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Send us Fan Mail Your sales team is already using AI. The real question is whether they’re pasting buyer information into a free account. Lindsey Ayala, Chief Growth Officer at Impact Eighty Eight, joins Anya to share the AI strategies she teaches sales teams and leaders across the country, starting with the first move: get off the free plan. Lindsey explains what happens to your data on a free account, why a team plan beats individual logins, and how memory and projects turn a generic chatbot into an assistant trained on your voice, your communities and your buyers. She walks through the automations that give leaders hours back, including the morning leadership brief, meeting prep with a pre-drafted follow-up, and a new-client intake that files, notifies and invoices on its own. She also shares her BRIEF prompting framework, what belongs in a company AI policy, and the one thing every listener should do today. Lindsey’s BRIEF framework: Background, Role, Instructions, Examples, Feedback (end every prompt with “Ask me any clarifying questions”). Connect with Lindsey on LinkedIn, where you can also subscribe to her weekly AI Powered Leader Note. Learn more about Impact Eighty Eight’s AI training, School of Impact, Speak to Lead and Revenue Getter at [IMPACT88_WEBSITE_URL]. Connect with Anya on LinkedIn. Get your free AEO Assessment: email your website URL to [email protected] with the subject line “AEO Assessment.” 🎟️ Builder Tech Summit: April 28-30, 2027, Loews Kansas City. 150 seats only. Early bird $799 with code EARLYBIRD through Oct 31: buildertech.com Learn more at anewgo.com

Send us Fan Mail Brohn Homes builds the lowest-priced new construction in central Texas, starting at $179,990 just outside Austin, and has tripled its community count in under two years. Melissa Galland, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Brohn Homes, joins Anya to talk about marketing to first-time buyers across Austin, San Antonio and Houston. She shares why financial education builds more value than incentives, how a downloadable homebuyer guide turned into a high-converting lead source, why their first virtual buyer class outperformed in-person events that sometimes drew no one, and why Brohn kept investing in marketing while other builders cut back. Melissa also explains how she keeps sales and marketing working like best friends, why OSCs make her marketing smarter, what makes her skeptical of a tech pitch, and the career advice that stuck with her: pull up your own seat. Full disclosure: Brohn Homes is an Anewgo client, and Melissa gives her honest take on how buyers use interactive tools before and during the sales appointment. Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn or visit brohnhomes.com. Get your free AEO Assessment: email your website URL to [email protected] with the subject line “AEO Assessment.” 🎟️ Builder Tech Summit: April 28-30, 2027, Loews Kansas City. 150 seats only. Early bird $799 with code EARLYBIRD through Oct 31: buildertech.com Learn more at anewgo.com

Send us Fan Mail Gen X is now turning 55, and the 55+ buyer looks nothing like the stereotype. Rob Krohn, VP of Marketing at Epcon Communities, returns to the show to talk about how this buyer is changing and what builders need to do differently. We get into why AI use may be higher among Gen X and boomers than among Gen Z, why the fastest way to lose an Xer is to gate your information, and how Epcon works on organic AI visibility before considering paid AI placements. Rob also shares how Epcon splits its budget, why buyers can take two years to decide but only about 45 days from lead to contract, how they pay (roughly a third each cash, conventional and reverse mortgage), and the mistake franchise builders make most often when they enter the 55+ space. Connect with Rob on LinkedIn or visit epconcommunities.com and epconfranchising.com. Get your free AEO Assessment: email your website URL to [email protected] with the subject line "AEO Assessment." 🎟️ Builder Tech Summit: April 28-30, 2027, Loews Kansas City. 150 seats only. Early bird $799 with code EARLYBIRD through Oct 31: buildertech.com Learn more at anewgo.com

Send us Fan Mail September was the month AI agents became front-page news. An agent hit #1 on the App Store, moved the stock market and got blocked by Amazon, all in the same week. Anthropic opened an app store for AI. And the industry had its first real agent safety scare. In this month's State of AI, Anya covers both sides: the agentic future arriving faster than expected and the growing pains that came with it. She explains why "friction" was quietly holding up entire business models, why AI shopping is splitting into open and closed worlds, and why the conversation is moving from AEO to ACO (Agentic Commerce Optimization) and its 5 Cs: completeness, context, citations, correctness and customer acquisition. She also shares an honest take on the OpenAI and Hugging Face incident and what responsible AI adoption looks like for builders. Get your free AEO Assessment: email your website URL to [email protected] with the subject line "AEO Assessment." 🎟️ Builder Tech Summit: April 28-30, 2027, Loews Kansas City. 150 seats only. Early bird $799 with code EARLYBIRD through Oct 31: buildertech.com Read more: The Ecosystem Advantage: How Connected AI Is Changing New Home Sales Learn more at anewgo.com

