From Clicks to Conversions: Building an OSC Program That Works-160

Online Sales Counselors are no longer optional, they’re essential. In this episode, Anya Chrisanthon sits down with Ingrid Ricks (formerly Prince), founder of Convertly Sales Solutions, to talk about creating and scaling effective OSC programs for builders of any size.

Ingrid shares:

• Why small and mid-sized builders absolutely can (and should) have OSCs
• How to structure 10–14 touchpoint follow-ups that actually convert
• The surprising data behind today’s 300-day+ buying cycle
• How AI and chat assistants are reshaping the OSC role
• Why “no lead left behind” should be your 2026 motto

Whether you’re running 50 leads or 5,000, you’ll walk away with actionable steps to improve response times, nurture old leads, and personalize the buyer journey with data and automation.

👉 Plus, we reveal a sneak peek at Anewgo’s upcoming AI Assistant: an intelligent, next-gen alternative to traditional chatbots designed specifically for homebuilders.
Join the Anewgo AI Assistant Interest List to get early updates. 

Transcript

Anya Chrisanthon 0:34

Hello and welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining me for a new episode of Anewgo of New Home Sales. I'm your host, Anya Christianen, and joining me today is Ingrid Ricks. Now, you may be asking, who is Ingrid Ricks? And I don't know who Ingrid Ricks is because I've known her as Ingrid Prince my whole life. So hopefully when I say Ingrid Prince, it makes more sense. So congratulations. In order to you, first of all, thank you. Welcome to the show.

Ingrid Ricks 1:07

I'm so excited to be here. I think this is what, like the third, maybe fourth time we've chatted?

Anya Chrisanthon 1:13

I think so, yeah. I think I, we've had, few times, on my previous podcast, and then I think you've definitely been once or twice on the Anewgo new Home Sales podcast. So for those listeners who somehow live under the rock and don't know who Ingrid Prints, AKA Ingrid Ricks is. Why don't you give us your life story and give us a little introduction for who you are and what is it that you do now?

Ingrid Ricks 1:37

Oh gosh. Okay, so we're gonna, I'm gonna take you guys way back. Okay. So I have actually been in home building for about 20 years now. Started my career, initially as actually a general real estate agent. So started selling resale homes. Did that for. For a few years before, I transitioned into new home sales, and actually when I started my real estate career, I always knew that I wanted to work for new home sales versus general real estate. So that was always, my, my end goal. And I ended up working for one of the largest national companies. Did that for about four years until I had my son. And that was actually in Tampa, Florida. And then at that point ended up moving here to Texas, Dallas, Texas. And, ended up launching, the MI Homes division here when they first entered the market. And when I went to work with MI Homes, it was actually doing all things for the division. So everything from purchasing, from marketing, from sales, literally everything that you can think of. So that was a pretty cool experience. But then I transitioned into online sales. Obviously, you and I both know that's where my passion lies. And at the time, my CFO for MI homes ended up transitioning to Dunhill Homes which is a small private builder here in DFW. And they didn't have an online sales program, which he was like, you're coming with me and you're launching this program. And so that's where I, that's what I did, and ended up growing that program into an award-winning online sales program. Ended up growing it. We were then acquired by what is now called try Point Homes previously Trend Maker Homes here in DFW. And then, then worked my way up to being a sales leader. Ended up becoming a regional VP of sales for another big national builder before before I really made the decision that I wanted to focus on where my passion lies, which is online sales. So I was co-founder of another online sales organization. Did that for. Quite some time and then eventually just wanted to do something a little bit different, something that I could call my own little baby. And July actually of this year, we launched Convertly Sales Solutions. And we actually offer turnkey online sales solutions and fractional sales leadership to home builders across the country. So that is me in a nutshell.

