Mystery Shop 2025: OSCs vs No OSCs (And Why Leads Get Ignored)

Builders are spending to generate leads, then failing to respond fast enough (or at all). In this episode, Anya Chrisanthon sits down with Leah Fellows (Blue Gypsy Inc.) and Carol Morgan (Denim Marketing) to break down the 2025 Online Homebuyer Mystery Shop and what it reveals about speed-to-lead, follow-up quality, and the widening gap between builders with and without Online Sales Counselors (OSCs).

Download the Full Report HERE

We cover what the mystery shop tested (50 builders, real form submissions, 30-day tracking), why “no personalized email within 5 minutes” is still a thing in 2025, and what builders can do immediately without over-automating their prospects into oblivion (yes, we’re talking 74 marketing emails in 30 days 😬).

In this episode:

• What the Online Homebuyer Mystery Shop measures (speed, frequency, channels, responsiveness)
• The OSC vs non-OSC performance gap—and why it keeps happening
• Phone, text, and video email: what’s working and what’s being ignored
• Autoresponders that actually help (and the mistakes that hurt)
• “Minimum viable OSC program” for smaller builders
• The non-negotiable KPIs builders should track weekly

Transcript

0:34

Hello and welcome to a new episode of Anewgo of new Home sales podcast. I'm your host, Anya Chrisanthon, and today joining me too of my favorite ladies in home building industry. We have lovely Carol Morgan from Denim Marketing. And Leah Fellows with Blue Gypsy Inc. So welcome to the show, ladies. So excited to have you on and to talk about your annual mystery shop. Thanks for having us. Yeah, we're excited to be here. To be here. It won't be a mystery after we talk to you. That's right. So you guys, as we start to talk about this, I will be sure to link the entire mystery shop in the show notes so you can head there right away and download your own copy so you know exactly what we're talking about. But before we jump in, for our listeners who may not know who you are. Leah, let's start with you. If you can give us quick introduction of who you are and what is it that you do? How does your company help home builders? Sure. I am Leah Fellows. My company is called Blue Gypsy Inc. And for 16 years now we've been in the online sales counselor arena, coaching, OSCs, helping builders, build programs, audit programs, and do anything online sales counselor related. Awesome. And Carol Morgan, tell us about you and Denim marketing please. So dinner marketing is 27 this year, which seems absolutely crazy, but we help builders with all things content. So media relations, blogging, social media, email marketing. If you have a need and your staff is strapped for, capacity, then give us a call. We'd love to help. Perfect. Well, so first question goes out to Leah. So Leah, for listeners who may not have heard about this report in the past, and again, you guys, I'm linking it right in the show notes, so click on it, you can download it. But what is the online home buyer mystery shop and what are you trying to learn each year? Great question. You know, we've been doing this for six years now. We started doing this back when, COVID started in 2020, and we wanted to look at how builders are following up online. So we go out and we Mystery shop, 50 builders across the country, along with Melinda, Brody and Company. We couldn't do it without them. And we go out and we do form submissions. On their websites. And then we look at, frequency of messaging, speed to lead, diversity of touch points, and who's really answering this. And more often than not, who's not answering. And can you tell us a little bit about a mix of the kind of home builders that you shopped, when you shopped, what you submitted, and how long did you track this follow up process? That's also a great question. So we actually do look at the builder, the top 200 list, and we pull a lot of builders from that. We look at different categories. We also pull builders. We know from our three companies that we know various things. And, in the last couple of years, Ben over at Melinda Brody And Company has created a breakdown of the different. Subcategories. So everything from your builders, your national builders, all the way down to your little mom and pop shops. What we do is we fill out a form during business hours. We ask a question, we provide, an email address and a phone number for follow up. And then we track the results and what sort of outreach that builder tries to do to that prospect. Over. A 30 day period because we know that if you just do a one and done follow up, or sometimes we see zero and done follow up, then you're not going to get a response. You have to be consistent, persistent, and have a process involved. That's pretty much how the shop is run. Mm-hmm. And then that's what we're looking at. We're looking at what are their responsiveness like? Awesome. So just to clarify, so you submit email as well as the phone number, and typically, what type of question are you asking in the submission form? Is it the same question or does it vary? I think it varies that that's something more that Ben's team does, but it's usually something related to the builder, the community. It's a relevant question that should solicit a response. Right, right. Yeah. Like something like, yeah, do you build the x, Y, Z plan at, you know, clear Haven community? You know, something that. Is clearly showing that the buyer knows what they're looking at and is interested. Exactly. Exactly. Makes sense. Alright, so let's jump into some of the findings. So Carol, my first question's to you, so if you had to summarize kinda like what's different about the buyer mindset in 