317 6th Annual Online Homebuyer Mystery Shop Report - Leah Fellows and Carol Morgan Apr 29 2026

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

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

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to have two guests joining us again. We've got Leah Fellows and Carol Morgan. Leah is the president of Blue Gypsy Inc., and Carol is the President of Denim Marketing. Thanks Leah and Carol for joining us again today.

Leah Fellows: Thanks for having us.

Carol Morgan: Always happy to be here.

Leah Fellows: Yeah.

Greg Bray: [00:01:00] For those who haven't had a chance to meet you yet, let's get those quick introductions. Carol, why don't you go first and just give us a quick background and then we'll hear from Leah.

Carol Morgan: Sure. I'm Carol Morgan, founder and president of Denim Marketing. We are a marketing and PR focused agency. We focus pretty exclusively on home builders, developers, and real estate companies. And I'm also the host of Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio Podcast. So, I'm really fortunate because I get to have fun conversations like this all the time, which is one of my absolute favorite parts of my job.

Greg Bray: All right, Leah, give us a little background about you.

Leah Fellows: Well, I am the founder and owner of Blue Gypsy Inc. For those of you who go, what the heck is that? It's actually an online sales counselor training company. I do all things OSCs, online sales counselors, for the building industry. I'm very niche driven. I do everything from auditing programs that are already in existence to helping builders set up new and exciting online sales counselor programs. I help them hire people, train, [00:02:00] integrate it between marketing and sales and really just help that lead conversion for new home builders. I've actually been in the building industry for 20 years now. It's kind of crazy. And one of the latest things I've done is release my very first book, which is called "Attract, Engage, Convert" and it's about helping marketing, sales, online sales, and leadership understand how it all comes together.

Greg Bray: Awesome.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, we are to that point in the show where I get to ask you both a question, which is tell us something interesting about yourself that has nothing to do with work, family, or the home building industry at all. So, let's go with Carol first.

Carol Morgan: Well, some people may know that I live on a 20-acre horse farm, but a lot of your listeners may not know. I actually spoke to someone earlier today that had no idea that I live on a working horse farm, and what that means is fun things like I live with a very opinionated little mini donkey named Kevin. That means this weekend I [00:03:00] got to put a fly mask on Kevin for the first time and he was very confused at first. And actually it's funny, he didn't care about the fly masks so much, but the fly masks have ears on them now, so it keeps bugs out of their ears as well as out of their eyes, and he was very, very concerned about me covering up his ears, but actually, very quite compliant. So, I can't complain about Kevin, but

Kevin Weitzel: Kevin does like the fly mask.

Carol Morgan: And he was happy to put it on today for Lacey, who does my barn Monday through Friday. I said, did you have any problem getting Kevin's fly mask on? She's not at all. So, that tells you how smart they are. I mean, he literally had it put on him once and he's okay with it.

Kevin Weitzel: Find a Kevin mask for me.

Carol Morgan: I'll send you one, Kevin. You need a fly mask?

Kevin Weitzel: There you go.

Leah Fellows: Well, for me, the people who know me, know this, but a lot of people I find never really heard this, even if they know me, is that before the building industry, I spent 13 years traveling around the world as a backpacker, a dive instructor, and a sailboat captain. So, I still have a [00:04:00] love of travel and a love of scuba diving, even though I live in Denver and I know that people think that's crazy. I think Greg said it earlier, for someone who loves water so much, how come I live in Denver where I'm nowhere near the water. But I am getting to go scuba diving in Roatan, Honduras soon. So, I'm very excited to get myself underwater, and that is one of my happiest places, is just to be kind of gliding across a coral reef looking at all the stuff under there. That's my meditative happy place.

Greg Bray: Alright, so I can't wait till we get the AI summaries of this episode that say, Leah wants to be underwater and Kevin needs a fly mask.

Carol Morgan: Yeah, that's going to be awesome.

Greg Bray: And they will have no idea which Kevin we're talking about. Well, Leah and Carol we're excited to have you back today because we want to dive in a little bit into the latest Annual Homebuyer Mystery Shop Report. I know you guys have been doing this for several years now, and [00:05:00] we've talked about some of the prior reports that have come out. But again, new report, new year, new data, new insights. Right? So let's just start with, for those who aren't familiar with the report, you know, when did you start doing it? Why are you doing it and what are some of the goals behind it?