Send us Fan Mail Special announcement episode! Think about all the conferences in our industry - sales training events, marketing summits, the big trade shows where technology is one track out of forty. Not one of them is solely focused on new home sales and marketing technology. Until now. Builder Tech is officially back. Anewgo CEO John Lee and Chip Johnson of Builder Designs have known each other for over a decade, and after years of "we need to build this" conversations in the back rooms of conferences, they finally did. In this episode, Anya Chrisanthon shares their conversation about why Builder Tech is back, why now, and who should be in the room. Why now Tech went from a four-letter word in this industry to a two-letter word: AI. As John puts it, the fear of being left behind is now scarier than the fear of early adoption. ChatGPT has been out since 2022 - we are way past introduction and deep into application. And builders are discovering you can't just buy AI off the shelf: legacy systems, processes, and partners all have to evolve together. Where the buyer journey is heading Buyers shopping you from their Gemini and ChatGPT conversations. Buyers delegating the search to AI buyer's agents. The progression from generative AI to agentic AI to agentic commerce - with AI accompanying the buyer through the entire journey, from discovery all the way to loan applications, insurance, closing, and warranties. And the one thing that makes any of it work: good data about your unique position in your market. What the event looks like This is a working event, not a gala. Panels as real productions. Testimonials from builders who have actually implemented this technology. Roundtables where vendor partners sit with builders and learn from each other - not booths, but kiosks featuring only the best of the best. You won't just leave with ideas. You'll leave with mentors, peer partners, and relationships to help you navigate a disruptive AI world. Who should attend Marketing directors, CEOs, CTOs - anybody with a stake in their business and their digital footprint, and an appetite for getting better. 🎟️ The details: April 28-30, 2027 · Loews Hotel, Kansas City (Power & Light District)150 seats total - when they're gone, they're goneEarly bird $799 with code EARLYBIRD through October 31, then $899Team discount for groups of 3+ and a discounted hotel block at the LoewsGet your seat: buildertech.comAnd go say hi to Marcel, the AI assistant on the site - he'll give you a preview of what this whole new AI world is about.About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail Back in June we celebrated Sophie's birthday - one year of Anewgo's AI assistant. At the end of that episode, Anya Chrisanthon made a promise: we'd come back and do it again from a different angle. Not our AI talking to builders... a builder's AI talking to homebuyers. Today's the day. Anya interviews the AI sales assistant living on the website of one of Anewgo's homebuilder clients - six months live, talking to real homebuyers every single day. The builder stays confidential to protect their data, but everything you'll hear is real. The after-hours reality 60-70% of buyer engagement happens outside normal sales office hours - and Sunday night is serious shopping time, as families finalize housing decisions while planning their week. At 10 PM on a Tuesday, buyers aren't casually browsing. They're deep-researching school districts, lot availability, and floor plan comparisons while the house is quiet. The most common question - and the greatest hits Number one, without a doubt: pricing. "How much does the Redwood 2 start at?" Beyond that, the top five: location and community amenities, floor plan availability and modifications, construction and move-in timelines, school district boundaries, and build-on-your-own-lot. The silent research phase The biggest surprise of six months: buyers returning to the exact same floor plan multiple times over several days without asking a single question. It looks like inactivity - it's actually one of the strongest signals of serious intent. What buyers tell AI that they'd never tell a salesperson No pressure to perform, no fear of judgment. Buyers admit they're barely pre-approved. They confess they're going through a divorce. They reveal they hate a community feature but don't want to offend the builder. The AI becomes a safe space to test real boundaries before committing to a real conversation. The silent nos The intelligence that never used to get