Anya Chrisanthon 4:12

Congratulations to you. First on your new family and of course on your new baby Convertly I'm so excited for you. Now, if you guys know Ingrid. Every time I think about Ingrid, I always think about Ask Ingrid, right? That was like your tagline when you were in online sales. You couldn't go anywhere without seeing Ask Ingrid. And really when I think about you is I think that you really pioneered and push through the concept of video. Marketing and video messaging, right? Like before there was really technology for official video marketing, video messaging. You were recording those video messages and on your phone, and you always talked about. Why video makes sense for OSCs or online salespeople, how you can build a relationship, how you can build trust with that, how your conversion rates go up for people actually showing up to your appointments if you're sending those video messages before the appointment and following up with people afterwards. So you've always been kind. On the edge of what's next, what's coming up, and I love that you're bringing so many years of your own personal experience working on the front lines, in the sales capacity OSC role. It sounds like you've done everything under the sun to now launch your own solution, so congratulations on that. So tell us a little bit more about Convertly. So who is your ideal customer? And what exactly are you trying to solve for them?

Ingrid Ricks 5:53

Yeah, so that there's actually, several ways I can go with this, right? So our ideal. Builder partners are, the small to medium sized home builders. And what I like to say is we offer a boutique style service where we offer an elevated online sales solution. And for us it's, there's this misconception. That. And many of you may be surprised that there's actually plenty of builders out there that still don't have an online sales program. And primarily it's because a lot of them think that they don't have enough leads. And we actually work with builders right now that get as few leads as 50 or less than a hundred. A month. And really for us, we focus on not only just the customer experience and the inbound needs that are coming in that are new, but really what builders are missing is continuing to work on the leads that are currently in their system today that have been, that they have been putting in there for the last. Year, two years, three years, four years, five years. So when builders say that they don't have enough leads, you absolutely 100% do. So those builders are the ones that we are looking for.

Anya Chrisanthon 7:08

Love that. And I think especially for builders who are on the smaller side who don't have all those leads coming in. OSC is almost a must because you have fewer opportunities to make that first impression, and you have fewer opportunities to make the sale. Versus a bigger builder who has lots and lots of leads coming, maybe how they have, bigger budget that they can spend on those leads. So any leads coming in, you gotta make sure that you're converting those leads, that you're providing the best possible customer. Support and customer experience. And one thing we do know about customers today, especially today, is that they are very impatient. So talk to me a little bit about how much time do you have to get somebody's attention? How quickly do you need to be responding to those online leads in order to actually convert somebody?

Ingrid Ricks 8:04

Yeah, that's right. I would say, we all know that it's speed to lead, right? And most home most buyers actually make the purchasing decision based on who gets to them first. Who responds first, and you have the highest rate of conversion, obviously if you respond to an inbound lead within two minutes, right? So your opportunity for converting that lead. Is the highest and greatest if you respond within two minutes. Now, if you respond within five minutes, that drops significantly, right? So it drops to about 20%. You only have a 20% conversion if you wait five minutes to respond to that lead. Now, anything beyond that, you are gonna be fighting for the attention. And to your point, an Anya, you said that we have all been groomed to want instant gratification and instant response. And especially when. Home buyers or really anybody is searching to make a purchasing decision. They do their research online, right? So they want answers as quickly as possible. And if you don't have that in place you're certainly missing the mark. And the thing is that yes, we know and understand you're onsite salespeople are great. And I just spoke about this. They're fantastic at what they do. They're great at showing model homes. They're great at touring the communities. They're great at writing contracts, but we can't also expect them to manage the new inbound needs that are coming in and work the leads that are currently in the system. Because the reality is it takes, anywhere between 10 to 14 touchpoints before a lead will even respond. So it's very high touchpoint for the first 30 days, and more often than not, what's happening is builders will follow up initially, one or two times, and then they don't respond and then they forget about it. Yes. So they're leaving profits and sales on the table.

