And now we've got traction with new home builders, which is what we're going to talk about today.

Kevin Weitzel: So, first off, number one, shame on anybody that no no-shows [00:07:00] without a call, email, or text, or anything else. That's tackier than tape. But, secondly, obviously, a platform like this, you're agnostic to your verticals. What is driving you to the home building industry?

Brian Kernohan: So, we have one customer that is close to where I live here in Florida, called Southern Homes of Polk County. They've been very successful using our technology. You know, they were introduced to us by a mutual partner several years ago, and they basically said, We have all these leads, and with our infrastructure, we can't contact the people fast enough to make appointments. So, their existing lead to model center appointment conversion was about 14%. We set the system up with them, and we almost tripled it in the first six weeks to over 40%. 

What we wanted to do was to determine how we can grow in a vertical, and as an organization, we're in a growth phase, but before we make a commitment to invest in a vertical, we have to have a couple of things in place. One is a solid repeatable [00:08:00] value proposition. We like to have customer-based evidence in the form of metrics-driven, you know, case study and references. And the third big thing is a compelling path forward to engage new prospects. We've got the first two things there, and now we needed a compelling path forward to take this story, a very successful peer as a home builder, to the whole industry. 

Kevin Weitzel: You know, it's coincidental that you, uh, mentioned Southern Homes, because I just took a moment to peruse their website, and they use absolutely, I don't know whose they are, but the absolute best interactive floor plans on the planet. I don't know whose they are, but they're by far the best I've ever seen.
 
Greg Bray: I could probably guess who they are, but.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh. 

Greg Bray: Without even looking at the website again. 

Kevin Weitzel: Just based on my excitement level? 

Greg Bray: Yeah. 

Kevin Weitzel: There's a chance they could be OutHouse, but anyway. 

Greg Bray: Well, Brian, I know that one of the things that you and I had talked about in the past, when we first met, is that in order to help you understand kind of that buying journey and some of the opportunities, you guys did some research and some mystery [00:09:00] shopping of a bunch of builder websites. Love to learn a little more about some of the insights you found as you tested people's follow-up and what they were doing. So, why did you guys decide to do that research, first of all, and what were you trying to accomplish with it?

Brian Kernohan: Yeah. The most important thing we want to be able to display when we talk to prospects is we have knowledge about their vertical. We try and understand their pain points. We try and understand what business goals they're trying to accomplish, and we also like to understand what they've tried before. We find that that gives us credibility to have a very robust conversation about how we might be able to help them. Even if we can't help them, at least there's an understanding of how they use technology, and it's a learning experience for us as well. 

So, what I did, actually I did this all personally myself. We selected 50 builders of similar size to Southern Homes who complete, depending upon the year, between like [00:10:00] 200 and 500 homes a year across multiple locations all across the US. So, what I did is I researched between 70 and 75 companies. Some were custom home builders who didn't have the same volume, so we, you know, kind of discounted them. A lot more acquisitions and mergers than I was expecting, and some unique ones that really didn't fit the bill, like Habitat for Humanity. 

So, we selected 50 commercial builders. I submitted a form on their website with my real contact information, so my name, email, mobile number. So, if they did research, they knew that this was a real prospect. I recorded each outreach back to me from every builder via email, phone, or text for the first seven days after submission. So, based on all that information back and forth, I was certainly committed to this exercise. 

The numerical responses were kind of in line with what I was expecting. So, 40% of the [00:11:00] companies phoned me, 67%, about two-thirds of them emailed me. Only 27% texted me. And they were all manual, so either from a handset or a console on their computer. The surprising thing was that only 12% did all three. So, we're building upon positive experiences in other verticals where using SMS AI texting is more mature. You know, an omnichannel approach is best, and we can go into some of those reasons why. But it was a little surprising that only 12% did all three. 

Kevin Weitzel: So, 12% did all three, but what percentage did absolutely nothing? Because that's the part that's mind-blowing. 

Brian Kernohan: I will get to that. So, what I also did was I gave a letter grade to each builder based on the number of ways that they responded and the frequency that they followed up in the leads that I submitted. So, of the 52, 15 or 29% did not respond at all. That was shocking. 