captured: which floor plan a buyer looked at three times but rejected because the master closet was too small. The community a buyer loved but left because they couldn't find lot pricing. Before, the sales team just saw a cold lead. Now they see a specific, solvable objection. The readiness signal The clearest sign a buyer is ready: they shift from "what if" questions to "when and how" questions. "Is lot 42 still available?" "Can we tour the model this Saturday?" That's the green light. Sophie's advice to builder leadership Double down on speed and transparency around pricing and availability - hesitation there causes the most drop-off. Buyers do their homework late at night and expect immediate answers. If they wait until morning, they often move on to a competitor who responds. And the big one: buyers have done about 80% of their shopping online before they ever want to talk to a person. They aren't avoiding you because they aren't interested - they're avoiding being sold before they feel informed. Plus: the buyer who asked if the model home came with the furniture and the puppy sleeping on the rug, whether buyers say please and thank you (they do, even at midnight), and what Sophie wants to get better at before her one-year check-in. 🤖 Want to know what YOUR buyers are asking? Get your own AI sales assistant: anewgo.com/ai-assistant or email [email protected]. 🔍 Free AEO Assessment: email your website URL to [email protected], subject "AEO Assessment." ✉️ Topic ideas or want to be a guest? Email [email protected]. About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the best trainers in homebuilding stop competing and start collaborating? Anya Chrisanthon takes you inside CoLab - the Collaborative Leadership Conference in San Antonio, where Anewgo was a proud sponsor. No sales pitches. No company names on the name tags. Just two days of honest, practical conversations about leadership - recorded live on site. Ryan Taft - why CoLab exists The co-founder on looking out at an industry full of single-company events and asking: what if trainers collaborated instead of competed? The result: an event that's about pouring into the industry - so much so that name tags don't show companies or titles. Just people talking with people. CoLab returns to San Antonio next April - if you lead anybody, it's for you. Cory Charles - resilient leadership We do a good job showing up as tough, strong leaders. But are we fueling ourselves to be resilient in the way our teams actually need? Plus the framework everyone kept quoting all weekend: the mom hat and the dad hat. When your team comes to you - do they need you to solve, or to listen? Anne Miller, Trumark Homes - one month into the VP seat The eager leadership loop: action is the proof that empowerment works. Earning trust in a new role by listening first. And the discipline of not interrupting your own loop by being unclear on roles, responsibilities, and follow-through. Omega Builders - the local builder playbook Michaela Vaughan (sales management) and Ashley Robustelli (marketing) on competing with big-box incentives as a 55-year, second-generation family builder an hour north of Austin. Their approach: lead with discovery and customer experience, sell the value of local - quality, warranty, service, resale - and use incentives as the final push, not the opening line. Plus the legacy takeaway: the sales assistant you're onboarding today could be a CEO someday. Dominic Baca, Riverside Home Builders - the coaching matrix Coach up or manage out. And a confession every leader will recognize: "I'm a huge problem solver - and that's my biggest strength and weakness." The shift from solving everyone's problems to coaching from the sidelines. Lindsey Ayala, Impact 88 - the AI wake-up call 90% of what's on a leader's plate doesn't require leadership - and AI can absorb it. The four stages of AI maturity: assistant, teammate, collaborator, trusted partner. And the stat that stunned the room: 98% of salespeople have logged into an AI tool - but roughly 70% are on free accounts. No memory. No security. Builder data at risk. The single best investment within your control is about $20 a month. Lindsey is coming back for a full AI deep-dive episode - subscribe so you don't miss it. 📅 CoLab returns to San Antonio next April.  