295 Mastering the Post-Sale Customer Experience - Jeremiah Gore Nov 19 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, Jeremiah Gore. Jeremiah is the owner at Crossroads Coaching. Welcome, Jeremiah. Thanks for being with us.

Jeremiah Gore: Yeah, thanks, guys, for having me. I appreciate it.

Greg Bray: Well, let's start off just getting to know you a little bit. Give us that quick background and overview about yourself.

Jeremiah Gore: For sure. Jeremiah Gore, founder of Crossroads Coaching. When I got into this space after 20 years in the home building business saw kind of an [00:01:00] opening for training builders and warranty professionals, simply how to speak to the customer. Been on the sales side of the business and the construction side of the business in those 20 years. I saw all the money being poured into training the sales side of the business, and it was like, why are we not investing even a fraction of that on the construction side and the warranty side of the business? And so, we thought, you know what? Let's start a company that focuses on that primarily. Obviously, I still love salespeople and sales training, but primarily, what we do at Crossroads is we connect the customer experience all the way through closing.

Kevin Weitzel: Alright, before we jump into that. One interesting factoid about yourself, and here's what's off limits. No family, no home building industry, no work.

Jeremiah Gore: No family. It does involve my daughter, but you know, I was a single dad for like 12 and a half years, and when you do that, you kind of think, what do I go do with this kid? How do we take a vacation? Because my version of vacation, to sit on the beach and do nothing. You know, a 12-year-old's gonna get bored after about two minutes of that. And so, we both loved our local Six Flags Park [00:02:00] and we loved coasters. And she would ride them from the moment she was able to be tall enough, right? Even putting like extra socks in her shoes so she could ride it maybe a half a month early.

We started taking trips. So, we took coaster trips every summer. We called them coaster cations. And these are not like two days, these are like 10 to 14 days of hitting a road trip somewhere in the US. Even one year in Japan, where we did a road trip to ride coasters. So she's now 18, off to college this year, but she's got 323 coasters to her name. So, she's catching up to me because she can still ride the little kitty coasters. Where I show up to those and like, Sir, do you have like a 4-year-old with you? And I'm like, no, but I can go find one. And they're like, No, don't go do that.

But it's turned into a cool passion for her. She's now in the college of engineering at A and M. Right now, her desire is to go work for a coaster manufacturer or a theme park down the road. So it's kind of fascinating to see how this little thing that was a trip for us, our version of a vacation every year, has turned into to that. So, that's kind of probably the unique thing. So, people will be like, Hey, have you ridden this [00:03:00] coaster that's in their backyard? I'm like, Yes, yes, I have. I can tell you all the details about it. It's kind of obnoxious.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, two things. One, it was a humbling point, but at Cedar Point, there's a ride called Top Fuel Dragster. We got the extra super duper passes to walk right front of line. I was too fat to ride the ride.

Jeremiah Gore: Ahhh.

Kevin Weitzel: But two, what is your favorite park? I'm thinking it's got to be Cedar Point, but what is your favorite park you've ever been to?

Jeremiah Gore: So, for coasters, it's going to be Cedar Point. Kings Island's a very close second for us. Ohio is the capital of coasters, and it still can claim that. Those two parks by far for coasters, right? If you start talking about theme parks, we really love Bush Gardens, Williamsburg. Disney Tokyo C, so their C version is not really overly Disneyed. Just looks like really cool Pirates Cove kind of theming. So, those parks from a theme park perspective, but from a coaster perspective, absolutely. See your point. It's just phenomenal.

We rode Top Thrill 1, the original, and then we were able to sneak in, like we were one of the few hundred that [00:04:00] got to ride that thing, Top Thrill, when we were there. So, we just lucked out. We were in the right place, the right time, stood in the right line, and uh, we were able to write it that day. But yeah, cool ride. Pretty awesome.

Greg Bray: Yeah. So, instead of building coasters, let's talk about building homes.

Jeremiah Gore: Segue.

Greg Bray: Yeah. So, Jeremiah, you already talked a little bit about that your goal was to help builders, the construction side, the warranty side, learn how to talk to clients and customers. Why? Why does that matter?

