328 Curating an Elite Home Buyer Sales Experience - Nicholas Czar Jul 15 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 to have joining us today Nicholas Czar. Nicholas is the group vice president of Builder Solutions at New Home Star. Welcome, Nicholas. Thanks for spending time with us today.

Nicholas Czar: Oh, thank you, Greg. I really appreciate the invite. Thank you, Kevin, as well. Certainly appreciate always working with industry professionals to stay on the cutting edge [00:01:00] of what's happening in new home sales and marketing.

Greg Bray: Well, Nicholas, for those who haven't met you yet, give us that quick background and overview about yourself.

Nicholas Czar: Yeah, sure. Currently I serve as the group vice president of Builder Solutions at New Home Star, which is the largest independent new home sales organization in the country. I get the pleasure of overseeing a dedicated division that partners with regional and national builders to run their sales operations and accelerate performance. Prior to this, I spent many years in sales leadership strategy consulting across the home building industry, and got the opportunity to finish my degree at Harvard based out of Pittsburgh, and I've had a career at the intersection of sales execution and organizational strategy.

Kevin Weitzel: Harvard? I don't even know if we can do our interesting factoid about you, but we're going to try anyways. Nicholas, because Harvard that's already paramount in my book. But what we need for our listeners right now is an interesting factoid about yourself that has nothing to do with family, work life, or the home building industry at all.

Nicholas Czar: Yeah, no, that's a great question. A lot of people like to ask what I do outside of work, [00:02:00] and of course, I've got two wonderful children, and I spend most of my time with them. But when I do get away and have some time to myself, what I really enjoy doing is shooting trap. I kind of got a little taste of that in my childhood, and then had the opportunity to participate in a trap shoot for when I was sitting on the Homemade America board out in the Phoenix market. I remembered how much I loved it when at that event brought me to try it again. And ever since then, I've really kind of dialed in and that's what I enjoy in my free time, is doing a little bit of target shooting.

Kevin Weitzel: So, are you a Benelli man, a Winchester?

Nicholas Czar: I'm a Browning guy. I like made in the USA.

Kevin Weitzel: All right. So, over under, side by side? What's your option there?

Nicholas Czar: I go over under, of course. You know, I bought a 32-inch barrel there. If I'm shooting above, you know, 92%, I'm feeling pretty good.

Greg Bray: Are we talking competitive, like prize winning?

Nicholas Czar: Oh, no, no. Maybe someday, you know? I feel like, you know, my eyesight is going on me as I get older. So, the shooting's not getting any better as time goes on. But maybe down the road I wouldn't mind having a little bit of fun in that. But right now, between [00:03:00] my family and my work, I'm pretty stacked up.

Kevin Weitzel: If you're shooting 94, 95%, that's nationally competitive.

Nicholas Czar: Yes, but I'm also shooting from 18 yards, and so that's different than the Olympics.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah.

Greg Bray: Well, Nicholas, you did give us a little bit of insight into New Home Star, but just for those who aren't familiar with the company, just tell us a little bit more about the services you guys offer for builders.

Nicholas Czar: Yeah, great question. For the first 15 years that we were in business, New Home Star really only offered one product, which was outsourced sales services, meaning that a builder would hire us, and we would do essentially all of their sales operations. We would hire the people, we would coach them, we would provide leadership, we would provide support and all the things needed.

That way, in this world where a lot of builders are searching after this asset-light model, we could kind of play into that a little bit because they could essentially outsource their sales teams to us, turn that into a variable expense on their books, which obviously supports their asset-light model. And of course, [00:04:00] you know, we have quite a bit of experience and tools and things in our team. We usually would elevate their sales easily by about 15% or more just year one, just because we showed up with the support and the playbook and the things that we have.

And so, that's really how we built the company, and I still agree that was the right way to build the company because it was a clear value proposition, builders understood it, and of course, we were able to achieve scale through that model. But once we hit a point that I like to call critical mass, once we hit that point, and I think we hit that point, that's when, you know, I had the opportunity to get together with the founder and say, "Hey, you know, right now is might be a really good time to pursue an unbundling strategy." You know, you see a lot of companies when they reach that critical mass point, that's when they shift into an unbundled strategy.