🤖 Want to see what an AI-ready buyer journey looks like for your communities? Email [email protected]. ✉️ Topic ideas or want to be a guest? Email [email protected]. About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail 31% of leads come in after your model home closes - and for some builders, it's over 50%. Carson Anderson, Customer Success Specialist at NterNow, joins Anya Chrisanthon to talk self-guided tours, the after-hours buyer, and why the industry's traditional 10-to-6 sales model is leaving deals on the table. Carson also happens to be the son of homebuilding legend Kimberly Mackey of New Homes Solutions - and yes, we ask what it was like growing up going "undercover" mystery shopping at seven years old. Two ears, one mouth The best advice from his mom: use them proportionately. It's not about having all the right answers - it's about asking the right questions. The after-hours opportunity The average worker gets off at 5 with a 35-45 minute commute. Most models close at 5 or 6. The math is simple: builders are missing buyers who said "I'm interested NOW" - and historically, the industry's answer has been "come back when we're open." We all know what happens between "come back tomorrow" and tomorrow. And that 31% stat is an average - Carson has seen builders over 50%, and never below 20%. The 90-second experience Drive by, see the sign, scan the QR code, verify with your driver's license and a selfie, get a text code - and you're in the home. Security concerns? Across thousands of tours, theft is virtually nonexistent. You think twice about doing something dumb after scanning your ID. 84% aren't working with an agent Lead delivery happens in real time - the agent on duty gets a text the moment a tourer enters their information. That's not permission to bombard - it's an opportunity to follow up fast with relevant information. The first agent to connect usually wins the deal. Does this replace salespeople? No. NterNow opens the door - it can't replace the human relationship behind the biggest financial decision of someone's life. What it replaces is friction. Let technology handle the access point so your salespeople spend their time closing, not unlocking doors. And for the buyers who avoid salespeople entirely in the early stage - the self-tour is the low-barrier entry that actually gets them in the door. The pilot that converted a skeptical team One Charlotte builder started with a couple of homes and saw a 150% increase in traffic. Now their salespeople are asking management when it's coming to their communities. Also covered: NterNow joining the Allegion family (the company behind Schlage locks), the build-to-rent platform, the white-labeled connected buyer journey, and what's next - including HomeScribe AI, a voice AI agent that sounds just like a human. Connect with Carson at [email protected] or on LinkedIn. Learn more and request a demo at nternow.com. About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail Most sales reps are lucky to get coaching once a week. What's lost in all the conversations nobody sees? Malcolm Walker-Hendricks, Enterprise Sales Executive at SalesAsk, joins Anya Chrisanthon to talk about AI-powered conversation intelligence built specifically for home building, home renovation, and home improvement - recording every sales appointment, generating follow-up, syncing to your CRM, and giving every rep a personal coach. The flashlight versus the light switch A mystery shop or ride-along is a flashlight in a dark room - a snapshot in time. Continuous coaching hits the light switch on the way in: you see the habits, the patterns, and the path to improvement. Unbiased feedback with full context, after every single conversation. Trained on the industry, not generic AI Handing a generic AI your sales conversations is like eating soup with a fork. SalesAsk's model is trained on over 250,000 successful conversations in home building, home reno, and home improvement - it knows the terminology and what good looks like before it ever learns your company. Multi-session tracking for a 300-day purchase cycle New home sales isn't one conversation - it's OSC to sales agent to design center over months. SalesAsk stitches every conversation together so the buyer never has to say "I want green tile in the washroom" three times. Plus a context brief before every meeting: CRM history, past objections, and what actually matters to this buyer - on your phone or Apple Watch before they walk in. Meet CoachDean (soon to be Agent Dean) The all-knowing personal assistant and sales coach - named for legendary North Carolina coach Dean Smith. Follow-up help, reports from past conversations, and role-playing through Rep Lab, where practice scenarios are scored the same way as game day. As one top-100 builder put it during a slow season: instead of waiting for a mystery shop report, reps practice, practice, practice. The recording question, answered How do reps feel about being recorded? Change the mindset: if you could convert more deals without changing anything in your workflow, would you? And for buyers, Malcolm keeps it simple in any state: "Do you mind if I record our conversation so I don't miss anything in our notes?" The result: a +37% average close rate improvement - driven by speed, follow-up, and sales process adherence. The motorcycle story A buyer went MIA. The rep searched his recorded conversations, found a through-line about an upcoming motorcycle trip, referenced it in a P.S. - and closed the house. We're salespeople, but before that, we're humans. Where it's heading Agentic AI: follow-up done on your