Jeremiah Gore: Yeah. So, let's just look at it from a data standpoint. Customer satisfaction scores. When you watch and you see this emotional momentum that gets built from the sales team, so they build this level of trust, the buyers are excited, especially like on a build job, right? Inventory home, it's a crapshoot. You don't really know what you're going to get when it comes to that buyer and their satisfaction because they're not really emotionally attached to the building process.

But for the build jobs that we do, our sales team does this great job connecting with the customer and converts them into a buyer, and then the buyer goes into the [00:05:00] black hole of death. We forget about them for about 60 days, 90 days in some markets. What we saw is builders were showing up for a pre-construction meeting, buyers are already mad at them. Builders, then, start that conversation defensively.

I grew up Baptist. It's like a Baptist meeting. Here's what you can't do, rather than here's what you can do. And so, for the builders, we're trying to set them up with the ability to handle their business, one. But two, let's raise that emotional momentum for the customer again. Think of it in terms of coasters. I love that first drop, but that's what the customer's experiencing. If they're not ready for it, they're not going to enjoy it.

So, how do we maintain that level of trust that sales created all the way through the journey? Those handoffs are critical. Remember, most of our sales teams are highly trained, either by outside trainers or inside trainers, or just for the fact they went from one company to another that was trained, and now they're here, most of our salespeople are, well, trained. Most of our building teams, most of our warranty teams, are not trained how to deal with the customer. They're trained on how to build a house. So, there was a huge [00:06:00] gap there, and that's just where I think we've got to be able to focus on how do we elevate their communication so that it benefits the customer.

Greg Bray: So, do you ever see builders recognizing that and saying, Oh, you know what, we're going keep the sales person as that contact so we don't let these other folks actually talk to the customer? What are the pros and cons that you've seen with that type of an approach?

Jeremiah Gore: Yeah, so, okay. Have you ever asked somebody who doesn't know the answer to anything?

Greg Bray: Absolutely.

Jeremiah Gore: Most of our sales team they don't know how to build a house. Some of them do. There's a few, there's always exceptions to every rule, but majority of our salespeople know how to sell homes. They don't know how to build them, and for good reason. When you're a buyer and you have a question, a simple question in your mind of why is there a post here. Like, if we're trying to save money, we value engineering in the home; we don't want to run these big beams everywhere, so we're going to sneak this post in here.

We'll see it, you know, in the lower price points. There'll be a column, and it doesn't make sense because you've seen all these pictures in Pinterest, you've seen all these pictures in magazines. Why is there a post in my kitchen? [00:07:00] Well, if you ask the salesperson that, they're going to give you maybe a stock answer because they've gotten that question before, but they're not going to be able to truly explain it.

There's just something about a builder being on the phone call or a builder having a conversation with a customer that gives them a level of confidence and a level of security and stability that this person knows what they're talking about. Even if they don't, there's studies that talk about salespeople who know everything, who's been in the business for 25 years, and you send in a builder, especially if they've got gray hair, but you send in this builder that has been in the business for maybe a year, buyer believes what that builder says greater than what they believe the salesperson says. It's incredible.

Kevin Weitzel: How real can people be? This is a pretty loaded question. So, when somebody asks that question, why is there a post here? Do you have your people? Do you instruct them to say, Well, hey, Mr. Customer, you came in at our lowest possible price point that we offer, and that glulam beam that would be required to give you this great room that you're talking about is $15,000. That four-by-four that's going to [00:08:00] hold up this little section of a header is only 80 bucks, whatever it costs.

Jeremiah Gore: I firmly believe in explaining a why. You may not explain it, maybe that direct. You're right. You're not going to be like, you bought a low-priced home. Right? But you are going to talk about, you may be seeing pictures of custom homes or high-end homes that are 900,000 to a million dollars. For us to be able to provide, you know, the level of home that you're looking at today, we do have to take a look at some of those things, right? Like maybe ceiling fans aren't included, right? We're going to look through and how can we provide the home that you want at the price that you want? And sometimes, yeah, we may have to make some decisions, and that may be one of those.

But I think there is a level of authenticity. Buyers can Google things now that when I built a home, and granted I didn't build for long, you can ask anybody that I worked with, that was not my strength. It's just not. If you've known me long enough, you'll realize I'm an ADD and I'm chaotic. Like those two don't go real well with building homes. You know, you'll be like, where were we? Oh yeah, we should probably put a roof on. And so, for your [00:09:00] customer, though, when you're looking at it, you want to be authentic, you want to be able to share. I firmly believe in explaining the why. When we teach how to say no, is explain the why behind it.