2025 and going into 2026 now that makes speed and follow up quality even more important. Well, I think we've all become so impatient. It's the whole we want it now answer, and if you can't answer now, they're gonna move on to your competitor because you know the point that they've emailed you. They've probably emailed two or three other people as well. It's not usually just that one and only one, unless you just happen to have the only new home community in that high school district they're looking for. Right. So I just think speed is so important because. And responding, period. Because they're not gonna email you if they're not interested in finding out information. Right. So I have interviewed, you Leah in the past, a couple of times about this report. Mm-hmm. And so this year the report once again says that no builder has responded with a personalized email within the first five minutes. Why is it still so hard in 2025? Like, what are we doing here? I dunno. I wanna cry because, I mean, it's like really easy stuff. It should be very easy. I mean, if we saw that they were responding by phone in five minutes or less, maybe that would make sense that there's no email going out. But the majority aren't even doing that. Right. So, you know, what's the mystery that's part of the, I guess the title mystery shop. Still in the darkest why these builders are not taking these leads seriously.'cause if they're not taking our shop lead seriously, how many other leads are slipping through their fingers? Right? Exactly, that's exactly my question. So, Carol, what, why do you think, builders still believe, maybe that online leads are not as important as in person? Or what do you think is the disconnect here? What's the deal here? I'm with Leah. I wish we knew because honestly, it'd be one thing if we were back in 2020, you know, during COVID and homes were flying off the shelf, no matter how we priced them or where we built them, but that's not where we were last year or this year. We've got sitting inventory in a lot of places and we've got lots of buyers sitting on the fence and worried about interest rates and why on. Earth we're not responding to these leads in a timely fashion. And in some cases not responding to them at all is shocking. And it just, it's very frustrating as a marketer'cause we work so hard to send quality leads to builders and then for just nothing to happen with that lead. And ultimately, it's gonna be my fault as the marketer if somebody isn't buying, it's, it's because I didn't send a qualified lead. Not because that team didn't follow up with it. Yeah. Well, and that's the big disconnect, right? Yeah. That's, that's the huge disconnect and why it's so important to have someone that's actually the catcher receiving those leads markets. Marketing's like the pitcher and the online sales counselor role is like the catcher. Yep. You're missing that and, and everybody needs training, right? I mean, I'm not a sports person, but I know that people in sports, they train and practice and there's not a lot of training and practicing happening is all I can. Mm-hmm. Imagine. So, yeah, and what was surprising to me is that it's not just email responses. Sounds like the phone follow up also is down. So phone follow up fell again. Only 58% of builders called and 42% never called at all. So crazy. Why are builder abandoning the phone and do you think it's a mistake? Do you think people actually answering the calls? Um, so, you know, it's really funny'cause I know Anya, you and I have this debate all the time, you don't wanna talk to a human. Right. But if someone puts their phone number in there, the assumption should be they will talk to you if you call. Right? And the fact that we are missing out on that. We can engage people so much more dynamically over the phone and get so much more information in a quicker, more personable way. So the fact that this number continues to bogle the mind as to why we're providing a phone number and no one's picking up the phone to me it says either lack of process. Burnout, laziness, or, you've got people who are in sales that are afraid of the phone and we need to change that. It's just gotta change in order to be able to do this outreach, because more often than not, appointments are set via phone than any other medium. So you gotta pick up the phone. Now, I was happy to see that texting jumped to 62% of builders and video email to 34%. So why are these working now? Mm, Carol what I was gonna say, I think they jumped because of the OSCs. If you look at the non OSCs video emails, you know a hundred percent no. know, nobody without an OSC responded to video and, 53% of those without. An OSC did not use text. There's definitely a dichotomy between mm-hmm. You, the OSC and the non OSC. And it's clear, if you go through and you look at this report and you compare the OSC versus the non OSC numbers, it is clear that the OSCs are making a much bigger impact than the companies without them. I mean, there's just no way to compare the two and see it any other way. Absolutely. We're gonna jump into those OSC versus OSC numbers in just a second, but yes. A hundred percent of video emails came from OSC. So what does it tell us about training or maybe some gaps and opportunities? Because, I mean, OSCs are not the only ones who can record themselves on video, right? What you mean we can record ourselves? Hmm. Is that what we're doing right now? I, I really think it has to do with process training. I think that OSCs are trained on process when they are trained, and I, I will say that. The last couple years has been disappointing. The number of OSCs that aren't doing what they're supposed to do, and all I