”Marketing needs to be easier—less mystifying, more automated, more trackable, more cost effective. Our marketers need to know which tactics work in which channels, efficiently execute tactics and campaigns, track and manage results, and respond appropriately to every lead based on its priority and value.

”Once we have a qualified lead, sales needs to operate like a well-oiled machine—with straightforward visibility into every metric and datapoint that matters. Reps need instant ability to do things like separate hot from lukewarm leads pinpoint bottlenecks in the process—like slow quotes and approvals—that repeatedly bog the system down.

”Buying a house is stressful—so anything we haven’t clearly documented contractually and updated in a timely fashion introduces real potential for heated misunderstandings and even long-term customer dissatisfaction. We can’t afford the time or money this kind of dispute resolution requires or business implications of the negative word of mouth that can result.

”If a prospective buyer hasn’t done some financial due diligence before moving forward with a rep, bad assumptions and calculations can send us back to the drawing board, wasting critical time, jeopardizing sales, and incurring revenue loss.

”Our reps spend too much time responding individually to one-off buyer questions on topics they could easily research on our—like which lots are available, pending, or sold.

”When we build a house from scratch for a buyer, the list of available options they’re choosing from is long—these are details buyers agonize over and waffle on, which takes time our reps simply don’t have.

”Sometimes addressing warranty issues feels like slapping an expensive Band-Aid on a symptom instead of addressing the real problem—it’s also hard to know how much those “fixes” really cost us or whether the warranty customer care team is actually operating as a profit or cost center. Even then, it’s difficult to get a real quantifiable measure of how delighted or dissatisfied your customers are.