And what that meant was, for the first time ever, builders could buy a piece of our services. You see, before it was like you bought the whole thing or you got nothing, and that was it. Now we could say, "Well, there's different entry points," which of course allowed us to help a lot more builders because if you're pursuing an [00:05:00] outsourced model, you need a certain scale in order for that to pencil, whereas when we go to more of an à la carte services, now I can help builders of all sizes, of all scale, and I can help get them to a point where we can actually graduate into greater services.

And so really, the services that we provide are going to surround sales training. We provide fractional leadership. We provide online sales concierge services for about 12 different builders across North America right now, which is really, really nice. We also have a technology platform called New Home Connect, where we have nearly 1,000 sales agents for companies all across North America that interact on there, that share ideas, that ask questions and provide answers and do their training on there. And so, there's a tech platform behind that.

We also provide great recruiting services because with our national footprint, we have kind of hands in all the different markets, so we can help many, many builders recruit the right talent. In addition to that, we also have a [00:06:00] consulting service as well as a marketing service that we focus on as well. So, now we're offering these all in an a la carte bespoke way that can be tailored to a builder of all sizes' needs.

Greg Bray: Nicholas, knowing that about you guys, that's one of the reasons I was kind of excited about today's conversation because you mentioned that you've been doing this for 15 plus years with the company. You've seen a lot of changes in what it means to sell homes over that time. I'm assuming. Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, it's a little different now. And so kind of want to drill into that a little bit more and just some of the things you've seen, some of the things that are shifting. It seems like the rate of change is getting faster and faster and all of that. So, let's start with just this idea that buyers come knowing more than ever when they show up. So, what is changing for new home sales because of buyers self-educating before they knock on the door?

Nicholas Czar: Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, I started in this industry over, gosh, now I'm dating myself a little bit, but I've been in this industry for about 26 years now. And [00:07:00] so, I started right out of college in 2000, did my internship with Pulte Homes in Detroit back when the corporate office was back there, and really got a good foundation for the sales process. And I recall selling my first homes in my first couple of years there in the industry.

The difference between then and now is night and day. To me, the single biggest difference is the role of the sales associate has changed so dramatically. Twenty-five years ago, you were a gatekeeper, and you had the information, and you could leverage that information in a customer interaction because that was back in the day, you know, where a lot of people didn't start their search online. They just literally started driving around, looking for signs, looking for open house signs on a Saturday morning, and would roll into your model home, and they'd say, "Oh, what do you offer here, and how much are the prices?" and all the things.

Well, all of those details were gatekept by the sales associate, and I could actually leverage that in the interaction and say, "Oh, well, oh, you want this information? Great. Can I have you fill [00:08:00] out a customer card now?" And I could almost withhold to get the information, and then I could use that information and trickle it out strategically throughout the process to keep that customer engaged because they had to go through me in order to get this information.

Now, the game has completely changed. Buyers are now coming in much more well-informed. They're leveraging AI, the internet, all of the information that's on all of the available builders' websites. And so, what we train our sales associates sitting in the model today is you have to assume that these people are coming in already looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of homes before they walked into your door.

So, what does that mean? That means you can no longer gatekeep information. And so instead of being a gatekeeper of information, you need to be a curator of information. Because now the challenge is, is that they've seen so much online when they come in that they don't know what's real, what's fake, what's good, what's bad. And so that role of the sales associate goes [00:09:00] from gatekeeping information to saying, "Okay, now you have all of the information, let me help you refine all this information based upon the motivating factors that are prompting you to move. That way I can ultimately deliver you the best experience and ultimately the best conclusion for your home search."

People typically don't buy homes every single day, so regardless of how much information they have, they're not familiar with the process of it, and they don't understand what is good information versus bad. That sales associate can create clarity of the process and then create confidence in that buyer, which is where we actually see the sales teams that are succeeding today versus the ones that are not, are the ones that are able to create that clarity, curate that information, and create confidence with the buyer at the point of sale, and those are the teams that are winning today.

