182 The Power of Proactive Communication - Paul Gortzig Sep 13 2023

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

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with Zonda Livabl.

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to have joining us on the show, Paul Gortzig. Paul is the Director of Sales at Bokka Group. Welcome, Paul. Thanks for being with us today.

Paul Gortzig: Thanks so much for inviting me. You've had a great run and listen to you all the time and look forward to the conversation.

Greg Bray: Well, Paul, let's start off by helping people get to know you a little bit. Give us that quick background. Tell us about yourself.

Paul Gortzig: Yeah, I'm Paul at the Bokka Group, [00:01:00] digital marketing agency over there at the Bokka Group and been with them for about 5 years. I came from the building world. I spent 30 years or so in home building and new home sales and sales leadership roles. Now we're doing a lot of the same things for builders all across the country. Looking forward to that and looking forward to this conversation.

Kevin Weitzel: That sounds great, Paul, but before we take a deeper dive, could you do us a favor and tell us something personal about you, non-home builder related that our listeners will learn about you on today's podcast?

Paul Gortzig: I guess there's a few. I actually put myself out there on LinkedIn enough to where everyone else knows seems to know me. I'm a hockey coach. I play a lot of hockey. I enjoy that a lot. I will tell you this fun fact. I come from a kind of middle-class family and one of six kids and I'm number four. There are six kids and seven years, so we're real tight together. So, as a middle-class family, born and raised in Buffalo, New York, we didn't do a lot of traveling.

So, the first time I had a chance to get up in an airplane, I actually jumped out of the airplane. I did a skydiving skit [00:02:00] and didn't realize when I was going through the training for skydiving that you actually had to get up in a plane to get out of the plane. So, first time in an airplane, I never landed with that airplane.

Kevin Weitzel: That's pretty cool.

Greg Bray: I've never quite understood jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.

Paul Gortzig: It was one of those moments. I was young and stupid, but it was a thrill of a lifetime. I would do it again.

Kevin Weitzel: So, have you done tandem and solo or just tandem?

Paul Gortzig: No, it was just a solo.

Kevin Weitzel: just solo? Wow. Okay. That is a big step then.

Paul Gortzig: The hardest thing about skydiving was getting out on the plateau, that little landing that you got to stand on to uh, jump out of the plane. So, you're supposed to jump on that little step, and you hang onto the uh, stanchion for the wing, and then the guy says, count to three and let go. It's like, no, no, no, no. So, the hardest thing was getting out there 'cause of the wind. So, you just push off and you count to 10 and I didn't count to 10. I grunted.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, you know, they do it slightly different in the Marine Corps. In the Marine Corps, you're basically tethered to this little line that's attached to the ceiling. And they just have you run out of the [00:03:00] back of the belly of the plane. It's called static line where basically yanks your shoot out as you're jumping off the platform and you just kind of float to the ground. And, so slightly different. So you don't have to worry about the fear there. Somebody's going to shove you from behind if you don't move fast enough.

Paul Gortzig: That's fun.

Greg Bray: Give us a little more info just about Bokka Group for those who aren't familiar with you guys and the kinds of services you provide.

Paul Gortzig: Yeah, the Bokka Group, we're a digital marketing agency headquartered here in Denver, Colorado. We work exclusively in the home building space, working with builders all across the country in digital marketing and all things there. It's almost easier to talk about what we don't do in digital marketing than what we do do.

We don't do things like renderings. We don't do things like virtual tours or Matterports. We have partners that help us with that. We work on behalf of our clients with these partners to really achieve those goals if that is one of the agenda items. Those are things we don't do. Everything else we pretty much do.

Also, within the three-legged stool, we call it, we have our marketing services, we have our consulting [00:04:00] services. The Bokka consulting services consist of things like journey mapping exercises, which has been a very popular exercise with our builders, where we actually map the journey of the customer from even before they become your customer all the way through the buying and building process. Builders learn what their role is and how they do affect that customer experience. So, that's journey mapping and consulting services along with sales consulting and OSC consulting.

We also have a technology solution for our builders, which is a builder survey platform. We help builders survey their customer throughout the building process rather than at the end of the process, where you can really take the temperature of your customer where they are emotionally through the building process, and if there's any course correction that needs to be done, you actually learn about it through the survey.

And then our ever-popular Builder Signal platform, which is a communication tool for builders that help them communicate more effectively with [00:05:00] their customers during the construction process through pictures and information that helps that customer have a much better building experience going through that process.