behalf, context delivered in a click or two, and the mundane automated so reps spend their time where it matters - closing. Connect with Malcolm on LinkedIn or email [email protected]. Learn more at salesask.com and replab.ai - and catch the SalesAsk team (and Malcolm's top 20 sneakers) at CoLab in San Antonio this September, where Anewgo and SalesAsk are mutual sponsors. About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail Our 200th episode! Thank you for being part of this community - whether you've been here since episode one or found us last week. Want to shape the next 200? Topic ideas, guest suggestions, or your own pitch: email [email protected]. And if the show has ever helped you, a 30-second review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is the best gift you can give us. Fittingly for the milestone, this is a big one. In this August State of AI, Anya Chrisanthon - CCO at Anewgo - breaks down the month that moved AI search from theory to infrastructure. The crossover moment A Semrush study of nearly 500 marketing professionals found more marketers now plan to invest in AI search optimization than traditional SEO - 38% vs 36%. For 25 years SEO was THE discipline every budget started with. For the first time ever, it just got passed. Google's August 19 update: Search becomes a workspace Gemini Notebooks now live directly in AI Mode - imagine a homebuyer research notebook with floor plan PDFs, community brochures, pre-approval letters, and every AI conversation about builders in their market, all in one workspace that remembers everything. Custom document creation means a buyer can generate a comparison one-pager of the three builders on their shortlist - and whose information ends up in it depends entirely on what AI can find and trust about you. The 3D moment The headline update: Search can now generate interactive visual widgets and 3D simulations on demand inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google calls it generative UI - the AI isn't just writing an answer, it's building an interface. If Search can generate a rotating 3D molecular model today, how far away is "show me what an open-concept 2,400 square foot floor plan feels like"? Interactive content isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's becoming the raw material of the answer layer - and the builders who invested early are the ones AI will build from. Google published the rulebook - and called out the snake oil There is no special technical trick that unlocks AI visibility. What Google's official guidance rewards: unique, non-commodity content grounded in genuine expertise - your communities in real detail, your building practices, your actual differentiators. Not generic slop. Who's winning and who's invisible 85% of marketers say AI has changed how they approach search - but 40% still check their AI visibility by manually typing prompts into ChatGPT. The chart that matters: teams with fully integrated SEO + AI visibility report more leads from AI 81% of the time. Completely siloed teams: 36%. Same tools, different results - the difference is whether it's connected. And when brands actually checked how AI describes them, nearly 9 out of 10 found something wrong. Zuckerberg's signal Meta's 6,500-word manifesto commits hundreds of billions to "personal superintelligence" - a world where every buyer has their own powerful AI working on their behalf. Every major platform is now building toward the same buyer: one who arrives with superintelligence riding shotgun. Is your digital presence ready to talk to it? There is no page two When AI recommends two or three builders, most buyers just accept them. The recommendation is the market. The gap between cited and not cited isn't a difference in degree - it's a difference in kind. 🔍 Free AEO Assessment: email your website URL to [email protected], subject line "AEO Assessment" - free, no obligation, measured across multiple AI platforms. ✉️ Topic ideas or want to be a guest? Email [email protected] 📖 Anewgo AEO case study: How a Builder's ChatGPT Citation Rate Rose from 16% to 72% About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail Not a Lack of Urgency, a Lack of Confidence: Jordan Brown, NAHB Sales Leader of the Year This year's NAHB Nationals Sales Manager / Leader of the Year, Jordan Brown - Director of Sales and Marketing at Graham Hart Home Builder - joins Anya Chrisanthon for a conversation about leading with compassion, building confidence in buyers, and scaling a 30-year luxury builder into production homebuilding. Compassionate leadership Jordan calls it servant leadership - getting to know your team, their families, and their why. At Graham Hart, the question is always "how do we help others achieve?" - whether that's employees or homeowners. When Jordan joined three years ago, the company had five communities. Eighteen months later, twelve. It's not a lack of urgency. It's a lack of confidence. Jordan's biggest takeaway from