Kevin Weitzel: So, I used to go to hotels randomly here and there, you know, for A conference, B, or small vacations. And I used to question to myself, what the heck does a concierge even do, and how do they even earn their [00:10:00] money? Why are they on the payroll? What you just described is basically what a concierge is. I could go online and I can see what shows are showing in Vegas, but the concierge that I dealt with the group that we were with, you know, he asked me point blank, "Sir, you don't look like a gentleman who likes large crowds." And I said, "I don't. I want a small, intimate environment where I get to be the star along with the star." And he goes, "You know, I kinda thought that about you." And we got probably the best treatment I've ever had in my life going to an event. And believe it or not, it was punk rock. So, who goes to punk rock to have a small, intimate venue?

But anyway, long story short is that I agree 100% with you that it's not about being the gatekeeper. It's about curating and knowing how to morph that information that you have, and what the home buyer has, into facilitating it into what their actual needs are and drilling it down to almost being an eliminator of well, you don't like this because of that. You don't want to live on this street because knowing the community, knowing that this is on a bus route or [00:11:00] etc., etc. You get the gist. But I totally, wholeheartedly agree with what you just said, and it comes down to the concierge concept in that they aren't trying to sell you anything, they're trying to make your experience that much more smooth and better.

Nicholas Czar: You're absolutely right. The fact of the matter is is that 20 years ago you could be a pretender in this industry and withhold information, and, you know, as long as you were strategic about it, you could be fairly successful. But the difference is is now sales agents actually have to be experts. They have to be experts of their area, their builder, and their community, and of course their offering. But actually, you'll find that most of the builders' offerings are already online. Now, of course, they can provide their expertise when you start getting into color selections and structural options and all that kind of stuff.

But the reality is that a lot of the builder information is out there. But what is not out there and not curated is, how does this area serve your needs? You look at any customer segmentation guide, there's [00:12:00] a lot of different types of customers. And so understanding who your buyer is, which segment they participate, and how your area builder and community serve that particular buyer is what's going to create that clarity and gain the trust so that the buyer actually sees this professional as somebody who's qualified to be a curator.

Greg Bray: When you talk to sales teams about this evolution in their role, how is this received? Are they like, "Oh, yes, this is how I should have always been doing it anyway," or it's like, "Oh, man, I don't want to change. What does the good versus average salesperson kind of dealing with this, how are they going through that?

Nicholas Czar: This may not be a great answer, but a lot of it depends upon how experienced they are in this industry. I have some folks that I work with that remember doing contracts on triplicate paperwork, right? Where you peeled it off and handed it to the customer, "Here's your pink copy," right? Yeah. And so, you know, that was back in the day and before my time. [00:13:00] And, you know, when I started, I remember I was super cutting edge 'cause I had a PalmPilot. That was a big deal.

Kevin Weitzel: What?

Nicholas Czar: I know. You could, like, beam somebody, a contact. Whoa, right? So, obviously you've gotta change with the times. And of course, those sales associates that operated 25 years ago and never evolved, they're out of the industry. They're not here anymore. Because if you approach it from a gatekeeping standpoint, you wouldn't have lasted past 2008, right?Because that's when it knocked everybody out of the industry in the most part. Now, for those of us that stuck around, you know, it's like the dinosaurs. You either had to evolve or die. And so, I evolved, and so did many.

So, today's sales counselor, how do they feel about it? Well, I think most of them are okay with it. Because if they had evolved from 25 years ago, they're up to pace. And if they're new to the industry, you know, this newer generation, I mean, they grew up with the internet and, you know, understand how the information is available and the role that they play now. Where I think the game really turns on its head [00:14:00] is once you start introducing AI, right?

Because now the sales associates that are actually leveraging it the right way with the right customers to increase their repeatable tasks, be able to do more with less time and leverage it in the right way, those now are the sales associates that are shooting ahead of the pack. And so at New Home Star, we always say, you're not going to lose your job to AI, but you may get passed up by another sales associate who's leveraging it when you're not. Now is the time to embrace this technology because if you don't, you're going to be left behind.

Kevin Weitzel: So, let's dive a little bit more into technology. But before we do that, let me ask you another question.

Nicholas Czar: Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: Just out of morbid curiosity, because you're in part of the leadership of New Home Star, do you have any, because I have my own personal ones, do you have any word tracks that dinosaurs used to use that are just a no-go in your book that, you know, when you're talking to your new hires, it's like, "I do not want to hear this verbiage come out of your mouth"? Is there anything, top of mind that you can think of?