Because people can Google all of these answers. And if you've ever Googled any of the symptoms you've ever had when you've been sick, you realize that you're dying because you Googled and it's like three symptoms and it all points to like this disease that no one's ever heard of. And it's like based in like the tropics somewhere that you've never been to, but you now have that disease because Google told you you did. Same thing happens with our customers. They will go Google their answer, which is why I believe we've got to provide them an accurate and truthful answer where we can, for sure.

Greg Bray: We put our builders in these meetings. We have them all dye their hair gray so they look experienced. What is it that they do wrong when they're in those conversations? What are those top mistakes that they're making as they try to answer these questions or explain this to the customer?

Jeremiah Gore: One, they're not ready for the meeting. Sometimes our builders get very busy. They're not kind of leading their day, they're letting their day lead them around, [00:10:00] and so they're rolling into that meeting either late. And if you're on time, you're late for a customer meeting. And so, you run in late, you're probably not as organized as you should have been. You may not even have reviewed that file before you walked in. The biggest issue, they haven't connected to the buyer's story.

Most of the good sales trainers these days are connecting the salespeople to the buyer's story. Not just selling stuff. Not selling the what, they're selling the why. And so, the problem is, is it stops with the sales meeting. The sales team keeps that information. It's like they hoard it for themselves. So, they need to share it with the builders. So, we teach the builders, Hey, you've got to go get this information. You need to walk into that meeting knowing why this customer is buying from you, not just what they're buying from you. And our builders have been conditioned for the what.

They're building another Strathmore floor plan. It's a four-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath. Here's bedroom number two, and that's what they'll call it. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whose bedroom is that? Like, you should know that walking into the meeting. In that meeting, you cross out bedroom number two, and you've written in, Is this going to be Ryan's bedroom or is this going to be Catherine's bedroom? [00:11:00] And you mark out the floor plan and write their name on it. That's a connection that your builder could make with your customer.

And here's the other thing we're finding: if the builders will connect to the buyer's story, they're not just building another Strathmore floor plan on Lot 87; they're now building a home for the Johnsons on Lot 87. In a job that rewards kind of monotony and cadence, it's much more rewarding when you connect to each of those buyer stories. Now, some of our builders aren't emotionally equipped to connect themselves with every single customer. Let's be honest. Their job is going to be more rewarding down the road if they connect with the customer's story rather than just building yet again, another Strathmore floor plan.

Greg Bray: So, where does that customer story live then? Is this CRM updates? Is this pulling the salesperson aside for a little pre-brief before? How do we connect that information and pass it along?

Jeremiah Gore: Yeah. The answer is yes. The answer is yes. Obviously, the builders that are a little more progressive are using technology to [00:12:00] assist in that effort. I'm a huge fan of it. Because one, there's a little bit of the redundancy story factor. We've all called that tech helpline at some point with a problem that we can't resolve. You talk to the first person, they ask your name, your number, all your medical history. And then invariably they'll go, have you unplugged it and plugged it back in yet? And then you go through those steps, and they go, okay, well, I'm going to elevate you to the next person.

And you go to the next person, and they ask you your name, your phone number, your contact info. Oh, your medical history again. And you know what? Step one, let's have you turn it off and turn it back on. You're like, I just did that. We do the same thing with our customers. And so, yes. I think part one is if technology; there's great companies out there, NoviHome, Foundation, those kind of things. A CRM, like Lasso, all of these programs are out there.

They're phenomenal, but we've got to use them, one. So, salespeople have to input the data, but then we've got to give access, whether that's a printout or whether the builders have access. You know, there's certain platforms out there where the builder can access [00:13:00] that information, be able to review it before they walk into that meeting, and then walk into that meeting much more empowered.

But I still believe that the best thing, regardless of the technology, is that weekly meeting that a salesperson and a builder should have. They should say, Oh, by the way, I have a pre-con coming up with the Johnsons. What should I know about their story? Even if it's just a primary motivation. Why did they buy from us? What should I know? One, it'll safeguard you from stepping into some bear traps. We all know all these various stories that we've heard.