Anya Chrisanthon 10:02

Absolutely. So if you guys think about your salespeople in a model home, the priority for them is always going to be that person who's standing right in front of them, right? They're there to sell that person, so it's gonna be probably longer than five minutes for them to get back to somebody. If they're in the middle of their appointment. So that's a huge opportunity for you to make sure that somebody's responding and somebody's there to really provide the kind of customer experience that people expect today. And I love how you're talking about not just an incoming leads that you're answer. In real time, which is obviously very important, but also the outbound outreach program. Now, as an ex salesperson myself, I know that one of the biggest things that salespeople struggle with. Is follow up. If you look at statistics, it is crazy. I think less than 50% of people will follow up with a prospect after they leave or after they they give you their information. And then as you look at the number of touch points, so Ingrid, you said 10 to 14 touch points just to get them to respond to you. There's very few people who make that second or third. Outreach as salespeople we're just focused on what's in front of us, and I think follow up is a huge weakness for most salespeople. Not everyone, but a lot of us for sure are like that, and so it is essential that you have somebody like an OSC because OSCs. Have a completely different set of skills and one of those skills is specifically that follow up process. So Ingrid, I would love to spend a little bit more time talking about the follow up process. What does that look like for a typical builder to implement this program of 10 to 14 touch points? Are we reaching out by phone? Are we reaching out by email? Are we reaching out via text? What's working right now?

Ingrid Ricks 12:01

Yeah, so that's such a great question. And just to give you guys an idea, right? So when you work with ly, what we do is we actually help you set up all of your follow up processes, right? And just for the online sales concierge alone, we have about 14 different follow up processes. Okay? 14. And based on what the prospective buyer provides. Relative to the, their information will determine the follow-up process that they get that they get assigned to them, right? So if a prospective buyer provides, fills out a form online and provides their name, phone number, and email address, then their follow-up process in, is inclusive of obviously emails, phone calls, text messages. All, all of the things. Now, if a consumer just provides their email, then obviously the follow up process is gonna be radically different for somebody that just provided their email. And as you have to think about it from the perspective of. You the OSC is going to be following up. It's they're, they have compounding tasks every single day, right? Because any new leads that come in, you set them up with the follow up process, and then that goes on, for however long. So the initial follow up process that we put somebody on is obviously a 30 day. Sequence is what we call it right after the 30 days. Then they, and there's still no response. Then they get put into an age lead sequence. Now that age lead sequence lasts for six months. Okay. Now, if they still don't respond to us for six months, then we put them in a long-term nurture program. And that long-term nurture program is another year. So effectively your one new lead that's coming in today could get followed up on for almost two years. And so one of the biggest things is we wanna make sure that no lead gets left behind. And for us, we're persistent to make sure that we. Wanna make sure that we understand where your buyer is at and relative to the, their decision making, right? So when we wanna know, okay, are you still in the market to purchase a new home? Have you bought a resale? Have you bought new? Or are you still waiting? And are you still looking? Because again, we don't wanna just forget them after the initial 30 days. Yeah. Now

Anya Chrisanthon 14:30

some of you may be thinking two years. That's crazy. But recently I was talking to Ed Carey from Audience Town and he said that one of the things they're seeing on there and is the length of the sales process. And currently that length is close to 300 days from the time somebody reaches out to you to the time somebody purchases. So it's almost an entire full year as all of you're well, aware. Consumers are nervous right now. They're uncertain. There's a lot of uncertainty in the market, so the sales cycle tends to be longer during those uncertain times. So it makes sense that two years is really what you need in order Yep. To nurture your customers now,

Ingrid Ricks 15:16

and I'm so glad you said that Anya, because for us, we have so much data we work with. Home builders across the country, right? And so we're able to compile that data to see any trends, right? So to your point, a lot of our our buyers across multiple, regions, it is taking a year to convert that lead into a sale. And one of the things that. I get asked all the time from our builder partners is, they question, they're like, Hey, you told us we needed leads. We need to, we needed to get the leads into our system, but they're just not converting. But I have to tell them, Hey, what we're doing today, the leads that we are feeding the system today is gonna set you up for success and get you the sales. A year from now. So it's not an instant like gratification on the sales side, unfortunately. And I'll tell you a story. One of our OSCs she is a rock star. She is probably one of the best that I've seen. Her name is Christie. That is fantastic at prospecting. Her age lead sale conversion is phenomenal. She has been able to convert leads that have been in the system for over four years. That's the oldest that we have been able to convert into a sale right now. Most builders will say four years. There's no way they're still looking. Lemme tell you they are.