can imagine is their OSCs and name only, they're being thrown into the chair. Mm-hmm. They're not given the kind of coaching and process training that a true online sales counselor should have to be able to do their job well, and they're not self-starters. I mean, there's information out there that will teach you even if you can't afford to hire someone. That you've got to be able to set that program up properly. Not just say, here you go, here's your title. Go do this. And so I think that it's a lack of process training on the side of onsite sales agents. And I think one of the things that I, I'm, maybe I'm jumping ahead of your statistics you're gonna get into is the fact that a. The, the number of OSCs has fallen this year. It's fallen consistently over the last couple years. We hit our high during COVID and then now as we've seen, leads, atrophy and less leads coming in. Builders think, well, we can go back to the way we always did it before and just send the leads out to our onsite sales agents. And that is the problem. These are people that are not trained to deal with digital marketing leads. They're trained to deal with people who are in their face walking through the door. And because of that, that's why we see such a disconnect between builders with and without OSCs. Yeah, I completely agree with that. I mean, I remember my own selling days, and I remember specifically that I had a generic introduction message that I had recorded myself saying, hi, I am Anya from such and such builder. I'm working in this community. I just wanted to personally introduce myself to you. I'd be, sending you the follow up. I just wanted to put the face to the name. It was as simple as that And I got almost a hundred percent of response rates to that. So if you guys, you know, taking, taking notes from this, like this is your OSCs, non OSCs, your sales team, every single person should have a generic introduction on their phone or saying some generic introduction saying, thank you for coming out to our model home. It was a pleasure to meet you. Just, again, wanted to let you know. Feel free to reach out to me anytime you want. Stuff like that. Like it's, it's not a rocket science here, but Carol, since you are the content expert, can you share some of the best, practices for video email that are actually effective right now? Like. If you're thinking about sending in a video email like lengthwise, what are we targeting? What kind of content are we sharing? CTA, personalization, kind of give us a couple of, quick hits. Success. I mean, yeah, obviously personalization is best, in this shop, they asked a specific question so you could just go on video and give'em a. Quick, answer, Hey, thank you so much for inquiring about, such and such community or such and such floor plan. I, happy to share a little bit more about it. Actually it's our model home. I'm standing at it. I mean, just something that gives them a face to go with a name. And I don't think it has to be very long. 20 seconds, 30 seconds, nobody has an attention span anymore. But whatever you can do to answer it and make it more personal is gonna get the best response. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. I always train OSCs to have a little sign and put the person's name on it. I, that, that, yeah, so that you're saying, hi Carol. And they see it. And the good thing about that is when it shows up in your email and you see that little gif or that little mini, thumb. It's playing, it's almost impossible not to click on something that actually has your name in the video. Right, right. You know, it was not canned. This is not someone, something everybody is receiving and that is a perfect way to get. Engagement, and I have online sales counselors who send their videos on like say day three, and they have responded and said that people thought it was a bot responding to them until they saw the real person. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it's really important to personalize that. And then the further you go down the line in your follow up, you can have canned video emails that are sort of more generic, like you were talking about, Anya. But still make them sound warm and like they're applicable to that person. Yeah. You're just not mentioning their name in that one, and so therefore you can reuse it over and over. Right. And allow it to be more part of an automated process. Yeah, for sure. So back to OSC versus No non OSC. So one thing that jumped at me, the gap is brutal. I mean, 14% of OSC builders never emailed, compared that to 52% of non OSC builders. I mean, that's an enormous. Gaps. So ladies, what do you think is happening with the non OSC builders? Is this a breakdown in their process? Like they're obviously paying for the leads, getting, I don't think they have a process. I mean, that, that's what comes to mind to me is like, is there a process?'cause you know, the other thing you see is the builders without OS Cs, they're really good at that marketing email. They've got marketing emails going out. Mm-hmm. So they've got somebody in marketing who set it up to me. It just says, we don't have a person who's really. In charge of responding to our sales leads as they're coming in digitally. I think personally that the people who are getting them, that are the onsite sales agents, or even if they're going to the marketing department, like who knows where they go to first, a lot of times they get sent to the marketing department. Then the marketing forwards it to the agents and there's a lag time. And in all honesty, when you're on site, you need to pay attention to the people who are right in front of you and you're gonna check your email at the