Greg Bray: Paul, as you have worked for builders, and then now you're on the consulting side, you know, with Bokka Group and helping these builders improve, you've seen a lot of these customer journeys, these journey maps. What is common between those, especially around the areas where customers start to maybe be not as happy as you want them to be as the builder? What kind of common patterns have you guys found in all of those journeys?

Paul Gortzig: There is absolutely a common thread in that, Greg. We have learned through our research and supported by Zillow's research that the number one pain point a customer has in building a home is the lack of communication during the construction process, or the lack of consistency or accuracy of the information the customer is being shared with. It's the proactive [00:06:00] communication during construction that home buyers are very, very frustrated with.

And a lot of builders feel they've got the solution by email updates. It seems like those updates go out when they have time to do it. It didn't seem like it was a systematic way of communicating. It was more of, hey, I'll get to it when I have time to send out updates to the customers, where Builder Signal is a tool that I mentioned earlier that helps builders be more efficient with their communication during the construction process and deliver a much better experience.

So, I would say more than anything, the proactive communication during construction is one that really lacks from a lot of builders. In fact, the Zillow report that comes out once a year, they interviewed over 6, 000 new home buyers in the process of building a house and they asked them what they liked about building, what challenged them about building.

The number one issue they brought up with was that they were frustrated with the lack of communication during construction.[00:07:00] And then the other thing that they shared with us, from their research, was buyers seek more understanding of the building process. Don't just tell them what you're doing, they need to understand a little bit more of why you're doing the things you're doing. A really good example of that would be why do builders install cabinets in the home before they paint the walls.

Greg Bray: It's a great question. I would like to know the answer to that question.

Paul Gortzig: You know, it makes a lot of sense from the builder perspective because of scheduling and having the trades come in one time instead of multiple times. They install those cabinets so they can install the trim after the cabinets are installed, and then they have the painter come in and do their painting all one visit. Wait a minute, you're putting in my beautiful hickory cherry maple cabinets in my home and you're going to get paint on my cabinets. Or better yet, you're not going to get paint behind the cabinets. So, if I did a remodel, there's not gonna be paint behind the cabinets. So, there is a real reason why builders do that.

If we would share [00:08:00] our expertise a little bit more during our pre-construction meetings or pre-drywall orientations, if we would just take a little bit extra time to share expertise to help the customer learn some things, that customer will have a much better experience. You're peeling back the curtain a little bit, and they're learning something along the way. That's what builds up trust.

Greg Bray: Paul, step it back even before they've made the decision to buy. Is there a difference in how we communicate during the information gathering and sales piece compared to how we communicate during construction, in your experience?

Paul Gortzig: Oh, absolutely. Thanks for the question because that's another area of the buying and building process that seems to be frustrating for homebuyers is that in the last several years, we know what the market conditions have been like, buyers have not felt valued by that builder. So, the communication prior to the purchase needs to be a little bit more [00:09:00] substantive. It needs to have a little bit more information provided for that customer to help them through that buying funnel. We tend to pick up the phone or send an email. Hey, I know you were out here a couple of weeks ago. I'm just checking in. Are you still in the market? Well, that kind of phone call or that kind of email doesn't bring any value for that customer as they're trying to make a decision on what builder to go with.

What we try to encourage our builder clients to do is really take a hard look at their workflows and their sequences of their communications pre-sale and always bring something of value to every touch point. Whether that is an email or a text message or a video email, bring something of value. Link them back to their website. If you've taken some good notes of the visit that you've had and memorializing that visit, you can bring something of personal value to that communication. So, I would encourage to always bring something of value to every touch point prior to the purchase to help them with that decision.

And then once they've [00:10:00] made that decision and they're engaging you as a homebuyer now, we need to help them understand what they're looking at. Because if we allow our customers to try to interpret what they're seeing in the field as they visit their home, we always seem to be chasing our tail because we're explaining what they're looking at. Because their interpretation of what they're looking at, it's going to be maybe different than what's really going on. We need to be more of an educator. We need to help them understand the building process as they go through the building process.

Kevin Weitzel: So, basically what you're saying is we build tons of homes, but this might be their only home they've ever purchased so they're not going to be in the know on all the processes.

Paul Gortzig: Exactly. Even if they built a home before with another builder, you as a builder are very unique and there's some things you do may be different than what their past experience has been. So, don't assume anything that they know of the things that they're looking at. Over-communicate rather than under-communicate. You'll learn very quickly from your customer how much they know, how much [00:11:00] they don't know, and how much you need to really engage them with information on the home building process.

Greg Bray: But Paul, I mean, once they've signed the contract, we've got them. They're a customer. They've paid the deposit, you know, they're locked in. They're loving it. Do we really need to worry about this stuff? Can't we move on to the next sale. The house will get done when it gets done. And yeah, maybe there'll be a little grouchy when they move in ‘cause it took a month longer than we thought, but you know what? They're stuck. We've got them. Right?