Leah Fellows: I'll take that one. We actually started doing this in 2020, during COVID when things kind of got crazy. And we wanted to take a look at how many builders actually were responsive to digital leads because everything started moving online. Our first report was in 2020. We just kind of started going from there and we wanted to look at how many builders had online sales counselors, how they were following up, and we were looking at speed, diversity of touchpoint, and frequency of messaging. That's kind of been the consistency throughout. Now this is year six, the sixth year we've done this report, and so we've seen things go up and down and a lot of things change, which I think we're going to dive into a little bit [00:06:00] more.

Greg Bray: Well, Carol, tell us just for those who aren't quite sure what mystery shop means or how you get this data and who you got it from, just give some of those logistical, background pieces.

Carol Morgan: Yeah. Well, and we'd be remiss if we didn't mention our partner Melinda Brody and Company that actually does the mystery shop portion of this. But we mystery 50 builders across five categories, and they range from large national builders to small local ones. The shoppers submit a real inquiry on the website. So, they submit their name, their information, a question, so it looks like they're a real buyer, truly interested in a specific property. And then we track responses for 30 days across email, phone, text, video follow-up, any kind of follow-up possible really. The builders don't know they're being shopped, so it gives us a really nice, true picture of what's really going on out there.

Greg Bray: So, you don't get permission from the builders to do this? You just go to the website.

Carol Morgan: We just do it.

Greg Bray: Fill out the forms and see what happens.

Carol Morgan: Yep.

Kevin Weitzel: Okay. Before we break into [00:07:00] the finite aspects of the study, could you possibly give us the biggest change that you saw from 24 to 25?

Carol Morgan: Yeah, absolutely. I think the biggest shift is what we're calling the teeter-totter effect. So, OSC performance improved, but OSC presence dropped from 78% of our builders being surveyed having OSCs to 70. So, teams are doing better, but fewer builders are investing in OSCs, which is really concerning.

Leah Fellows: Yeah. Last year's disappointment, not this current one, but last year's disappointment was the performance of online sales counselors. Because we had 78%, which was the highest number I think that we'd had in the five years at that point that we'd done it, but they were the lowest performance rates for OSCs. But I don't want you to make a mistake and think, oh, that means OSCs aren't performing well. Because when we compare them against builders without online sales counselors, there's a huge [00:08:00] chasm of difference between what OSCs and builders without OSCs do. But this year, we only had one that was a little nonresponsive versus 13 the year before. So, that is a big thing that we saw a difference in.

Greg Bray: I need to clarify. These 50 builders, are they the same 50 from prior years, or it's a different kind of collection? Just to understand.

Carol Morgan: I would say, some of them are the same, but we do change out about a quarter to a third of them every year.

Leah Fellows: Yeah.

Carol Morgan: You know, there is some consistency, but we try to change it a little bit just to give other people a chance so that it's not the same group time after time.

Leah Fellows: Yeah. We take the list from a variety of places. We do look at the top 200 builders and pull some of our people from that. Back to what Carol said with Melinda Brody and Company really kind of being the driving factor in this, a couple years ago, Ben, who is the owner of Melinda Brody now, Ben started breaking out into five subgroups. So, [00:09:00] that's in the report too. I don't want to get into the weeds because that's Ben's baby, but you can see it in our appendix. You can see the different size builders that we shot because we try to create a picture that looks at everything from national builders all the way down to the small local mom and pops. So, we're seeing all of that.

Greg Bray: I know, Leah, that because you were mystery shopping them and they didn't know this was happening, you don't get to go back to the builder and say, why do you, or don't you have an OSC? But as you are talking with builders in general and you layer that in that the number with OSCs has declined a little bit, do you have some theories as to why? Is it less important to them? Are they using like AI instead or is there something else that's kind of getting in the way of them prioritizing it?

Leah Fellows: So, I hate to say this, and I'm probably calling builders out on this, but when times get tough, and we've seen it again 20 years, we've seen the ebb and [00:10:00] flow of things. You know, I started in the down market in 2006, 2007. When builders start to make cuts to try to cut their budgets, sometimes they're cutting people and marketing that they think are non-essential. And I think that a lot of times leadership is not in tune with what online sales actually does as that crossroads of marketing and sales, and how during down times, like we're experiencing right now, that an OSC can really get as much juice as possible when trained right, when the right objectives are set up for them, when they're supposed to be doing things and they're being held accountable, they can really move the needle on how many of those marketing generated leads we're getting, even though they're lower numbers, actually convert to viable leads. And I think that leadership doesn't always understand it. And I think that's why this role sometimes gets cut because it's being seen as [00:11:00] an expense versus an actual revenue-generating position.