end of the day. A lot of those. We may see people who don't respond, but we also see the longer response times come from the builders without OSCs, and that's because they're like, I might do something with this. I might not. There is no process, but I will speak to that. 14% of OSCs never emailing. That like breaks my heart because that is your whole job. And if you're a builder whose OSC is not emailing, you've got to audit your program and figure out what's going on and why that's happening, you know? So, so speaking of OSCs, another interesting finding I saw in the report was that OSC presence has dropped. So this year we had about 70% of builders. In 2025 versus 78% of builders who had OSCs in 2024. So it's a 8% reduction from 2024 to now 2025. Now, what do you think is driving that decline? Well, obviously we see the value in OSCs through this report. Well, again, I think I addressed that a little bit before, but I will say that when budgets get tight, and Carol, I'm sure you can talk about this with from the marketing standpoint, when budgets get tight and builders start thinking, what can I cut? I have never understood the desire to cut marketing, online sales, your frontline lead generation and lead nurture services. But yet I do think that's what, they're doing. I think they think they can send the more limited leads they're getting to their onsite, but yet those people are not trained and there's no process to deal with it. So I think that's what's causing that reduction, in staffing. I don't know. Carol, you think it's just so interesting'cause Anya, even if you drill back to 2020, you know, again, COVID, it was 80% of builders had osc, so it's dropped 10% mm-hmm. In, five years. I don't know how they could think. They don't need them. All you've gotta do is look at these results or any of the other, there's other people out there doing similar surveys and all these surveys come back with the same answers. If you don't have a program, mm-hmm. You're not getting results. So I don't know, you're kind of cutting off your nose despite your face because you're trying to save money, but you're not spending the money that you need to make money. Exactly. You know, old saying, spend money to make money. I mean, the I, I've heard builders say we're paying our OSCs too much. Oh gosh. And yet, and yet these are the people that are touching 50% or more of their sales. Like how can you feel like you're paying that person who is the face of your company? Who is the first impression? Too much money when you wanna keep them motivated, not demotivate them. So I think that's some of it as well. Yeah. It's surprising for me to see that it used to be 80% and it, now it's, it sounds seven, it's 70%.'cause to me, OSC is like almost, I mean, it's obviously not similar to technology adoption, but I would think it's along the same lines that we are realizing that we need more. Tools, better tools for our customers. And so OSC kind of like falls under that for me. So it's, it's really surprising. So, Leah, the question is for you. So first maybe smaller builder who's like, you know, we can't afford an OSC. Like, what's the minimum viable version of an OSC program that you would say, okay, do this. At least. So that's always an interesting question'cause everybody defines small builder differently, right? Mm-hmm. And a lot of people think a small builder is someone building just a hundred or so homes a year is small. It is compared to like, you know, your big, big, big nationals who are selling tens of thousands of homes a year. But I think if you're building. 50, 75 homes a year, you need a dedicated online sales counselor. First off, you need a good marketing push to generate leads for them. You need to set the right expectations and they can cross over and help. On the marketing side, I feel like the minimum is to have someone who's. Still their primary role is OSC. Maybe they have some secondary responsibilities that include some light marketing and liaising with their marketing companies, but they should not be, and I accredit this phrase to my friend Elisa Poncher, at dream finder homes, they cannot be the junk drawer of the company. Right? Awesome. They cannot pick up all the other stuff. So if you're a builder that's building less than 50 homes a year. You still need someone who's trained in how to set up a process and follow up and engage with your prospects, even if they're not a quote unquote dedicated OSC. But I think when you start getting into that 75 a hundred, for sure, if you're, if you're building over a hundred homes a year, you need somebody. Okay? And then that's where assessing the situation and figuring out what can they and can't they handle is important, right? Mm-hmm. So, so builders listening to this, if you're like, Hmm, I don't have an OSC program. Your first call after this podcast is straight to Leah. Okay. Just saying. Carol, next couple of questions are for you. Oh, good. It all about the website. So one thing I see on the report is that only 52% of all builders actually show OSC presence on the website. So why are builders still hesitant to put the face on the. You know, I think it goes back to it's, it's two different things that I hear over and over again. One is, oh well what happens if he, she leaves, and then the, oh, well if I show people who my OSC is, somebody's gonna steal them. Those are the two things I hear over and over again. I don't want my staff to go to HBA stuff,'cause some other builder's gonna steal them and. I don't wanna put'em on the website'cause they might leave. So it's kind of the same answer. They're scared of losing their person no matter what. So the solution to that is have a