Kevin Weitzel: Shocking. 

Brian Kernohan: [00:12:00] Shocking. Twenty-seven percent only did, we'll call it one modality. So, they either phoned or called or texted, but they only reached out to me one way. Thirty-three percent did two modalities and as I mentioned before, only 12% did all three. The other thing that was kind of fascinating was that where the form fills on the websites allowed for detailed information, no one offered me a model center appointment. The only option was for an online sales coordinator appointment. So, kind of fascinating. 

Greg Bray: Most importantly, Brian, how many homes did you buy during this process?

Brian Kernohan: I tend to buy a new home every four or five years, so I'm definitely a candidate. Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: And I know that these are usually the responses are private, like you don't want to let anybody know. But is there one that actually stood out, whether you want to give them verbal kudos or not, one that actually stood out head and shoulders above the rest in their responses, multiple responses, their customer service level, their communication?

Brian Kernohan: The ones that were, you know, the B's and as I said, there was only a half a [00:13:00] dozen, but they also tended to be very committed. You could tell they have strong sales leadership, they have good metrics. They're using a CRM. You could see that the cadence was, we're going to call three times over the first five days. We're going to make sure that we text out up to two months, and we're going to enroll them in a drip campaign. So, you know, maybe at the end I'll do quick research. I've got the data here. I can give a shout-out to a couple of names. But there was three or four of the organizations that did a fantastic job. 

Greg Bray: That's awesome. It's always fascinating, the people that don't respond at all. Did you see any commonalities between those types of builders that you could see, like, oh, there's a certain size, a certain location? And did you double-check your spam folder just to give them credit, just in case?

Brian Kernohan: Yes, absolutely. Yes. Yep. There's so much more that I did with this that I wanted to share with you. So, you asked me before if any of the builders knew that this was happening, and the answer is no, they didn't. I mean, it's mystery shopping after all. But this is where it kind of gets really fascinating and actually like your [00:14:00] opinion. So, after the fact, I personally reached out to the CEO or the COO, and the head of sales or marketing for each of these 50 home builders, just to share the results and to talk with them, and it only generated less than five quality follow-up discussions, so one in 10. I was going to ask you both, based on your experience with the home builder industry, why do you think that is? 

Kevin Weitzel: Wow, number one, we don't use video, but my jaw literally hit the floor because I've been a business owner. I've been a partner in companies, and I've been, you know, head of sales. I've done training, and if I'm ever provided with the opportunity to have a chat with the person that was not enamored with the treatment that they received from the company that I represent, I will literally do whatever it takes to get in touch with that person to find out what the problems were. Is there a fix or a solution? Is there any kind of rest assurance I could give to that client as to why that happened in the first place, and that it won't happen [00:15:00] again, some sort of reassurance there. So, the fact that you only had five.

Brian Kernohan: Five quality discussions out of 50. Yeah. 

Kevin Weitzel: That's sickening to me. Because that means that they're apathetic to their systems and could care less what your opinion was. 

Brian Kernohan: Yeah. Maybe they had quality internal discussions. You know, this came up and, you know, they triangulated but didn't really reach back out. In the technology world, we like to say that nobody likes to be told that their baby is ugly, right? So there's sometimes you shoot the messenger, right? You know, so that's kind of interesting. I did circle back with Ashley Link, who's the CMO at Southern Homes, and I asked her about the results and the feedback. 

And her quote was, you know, maybe it feels overwhelming. They don't know where to start, and that's how it was for us at Southern Homes. A, builders are notorious for not being cutting edge, and B, they're slow to change. And even she said, and this was several years ago, with AI and more of its nascent stage than it is today. She said, you know, we launched a bit prematurely for my [00:16:00] liking, and that's surprising because she's pushing the others. So, just thought I'd share those comments. 

Kevin Weitzel: Brian, since we're talking about tech, let me ask you this. On those responses, I use HubSpot obviously, and it lets you know if an email is opened or if it was never even viewed. Were these all viewed emails, or were the spam filters not allowing your communication to even get to the intended parties?