Greg Bray: Based on that then, let's talk a little bit more about the differences between builders with and without OSCs and show a little bit, what is the benefit of that OSC position? Are there a couple of stats that jumped out in that comparison, like, oh, with you achieved this and without you miss out on whatever?

Leah Fellows: OSCs are faster, they're faster to respond. You're going to get the fastest response time, the most consistent response time from them. Across the board, if we were to look at the report, we'd see the frequency of the messaging, the OSCs do it. Builders without OSCs tend to, if they even reach out once, which I think at least 20% didn't at all, if they even reach out once, it's a one and done. There's very little phone calls made, et cetera.

Carol Morgan: Yeah, and only 3% of the OSCs failed to send a personalized email in this latest [00:12:00] survey, which is a huge, big improvement. You see that as a huge improvement over the builders without OSCs. Because some of the stats, just overall, I mean, you know, 20% of builders responded within 30 minutes. That's still not ideal as a whole. Only 6% made a phone call within five minutes and 42% never called at all. But if you compare those general numbers to the OSCs, the OSCs are just warp speed ahead of the builders without them. Because the reality is, and you guys know this, but I'll just say it, if you don't have an online sales counselor, it probably means you don't really have a process that is rinse and repeatable for following up with those leads.

Leah Fellows: When we say 3% of OSCs didn't send an email, that's one person. So, one person throws that wrench in there, you know? So, you got to ask yourself, does it look like they have an OSC in name only? There's only so much we can do in the survey to understand it, but we do try to look at how many builders have a presence of OSC. [00:13:00] Sometimes we only uncover the fact that a builder has an OSC because the email signature line says it's an OSC. There's that as well. Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: Alright. Now this is the 2025 report, not the 1975 report.

Carol Morgan: Shockingly.

Kevin Weitzel: Did you seriously say that 20% zero response at all and over 40% no personal phone call or no phone call at all? That's ridiculous. Do they not know that a puppy dies every time you don't respond to an inbound warm, saucy, juicy, huggable lead like that?

Carol Morgan: It's kind of crazy, Kevin. I mean, they're not persistent at all either. You know, 30% of builders made one call and never tried again. These are warm leads. I mean, if somebody gives you their phone number, hello, call it. The biggest miss overall seems to be consistency. You've got to have a consistent follow-up approach.

Leah Fellows: Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: Let me ask you this, and this is probably something more for Ben's team. Are these failing the [00:14:00] sniff test? Are these coming to savvy salespeople that are just like, there's no way this isn't a secret shopper, I'm not going to waste my time on this. Do you think that's happening?

Leah Fellows: No. I really don't think so. I mean, I think that my experience beyond the mystery shop is that when leads are sent directly to onsite, onsite is too busy to do stuff. They have other things that they prioritize. It's not in their training to prioritize this. So, I really don't think it's a sniff test issue. I think it's just a lack of prioritizing something like this. Whereas in online sales world, it is the priority.

Kevin Weitzel: It is the priority. That's exactly right. Because you know, in the sales, physical sales world, they say the most important customer is the person in front of you.

Carol Morgan: In front of them, right?

Kevin Weitzel: So, if their focus is that person that's in front of them and they've got an email and a phone call and all this other stuff coming in. Now granted there is not a builder out there that's so busy that they can't go check their emails and phone calls and stuff. But, that said, that is the existence of an OSC. That is their entire [00:15:00] existence in life is to make sure that they're nurturing every one of those leads as they come in.

Leah Fellows: True. Exactly.

Greg Bray: What is the ideal response time? We're throwing some numbers around and what is it that we think would be good?

Leah Fellows: Five minutes or less.

Carol Morgan: I was going to say less than five minutes.

Leah Fellows: Yeah. Five minutes or less. If you look across all industries, not just ours, I mean, the likelihood of converting a lead is exponentially higher the quicker you respond. I think it's in the 300 plus times more likely for it to convert. And look, we have a problem in our industry. I will laugh at this all the time. We call anything that comes across our database a lead, right? But it really is an inquiry and a lead isn't something until we actually can communicate with it and understand, does it respond. Because one of the things I feel like OSCs do on a regular basis is filter out spam. Their job has become, [00:16:00] whether it's by phone or by email, to filter out a ton of spam.