good company culture that Exactly. Your OSC doesn't wanna leave. Right? I mean, do you see another reason that they don't put them out there? That's what I hear, Lee. Do you hear different things? I think they just don't understand the power of branding that face. Right. But to really be there to provide answers, mm-hmm. I think they feel like, I don't know. What if they're not pretty enough? What if they're not, you know, how does this, how can I let this person be the representative of my company? My company? Right. But, you should be okay with doing that, because that's going to provide a better customer journey. In the end, it's gonna be providing a better customer experience. So I, yeah, as a non, uh, non-person, person, I am meaning, I don't like to talk to people in the sales process, but I think if there was a face to the person, I'd probably be more likely to engage with them than, just like an 800 number that I got a call. Right. Then at least, oh, I'm getting Jen on the other side. Right. Well, and and I think sometimes when you go to a chat, and you're just chatting and you don't see a face, you just assume you're chatting with a bot versus a human. So, right. Or somebody in a foreign country that doesn't Oh gosh. Exactly. Yes. I think a lot of people have an adverse reaction to calling customer service. And Anya, correct me if I'm wrong, but calling customer service and feeling like you're just gonna get somebody reading a script, you're gonna get somebody that's not personable, somebody who's annoying. Hard to understand because English isn't their first language. Right. I have some OSCs who English is not their first language. They're still warm, they're personable. Yes. They're easy to understand, but this is something that we hire. For, right. We've gotta hire for people who have a great presence. And so as much as I understand there are people that don't wanna talk to humans. There comes a point in your journey where you may wanna. Start talking with a human instead of like, you know, a bot. A bot or an ai. Like some people like that. I can break a bot pretty quickly. I ask very complex questions that it then says, sorry, I don't have that answer. So, and that causes more frustration for your buyer than having live chat. What would be a great combination is. Bot tied to live chat. You know, that's a great question. Let me get a live agent on the phone for you. Mm-hmm. Line for you. Then. You have the best of both worlds there, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah. All right, so let's get a little bit into autoresponders and auto automation. So. Leah, I know you say that autoresponders can buy time. Mm-hmm. And still feel warm, but what are the must haves of a good autoresponder? So when I say they buy time, I don't mean they buy you days. I mean they buy you minutes. And what I think that they should say is, I think an autoresponder is a perfect place to have a video of your OSC on it so someone can see an introduction, have some personable, Hey, thank you for reaching out. We're gonna be with you shortly, but if you have something that's pressing, please. Call or text our online sales counselor and they'll get back to you quicker. Our goal is to respond within, whatever that timeframe is for really busy builders. Maybe it's four hours, whatever it is, but we will get back to you as quickly as possible, right? If your autoresponder sets an expectation. Provide some warmth and some personality. Then I think you're doing it right. If it just says, thank you for your registration, we'll get back to you. That kind of sucks, you know? Yeah. It's again about setting expectations. Right? Right. The best case use of autoresponders is when you've got like a VIP situation. You've got a neighborhood. That you're just announcing, maybe you don't have pricing. You don't know who's sitting on site yet. You don't know all the details, but you know, it's a hot area of town. So setting up that VIP interest list and letting people sign up that they're interested and then putting them into a drip campaign that does tell them, about your process, about your history, about your team, you know about your warranty, about the, neighborhood, all the things you do know about it. Mm-hmm. And then, lets them know, here's how we're gonna handle. Our VIP interest list, once we're ready to announce this, you're gonna find out pricing first, and you're gonna be amongst the first to be able to make an appointment, for our presales and all of those things. I mean, to me that is a fantastic use of an autoresponder in a drip series. But unfortunately, I think sometimes, those get put in place for things that aren't necessarily VIP lists. Mm-hmm. So what's the most common animation mistake that you saw? We have one builder, who sent out, what was it, 74 or 76, something like 74 to 76 emails. In 30 days. Can you imagine? I mean, but we, we had another one that wasn't that far behind it, that was in the fifties somewhere. That's at the level of like White House, black Market and a few other retailers who just won't leave you alone no matter how hard you try. Like you can't, like is it, can I just get like one once a month or once a week, but twice a day is a little bit much. Yeah. Yeah, that those were marketing, automatic marketing emails. And what's crazy is the builder that sent out the 74 did have an OSC program. Oh my gosh. And then they didn't ever make a phone call. I can't remember. I'd have to go back and look at the data as to whether they also sent OSC emails. Those numbers we track are just marketing. Sometimes we have just marketing. That's crazy. And we still have the four to eight OSC emails that go out on top of