Brian Kernohan: Yeah. So, we use HubSpot as well, and the amount of opens and whether it's, you know, an automatic delete or a bot, the emails were one thing, and the open rates were higher than industry average. The other thing I did was I sent everything, the same content, obviously limited, or changed the format for the mechanism. But I also sent out connection requests to every contact and use LinkedIn email as well. So, those responses were actually better than email, but it was still only leading to five quality conversations. So, again, with the omnichannel approach, we believe that as well. So, I did that too.

Kevin Weitzel: Wow. 

Greg Bray: So, Brian, let's pivot a little bit away [00:17:00] from your interaction with the builders. Let's talk about the builder's interaction with their prospective buyers that you're exposing some opportunities for improvement, shall we say, in your experience. What did you see as the best process that worked compared to the worst, which we'll go with no response at all, but what was kind of that process, what did that look like for those best ones? Like, how often, what method did they use? What did you see there? 

Brian Kernohan: Yeah. So, you're dead on with the first point, lack of response at all from 30% of the builders. Very disappointing. Before I talk about what worked really well, I wanted to set the baseline. As I mentioned, you know, the 52 builders, if we remove just the, let's call it the forms submittal email acknowledgement.

Greg Bray: Just that automatic reply that kicks out. 

Brian Kernohan: Yeah. And those are so low tech, right? It's just thanks for your query. We'll get back to you soon. There was very little branding, very little sizzle. The websites are amazing, with the quality of the pictures [00:18:00] and the communities, but I don't think anyone used that in the email acknowledgement form. If I take out the email acknowledgement forms, for the 52 leads that were submitted in the first week, there was only 113 total contact attempts across the 52 companies. So, that's only 2.2 attempts for each lead across all modalities. That's the average or the baseline. So, if you take out the 30% that didn't respond at all, you're getting up there to, you know, like four attempts on average. 

What we discovered, as I mentioned, if someone was doing all three things, they were doing all three things with an approved and managed cadence, which is good. So, when you do an approved and managed cadence, you can put different messaging across different channels and at different times as well. The other thing that was kind of fascinating was the lack of working or effective automation in the lead pipeline. There is never any excuse not to send an immediate email [00:19:00] acknowledgement or enroll that person into an email drip campaign right away.

Once the lead was submitted, some organizations called immediately. You know, you could tell, well, like within five minutes of lead submittal, they called. Some of them waited three or four days to getting around to it. So, you don't know with an online sales coordinator if they're being assigned the lead, that they've got a lot in their pipeline, and you think Monday morning at 8:30, when they get in the office, they've got all the weekend stuff. You know, the people that have visit the model centers all weekend, depending upon how they work as an organization, there's 10 things for them to do. The last thing on that list is the new people that came in, where you're starting engaging with the lead from scratch. So, just the lack of effective automation in the lead pipeline was very surprising to see. 

Kevin Weitzel: I got to tell you, Brian, being in the sales position that I'm in, it is literally making me physically anxious, like itchy, hearing [00:20:00] some of these stats from you. You know, the responses that you're getting out of these people, like three days for your first response. That is ridiculous. They've already bought somewhere else the three days. That's the mindset you're supposed to have. That's crazy. 

Brian Kernohan: Yeah. So, before we talk about moving forward and the recommendations that we have, I would like to share one other thing that we did with all of the results. So, obviously, being new to this vertical, we wanted to participate at the NAHB International Builders' Show in Vegas, that was just completed a couple of months ago in February. So we took these mystery shopper results, and as I said, we graded everybody, you know, F, D, you know, B, C, and we had one A. And that A was given for someone who used all three modalities, but used, automated AI texting in order to set leads immediately. That happened to be Southern Homes. 