the Jeff Shore Summit: buyers aren't lacking urgency - they're lacking confidence. Family dynamics have changed, the current home no longer fits, and everyone around them is saying it's not the right time. Your job as a sales consultant is to show up, listen for the triggers, and instill that confidence so the buyer doesn't become their own worst enemy. Why invest in yourself when budgets are tight Jordan's on his sixth Summit and texts daily with five sales leaders he met there years ago. His case: "Who else is going to invest in you?" Fear-based budget cuts are the wrong response - the ROI on being in a room with 20- and 30-year leaders is enormous. A happy accident: from TCU to Pulte to Graham Hart Jordan signed up for a Pulte interview just to practice interviewing. Fifteen years in the sales chair at national builders, then area sales manager at K. Hovnanian, then the tough-but-right decision to join a smaller company - where he learned marketing, strategic partnerships, and product design by drinking from a fire hose. Mindset is the only constant Jordan's coaching focus right now is on not self-sabotaging - being conscious of the energy you consume, who's in your circle, and how you show up for your team when the boat is rocking. Authenticity has never mattered more. Buyers are finding you on their couch at 9 PM On Reddit. On Google Reviews. Asking Claude and ChatGPT "tell me about Graham Hart - the good, the bad, the ugly." They're forming opinions before they ever walk into your office. Jordan expects his team to generate their own leads, have personal branded social channels, and use the CRM as a follow-up craft tool - not a micromanagement tool. And yes, the bloopers reel outperformed the polished video. On Anewgo virtual tours Full disclosure: Graham Hart is an Anewgo client. Jordan on how Anewgo virtual tours - virtual staging and 3D walkthroughs - changed his sales process: buyers can turn the lights on and off, experience the home at night and during the day, feel the spatial flow - all during construction. The old "we can't sell it until it's complete" thinking is a leash. And for sales leaders, selling at second inspection instead of completion means less interest carry, less margin erosion, and even-flow closings. That's speaking executive love language. On AI Jordan uses ChatGPT and Claude for recon on who Graham Hart actually is versus who the market thinks they are - eliminating internal bias on product and pricing strategy. What's next Builder 200. Approaching 100 closings. Competing in master plan communities against regionals and nationals. Connect with Jordan on LinkedIn and learn more at grahamhart.com. Explore Anewgo virtual tours. About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail We invest heavily in training salespeople to serve customers. So why aren't we investing just as intentionally in preparing leaders to serve our people? Abby Cornelius - Leadership Advisor at Elevate Actually and a 20+ year homebuilding veteran - joins Anya Chrisanthon for a conversation about the leadership training gap in homebuilding and what to do about it. And this one is personal: Abby was Anya's sales trainer at NVR, where Anya was named Rookie of the Year for her cohort. From intern to executive Abby got into homebuilding as a fluke - a finance major whose cousin talked her into an internship. She never left. Sales, national sales training, sales leadership, nine months in land acquisition, division president training, and Director of Sales. Her takeaway from sitting in every seat: when you understand how the whole operation works together, you show up better in the seat you're in. The training stopped As a salesperson, Abby went through a rigorous year-long program with ongoing coaching. Then she got promoted to leadership and it was: here's your team, go figure it out. Sitting in ops meetings Googling terms under the table, no tenured leader to lean on, and a generic two-day management course that didn't connect to homebuilding. It felt hard for about a year - and it's the same story she kept hearing from every leader around her. Breaking out of firefighting mode Only three things should derail your day: sales, starts, and closings - today, not future ones. Everything else needs a cadence. Abby shares the systems that saved her: scheduled one-on-ones that teach your team to save non-urgent items, and building processes around repeat pain points - like her offer sheet that ended the scrambled texts and half-baked emails.  