And no offense, Carol, to the marketing side of things, or Greg, but a lot of times I will be talking to marketing departments that say, but they got 95 phone calls. That's 95 leads. Do you know how many of those phone calls are robocalls, how many of those phone calls are previous buyers that want to know the paint color on the door, how many of those leads are not really leads, but repetitive phone calls or even vendor calls that they're getting?

Carol Morgan: Well, yes, Leah. We do know how many of those there are if the person answering the phone is tracking that for us.

Leah Fellows: Right, right. But somebody tracking that. Right. And I've had raw numbers, you know, I've had people tell me that and then I make the OSCs tag everything, but you have to have a calling system. Do you know how many builders still don't even have calling systems that record and track and do all of that? [00:17:00] So, there's some craziness out there that, like you said, Kevin, what is this? 1975? Because it's like we have the technology.

Carol Morgan: It's the dawn of the internet still.

Leah Fellows: But we don't use it and we don't use it properly, and we don't set it up and we don't create accountability, and we sometimes only create accountability for online sales and not onsite sales. So, that's another thing. Sorry, I just, I think I need to step off that soapbox.

Carol Morgan: We're just glad you're passionate. We can tell you care about what you do.

Leah Fellows: Always.

Greg Bray: Hey everybody. This is Greg Bray from Blue Tangerine, and I am so excited to let you know that the registration is now open for the 2026 Builder Marketing Summit. We're gonna be in Dallas, Texas this year on September 23rd and 24th, and we are working on an amazing lineup of marketing OSC and leadership content for you. Please check it out@buildermarketingsummit.com and get your registration in today. Remember, there's limited seats available, so don't miss out. Again, builder marketing summit.com. Can't wait to see you there.

So, we want to be fast with the responses. The five minutes is not a new metric that you've imposed here. You've been tracking this before. You mentioned the number that do personalized emails versus the autoresponder type, automated replies. How personal should this type of an email be to qualify? Is it just like slapping a name in there, or does it have to have something more to qualify as a personalized [00:18:00] email?

Leah Fellows: That's actually a good question because every one of our inquiries has some sort of question that the prospect has put into that form for the inquiry. So, it's not just someone's given a name, a phone number, and an email address, they've asked a question. So personalization is, did you actually answer that question or respond to that question. If it's just a templated email that looks like, Hey, thank you for your inquiry, that's where we count it as not personalized, right? We count the personalization, as actually trying to answer that question that was asked by the shopper, the mystery shopper.

Greg Bray: So, one thing I noticed was a little growth in text messaging this year. And you mentioned people not calling. Is there a cultural like shift towards texting versus calling that could be at play? I know we're trying to make maybe too big of a leap in understanding people's motivations, but what are your thoughts around the text messaging?

Carol Morgan: Absolutely it's a [00:19:00] cultural change. I mean, how many of your friends even do you call who don't call you back, they text you instead. Texting is just what people are comfortable with. You know, they can hide behind their phone and text. They don't actually have to talk to anyone. And I think there's a lot of people who just love to live their life that way and not ever talk on the phone. So, I think that's part of why builders have incorporated it more and more into their follow-up plans is because they've given you their number. They might not answer the phone if you call, but they might text back if you text them. Yeah, and it was up 62% of builders used it in this past survey, and that's up 12 points. So, it's definitely becoming a key channel because it's where buyers are, you know, we're all on our phones all the time, unfortunately, so.

Leah Fellows: Yeah. I would say, just as an add-on to that, I don't think that we should give builders a pass. Builders should not give their salespeople or online salespeople a pass and say, just text, don't call. We should link all that follow-up so that the buyer has their preferred method to [00:20:00] respond. Texting is up. It doesn't mean don't make the phone call. It means make the phone call, connect it to the text, connect it to the email, and then have your buyer respond the way that is most comfortable to them.

Kevin Weitzel: I don't mean to shift to a completely different direction, but while I'm eyeballing this report I noticed something that kind of glaringly stands out that you have in here a stat that there's 122% increase in builders without OSCs using autoresponders. I assume it's a smart practice because they're doing something rather than nothing. But is that a lazy practice that shoppers like me that will say, that's just an autoresponder, I don't really want to waste my time with these people?