Anya Chrisanthon 16:36

Yeah, especially right now, they may, there may be a lot of people out there. If you remember back from the pandemic time, there was a lot of dissatisfaction uncovered in those people, right? If you guys are followers of Jeff Short teaching, you know that dissatisfaction comes, right? Everybody was cooped in, they're home during pandemic, and suddenly we realize, I really need that office. I really need that backyard. But at the same time, the prices went skyrocket, right? So there are people that. Are still dissatisfied in their current situation and just maybe they think that they can't quite afford it, so it takes them a while longer. So why don't we talk about. How and what next? So obviously you see a lot of builders, a lot of different customers across the country. So let's first talk about how, meaning we've talked about email, we talked about phone, we talked about text messages. Right now it's like you have to be in front of everyone. In every possible way. As we introduce new technology, like a chat bot there's gonna be people that will respond to that. There's gonna be people who will only respond via text, and there's gonna be people who only respond with the phone call. Unfortunately, for you as builders, you are in a position where you have to tailor and provide. That kind of a personal customer experience that tailors to every single individual to the way they want to do business. So Ingrid, do you see any pattern where. Texts are really working well. Is it the email that people are responding to, like what works right now to get somebody's attention? Have you noticed any patterns there?

Ingrid Ricks 18:18

Yeah, so definitely because they're taking a lot longer to make a purchasing decision. Texting seems to be the best route right now for somebody to quickly respond. We all know that everybody is literally on their phones. At all times. So for what we like to see is that we make it easy for the customer to respond. So you do a quick question and then you give them an A, B, C, or D, right? Meaning are you still in the market of pur of purchasing a new home? A, yes, I am B, no, I'm not C I'm still waiting. Th or D whatever that, that choice is. So that way it's literally one letter or one number. They click send and then you're good, right? So making it easy for the customer to respond and not having them, type out a long drawn, response is gonna be key to a successful, text. Campaign. And two, I, to your point, everybody wants a personalized, customer experience. I think one of the things that is going to be really cool, I think it's not quite there yet, but it's obviously here. And it's going to stay. And what I'm talking about is ai, right? There's so many ai chat bots platforms right now that people are testing. But we all know, some of us are still afraid of it. Some of us are unsure about it, and some of us are like really gung ho about it, right? So I think right now there's a lot of folks that's in the testing phase and waiting to see what happens. But the great thing is. AI technology has significantly improved even over the last couple of years. And what I can see in the future, especially for OSCs, is as these the AI technology evolves from being a person that can. Answer your call right as an AI agent and then transfer that, that call to an actual OSC who can have a full blown conversation that is gonna be holy cow. That's gonna be amazing, right? Because then you're able to capture that lead in real time, even if your OSE is on another call right now. Yes. So

Anya Chrisanthon 20:28

a little tease for you guys. We actually just announced that Anewgo is working. We're testing our very own ai assistant, we're calling them. So to differentiate from a chat bot like not your old school chat bot, which is decision tree based, limited to whatever answers you provide. AI assistant is intelligent. It can scan your website, it can answer all the nitty gritty questions. It can read your floor plans, it can read all the information on your website. So especially if you have smart content on your website, and it is. Really positioned for AI to read that information. It's gonna be much easier to have much richer, better conversations. And if you think about yourself, like again, I don't know if this may be my millennial is showing, but I would rather use a chat bot for as long as I possibly can go down the route. If it's smart, right? It's it people abandon it when it's dumb, when it says, I can't answer that, I don't know that. And you get frustrated and it's okay, give me the human at that point. Now I do still think that even when we roll out this super smart chat bots and they're able to. Answer pretty much what your OSC would be able to answer in real time. There will be some people who will say, I only wanna chat with the person. So I think it's important that you still provide that live person as an alternative. And in my opinion, I don't know, see if you agree, disagree with me. I think the role of OSCs is going to shift where. We talked about, maybe it's not so much the inbound, but it becomes the outbound role. Because when the chatbot is able to intelligently answer all those questions, and if you think about the conversations that people are having with these assistants, it's just like their own real estate agent, right? They trusted, they have in-depth conversations, they can describe that conversation. Beyond, the three bedrooms, two, two baths. They can design that home online with an assistant of this ai. The role of OSCs, I think at that point becomes, okay, what are the opportunities? How can we reach out to this person? What stage are they in? You can read the AI conversation. Maybe it's some kind of a. Daily digestion, right? That goes to the OSC that okay, this person is really interested in this floor plan and they're interested in this community. This is where we got, so now your role as an OSC becomes, okay, how can we target them? What can we offer them in order to entice them whether to come into the community and actually see that floor plan in person or what do we do next? Which actually brings me to my next question. We talked about how. Next is what? So I think the biggest problem with most salespeople, the reason why we hate follow up so much is because we don't know what to say. It's, are you still interested? Which is a big no for me, right? You don't wanna waste our time. So let's talk a little bit about what do you see right now? What kind of content actually resonates with people? What is working to move that sale forward?