Nicholas Czar: I mean, you know, from [00:15:00] a compliance standpoint, of course, we always make sure to cover things like fair housing. I never want to hear those things coming out of people's mouths right there. And the other thing is we look for people that have what we call New Home Star DNA, which means that we need to respect our teammates, and we expect people on our team to have a mentality, a winning mentality.

We also expect people on our team to provide excellent careers to their fellow teammates. That's one of our core values, and it's extremely important, whether you're the CEO, you're in leadership or you just started yesterday. You have a responsibility to provide excellent careers for your teammates, and if you aren't doing that or saying something is coming out of your mouth that's not supporting that, then that's going to be a problem for us.

Another one of our core values is providing premium sustainable services for our builder partners. If you're talking in a way and not supportive of that, that's going to be an issue. And then we also have another core value of giving back to our communities in meaningful ways. Our CEO does an excellent job of funding these efforts by [00:16:00] division and allowing the space for quarterly charitable endeavors for teams because not only is that a social activity that brings teams together, but it's also one that serves your community.

And look, we're all fortunate to be in the home building industry, and if that doesn't mean that we have a responsibility to give back to the communities that we're serving, then I don't know. And so really, Kevin, to answer your question, is there a specific thing? No. You know, if they say something, "I can't, I won't, it's not for me," those types of things, like yeah, of course those are all red flags. But the reality is, is that if you speak in a way that is not consistent with our values and our mission and our vision, then, you know, an excellent career for you might be somewhere else.

Kevin Weitzel: I love it.

Greg Bray: [00:17:00] 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 at buildermarketingsummit.com and get your registration in today. Remember, there's limited seats available, so don't miss out. Again, buildermarketingsummit.com. Can't wait to see you there.

So, Nicholas, to kind of pull us back to the AI conversation, because everybody's interested in that, right? I see two halves of it. One is the productivity tools we can use, and the other one is the information the buyers are getting about us, and we can kind of maybe separate those. But let's talk about salespeople using AI to help them do their jobs better. What are ways that you've seen that are effective uses of that, and what are some things that are like cringey, like don't do that again?

Nicholas Czar: You know, it's funny because I feel like there's really two camps when you think about AI communications. There's one camp that says, you read an email and you see kind of the ChatGPT dead giveaways. There's em dashes, right? Like all of a sudden everybody writes with em dashes in their text, right? And like why? So, it's like when [00:18:00] you see these things you're like, "Oh, okay, this is written by a bot." Half the camp or I almost would say 75, 80% of the camp says, "Ah, this is an AI written email. I'm going to discard it."

But there's another 20, 25% that looks at these emails, and I actually got this from the founder of New Home Star, who says, "You know what? I actually really appreciate it. Because if somebody took the time to run it through a filter because they were that concerned with how I was going to perceive it, then I applaud their use of technology and their use of tools, I'm grateful for them giving me that much credit. If they didn't care, they wouldn't do it."

Hearing that kind of made me have a little bit of a paradigm shift. So now when I see an AI-written email coming from a contact, I'm actually more grateful for it now, because I'm like, "Wow, they really had a lot of respect for me and thought of this before they sent the email." They just didn't type something off the top of their head, hit send, and forget about it. Like, they had a thought, and they wanted to communicate it well. And there's a lot of people out [00:19:00] there that quite honestly don't have the words or maybe the skill set to appropriately express themselves, and if this tool allows them to do that, why shame them for it? I'm grateful for it.

So, one way, of course, sales associates can utilize it is to speed up their communications. But doing so, it's important to personalize that communication as well. And what I mean by that is is that, you know, because we have this great tool where we can kick out emails and communication so great, that's fantastic, but let's personalize it to the targeted consumer group that we're speaking about so that we're speaking about their language. Let's make sure that there's some personal notes in there that reference a previous interaction so that it seems continuous. And also too, let's give that prompt to ChatGPT saying, "Hey, remove all the em dashes," because everybody knows that's you.

Greg Bray: I get some of these where it's like they're pulling stuff off, like, my LinkedIn profile, and they're trying to personalize it, and it's like, "Oh, we saw you went to school here," or, "Oh, I loved what so-and-so [00:20:00] said about your what," and I'm like, it's too personal. It's not real somehow. So, where's the balance there in personalizing from a sales conversation?