The best example that I've heard is a husband knowing he has stage four cancer, knowing he's not going to be able to live through the build process, buying a home in an active adult neighborhood for his wife, knowing that he won't even see this home be built. The builder, not knowing that, just walk through how different that pre-construction meeting's going to be than if the builder knew that husband's not even going to see that house get framed. It's going to be a lot different. That conversation is going to be about her, not about him, which is where most of our builders they talk to the husband a lot of the time in these [00:14:00] pre-construction meetings because they're talking about the what? They're not connecting due to the emotion.

Kevin Weitzel: The nuts, the bolts, the two-by-fours, the timber, all that stuff.

Jeremiah Gore: Yeah. Site visit policies, you know, all of that. They're not connecting to the customer's journey. They're not connecting to their story. And so, they're pretty limited as to the emotional ride that these customers are going to be on with them.

Greg Bray: That's a pretty powerful example, Jeremiah. Probably not the most common thing that comes up, but wow. If you don't know, you don't know. You could really embarrass yourself quick. By not knowing some of those details.

Jeremiah Gore: We sold a house. It was a couple that were getting divorced, but they wanted their kids to live in the same neighborhood, regardless of which parent they were go be living with that week. They came in to buy two homes as close together as they could, which, hey, good on them. I can't imagine that scenario. But works for them. Great. The salesperson got to sell two houses, even better. But if you don't tell the builder that and they just show up to a pre-con and they're talking about, you know, you're moving in with your family and you know, just the normal [00:15:00] things. Or, Hey, is your wife going to join us? Just any of these conversations that we would take for granted in this, yeah, they're going to step into some bear traps pretty quick.

Greg Bray: So, when you are teaching builders about how to interact with customers, about the importance of all this, what kind of pushback do you get? Is this like, oh, yes, I love your ideas, or it's like, man, that's just one more thing I got to do, and I don't have time anyway to get it all done? I don't want to.

Jeremiah Gore: Yeah, I think like any training, you're going to get the people that are early adopters. They're just excited. This is awesome. And you're going to get the other people. So, sales training, I generally show up, everybody's excited. Like, this is great, we're going to have a great time. I show up for construction training, half the rooms got their arms crossed, and they're mad you're there. They're mad they're there. They're mad you're there.

I've talked to them the night before. It's great. Some of these times I'm traveling in, so I stay at the hotel. Maybe they're hosting this event at a hotel, the training's at a hotel, and maybe some of these guys are out of town and they've had to come in there too. Well, if they haven't researched me at all, which is generally the case [00:16:00] for a lot of these builders, they've just been told, you got to be at this hotel, at this city, at this time. And they're like, for what? And they're like, you know, you're training and they, you know, fired up.

I'll see them the night before, and I'll be like, What are you guys in for? Because they're wearing their shirt. They got their logo builder shirt on. I'm like, what are you guys in for? Oh, we got some training. I'm like, oh, that sucks. They're like, Oh yeah, you have no idea. And then I walk into the room next day. Right. But I call them out on it, you know, because I understand. And it's because they've never really stepped through training. Now, my training might be a little bit different, but most of the trainers that I know and work with they all work to keep it engaging, keep it fun, keep it moving. You know, no one's really lecturing for six hours that I know.

And so, I think for the most part, they don't know what they don't know. It's like our customers, they create these stories in their head of what it's going to be like. They create their own expectations, and then we don't live up to them. With training, it's kinda like, ah, let's shake you loose of that and let's have a little bit of fun. And what you'll see is those guys that [00:17:00] first pushed back and are like, you can't teach me nothing. I've been building for 35 years. And that same crusty guy will walk up to you at a break, a little bit later, and he is like, I wish I'd have known that before, I might not have been married four times. You're like, good point, sir.

Kevin Weitzel: Let me ask you this. So, you work with both operations, and you're working with like the people that handle warranty, correct?

Jeremiah Gore: Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: Okay. So, on the warranty side, is your methodology, do you just teach them the teeth breathe, you know, the Ooh, yeah. That's not covered. Is that what you teach, or is it more in-depth than that?

Jeremiah Gore: Yeah, I'm going to now. I love it. I'm going to teach them the teeth breathe. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. You know, from the builder side and the warranty side, so much of the conversations are the same. Let's be clear. Brene Brown is the champion of empathy for me, and I try to soak up everything she teaches. I try to filter that and put that tool into the the hands of the building staff and the warranty teams.

