ProBuilder.com Professional Builder 19
truly encountered? It’s happened just once for me in the last
15 years and, ironically, it only partially involved technology.
Yet, when someone in our sphere of infl uence proudly an-
nounces how well something is working for them, our ego—
combined with fear—says we can’t afford to miss out. If a
buzzword such as “artifi cial intelligence” or “blockchain” is
involved, our ego tells us that being skeptical may cause us
to appear ignorant and ancient (like a dinosaur). We skip due
diligence, quality research, and testing and instead rush into
the next board meeting to champion a solution we actually
know very little about.
But we need better fi lters and guardrails on how we imple-
ment technology in our home building companies to protect
us from the hype culture we live and work in today. Here are
some ideas to help you in that endeavor.
MY OWN TECH STRUGGLE: ONLINE CHAT
First, I want to share a story about my own struggle with a
specifi c piece of much-hyped technology: online chats on
home builder websites.
Widgets that could be added to your website to enable on-
line chats fi rst appeared in the early 2000s. Millions of people
around the world had already experienced personal “chat
rooms” online in the late 1990s, and with the launch of AOL
Instant Messenger in 1997, the idea of one-to-one messaging
online was booming. Home builders wanted in on the action
and began experimenting with the technology, too.
In 2009, while attending the International Builders’ Show, I
heard about “hosted chat” for the fi rst time. It was touted as a
“next big thing” because it would allow a third-party company
to chat with your customers to address common questions—
with near-instant response times whenever your customers
happened to be online. It was expensive, but it also appeared
to be a silver bullet.
But hosted chat ended up actually being a pretty bad idea
because customers became frustrated with the overall low
quality of interaction that a third party could provide.
Over the next 10 years, people regularly asked me about
how to properly implement online chat for a home builder.
When I answered, “You probably shouldn’t do it at all yet,”
you can imagine the looks of disappointment that fl ashed
across their faces. It isn’t that I hate chat, but if phone calls
from people shopping for a home were only being answered
40% of the time, I felt there were bigger, better opportunities
for engaging interested buyers than an online chat.
Even though I knew I was giving the best advice, I al-
ways felt like I was being judged as closed-minded. But
data supported my opinion and that of the team at Do You
Convert. For example, we helped one builder grow its online
sales volume by 675%, from 91 sales in 2016 to 705 in 2019,
without ever implementing online chat or using chatbots of
any kind.
In fact, it wasn’t until this year that the company started us-
ing online chat with a subscription-based service called Drift ,
which is available for as low as $50 per month. The builder
had laid an amazingly solid foundation for online sales and
was ready to add new technology the right way, albeit 10 years
after it was all the rage.TIMING ISN’T EVERYTHING
Being the fi rst to implement a technology is infi nitely less im-
portant than having all of the required basics organized and
ready. Making sure your data is digitized and organized, your
content is current and well-produced, and that you have a
team of capable players means you’ll be able to adapt quickly
to any changes when necessary.
When the newest social network comes along, for example,
companies that have well-organized content on their web-
sites will be in a position to repurpose that existing content
for the new platform. Artifi cial intelligence is worthless with-
out well-organized and scrubbed data to feed it. The exam-
ples are endless.
Any tool or piece of technology that ultimately does prove
to have a “game changing” impact will be made available to
everyone who wants to purchase it. You may be behind for a
moment or two, but remember that Apple was awfully “late”
to the cellphone race, but by applying existing technology in
a better way, Apple ultimately won by a mile with its iPhone.TEST SMALL, TEST OFTEN
Don’t rush to implement new technology across your entire
organization. Start with a single sales rep, community, or di-
vision. The best way to predict correctly is to test often and
to test small, and to then expand (and adapt) as results come
in. That way, when things do unexpectedly go wrong, it won’t
harm the entire company (or your overall credibility), and if the
new technology proves wildly successful, you’ll meet less resis-
tance along the way to implementing a full company rollout.
New technology and innovation is necessary, and you
should remain on the lookout for well-tested and proven solu-
tions. As Bill Gates said, “We always overestimate the change
that will occur in the next two years, and underestimate the
change that will occur in the next 10. Don’t let yourself be
lulled into inaction.” So don’t fall prey to hype culture, but
don’t sit still forever either. There are amazing opportunities
out there, but they’re rarely one-size-fi ts-all. PBKevin Oakley is managing partner at Do You Convert, a company
exclusively focused on online sales and marketing for home builders
and developers.