Nicholas Czar: That's where I disagree with you, Greg, is that I don't think that's personalization. What I think that is is I think that's phishing, like you're just poking and hoping and thinking, you know, shooting skeet with a blindfold on. You're just hoping that you hit something, right? And so, that's one strategy, and of course, if you're doing some broad-based marketing, casting wide nets and that kind of stuff and you want to leverage AI to pull some specifics about your audience, you know, from the various different platforms out there, okay, you'll probably get more clicks than if you didn't do that. I'll give you credit for that.

But when I talk about personalization, I'm not talking about, you know, seeing where you went to school and trying to make some lame hook into it. I'm talking about I've spoken with you. You've been to my model homes before. You and I had a conversation. Now I need to leverage that conversation just like we would in conversation with somebody.

"Hey, we [00:21:00] had an interaction. It was important enough for me to remember what you said, and actually, I took action on what you said, and so here's my findings, and I'd love to schedule a follow-up meeting to talk more," whatever your call to action is or whatever your goal is within that interaction. And so, I believe personalization has to be true. It has to be authentic. That piece cannot be AI generated.

Kevin Weitzel: I agree with you, and I think it does come down to that punch. I have a certain way of speaking that can be 20% abrasive. I also have a way of typing that can be 25% abrasive, where the recipient can be like, "Wow, is he angry or something?" It's like, no, that's just I'm typing to the point, being, you know, factual and succinct. But I also have a very personal way of speaking when I type. Like, I use some euphemisms. I use some contractions. I use just a pinch of slang, but, you know, above board slang.

Because I do that, what we did was we took several emails, just general emails that I've sent to, you know, 20, [00:22:00] 30 different people, and we put it into Claude, and we said, "Hey, analyze these and develop a persona." So, what we have as a company is we have a Kevin persona. We have a Bill, which Bill's our resident Buddhist, you know? We have our Bill persona. And depending on who we're talking to, we'll determine, you know, hey, I want to send a response, but use Kevin persona, and it will send that, and it'll be a little bit more personal, a little bit more down to earth, a little more salt of the earth type of response.

You guys have gems on your team. You got, like, Keith McKinney. You could get a Keith McKinney response filter, if you will, that literally your whole team could utilize and say, "I'm gonna respond with the Keith filter today, to this email," and boom, that would be at their fingertips. He's fantastic.

Nicholas Czar: Keith is amazing. I mean, I always consider Keith, quite honestly, to be the best sales trainer in the industry, hands down. If you want to give your team a shot of adrenaline with some real actionable stuff, Keith is definitely the guy to call. We already have a lot of that technology built in an internal system called [00:23:00] Astro, which is our internal AI engine. Astro is provided through our New Home Connect platform. That was the platform I mentioned where we have nearly 1,000 new home sales associates across North America kind of interacting on that.

And as part of that, we actually have an AI tool that we named Astro, which essentially could do exactly what you're talking about and then some. The nice thing about Astro and the way that we built it was that we have a knowledge base that extends over all builder partners, so it encompasses our training, our marketing methodologies, our 60,000-plus pure learning questions that we've actually aggregated over the past 15 years.

And so, we put this as a base level knowledge base for the AI Astro tool to pull from, but then home builders have their own container where they can drop in their proprietary information in a secure way so that they can actually leverage the bot, not only to access a Keith McKinney persona-type email if that's what [00:24:00] they want to craft, but also on top of that they can say, "Hey, Astro, I came up with this objection. How do I overcome it?" Or, "I'm having trouble driving traffic in this particular community. My targeted consumer group is this. How do I do it? What would you recommend?"

And so, to your point, Kevin, yes, that's certainly possible through our platform, and we have people that leverage it. However, I would encourage our sales associates, even if they're using AI to craft emails and to reach out to customers, to try and stay authentic to your voice, because Keith McKinney isn't going to come in and close that deal for you. I mean, knowing Keith, he might, but he can only be in one place at a time, and so my point is, is that Keith is most likely isn't going toa come in and close it. He would if you asked him, but, like, he's probably not going to be there. And so, if that's the case, you are still the one that needs to have that authentic human connection and create the emotion. Because there's one thing that I know of doing this for over 25 years, is that customers buy with emotion and then justify with [00:25:00] logic. And if you can't make that human connection and build trust and rapport, then you're going to have a hard time bringing them along on your emotional journey.