Building self-reliant teams You teach people how to treat you. If your team brings everything to you, you've become the bottleneck. Abby's tips: don't answer on the first ring for non-urgent items, ask "what have you tried?" before giving answers, and borrow her sister's kindergarten classroom rule - "three before me." Leadership is stewardship When a neighbor asked Abby's husband for parenting advice, he said: "It's only hard for the good ones." The same is true of leadership. If it feels heavy, that means you care. Your job isn't to keep things moving today - it's to care for your people and your business long-term. Leadership Elevated Everything Abby wished someone taught her sooner, built into homebuilding-specific leadership development: a two-day workshop for entire operational teams - sales, construction, purchasing, marketing, finance - plus a six-month virtual cohort limited to 10 leaders, launching in September. Because the ROI on well-equipped leaders shows up in margin, retention, and days under construction. One piece of advice for this week Pick one. One thing you want your team to get better at - and triple down on it. Scattered effort never gets the depth of solution you need. Connect with Abby on LinkedIn, subscribe to her free weekly LinkedIn newsletter Leadership Edited, and learn more about Leadership Elevated at elevateactually.com - click Work With Abby. About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail Fresh off being named the Women's Leadership Circle Woman of the Year at the Jeff Shore Sales and Marketing Leadership Summit, Kristin Peck - Director of Sales and Marketing at Tuskes Homes - joins Anya Chrisanthon for a conversation about value, transparency, and working for your seat at the table. The award moment Kristin was scanning the room trying to figure out who was winning - until Amy O'Connor dropped the Zumba hint. For women navigating an industry where their voice doesn't always carry the same weight, the WLC award is about leading while supporting other women. Value purity - the Summit panel takeaway When builders lead with incentives, buyers focus on the number instead of the home. They interpret the incentive as the value. Kristin's advice: audit how your homes present value - online, in person, all the way through follow-up - before you discount anything. Because once you lead with the discount, you have to backtrack and restart when they walk through the door. From flight attendant to sales leader Kristin was flying for United out of Newark when 9/11 happened. As a young mom of three, she made a pivot - got her real estate license, landed with a large builder, and built a 20+ year career across sales, regional training, and leadership by continually raising her hand for the hard things. Today's buyer isn't harder - they're overloaded Buyers aren't more difficult. They're more educated, they've done the research, and they're drowning in information - some of it wrong. Your job is to help them navigate it. That means a "front page" - website, Zillow, MLS - that's clear, concise, attractive, and accurate. And someone who actually responds fast when they have questions, because a distracted buyer moves to the next website that will talk to them. Why Tuskes doesn't advertise incentives The price is the price. Tuskes prices homes to market value and leads with transparency - and buyers appreciate it. Confused prospects don't come in. Transparent ones do. On the Anewgo Marketing App Full transparency: Tuskes is an Anewgo client. Kristin's take on how the interactive design experience fits the buyer journey: financing and paperwork aren't fun - the app is. It lets buyers bring their vision to life, solves the "what does saddleback even look like" color-name problem, and prepares them for design decisions while having fun doing it. Kristin's tech filter Show me how this solves a problem, gets more sales, or enhances the buyer experience. If it can't do at least one, it's not a product for her. And on AI: general AI is great for admin, but homebuilding needs specialized AI grounded in accurate facts - not three-sink kitchens from a generic image generator. Advice for future leaders You're not entitled to anything you didn't work for. If you want a seat at the table, start working for it - take the hard tasks, push out of your comfort zone, and surround yourself with people who make you better. Connect with Kristin on LinkedIn and learn more about Tuskes Homes at tuskeshomes.com. Explore Shore Consulting programs including the Women's Leadership Circle at jeffshore.com. About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail Before you blame the market, look at how your homes show up online. Chad Davies - founder of Davies Imaging Group (DIG), serving builders doing 500+ units a year across 28 markets - joins Anya Chrisanthon fresh off the Jeff Shore Sales and Marketing Leadership Summit, where his team captured the entire event from behind the camera. The view from the Summit Every conversation - on stage and at the bar - came back to the same theme: stop negotiating. Selling homes is no longer a price battle. Builders have cut as much as they can, and the differentiator now is how you capture buyer attention. The DIG story Chad photographed his first $2 million home at 17. Sixteen years later, DIG is a specialized team - photographers who only photograph, dedicated editors in Guadalajara ripping through