Paul Gortzig: Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. No, no. And I know you're a little bit tongue in cheek there, Greg. The buying experience has quite honestly been neglected by a lot of builders. They took for granted that, okay, we've got them under contract, they're not going to leave us because our price increased by $40, 000, they'd be silly to be leaving us, if they ran up against any friction points along the building process. Our process at Bokka has tried to minimize if not eliminate those friction points along the way. That's where Builder Signal came about.

What we encourage our builders to do is [00:12:00] deliver that greater experience because as you know when they have a great experience, they're going to share it with their friends and family. They're going to speak from the highest mountain about the experience they had with that builder. We have to make sure that we are exceeding the expectations to have them be one of those evangelic-type buyers where they're willing to share their experience on social media. As they're sharing their experience on social media, you have stronger testimonials, you have stronger referrals. You're lessening your cost of sale by the experience that you have delivered to that customer.

We are looking for customers for life, not just customers for contract, customers for life, and have them be an ambassador for our builder. That's where it just starts. That's where the work really starts picking up is when they do purchase with us, they write that contract, that's where we roll up our sleeves and get to work to really make sure that customer enjoys the experience that you can deliver.

Greg Bray: [00:13:00] Hey everybody, this is Greg from Blue Tangerine and I just wanted to take a quick break to make sure you know about the upcoming Home Builder Digital Marketing Summit that Blue Tangerine is hosting together with OutHouse, October 18th and 19th in Denver, Colorado.

This is gonna be an amazing event full of digital marketing insights, knowledge, best practices, and most importantly, some fun. So, be sure that you get registered today and come hang out with us, an amazing team of speakers and presenters that are gonna be together. Again, that's October 18th and 19th in Denver, and you can learn more and get registered at buildermarketingsummit.com. We'll see you there.

Have you ever seen, as you've looked at that communication path through the map, this idea that at the front end, the sales team and the marketing team, actually, they're pretty good communicators, in general, because they're trying to get to a very specific goal. But then there's kind of this hand off once we're at contract and move into the construction phase, where maybe it's not quite clear who's [00:14:00] responsible for that communication or how the team is working together. And so, it's like, we went from really good communication to all of a sudden it's like crickets.

Who should be responsible for that communication during construction? Is that a marketing and sales role? Because the superintendent, he's busy building the house and making sure all the stuff is happening the way it's supposed to, and not necessarily trained on the communication, the customer experience side of things. So, who should own that communication process in your opinion?

Paul Gortzig: That is an awesome question and a question we deal with almost daily here at Bokka Group when we're talking to our builders on communication on the Builder Signal platform. It really comes down to who does champion that communication? The sales team seems to have that relationship with that customer and understands that customer more than anybody within the organization, and the construction team has the information. They know what's going on with the home. They know what's going on, whether they're on schedule or not on schedule.

What we have found in [00:15:00] working with our builders is that it's both. We have had sales teams champion the weekly communications. They use some kind of tool like Builder Signal or a tool like that, that they can be systematic with their updates. And then we have other builders such as on your land builder, on your lot type of builders that the sales team isn't out on those sites on a regular basis. They could be 50, 100 miles away from their sales office where they don't get out on site. So, the construction team would be the one championing the cause. And certainly, from that perspective, we need to provide them the tools, the process for them to communicate very effectively with our customers.

So, we see construction managers using tools like that to communicate on a weekly basis with their customers. So, it really depends on the culture and within each builder organization. But we're finding typically about 65 to 70% of the communication comes from the sales team, where the other part, [00:16:00] 30% or so, the construction team is championing that communication.

Greg Bray: Is the big benefit that you hinted at simply in the referral standpoint, or are there other benefits from keeping this customer happy and up to date that come even during the process, even before they're finished with the home?

Paul Gortzig: Well, certainly the referral is very important and strong testimonials. So, all builders like to have those, and they share them on their website. But we also like to help ourselves be a little bit more efficient at what we do. If the customer is out there visiting on a regular basis, even though we tell them not to, don't visit your home and check in and all that. At seven o'clock after dinner, they're coming out to the house and they're walking through their home and they're not understanding what they're looking at sometimes.

So, then they start asking all these questions and they start assuming the worst-case scenario just because they're trying to protect themselves. So, it will actually help the builder be more efficient at what they do by being proactive with their communication and getting to [00:17:00] that customer the information before they're even having to ask. Therefore, it makes your day more efficient. You're not dealing with as many interruptions from your home buyers with these random questions. So, it does help the team be more efficient in building homes.