If people would just be empathetic to what someone else is going through, it's not just [00:18:00] about what we're talking about today, but in life in general, if you would just be empathetic to that person who's got a stroller, they're mad and they're yelling at everybody in the airport, and just a little bit of empathy, realizing how difficult and stressful that would be for that individual to be making their way through the airport with all of that, our world be so much better.

So, what we try to do is just remind the guys and the girls that are on the construction and warranty teams, they're frustrated, they're mad, the fastest way to disarm that is to show some empathy. That's where we start. Pretty much every negative conversation is just be empathetic. I'm going to add in the teeth brief, though. I love that.

Greg Bray: I've got two thoughts on warranty and things that I'd love your feedback on. Number one, I get asked sometimes, Hey, you know, we've got these bad reviews on Google and things, what can your SEO team do to hide those reviews so they don't show up when people search for us? And I just want to say, well, why don't you fix your construction warranty process, so then you don't have these bad reviews?

And [00:19:00] then secondly, I feel like warranty is one of the secret silver bullets that builders have on the marketing because the biggest competitor is resale homes that don't come with warranties. And we've got this big differentiator between new construction and resale or used homes, but yet warranties like this, oh man, it's, it means there's problems. It means we did something wrong, and we don't lean into it, as this is a huge benefit to a buyer. Do your warranty trainings, do they feel like, Wow, we are really bringing this extra value to the whole process? Or is like, oh man, there's more problems. We got more nail pops we got to go deal with, or whatever it is that comes up.

Jeremiah Gore: Yeah, I think the question's great. It's twofold, though, and you brought up kind of both sides of it, because you're coming from the marketing angle. I mean, that's step one, right, is on the marketing side. I've been fortunate or cursed, I don't know how you want to look at it, of being responsible for marketing at various stages in my career. And I'll say that the first issue that a lot of builders have is they want to hide it. You got to own it. How you respond to it is going to be more [00:20:00] beneficial than saying, Oh, we never get a bad review. So, that's step one.

The longer term is, customer experience is not a thing you do. It's a thing you are. It's reflective of your internal culture. So, if your internal culture is jacked, guess what? Your customer experience is most likely going to be jacked as well. This is not an initiative. This is not something you can hand off to a committee and say, This is our customer experience committee, and, you know, we're going to have a cutting board at every closing. And just think that fixes everything. That's not how customer experience and that journey goes.

The customer experience doesn't end when the home closes. It includes that warranty part of the process. And so, when you think about that. We teach the warranty guys and girls that when you think of what they're responsible for, so they are like the doctor. When you go to visit a doctor, you're not saying this whole thing is crap. You're not like looking at yourself, saying, This is just awful. I mean, you might when you look in the mirror. I know for me, like, I didn't go for five years, and I went the other day, I had a birthday, and I went in. I'm like, just tell me what's all wrong and then we'll just [00:21:00] figure out, you know, what vitamins I can take to fix it, and it's in my head.

But the warranty team is there to fix the most prized possession that anyone will have, and it's not just that they're fixing it. When we talk about that they're healing their home. They are the healer of their home because this thing is the most important thing in their life. A home will impact a family in ways that nothing else will. If they will change their mindset, as to buyer has problem X, I'm here to fix problem X. The faster I can get them to sign off that problem X as resolved, and instead see it as coming alongside the customer and realizing the thing they're complaining about may not be the thing that they're actually upset about.

And a great example is like a toilet backing up the day of their daughter's birthday. Oh, by the way, this is their daughter's birthday, and the first time that they've ever shown this home to their friends and family. So now, do you think the warranty's actually there to fix the toilet, or are they there to help with the fact that this husband and wife were extremely embarrassed by the fact that their new home had a [00:22:00] problem? If warranty buys in on this, is a bigger deal. We got to get to the emotional side of these issues, not just that these are issues in the home, then they're connecting with that customer in a way that they haven't before. I don't know if that answers your question.

Greg Bray: I know from my own personal experience, our home was a move-in ready inventory. So, we had the walkthrough, and here I am, this beautiful new house. I'm really kind of in there for the first time. And what happens is they hand me some blue tape and say, Find everything wrong that you can and mark it so we can come back and deal with it. I was terrified I was gonna miss one, and then nobody would ever come back and do it. And it's like, it all became this focus on the problem, instead of the joy of, wow, we're moving into this beautiful new house. Look at all the things we get to do here that we couldn't do in our old one, and all of this kind of stuff. That's always stuck with me. It's like, I think that was a missed experience opportunity from a positive versus negative role.