Ingrid Ricks 23:41

Yeah, no, that's a great point. And I think for when you're doing follow up, we all know that the purpose of you following up is to elicit a response, right? You want to get the buyer to engage. And I think where a lot of the miss happens is when. Sales or OSCs follow up, it's always, Hey, just checking in to see how your home search is going. That's generic. I'm, I guarantee you every single person that's calling them to follow up is saying that exact thing. I'm just calling to follow up. But we have to think about it from the perspective of, again, your providing a personalized customer experience. So that means as a salesperson, as an OSE. Before you dial that number, before you hit that email send, you need to be taking a pause, reviewing your CRM, looking at the history of what has transpired. That means, if you have an ai, provider that can tell you everywhere they've looked on the website what they've clicked on, what they haven't clicked on, or you can see effectively what's happened. Then you can customize the message based on their behavior, right? So that means you're more intentional with the messaging and you can say. If they if they inquired about a specific floor plan, right? You're talking about that specific floor plan, not necessarily saying, Hey, I'm just calling to check in and wanted to tell you about this floor plan, but really getting more intentional on the messaging of what about the floor plan that they need to come back in to look at.

Anya Chrisanthon 25:15

Yes, exactly. So personalization is a huge theme. Again, I feel like we've been like a broken record talking about personalization for the last few years, but I feel like the rest of the industry is actually catching up to that idea now. Finally, it's like making sense to people. And again, you need personalization to feed AI also. Love that. Yeah. If you guys don't have. Analytics beyond Google Analytics, google Analytics is very limited. It gives you footprints for where people went, which website they, they looked at, how many minutes. There's a lot of solutions out there. Again, an Anewgo we have a solution for that. We can tell you exactly. Which floor plans they're looking at, which colors they're looking at and all of those things, and that makes your follow up so much easier if you know exactly what they're into. Again, you don't wanna be big brotherish about it, you wanna be careful, but it does give you a lot more ideas if you know they're into the Madison floor plan. For the holidays, maybe you have different renderings of the Madison floor plan decorated for Christmas or decorated for the fall with the front porch. There's so many different creative ideas that you can come up with if you know what you're actually targeting.

Ingrid Ricks 26:29

And to your point, you don't wanna be a creeper about it saying, Hey, I saw you looked at the Madison floor plan. And it's more about saying, Hey, Anya, I just wanted to tell you a little bit about the Madison floor plan that I think would be perfect for what you're looking for right now. That's, that sounds a lot different than you saying, Hey, Anya, I saw that you were looking at the Madison floor plan,

Anya Chrisanthon 26:51

right? 100%. Yes. Don't wanna be creepy about it. Okay. So Ingrid, I wanna bring it back and talk a little bit about specific services that you guys provide. So we talked about OSC. Talk to me about, how is it structured? Do you have an OSC team assigned to you? Do you have an OSC person? Is it remote? Are they on site? And what other services do you guys provide? You mentioned something about sales leadership. Tell me all about it.