Certainly, we want to do the right thing for our customers. We want to deliver a greater experience. And I think as a whole, our industry can do a much better job at delivering a better building experience. I think we do a great job of a buying experience with all the technology and all the tools we put on our website, and that has come a long, long way, and that's fabulous. If we start focusing on that building process, it's going to help our teams be more efficient in the field and the buyers are going to have a much better experience. They're going to be more comfortable with going through that process.

I had a survey that came back to us from one of our builders that was on the Builder Signal platform, and they said, Paul, I have so much more appreciation for my builder and what they go through from what I learned through the program. My anxiety was off the charts. Now [00:18:00] I'm really calm, and I can sleep at night because they're peeling back the curtain a little bit. The builder is being more transparent. I have a higher trust level with them. It's just been a much better experience as I was going into it. It really turned out to be a great experience. So, it helps the builder to be more efficient. Plus, it gives the buyer a better experience.

Greg Bray: As you talk about being more transparent, Paul, and as a way to improve that experience for the customer, what gets in the way? Why is that hard for some builders to actually execute? Right? It's really easy to say, okay, let's be more transparent. Let's tell them more. And then we go back to work tomorrow morning and we're back in the same old habits of how we do it. What do we have to do as a builder to actually make some of this stuff happen?

Paul Gortzig: I love the direction you're going here 'cause this really feeds into a journey mapping exercise we do with builders where we actually get the teams in the conference room individually, and we talk about what is it that they do and how it does it affect the customer experience. And we talk to, of course, [00:19:00] the sales. We talk to construction. We talk to design. We actually talk to purchasing and accounting.

How is it what they do, deliver a better experience? They go, well, wait a minute. We're just in the back room over here. We're purchasing. We just pick the products and put it in the house. Well, they absolutely do affect the customer experience. By going through a conversation like this really helps them understand their role in delivering that better experience.

Same thing with accounting. If accounting isn't paying their bills on time. If they're paying their trade partners on a weekly basis, and they're not getting their pay, then sometimes they cop attitudes while they're out on site. And if they engage a customer while they're upset, then it may deter that buyer's experience.

So, everybody has a role in delivering this experience. What we try to do is break down the silos that tend to exist in each organization. We blend the organization, so we understand that our focus is customer experience, and everybody has a role in it. We just need to understand that as an [00:20:00] organization and understand what our role is to deliver on that.

Greg Bray: It's always so interesting to me and Kevin, maybe you've seen this too, but the parallels between some of the projects that we manage, you know, whether it's a website or others and trying to make changes to make that process better. It's actually kind of hard to change the way you do things and work through it. But also, that same benefit of when we're proactive, it's so much more efficient than somebody saying, hey, I haven't heard anything for a few weeks. What's the status? And you're looking around going. I don't know. I got to find out. And then all of a sudden you have, you know, three meetings and four phone calls to figure out where everything is because nobody was tracking it. You just spent two hours out of your day trying to answer this question that should have been answered already, you know, ahead of time and everything else. I don't know, Kevin, have you seen similar types of impact?

Kevin Weitzel: It's kind of funny because I have seen that. And basically, to paint this picture, when I sell somebody digital assets, they don't want me involved in the production. Trust me. You do not want your salesperson dealing with [00:21:00] code or dealing with your assets, et cetera. So, that handoff is something that has always been foreign to me 'cause I always like to stay intimately involved throughout the entire process. But I also understand and respect the fact that the production team will take very good care of them.

What I did institute was that I wanted to be cc'd, either that or bcc'd on all communication. That way, if there was ever a flag that got thrown up in the air, I could, you know, jump back on the field and say, Oh, hey, by the way, this is what's happening here and here's why. So, I totally get it. I love the concept and the idea that it isn't just a handoff. It isn't just a contract signed. I'm done. I can turn this over now.

Greg Bray: So, we've established it's hard to change, right? It's hard to change our habits. It takes real focus and effort. Just some quick tips. If there's something that they can go change tomorrow, where would you have them start in improving their customer experience? What could our builders do tomorrow?

Paul Gortzig: Oh, I think there's several things. First of all, the real obvious thing is set proper expectations. You've heard that a gazillion times. It's overused, but I'll add to that. Where you're setting [00:22:00] expectations, you're resetting expectations and resetting again. We can't just set expectations and say, okay, I told them what to expect. In home building, especially the last couple of years, it's ever changing. So, we need to be always communicating. We need to be proactively communicating with our customer. We need to look for opportunities to educate our customer on what they're looking at. Be proactive.