Greg Bray: Now before we go on, I just have to say, Kevin, that I am now interested in doing some type of LinkedIn poll to find out what percentage of people consider you abrasive or not, whether your measurement is proper. You know, you said 20, 25%. I just want to say it might only be 10.

Kevin Weitzel: You know, there's that 90/10 rule that no matter who the person is, 10% of the people that you run into are just not going to like you because of the shape of your nose or the distance of your eyes, your hairline, whatever their criteria is for not liking somebody.

Greg Bray: You're, you're not as abrasive as you like to pretend you are, so anyway.

Kevin Weitzel: I know, I know. I'm a big old huggable teddy bear.

Greg Bray: But, Nicholas, the idea of what you're talking about here, I think, is that AI is going to work better for salespeople if they take a few minutes to give it a little training, and a little background, and a little insight. And I'm learning more and more that there's a lot of people out there that really don't know how to do that [00:26:00] yet, they need a little bit more. And you guys have built a system for your team, but talk to the person who's not in that system who might want to try to just use ChatGPT a little better. What are some of the inputs that might help them get a better result, using a tool like that?

Nicholas Czar: Yeah. So, it's really interesting to me because through the Builder Solutions group, we've partnered with over 70 home builders just in the past year on various different engagements, and most of them are current clients that continue to collaborate with us. And so, it's really quite interesting in how different home builders are approaching AI. Because some of them are saying, "Yes, lean into it," some are saying, "Lean into it, but in this way." And then, quite honestly, I hate to say it, but I know there's some builders out there that are saying, "Don't use it, because we don't want you putting our proprietary stuff into the ether of ChatGPT."

They want to protect their playbook, they want to protect their IP, but they also don't want to fall behind their competitors who are utilizing this [00:27:00] tool. That's really why we developed Astro, if I'm being honest, is because that question of how to leverage AI in a safe way while protecting our proprietary information, that's the big question for home builders right now. Not should we or should we not, it's like, how do we do this safely? And so we created Astro to create that safe environment for home builders to start leveraging it.

But for the average sales associate, and for those builders too that are saying, "Hey, don't use it," guess what? Your teams are using it. They're just using their personal ones on their cell phones now, just not your company computer. Pandora's Box has already been opened. We're not going to close it, so let's figure it out and do it in a safe way. And so, we've tried to answer that question.

But to answer your question a little more directly, what can a sales associate do? Well- I am not a super AI expert. I mean, I know a little bit and I've read some books, and I'm definitely on top of it. But the most impactful things for me right now is understanding how the different AI platforms solve different [00:28:00] use cases. So, most people think ChatGPT is, like, the end all be all. It's like the Kleenex, right? It's synonymous now with AI. "Oh, I chatted this, I chatted that," right? And that's really cool, but the fact is is that Chat has a lot of limitations.

What we're trying to teach our leadership teams and our sales leaders and sales associates is understanding that different use cases call for different types of AI. So, general, yes, Chat is great. However, if you're looking for more strategic deep thinking, we think Claude is better. If you need something that's going to be sourced, if you're putting out a publication or a market report or something like that, or you want to pull some stats, you're going to wanna lean into Perplexity because that's going to provide more of a guided source, everything will be sourced in their answer that you could obviously reference in your paper or your documentation. And then if you want something that's going to be a little bit more focused, you know, that's when you need to lean into NotebookLM a little bit more.

And so, it's been very difficult for me to stay up [00:29:00] on all these changes. Now we all get on Zoom calls, and there's 15 Otters and all these reporters and Fireflies and all this stuff, and it's like, "Holy smokes, this is getting a little out of control. Can just one person take this transcript and just distribute it afterwards?" But now there's Granola and Otter and Firefly and, you know, all these things. And so, the point is is that it can be a little overwhelming with all the different AI platforms and choices that are available out there. But if you can get a core tech stack that you're comfortable using and understanding the different use cases, that's what's going to propel sales associates and sales leaders over their competition. Does that answer your question?