Carol Morgan: The problem is it might not answer their question. That's the biggest problem. You know, if they've asked a personal question and you're responding with a generic autoresponder, it's a miss.

Kevin Weitzel: Do you offer finished basements and then it comes back with, hi. I see that you've contacted our company and I hope you're having a great day. Yeah.

Leah Fellows: I really think the autoresponder should [00:21:00] be set up to let people know you're going to reach out to them personally. I think the autoresponder should have warmth to it, but not be pretending to be a response. It should say, Hey, thank you for submitting your inquiry to us. Our team will be reaching out to you. If you have immediate questions, please reach out to Sarah, our online sales counselor. Her number is blah, blah, blah. She's going to be, contacting you shortly.

Carol Morgan: Yeah. I think the best use of autoresponders is still, if you've got somebody signing up for something specific. Like you've got a VIP interest list, and you're going to use the autoresponder as the start of a drip campaign where you're going to keep them informed of what's going on with that community, that's maybe six or 12 months out but you started this VIP list. They can be first in line to buy, and you're going to tell them all about the amenities, and all about the home plans, and all of that in a drip campaign. That makes a lot of sense. But when it's somebody wanting an answer to a specific question, again, I think it creates friction, and that's something that we, as an industry, need to learn to do less of.

Greg Bray: It's [00:22:00] also kind of that placeholder, right? If you're going to respond in five minutes or less, you don't need the autoresponder to tell the message got through.

Carol Morgan: Right.

Greg Bray: Because often the autoresponder is simply that confirmation that the system didn't break and it actually s ubmitted something for real. Because, unfortunately, sometimes we hit submit and we never know what happens to it. But if you're going to respond quickly, then great. Just respond and be done. But if you're not, then I think the autoresponder becomes more important because it actually is proving that it got through and it might take us a minute to get back to you.

Leah Fellows: Well, and I think the hardest problem with that is we still don't have OSCs on 24/7. So, if somebody's filling a form out at 2:00 AM, what are they going to get and how are they going to do it, and how are we going to make sure that they know we are planning on reaching out? And so, that's the harder part is how do you turn automation on and off? And automation and autoresponders are two different things.

What we used to find, I think in the early days of doing this shop [00:23:00] is not only did builders not have autoresponders, but they weren't even doing marketing follow-up. And a lot of them had no autoresponder, no marketing follow-up, and then no OSC follow-up. So, we would see people with nothing. One builder sent something like 84 marketing emails. I think it was 84 in 30 days.

Carol Morgan: In 30 days. I don't know how anyone is still on their list. I know what I would've done to them.

Leah Fellows: And actually what's funny is it was a builder that supposedly had an online sales counselor, but there was no online sales counselor follow-up.

Greg Bray: Kevin's stunned. He's speechless.

Kevin Weitzel: I'm telling you right now that's an instant unsubscribe from a shopper like myself.

Carol Morgan: It's more than two a day. It means they sent three some days. I would like to know just like what does that workflow look like and what were the subjects? I can't fathom a builder that has that much to say that anyone would want to continue to engage with.

Leah Fellows: Okay, I got it correct. I need to make a correction. It was 74.

Kevin Weitzel: It's still a lot. That's ridiculous. Let's spin this into something that's easily [00:24:00] chewable by even the most simple minded sales personnel. You're in a bar, and some guy in a leisure suit, polyester, by the way, comes up and says, Hey, how you doing? And you say, oh, I'm great. I've already got a drink here. Kind of give him a little shove off and they're like, boy, I like blonde hair. Is your hair blonde for real or do you have that dyed? Hey boy, I noticed you have blue eyes. Did you always have blue eyes or are those contacts? Now, when you're done with a drink, you going to want another drink? And then it just keeps on going. Nobody wants to date that.

Carol Morgan: I have that on my phone right now, Kevin. I need you to help me after this call formulate a response.

Leah Fellows: Yeah.

Greg Bray: What does the ideal recommended follow-up kind of structure look like?

Leah Fellows: I've been saying this for years, that in the first 30 days we should have eight to 12 touchpoints, maybe 15, and there should be a diversity. There should be a diversity of those touchpoints. So, that means it's not just emails, it's emails, phone calls, text messages, [00:25:00] video emails so that you're not just pounding them, hammering them with those emails. Even if you had like 18 touch points, but they were diverse, that would be a little bit better. I still think it would be overkill. I don't think anybody wants to hear from you almost every day in the first 30 days that they've inquired.