If you have a systematized way of weekly communications, stick to it. If you are relying on your teams to send out emails, first of all, don't communicate with your customer on Monday. Typically, what we hear from builders is, yeah, sales and construction meet on Monday after the busy weekend, they compare their notes, then they start their updates to their home buyer. Well, those updates tend to carry very little value because the buyer typically is out on the weekend, so they know what's going on.

So, what we have always encouraged is if you do weekly updates, and you should be doing weekly updates because that's what homebuyers are telling us they want. [00:23:00] We want weekly updates, and we want to understand what's going on. So, do it on a Thursday afternoon, Friday morning. That's when the updates carry a lot more value. So, be proactive with the communication. Your weekly communications should be later in the week.

And look for those moments in the building process that you can really leverage the goodwill that you are having during the building process with that customer, those moments of truth. There's hundreds of touch points that you have with that customer. And believe me, we've counted them as an organization. There are hundreds of touch points to where when you're out on site and you're looking at that home site and they're actually choosing that home site because they can now visualize themselves in this home on this street, that's a time where you might ask for referrals. You might ask for Hey, is there anybody in your neighborhood or friends that might want to have the same experience? So, look for those moments of truth to find those referrals.

Of course, examine your website. That's another thing you can look at. Do you have the digital experience your customers are [00:24:00] expecting? Do you have those great virtual tours? Do you have virtual tours of every one of your plans? There are companies out there that are exceptional at doing this now, that make sure that you have those digital tools that really deliver the experience your customers are now expecting. Because they're getting it from all the other industries. We need to follow suit.

And then, getting the feedback along the way and gaining that feedback from your customer. If you're not surveying your customer during the process, we would suggest doing that, little pulse surveys to understand where their emotional altitude is. Understand where they are in the emotional building experience. That way you can make sure you're leveraging your goodwill and delivering a greater building experience. So, first and foremost, proactive communication answers a lot of that.

Kevin Weitzel: Are you going to sit there and tell me that it's not okay as a builder to use just some extracted sheet out of a set of construction documents that show an elevation of a home, that I should actually show a pretty picture of a home [00:25:00] or a rendering?

Paul Gortzig: Yes, I guess I am saying that Kevin.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, okay. All right. Just checking.

For a second there, I thought you were saying that, oh, my goodness. Yeah, that's totally right. No, I'm just kidding.

Paul Gortzig: It's not good enough to be just a 2D picture. We got to really leverage these great tools. I was just at a conference last week talking to 150 builders. Literally, at this conference, there were some awesome ideas that were exchanged and a lot of it was about the digital experience. So, make sure your digital experience is up to par and what your buyers are really expecting.

Greg Bray: Well, and I think, Paul, just to piggyback on that. I think sometimes we get in this bad habit of, well, I sent them an email, therefore they read it, they understood it, they memorized it, and they know everything that I wanted them to know because I sent them that email. Right? And the reality is they probably skimmed it if they even opened it at all, if their junk mail filter didn't eat it, you know, and all these things. And this is not just in the building processes, this is every type of email we ever send, right? We just, well, I sent an email, they must know everything I want them to know. So, you have to [00:26:00] keep going and keep that communication, over-communicate is another overused buzzword. Right?

Paul Gortzig: Exactly. It's reminding them of what you talked about in the sales process. Now, here it is. You see it in the building process and reminding them of the things that they need to be aware of. Yes, you told them 14 times before that, but the 15th time and 16th time is going to be important. So, that's why I talk about expectation setting and resetting and resetting and supporting and reiterating your direction because you're absolutely right, they do forget a lot of things that you tell them. You gotta remind them.

Greg Bray: Well, Paul, we appreciate the time you spent with us. Do you have any uh, last words of advice you wanted to share with our audience today before we wrap up?

Paul Gortzig: Yeah. I think when we look at our processes and our systems and when we're establishing those things, we can take a lead from Jeff Bezos at Amazon, where he always put a empty chair in the room and put the word customer on that chair. When we start really applying different systems and processes for our organization, let's make sure the [00:27:00] customer's voice is being heard. And that's a lot of what we do at Bokka. We bring that voice of the customer to every conversation.

So, when you start with the customer and work it backwards, you tend to really find the right answer as to how you want to operate within your organization and for your customer. So, start with the customer and work things backwards and you'll find that the answer will be just laid out in front of you when you start thinking that way. You'll also be bringing more efficiency to your own organization.

Greg Bray: Start with the customer. Love it. Love it. Well, thank you so much, Paul, for being with us today and for sharing your thoughts and experiences. And thank you everybody for listening to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with Zonda Livabl.

Thank you. [00:28:00]