Greg Bray: Yeah. No, that's great. I'm just looking at the clock going, man, the time's flying by here. it's been a great conversation. For those folks who are listening, they'll go, "Okay, I need to help my sales team move forward. I need to acknowledge that these tools can help us," what's kind of the place to start? Where do you recommend that someone who's trying to get a sales [00:30:00] organization to kind of be ready or get ready for where they need to be at the end of this year or moving into next year, what's step one or two on that journey in your opinion?

Nicholas Czar: Well, at New Home Star, you know, we believe that culture eats strategy for breakfast. I know Drucker gets all the credit for that comment, although he never said it. But the fact is, is that we do believe that culture eats strategy for breakfast. And so, what we mean by that is, is that if you really want a team that's going to lean into these types of technologies and stay current, then you need to have a culture of continuous learning, and that needs to be driven by the top leadership.

Now, what does that mean? That means that you need to support your team with the tools. If they want a premium Claude, it's like $17, buy it for them. Let them use it. Empower them. Show them how to use it. You should [00:31:00] have sales meetings on new use cases. There should be feedback loops inside of the team to discover new use cases where they can share, so you get those internal networking effects in your own team. "Oh, you used it?" Because right now there, there's a lot of agents that are like, "Oh, I used it to put in my listings." Cool. You used it to write a description. Awesome. That's like a four-line thing. We can use it in so many different ways in order to drive traffic and increase conversion, increase our follow-ups.

Because here's the thing, is that if you look at the market data, and what the market data most recently has told us literally in the past 30 days, is that the buyer pool that's available out there is now smaller than it was a year ago, but the buyer pool that is active is more interested. And so, that means they are more interested, but they're also taking longer times to make their decisions. And so, those sales associates that are now leveraging this technology to take their follow-ups beyond the 30 days, in fact, we see so much decision-making happening between that 30-day [00:32:00] mark and the 56-day mark, so many decisions are happening in that window nowadays, that sales associates need to extend their personal follow-ups.

Because, like forever, what most people taught was, "Hey, follow up with them five times. If you don't get a response, you know, change the coding in the CRM and the marketing drip will pick them up if they get interested again." That's not the way it is today. You have to extend your follow-ups. You need to leverage these tools. You can kick out more follow-ups for a longer period of time in a faster manner by leveraging these tools, and just that singular piece of improving your follow-up, being more intentional, more personalized, and extending your follow-up process, you will capture more sales, and you will beat your competition.

Greg Bray: Well, and based on what we've seen in some surveys, if you just follow up at all, you might do a lot better.

Nicholas Czar: You will. There's that too.

Greg Bray: There's some crazy number of builders that seem to think people will just keep calling if you don't answer. I don't understand, but that's a whole other conversation for another day.

Nicholas Czar: And [00:33:00] I won't go off on too much of a tangent, but I actually, I mean, I just made a tool, for home builders. Basically it's an AI powered tool that assesses the revenue leakage in their funnel. It's so interesting to me because builders will spend so much marketing dollars to drive people there and get the clicks and get people stopping in their offices. They're almost pre-programmed to constantly be working on their costs, right? Like, they're always looking to find another percentage point, whether it be on their concrete or their lumber or whatever they can, because that's how they are.

And they will work literally six months to a year to get a percentage point off of their concrete or their lumber, and then their salesperson will just give it up on the floor. Just give away an incentive they didn't have to give, or write a realtor on a deal that wasn't the procuring cost because it's easier and it's the path of least resistance for them. And the reality is, is that there's tons of opportunity for home builders to shore up the leakage in their current funnel, and they'll capture way more percentage points than they will chasing down concrete or [00:34:00] lumber.

Greg Bray: Well, Nicholas, thanks so much for spending time with us today. If somebody wants to connect with you and get in touch, what's the best way for them to reach out?

Nicholas Czar: Yeah. You can certainly reach me by email. It's nczar@newhomestar.com. I'm always available there. You can certainly reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. I'm pretty active on that platform as well. So, appreciate the opportunity to be here, Greg.

Greg Bray: Well, thanks so much for joining us, and 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 you. [00:35:00]