You've got to remember that people's lives get busy, and that's why you don't get a response. So, you need to stand out from the crowd. It's not about more, it's about quality over quantity, and how are you going to try to do your outreach? And sometimes maybe we even need to check and get outside of our CRM and go through an inbox because maybe everything's going to their junk.

Carol Morgan: Right.

Leah Fellows: We need to be able to see what's the open rate? It's not just about sending, but it's about tracking and looking. What's going through? What's the open rate? What are the links they're clicking? Are we being able to see actual engagement that maybe we can't see because it's silent [00:26:00] engagement? But if you're not looking at all of those aspects as well, and you're just thinking response is the only answer, then you could be missing out. You could be missing that they really are engaged, but they're not there yet to want to speak to you.

Greg Bray: I think those are some great points, Leah, when I realize how dependent we become on email and how easy it is for an email to end up in the junk folder or to get buried simply in the inbox. Like, oh yeah, I need to get back to that tomorrow, but I'm busy right now. And then all of a sudden all this other stuff comes in. The same thing happens with text messages too. I need to get back to that later, but I can't right this minute and all of a sudden you've forgotten about it. It's like, oh yeah. I need to deal with that. The idea of multiple touch points to make sure that hasn't just been lost. These people reached out for a reason. These aren't folks that just accidentally submitted the form on your website by mistake. They had a question, they had some desire to know more.

Kevin Weitzel: And to add to that, Greg, these are people that you've literally [00:27:00] spent money with marketing dollars to do ad campaigns, to do social media campaigns, to get them to swing that door, so they say. And then when they swing that door, if you don't respond to it in any sort of good timeframe or have a personalized response, why did you spend the money in the first place.

Leah Fellows: Well, and I will say one of the most underused, still, one of the most underused touchpoints is video. Okay. And yet we see time and again, if you look at studies, people are much more likely to open and watch a video than read an email. People are much more likely to engage with that. And I get online sales counselors that are consistent with sending video emails that say, Hey, people thought I was, you know, in the Philippines or some foreign country until they saw my video and realized I was a real person. I was at the builder and I wasn't just a bot.

People are going to automation, and like you said earlier, some chatbots and AI and things like that, [00:28:00] and that can't really understand the feelings of people. They can't understand what people are truly looking for. So humans, they may not be ready to communicate yet, but when they see that human engagement, it may move them further and further forward to wanting to engage with a human. So, I think video is so underrated and underused right now.

Greg Bray: And you were tracking that specifically too, as part of this? Right?

Carol Morgan: Yes.

Leah Fellows: Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.

Greg Bray: Okay.

Leah Fellows: The only ones that used video email were OSCs. Thirty-four percent of builders in 2025 used video email. That's a 12 point increase from 2024. A hundred percent of those were OSCs.

Greg Bray: But it also shows a huge opportunity to differentiate because most are still not

Leah Fellows: So, yeah. That's a really, really important thing. It's not expensive, it's not new technology. My goodness, we've been using it forever. And you can create a variety of both [00:29:00] pre-canned videos that look warm, but you should still have the personalized videos that you do the one-off videos for people, the one-off videos that answer their questions, using video in a way that engages people once you have communicated. Which, of course, in these shops, the shoppers don't communicate with the builder. But in real life, what you would do real life, you should do that. And I'm guaranteeing you if we're not seeing it here in the mystery shop, we're not seeing it in real life very often either.

Greg Bray: Well, there's been so much that we've talked about already. There's a lot more in the report that we don't have time to get into, but let's try to boil it down. For builders that want to get better, what is one or two things that you would recommend they look at as where they should go next? Carol, how about what's one you've got? And then we'll let Leah give one.

Carol Morgan: Okay. I would say first speed to lead, respond within minutes, not hours.

Leah Fellows: I really think that time and again, this report proves we're not process [00:30:00] driven. And I realize we need to have humans driving it, but we still have to have humans within a tried and true process. And when we do things over and over again, the same way, we're going to get results. I think you need to make sure you're putting a process in place, auditing that process, and training your people to do it the right way.