Jeremiah Gore: Oh, for sure. If builders are running blue tape meetings, they're doing it wrong, period. Put that in bold [00:23:00] print. You know, before I go into a training, I'm like, what is your process? Tell me, you know, I want to make sure we're in alignment. And every once in a while, I have a builder say, Well, we do a blue tape meeting. Wait, what? Is that what you call it with a customer? They're like, yeah. No. No, you don't. Please tell me you're lying. Like you're just trying to get me, and they do.

Or you'll have what they call first walk, second walk. Okay. Well, walk me through that. Help me understand why you call it first walk, second walk. Well, because we know we're going to have a second walk, 'cause they're gonna find problems with the house. We're okay with this. We're okay with like saying, Hey, here's the finish line, but we're not going to finish here. We're going to need you to come in and help us finish it. You know, I have some builders that will flat out argue with me and say, Well, if the customer finds a few things, then they feel like. They feel like what?

So, to your point, Greg, I think the problem is sometimes we accept a culture that allows our customers to finish their home. That's a fast way to lose them from a customer experience journey. I mean, think psychology terms, buyers will remember the highs during the journey, and they'll remember the end of the [00:24:00] journey, which is why we teach Finish Strong on all of our stuff, is because they're going to remember the highs and the end.

Now, if the experience was the worst in the world, it's hard to overcome. But if the experience was average, it was just like, eh, but your highs were great and your end was phenomenal, they're going to remember that and that's what they're go when they get done with the home. And I think sometimes our builders forget that when it comes to, and by builders I mean home building companies, because they're allowing it in their culture, that this final part of this journey that this customer has been on to just kind of fizzle out.

And it's kinda like, Hey, you know what, Kevin? Show up to your house on Tuesday. I'm going to have you kind of walk through it because I can't finish it unless you give me a punch list. That's what it sounds like. And unfortunately, too many of our builders out there, that's what they're allowing their construction guys, or warranty, however they set up that orientation, they're letting happen.

Kevin Weitzel: It's also how you handle just the communication because I had the sheer, [00:25:00] just coincidental luck of being in a car dealership. I had a little Toyota XP, and this guy brought in this car. He was fuming, like super, super mad, and I was just happened to be in the service bay, you know, the little tunnel you drive in and you get with the guy with the clipboard. Anyway, long story short, this kid comes up, he's a lanky, buck-tooth kid that kind of spoke a little bit urban.

He comes over and goes, Hey Jeremiah, man, am I glad you were here? And I know that you're pissed right now. I can see it in your eyes. And he goes, but let me tell you. I want to thank you for providing us with the opportunity to right this ship. Here, why don't you come on over here, let me get you a drink? I'm going to talk to the service manager. And honestly, with your vehicle, it's been coming in with a recall issue. And if it's a recall issue, you know what, brother? You got no problems at all. He's seriously just, and this dude was mad, diffused him like that. And it's all just based on the way he carried himself and the language that he used. And just being friendly and real.

Jeremiah Gore: Well, I would suspect that kid, guy, whatever has had that conversation before. He knows that conversation's coming up. Right. [00:26:00] Yet, when you talk to some of these teams, they act like this is the first time they've ever experienced this conversation. I don't do role play in training. That's a fast way to lose a room. We do practice. We're going to be talking about practice, right? In the words of Allen Iverson, we're going to talk about practice.

 We would do practice. And so, I'll ask somebody, they're like, you know, my team doesn't really need training. I'm like, pick your top builder and let's call them on the phone right now. And let's ask them one problem question, and let's see how they respond. I've yet to have anyone take me up on it because they know it's not going to be as phenomenal as they're claiming it to be.

And to your point, that's one of those where he knows that's going to happen. Why is he not ready with a response for that to happen? And this guy, you know, apparently he is ahead of the game because he is got a response ready to go. It's not canned, it's not rehearsed, it doesn't feel like it, right? It feels personalized to that customer. Our building teams and our warranty teams have that exact ability to be able to go and say, What is the number one complaint I get, and how am I going to respond to that? [00:27:00]

And when you ask them that, they're like, what? It's not rocket science. You know you're going to get this question how many times in a week? How many times in a month? What's your response when you get that? And it is amazing to me how many teams aren't equipped and ready for that response.