that. Right. That's insane. So what's the recommended follow up cadence to marketing emails that. Maybe not 74. Definitely not 74. I mean, I think everybody does it a little bit differently. You could always, go to MailChimp for Constant Contact and some of those companies that specialize in and kind of see what their cadence is and look up some, cadences for, real estate sales. But, once or twice a week I think is plenty. Maybe just once a week. I you wanna make sure that they know you're there, but you don't wanna pester them to death. That's a good way to run people off too, I think. When you have an online sales counselor program, you need online sales and marketing to compliment each other. Yes. So for OSCs, and I've been saying this for years, you should have 12 to 15 touchpoint. Mm-hmm. During that first 30 days, which includes your marketing touchpoint. Right? Mm-hmm. You need a certain number of emails. You need phone calls, text messages, video emails. You need to diversify your follow up because different people respond to different things. And so having anyone who sees that beautiful templated marketing email, it might catch their eye, but they know that's not personal to them. So when you can combine it with both, the personalized emails and the marketing. I think you're looking at two to four marketing in that first 30 days, maybe it becomes more as the OSC has less personalized touchpoint. Mm-hmm. The further you go out, the less frequency of the touchpoints from the OSC, the more automated a campaign can be. Yeah, that's good. Good, good, good, uh, formula to follow guys. Mm-hmm. So make sure you audit your auto responders. You, you look at what's going on, right? We don't want someone, well, that's important to do.'cause sometimes you'll set them up and just forget about them and you go back and you look at them and there's stuff in them that's just horribly out of date. So make sure you are auditing those every six months or so. Yeah. Yeah. And if you write one that you know is gonna go out of date, put a tickler on your calendar, Hey, I need to go update this on June 1st. Good point. Such a good point. Yeah. I mean it's all part of that, setting up a process that works. Yeah. Versus, you know, marketing by accident like that. Marketing by accident. Yeah. 74 somehow. No, no. Doesn't, doesn't feel like, like an accident. That was that. Somebody had some wild idea. Somebody was very overzealous there. I'd love to know what on earth and you know, maybe like as Ben could tell us, I'd love to know what on earth you can send 74 emails about. I mean, were they for long? I wonder if they just said like multiple campaigns that like overlap. They didn't. Oh no. Why? That they didn't turn off. I mean, it just. Crazy. It's gotta be, it's a lot. It's gotta be something like that. Like again, Ben's team is the one that has to weed through all of that stuff. Carol and I look at different stuff when we, yeah, and we're so lucky, Melinda, Brody and Company does, because that's what they specialize in, is mystery shopping. They do the mystery shops for onsite sales agents, but they also do online sales agent shops. That, we've helped to really Yeah. Define over the years. So, yeah. So Leah, for builders, like what are your non-negotiable KPIs when it comes to, weekly activity tracking? Is it, speed to first response? Is it channels that they used? Is it number of touches, appointments? What are the biggest KPIs that you would have Every builder truck with their OSCs. So I always laugh because builders are always asking me, what are the benchmarks I should track? What should I track? How many emails, how many, how many phone calls should they make in a day? And my short answer to that always is it depends and they don't like that. But it is customized based on the number of leads you get. I don't wanna tell you to make 50 phone calls a day if you're not getting the lead volume.'cause what are you gonna do? Keep pestering everybody every day. But you, what you should be doing is tracking on a weekly and a monthly, and I believe quarterly, annually basis is, is your. Uh, number of unique visitors to the website, to the number of actual lead forms you generate, right? So, so how are you getting those, whether those are coming in by phone, call, email, you know, third party channels, how many leads are you getting compared to that? And this historically has fallen in that one to 3% category, right? Historically, one to 3%, though I've been seeing a lot of builders hitting below 1%. They're generating less than 1%, which isn't great. Whole other thing we can talk about. Then from there, the number of leads they get to the number of appointments they set, that should be 25 to 35%. Some builders will set 45% or more depending on how organic their traffic is and all of that, but 25 to 35% is pretty average of those. The ones that show up should at least be 90% or more should show up. You should not have a high no-show ratio. If you do, there's a problem with your handoff, with your lead qualification on your agent side, on your OSC side, there could be a lot of problems. Then from there, what's the conversion of appointments that have shown up to the number of appointments that purchase? I always, and I have always said, one in three to one in five 20 to 33%. Mm-hmm. We can't hit that if we're hitting 9%, 10%, 4%, 11%. Something's wrong. Something's wrong in the handoff, something's wrong in the follow up. Something's going on on one side of that. Right. And then for overall sales, it should be, we should be tracking how many OSC contributions there are to overall sales, and that can range anywhere from 30 to 50% or even higher, right? Yeah. New programs, maybe 30 to 35%. Season programs, 45. 