Kevin Weitzel: I'd like to add to that. And here's what I'd like to add. If you, the brass of these companies, feel that it's okay to spend money to send people to rah rah camp, and what I mean by rah rah camp is you go to that be better and I'm going to be supercharged and awesome. If you're going to send your salespeople out the tens of thousands of dollars that cost every year, put it toward an OSC. You'll see so much more benefit of cultivating leads and putting butts in the seat, so they say, than you will with just having peppped up, hyped up, ramped up coffee drinking closers.

Carol Morgan: I love that.

Leah Fellows: Yeah. And it needs to be trained. You [00:31:00] have to have a methodical way to integrate your OSC program into your company. Leadership needs to understand it, you know? Yeah. It needs to come from the top. It's really marketing and sales all have to work in a team. It can't be siloed, where OSCs are just doing their thing. It has to be communication cross channels between marketing and sales to really get that to work well.

That takes more than just, Hey, I think we need this role, let's put it in place. It takes really a thoughtful process of integrating it into your company. And if you already have it, how do you grow it? If you already have it, how do you audit it and make sure it's performing the way that it needs to be? Because that's also another thing is a lot of people look at different numbers, not all the same, and they don't understand what it should be doing.

Greg Bray: So, every time I look at these reports, I keep waiting for the one that says, Oh, we figured it all out. We don't need to do better. We don't need OSCs anymore because it's all there or whatever. [00:32:00] But I don't think this year got us there. So you're going to have to do it again.

Carol Morgan: Exactly.

Leah Fellows: Yeah. I keep hoping I can retire, but I don't think I can yet.

Carol Morgan: No, I think, this year's as a big needs improvement.

Leah Fellows: Yeah.

Carol Morgan: Which is unfortunate because it really was not, for the most part, was not an improvement over the prior year, which is not what we want to see.

Leah Fellows: No.

Greg Bray: So we threw a lot of numbers out. Sometimes it's hard just listening to numbers. If somebody wants to get a copy of the full report, what's the best way for them to get their hands on it?

Carol Morgan: They can get it from any of the three websites. At Denim Marketing, it's denimmarketing.com/onlinemysteryshop. At Blue Gypsy, it's

Leah Fellows: At Blue Gypsy, you just go to my homepage and you'll see a big button that says download Mystery Shop.

Carol Morgan: There you go.

Leah Fellows: And I know Melinda Brody has it as well, so whoever you want to get it. And also this year we had a sponsor, ECI Lasso sponsored us, and they were going to have it on their website. And actually, Carol and I are going to be doing a webinar with them soon, kind of talking about some of the same stuff, so.

Carol Morgan: We'll have to come up with new statistics because there's plenty of them. [00:33:00] Yeah.

Greg Bray: Thank you so much for the effort and investment you put in to bring this information to the industry and to help us learn where there's opportunities that can be better. It's eyeopening for all of us. Any just last thoughts or piece of advice you want to leave before we finish up? Leah, we'll let you go first.

Leah Fellows: My last thought is just, gosh, please don't discontinue your marketing and your OSC programs. But in this day and age where it really counts, please just work on how are we going to make this work for us better and smarter? Not, Hey, this isn't working, let's cut the budget, you know?

Carol Morgan: Yeah. Completely agree. I would say don't let automation replace human connection. We all know how important that human touch is. Technology should support your process, not be your process. And the builders who are winning today are combining speed, structure, and real conversations. So, let's all remember to have those real conversations, not just the automated ones.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you again for being with us [00:34:00] today. If people want to connect with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch? Carol.

Carol Morgan: Carol@denimmarketing.com, denimmarketing.com, LinkedIn. I'm easy to find so just, you know, Google me and whichever your preferred method is, I will do my best to respond, but I'm faster on email and LinkedIn than anywhere else. Hint, hint,

Greg Bray: Leah.

Leah Fellows: You can find me at leah@bluegypsyinc.com. And I always say that's INC, like incorporated, not INK, like the tattoo shop, right? But at Blue Gypsy Inc. And you can get on my calendar and we can do a virtual cup of coffee, do a Zoom meeting for free and chat and brainstorm and that sort of thing. But you can find me on LinkedIn too. Those are probably some of the best ways to get ahold of me. I love just chatting about this stuff. I'm not passionate about it at all. So, I give a lot of free information out to people if they want to chat with me, so.

Greg Bray: Thank you everybody for listening today to the Builder Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank [00:35:00] you.