We included them in the mystery shopper results, being our customer, using our technology. So, we wrote a case study with them and [00:21:00] we submitted them for an award of best use of technology at The Nationals. To our surprise being, you know, kind of brand new with this technology in the space that, Southern Homes was an award winner. So, they were, you know, feted at the Black tie event at The Nationals, uh, Caesar Palace on the Tuesday evening of the conference. So, we were very happy that we help them drive, not just an increase in lead to appointment conversion, but in the first, you know, three months after using our technology, they set record sales months, with basically the same staff and the same approach that they used for all of the other lead outreach, just added Lumin.ai to the mix.

Kevin Weitzel: You know, interesting fact about The Nationals, a lot of people don't know this. They have the absolute industry sexiest ushers on the planet. Absolute sexiest ushers on the planet. Again, I don't know who they were, but one of them didn't look a little like this guy. Boom.

Greg Bray: There you go. Well, Brian, you [00:22:00] know, just to be respectful of your time, just a couple more questions here as we wrap up. So, we threw a lot of numbers at people, which is kind of hard sometimes when they're just listening. Do you guys have a report that somebody can download somewhere that has some of these statistics that they want to dig a little deeper? 

Brian Kernohan: Yeah. They can reach out to me directly. So, what they can do is go to Lumin.ai. On our website, various places sprinkled through is, you know, talk to us, you know, have a chat, et cetera. What they can do is fill out that form, which is exactly the same as what their prospect would experience. Put in a name, put in the mobile number, consent to text, and a text conversation will start representing Lumin.ai and my calendar for us to talk. And once we have that conversation with them, I can share all of the information in its published and non-published format as well. And they can also see if they were one of the mystery shopper companies as well. 

Greg Bray: So, Brian, then, with all the things you've seen and kind of coming at this from fresh eyes, so to speak, what is one thing that you would recommend builders [00:23:00] pay attention to and start doing? They can't do it all, right. It's too much. But what's just one thing that you recommend? 

Brian Kernohan: Yeah. Based on our experience in working with leading companies in other industries, I'm going to give you three keys to successfully responding to builder leads. The first is use an omnichannel approach to follow up, give them choices in how they want to communicate with you. You should always email, call, and text. Number two is don't give up. So, just because a prospect didn't answer the phone or respond to an email or text on the first or second attempt, doesn't mean that they aren't interested. They just aren't interested in engaging with you when you want to talk. And that's the beauty of texting because it's always in someone's handset and always in their pocket. Our technology is contextual, so you don't have to start the conversation over. We remember exactly where we left off. 

And the third thing is try different approaches. With lead sources, use A/B tests and, above all, track and measure everything [00:24:00] in your CRM of the various stages of your funnel, from lead, someone who's raising their hand to the prospect. So, getting them into the model home and getting to a contract and closing it within a hundred days of construction. There's no reason why all of those things shouldn't be done and can't be done. There are obstacles, but those are the three big things. 

Kevin Weitzel: Obstacles are nothing more than just pesky things that keep you away from your goals, but on never giving up, I 100% agree. 

Brian Kernohan: Yeah. 

Kevin Weitzel: My saying for home builders is this, until I am invited to the housewarming party of that prospect where they bought somewhere else, they're still not a dead lead yet. 

Brian Kernohan: Yep, yep, exactly. So, with the technology that's out there now with AI and how SMS and moving to RCS texting is, you know, so common for everyone to do. You know, reaching out to 90% of your leads within a minute is trivial to do. You don't have to figure out AI yourself. You [00:25:00] can rely on a partner like Lumin.ai to help you, and you can stand on the shoulders of people like Southern Homes that have done this before you and others in different verticals that are selling similarly priced high-value products. You know, buying a franchise out of the gate could be a quarter of a million dollar acquisition, and lifetime value to that organization is well into the millions. A home is very similar to that lifecycle, and how you want to sell, and how we can support that.

Greg Bray: So, Brian, thank you so much for spending time with us today and sharing those insights and the research. Tell us one more time how somebody can connect with you and get in touch. 

Brian Kernohan: Yep. So, Lumin.ai is our website. Just, go there and fill out the contact us form, and it'll put an appointment on my calendar for us to talk, or you can call me on my cell, (813) 545-4752.

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

Kevin Weitzel: [00:26:00] And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.