Ingrid Ricks 27:19

Yeah, so for us, when we partner with a build out partner, we typically do what we like to say is our discovery process. And the reason why we do that is because we believe that we can't formulate a solution for you if we don't know how you operate as a home builder. Because many people think that, oh yeah they're in home building, they're production, they're custom, they're built on your lot. It's all the same. It's not right because in order for us to come up with your online and onsite sales program, we wanna make sure that it basically speaks to who you are as a home builder, right? So the first 30 days of our partnership, we basically do a deep dive in how you operate as a home builder. We take a look at your tech stack, we understand how you. Sell homes. We take a look at all of your floor plans, where your marketing is going, what leads are coming in, what your buyer demographic is. Really a deep dive in who you are as a builder. We understand your nomenclature, how you guys speak, right? All of that. At the end of the 30 days, we basically let you know, hey. These are the things that we found in our discovery to let you know that there are gaps in your sales process, your systems, or whatever it may be. And we basically do a full blown implementation and relaunch of. Of how we recommend they should operate in order to optimize their customer experience. And what that means to home builders is we actually were experts in implementations of, lasso HubSpot, Salesforce. Those are the primary ones that most home builders utilize, but really streamlining their. Technology. Because again, we talked about it, we wanna make sure that our follow up processes are in place. We're able to capture leads and make sure that no leads get left behind. After the initial implementation, then we go ahead and launch your online sales program. So it takes about 60 to 90 days to launch a successful online sales program. Then they do get partnered with a, their own dedicated OSC. And there I know that this may be a thing for listeners. Should your OSC be in market or are they allowed to be remote? Okay. We are a 100% remote online sales organization. Okay. Because for us, we wanna make sure, and we all know this, finding the right OSC is like finding a unicorn. And yes, it would be fantastic. Obviously we do the best that we can to find an OSC that is in your market. However, what's even more important is to find the right OSC with the right skills that's gonna do an exceptional job at their, at being an OSC for you, right? So that is our top priority. Finding the right OSC to partner you with. And then, from that point they are, they take on the persona of that builder partner, so we are an extension of your team and we you're very well involved. We have weekly meetings. We're a part of sales meetings. We're basically a part of your team. And the beauty about it is that you as a home builder never have to worry about a gap in service if your OSC has to take time off, or God forbid they, they quit and they want to go elsewhere, you don't have to worry about retraining another OSC because we backfill that immediately. So there's no gaps in service. And then we also offer our fractional sales leadership. So for those home builders that may not be big enough to hire a full-time in-house sales leader we actually offer that on a part-time basis. And it's based on hours you need on a monthly basis. And basically it's more higher level in strategic planning. To make sure that you are achieving your sales goals.

Anya Chrisanthon 31:12

Love that. So many builders again struggle with like, how do I start the program? How do I train them? Guess what? You don't have to worry about that. It's all taken care of for you. I love that. So Ingrid, if somebody wants to work with you. How do they learn more about you? Give us all the things and then if somebody wants to personally connect with you, where do you hang out on social media? What's the best place as well?

Ingrid Ricks 31:34

Yeah, so you can visit us at convertlysolutions.com to learn more. You can feel free to submit an inquiry to have a discovery session. And it's complimentary, so no cost to you. We are happy to do that. But if you wanna find us on social media, we're on Facebook. We are on Instagram, but if you wanna connect with me personally, you can certainly shoot me an email at ingrid@convertlysolutions.com. Or you can find me on LinkedIn under Ingrid Ricks. But if you still, if you type in Ingrid Prince, you'll still find me. So

Anya Chrisanthon 32:10

yes, for those of you who's who the heck is Ingrid Rick? I had to do double take when your last name she said, I was like, oh, okay. I got you. I see. I see you. So Ingrid before I let you go today, was there anything that I didn't ask you or you think it's important for our listeners to understand? Any topics we talked about today or didn't talk about today?

Ingrid Ricks 32:31

No. I'm just going to say, and I know we sound like a broken record, if you do not have an online sales program. Please consider it. It's worth a conversation, right? You don't wanna leave profits or sales on the table.

Anya Chrisanthon 32:47

Especially when the leads are this expensive and few of them coming in. So thank you, Ingrid. It's been such a pleasure. I love having you on the show. You're welcome to come back anytime you want. Love to get an update from you in a year or to see how things are going for you and you guys, again, thank you for being here with us today. I really love talking to you, Ingrid, and I will talk to you very soon. Thanks guys. Bye.