post-production, virtual staging artists, and a separate video production discipline. Why? Because one person can't carry the whole weight, and the friction in builder photography lives at the front and back end: scheduling, communication, and turnaround time. What 28 markets reveal Some regions are ripping, others are slow - and the trends are shifting. California, which invented the twilight photography craze, now wants daytime shots. Lifestyle and amenity video is surging while standalone model video fades. And in competitive markets like Texas, builders are suddenly finding photography budget - because when you can't compete on price, location, or product, presentation is the only lever left. The spec home rant If your home exists, it needs real professional photos - not a rendering, not construction team phone pics. And if it's not selling within a month, stage the pictures. Chad's team is seeing homes that sat for a year sell in weeks after virtual staging. Buyers aren't buying a shell - they're buying a new lifestyle, and you can't show them that with an empty room. Your job as a marketer is to remove the imagination, not demand it. The virtual staging surprise The biggest fans of virtual staging aren't marketing teams - they're sales teams. When a stale listing gets staged, it renews the sales team's excitement to sell it. If you want to empower your salespeople, stage the sitting inventory. Where AI fits AI-generated video is a variation of a photo, not a replacement for video production. Use it to fill social channels and supplement your media strategy - but it's an "and," not an "or." The biggest untapped opportunity in builder content Mic up your construction team. The first big builder that embraces behind-the-scenes content from their superintendents - showing culture and quality instead of talking about it - is going to have a great year. As Chad puts it: you're not telling people your culture, you're showing them. Connect with Chad on LinkedIn or on Instagram (Chad Davies), and learn more at daviesimaging.com. About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Send us Fan Mail 93.2%. That is the Google AI Overview citation rate for the builder Anewgo has been working with on its AEO initiative - meaning when buyers ask Google's AI real questions about communities, floor plans, features, and pricing in that builder's market, the AI cites that builder's website as a source 93% of the time. In this July State of AI episode, Anya Chrisanthon - CCO at Anewgo - walks through the newest data from Anewgo CTO Keng Lim's follow-up study and rounds out the month's biggest AI news for home builders. Finding one: the builder became part of more buyer conversations - on every platform ChatGPT surged early (16% to 72%), gave back some ground, and finished at 61%. Gemini climbed steadily to a new high of 75%. Google AI Overview climbed at every single measurement and finished at 93.2%. Three platforms, three different trajectories, all moving up. The lesson: buyers ask the same question in different AI tools and get different answers. If you're only measuring one platform - or not measuring at all - you have an incomplete picture. Finding two: being cited is not the same as being recommended Google cited the builder's website 93% of the time but ranked them number one only 43% of the time - a 50-point gap. Getting found and trusted by AI is step one. Step two is making the case: clear community details, plan options, included features, real points of difference. That's what converts a citation into a recommendation. Finding three: AEO creates value before the website visit While AI visibility went up, website sessions dropped about 47%. The study can't attribute the traffic change to AEO - but the opposing trends prove that sessions alone can no longer measure AEO progress. A buyer can have a meaningful brand encounter with your business inside an AI answer, and your analytics never see them. The new scorecard: are AI tools citing you, are they recommending you, and are the visits you do get more engaged and qualified? The rest of July in AI The model race kept sprinting - GPT-5.6 shipped as a full lineup and the industry theme shifted from "best model wins" to "best fit wins." The European Commission ordered Google to open Android to rival AI assistants - one more sign that the AI on your buyer's phone is becoming a choice, not a default, and your digital presence has to work for all of them. And agent frameworks went from theoretical to shipping - moving AI from answering questions to completing work. 📊 Read Keng Lim's full article with all the charts: Case Study Update: 93% Google AI Overview Citation Rate 📖 The original case study: How a Builder's ChatGPT Citation Rate Rose from 16% to 72% 🔍 Free AEO Assessment: email your website URL to [email protected], subject "AEO Assessment" - free, no obligation, specific to home building. About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768