Greg Bray: So, Jeremiah, who owns customer experience? You talked about it doesn't work with a committee. Is it marketing? Is it sales? Is it somebody else? Who has to own this to make it work?

Jeremiah Gore: It's everybody. The culture is the foundation of the customer journey and the customer experience. So, if it's chaos in the office, it's going to be chaos for the customer. You might have a builder or a salesperson overcome a little bit of that, but the whole team. So, marketing is responsible to kind of help start setting that expectation of what it is that we are as a builder. Are we a luxury builder? Are we a value builder? Are we down and dirty? Like, are we're going to give you the best home at the best price possible and as quickly as we can? Is that who we are? Or are we going to provide luxury at affordable price? Marketing, [00:28:00] they're setting the expectations of what it is that we're going to do. What's amazing is customers will feed off that expectation.

Now, on the building side, we have our best intentions. Those don't always align. Sometimes the buyer's expectations, and sometimes those expectations were set by us. Maybe a salesperson said, Oh, we can get you in by Christmas, no problem. Oh, if we look at the calendar mathematically, that's impossible at this stage, right? And so, builder shows up to pre-con and says, Okay, I've got you slated out to move in by February the 24th. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Salesperson said by the holidays. Yeah, maybe we met by Easter, right? Like, I don't know what the expectation was. So, we have our best intentions, customer has their expectations, and that gap in between is where we lose trust.

So, it's everybody's job for the customer experience, even purchasing. Purchasing or making decisions is going to impact that customer. Example is a two-gang switch in a bedroom. So, if we take those out and we just provide one switch [00:29:00] knowing that they're going to install a fan after the fact, if we don't include it already, we've just creating them a problem. That's all we've done. And what, to save 80 bucks a house? I don't know. I couldn't tell you last time I priced out what that even cost, and if electricians are even charging for it anymore.

I worked with a builder where they were still doing the old kind of old school light switches. I don't even know what they're called. Right. I just call them old school light switches. And it was like, what's the price to switch to rocker switches? Like decor rocker switches. They asked, and the electrician was like, Actually, they're free because every builder's gone to them. So, it's actually cheaper for us to just stock the one switch than it is to stock these old school light switches just for you guys. And so, it's because they asked, right?

So, purchasing has the ability to make a huge impact on the customer experience without ever even talking to a customer. And so, when you think about it, everybody up and down the line, accounting has a direct connection because if they continue to pay bills on a timely fashion, well, guess what? We're going to continue to have the good trades that want to do work for us because they're getting paid quickly, and they're not pushing back [00:30:00] because you didn't put the T in the right form, right? The old TPS report. Well, on your PO, you didn't put in this number or that number, like they worked through it to get it resolved, so they get paid on time. So, guess what? We get the best trades, and therefore we get a better-built home. So, everybody on the team is responsible for the customer experience. Everybody.

Greg Bray: Love it. Love it. Well, Jeremiah, thank you so much for spending so much time with us today. We really appreciate that. Any last words of advice that you'd like to leave with the audience before we finish up?

Jeremiah Gore: We kind of talked about it just right there is, no matter who you are in your role or your responsibility within the home building sector, or maybe not even home building, you're in a completely different industry, just don't underestimate the impact that you can make to the customer experience. Regardless of your role, regardless of your title, somebody has to champion it and somebody has to push for it to be better tomorrow than it was yesterday. So, every interaction either builds or breaks trust. One, you're listening to a podcast to be better. So, that's step one. [00:31:00] Step two is to take some of these things and apply them, but step three is choose to build trust. Proactively, choose to build trust.

Kevin Weitzel: So, if a builder wants to elevate their game. What's the best way to get in touch with Jeremiah?

Jeremiah Gore: Website, choosecrossroads.com. And then, Instagram, LinkedIn, Jeremiah Gore, pretty simple. You know, they can learn like how to reframe corporate speak. I don't take that stuff too serious. So, it's generally lighthearted stuff if they want to engage and kind of see our business through a slightly different lens. Check me out on LinkedIn or Instagram, but choosecrossroads.com.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you, Jeremiah, for sharing 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 OutHouse. Thank you. [00:32:00]