55%. Or more if we're, if we're not looking at you gotta, you gotta walk before you can run. And if we're having programs that are producing 20%, we've gotta look at why.'cause they shouldn't be doing that low. They just shouldn't. So thank you. That was quite a breakdown, you guys. So make sure you know your numbers because it's easy to predict what's gonna happen next month if you actually track those numbers and you know what your conversion should look like. Right? So we're not. Asking us ourselves why and what happened. We can go back and troubleshoot that. Right? Yeah. And believe me, I'm never passionate about this stuff. Leah, so from this report, which, builder, subgroup surprised you most this year and why? And again, the subgroups, I gotta tell you, that's a Ben Pet project. I don't look at the subgroups as much as the overall report, but I will say that the subgroup that hit the 74, uh, individual marketing emails came from a national builder. Wow. And I was like, come on. You know? So I think that's what maybe surprised me the most. I don't know. Carol, do you have something from the subgroups that jumped out at you? I mean, I think it's interesting if you look at the builders by subgroup that the national production builders are only, 30% of them are using autoresponders as opposed to the large production, small, regional, and small local, 50% of all of those subgroups who are using autoresponders. So I think that speaks to, probably the national production builder has an OSC. And the smaller ones do not. So they're, trying to do the best they can. Mm-hmm. But, it's just, it, so much of it's kind of budgeting and what your staff looks like, but there shouldn't be no reason not to have a autoresponder. Everybody should get something immediately to say, Hey, we got your inquiry and we wanna reach out to you. I don't even know what autoresponder you would use. That doesn't. Normally do that, right? Like when you set it up normally it says here's the message that you're gonna show to your customer. Mm-hmm. Change that or leave it generic. Yeah. I don't know, it's just so crazy. It always, to me that's a crazy thing to be missing. Yeah. How to respond. It's always crazy to me too, and I can't remember Carol, what the numbers were, the number of builders that just don't send marketing emails. Like you're getting these leads. It was quite huge and like, so there's always a percentage of builders that do nothing like that, do absolutely nothing, and it's like, why at the very minimum aren't you sending a marketing campaign out? Like why between that and why don't they pick up the phone when you've got 80% of builders without OSCs and not calling anybody in any timeframe ever. It's a lot. 80%. Are we all that scared to pick up our phones? No. No, Anya is, but that's, that's why I'm not salesperson. You could screen the call and I gets to leave her a message. I mean, you know. Yeah. Um, all right, so as we wrap things up here, so I'd like both of you to answer the next couple of questions for me. So, Carol, let's start with you. So if you had to summarize 2025 in one sentence, kind of like beyond the real headline. What? What is 2025? We're gonna go back to grade school, Anya, and I'm gonna say needs improvement. I like that. I mean, or unsatisfactory. I mean, seriously, we're not moving forward as an industry. We are sliding backwards. It's shocking to me. I mean, does every builder out there feel like they have so much traffic and so many people walking in the door, they can ignore their online leads? So, and as a marketer it's just shocking'cause I'm the one that gets beat up when they're not making sales yet. I can't do anything with their lead other than an, an autoresponder that if I set up too many of'em, Leah's gonna get mad at me, you know? Yes, yes. I, I understand. All right, Leah, how about you? If you had to summarize 2025 in one sentence, what is it? Hire more online sales counselors, uh, uh, use a process. I don't know, like, like, like train your process and hold people accountable because there's no reason for this to happen. There's really no reason for this to happen. In this day and age, we have CRMs that can track all of this. We should be tracking all of our activity. No lead should be left behind. No lead left behind. That's it. I like that. No lead left behind. Yeah. All right. Well, I think I may know the answer for this one for you, Leah, but let's see if a builder only fixes one thing after hearing this episode, what is it? It really is to audit your process, right? I really think that everybody needs to take a step back, a deep breath and audit what they're doing and then figure out how to move forward with intention and be better at what they do. We all have the ability to do that. And, Carol, how about you? So if a builder only fixes one thing after hearing this episode, what should it be? I'm just gonna go with the self-serving answer. Considering 50% of them don't have autoresponders. Overall, I would say set up an autoresponder and if you need help setting it up, call a marketing company. Call an OSC company, call somebody, get help. Oh no, Lord, one of us will hold your hand to help you set up autoresponders and drip campaigns. I mean, do something. You know, yes. Have a process. That's first and foremost. But if that's out of reach, then at least have some sort of autoresponders that people know what to expect. Set that expectation. Yes. Yes. All right, so here's the wrap up. So the report asks why get rid of your OSC program. So Leah, if you could just answer that directly to our leadership, what would you say? Well, don't get rid of your OSC program. In fact, add an OSC program. Improve it, make it work for you. Make make this really where your your buyer's journey begins is, is having that really competent, confident, person who's building trust and building relationships with them in order to set strong actionable appointments. So. Yeah. Love that. All right ladies, and as we wrap today's episode up, was there anything that I didn't ask you or we didn't talk about that you think is important for our listeners to understand about this report? I think it's important for them to understand that this is just a snapshot that they all have the ability to, either do it themselves, although they might not know what they're looking for, or contract with somebody like Melinda Brode and Company to really do a mystery shop on their own. I know that the mystery shop that we've set up through Melinda, Brody and Company is a 45 day shop, and it includes a phone call. So that not only are you testing the follow up, processes of your OSCs, but you're testing their phone presence, their ability to set appointments, what that follow through looks like. There's a lot of things we look at, and not only is it important to get that report, but to know what you're looking for. So I partner with them to then analyze that report for you and give you feedback and recommendations on what needs to go forward. And I just really think that that. Is a good place to start is really mystery shopping whether you have OSCs or not, if you don't have an OSC mystery shop, what's happening to your leads and then decide, hey, are we really missing something? You know? Right. Great point. How about you, Carol? Anything we didn't talk about that you think is important for our listeners to understand? I mean, consistency, we've talked about process, but it's not just having a process, but it's consistently using that process. You know, you've just got to. You've gotta be consistent. You can't treat one lead one way and then not treat the next lead the same way. Because what happens is that next lead that didn't get treated the same way drops between the cracks. Having a consistent process that day in, day out, you know, how it works is so key. I agree a hundred percent. That is what sets online sales apart from onsite sales. There's that consistency, that expectation that that's part of the job, you know? Right. So yeah. Accountability. Mm-hmm. Well, looking at this report, one thing for sure, there's a clear gap between. OSC builders and non OSC builders. So, we all have our feelings on OSC program and how we like this or that. I mean, I think numbers speak louder than anything else. So if you guys want to see for yourself, be sure to get your copy. Again, I'll link it right in the show notes, check it out there. And then if you need an OSC program or if you have an OSC program. Leah is your person. She's gonna help you hire your OSCs. She's gonna help you train the OSCs, make sure your program is audited when you need it, make sure that it's still working. And then if you need help with autoresponders, with marketing, getting those leads in, make sure you guys are reaching out to Carol Morgan with Denim Marketing'cause she's gonna set you up. With all the right stuff. Make sure that your website is looking great. You have all the right calls to action on there so that it's converting. And of course, Melinda Brody and company, if you want to secret shop your salespeople and your OSCs because hey, you gotta find out what they're doing when you're not looking. So definitely check them out. Ladies, thank you so very much for being on the show today. I really, really appreciate your time and all the valuable information that you share with our listeners. And, tell us where can we find you during the week at, IBS? Are you guys gonna be out? Uh, you know, what's, what's happening? Where are you gonna be? Yeah, yeah. Go ahead Carol. You start. Just say, I'll be there. I'm speaking on Tuesday. When I'm not speaking, I'll probably hang out some at Sales Central, but you know, anybody's welcome to email me, carol@denimmarketing.com. If you want to connect with me at IBS, I only have one speaking engagement this year, which is kind of cool. It means I have time to have, I have time to have, have coffee or cocktails or whatever, lunch maybe. So let me know and let's connect. I'm the same. I only have one presentation this year. It's also on Tuesday. I don't think Carol and I overlap. I think I've already looked at that., And so I have a presentation on Tuesday and then I, as I have for the last couple of years, I'm sponsoring the coffee at Sales Central. So, and tea, for those of us who drink tea, thank you for that. Leah. Coffee and tea, hot, hot beverages can also usually get some breakfast like. Things as well in the morning when they first open up. And so I'll be in and outta Sales Central a lot. You'll be able to find me there. You can always email me at leah@bluegypsyinc.com. And that's, I always like to say INC, like incorporated, not INK, like the tattoo parlor. So, a great name of the tattoo parlor. I know it would be a great tattoo parlor, wouldn't it? Yeah. And so you can do that or you can also jump on my. Schedule anytime for a Zoom if you're not at IBS a free consultation and I love just having, virtual coffee and talking with people in the industry. So. Amazing and I will include all the information for you ladies in the show notes, so it's easy to find you and get ahold of you Again, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. I cannot wait to catch up with you in person at IBS, so see you in sunny Orlando very soon. Yes, see you soon. Soon. You soon. So then bye. Thank you.