Buyer education is a significant challenge in industries like modular construction, where misconceptions about quality and value persist. Chris Duprey joins host Hannah Eisenberg to explore how companies often focus on self-promotion rather than educating potential customers, missing opportunities to become trusted voices in their fields.

The discussion emphasizes the importance of integrating buyer education into marketing strategies to break down barriers and improve industry perception. Chris highlights that organizations can become trailblazers by embracing transparency and addressing buyers' questions, ultimately leading to increased trust and sales.

With actionable insights on aligning marketing and sales efforts, this episode serves as a roadmap for companies looking to transform their approach and capture a larger market share.

Takeaways:

• The modular construction industry faces an image problem, leading to buyer education challenges.
• To succeed, companies must become the voice of trust and educate their customers.
• Sales and marketing teams should collaborate closely to understand buyer needs and concerns.
• Effective buyer education can significantly boost trust and conversion rates in construction.
• Companies need to show up earlier in buyer conversations about construction options.
• Content that helps buyers make informed decisions is essential for modern marketing success.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Impact
• Disney
• Pixar
• Lucas Film
• Yale Appliance

The interesting thing with this industry is I think they have this education problem, but you also have an awareness problem.

So you've got to crack two nuts, really, when you're looking at this.

And that is, that's where you have to really think through.

How do you not only become the voice of trust, but how do you start showing up in conversation, showing up in certain places?

How do you get people realizing that there is an alternative option to traditional construction?

Welcome to Trust Builders, the podcast where we have transformative conversations with company leaders as well as sales and marketing managers about growing your business by educating your customers and building trust.

My name is Hannah Eisenberg and I am your host.

Welcome to another episode of the Trust Builders Podcast.

My name is Hannah Eisenberg and I am thrilled and honored to have with me today my coach and mentor, Chris Dupre.

Chris, welcome to the show.

I am so happy to have you.

Thanks so much for having me.

I can't wait to dive in with you.

Excellent.

So let's get right to it.

You have actually coached hundreds of companies around the globe in various industries as your role as the head coach of Impact, the coaching and training company that the ask you answer originated from with Marcus Sheridan.

So it was a bit hard to prepare for this conversation today because there's so many topics I would love to discuss with you, but I would love to just draw on your expertise, having coached hundreds of different companies to discuss a problem I see in many industries.

But let's take the modular construction industry as an example.

I would really love to draw on your expertise, having coached those hundreds of companies, and discuss a problem I see across many industries.

But maybe we'll discuss it on an example of the modular construction industry because I've been talking to a lot of CEOs in that industry and I hear the same thing every time.

Does that sound good?

Even I can't wait.

So a lot of CEOs that I talk to, especially in the modular construction industry, are telling me that buyer education is their biggest problem.

And the modular construction industry is such a great example of explaining this problem because there is some really tangible consequences to that problem.

Right?

The modular construction industry has a massive image problem.

And most people in the United States, for example, modular construction is equivalent to lesser quality.

It's a cheap alternative where the opposite is true.

Right.

It's actually off site construction in a stable, temperature controlled environment.

It's built with precision into larger modules that can be assembled incredibly fast on site.

So having that image problem actually causes the modular construction industry to only have 6% as a market share of new construction, which is mind blowing if you consider how much better the quality of the construction is.

And you get this usually at a cheaper or comparable price.

On the flip side though, the same CEOs who tell me that they have a buyer education problem, if you go to their websites, you see that they talk about, look at us, our latest projects, our accreditations, it's all about them and making them look good.

But there isn't really any buyer education happening.

So Chris, is this something you see across the board and why is that a problem if we don't tackle this?

I think first off, the modular home industry sounds or not modular home, but the modular construction sounds no different than almost any other industry.

Specifically when we get into design construction, anything like that.

Funny enough, as you're explaining all this, one of my parents friends growing up, my aunt and uncle that weren't technically my uncle, that my uncle in the probably early 90s had one of those homes built.

So I've been in what we're talking about, but I think to your point is I think all CEOs will say that buyer education is a problem that they've got.

I think everybody gets that.

An uneducated buyer, really a great buyer.

And I think everybody gets that.

There's a lot of information out there.

I think the hurdle that most companies face is this idea that they have not put together that they are just like their buyer.

So shop on Google, they do research on Google or AI or YouTube or they see ads in Instagram and LinkedIn and all these different places and they click on it, they learn from it.

They like when they buy stuff, they do research and they go to website and they learn and they go, oh, I trust this brand now.

And then they go buy the thing, whether they buy it there or they go to a store, but they don't see that they're missing that for themselves.

So if you ever talk to an architect or designer or constructor, they always say, chris, our work speaks for itself.

Like they say that all the time.

And then, but then the question becomes, then why are we having a conversation clearly CEO, that something isn't working.

You've even identified that educating people is what needs to happen.

But you want to talk about, look at me, we're the greatest company in all the land.

There's a problem between modular construction off site versus new home construction on site.

There's an argument of modular construction versus an already built home, right?

Like these are the things that home homeowners or Future homeowners are potentially researching.

And if you're just talking about how great you are, you're likely not even in the conversation.

Yeah, you totally hit the nail on the head here.

Because a lot of times traditional construction has massive budgets, right?

They do billboards, they do TV ads, they do a lot of marketing and modular construction.

Because of that bad perception and because they're facing such competition, they're not even part of the conversation, right?

I would argue that they're not in the conversation at all.

Not because they're a cheap alternative, because until you mentioned modular home building, I forgot my aunt and uncle had a modular home built, right?

So I don't even think they're in a conversation.

Yeah, the US for sure.

I was really happy in July when I read in the offsite building magazine that the editor in chief, Gary Fleischer, who's a big voice in the modular industry, actually wrote a note or an open letter to the modular construction industry saying that it's our job as the modular construction industry to change that industry, to change that perception, to do the buyer education and to stop talking about just ourselves and really educate buyers by teaching them and embracing that whole transparency, honesty, et cetera.

In the ask you answer community, we call that becoming the voice of trust.

That sounds definitely familiar here.

So there's a couple of things, right?

The first is nobody's doing it.

So you have blue ocean today, right?

So if there isn't a voice of trust already in your space or in your industry, then it means that you can be that.

And so that's really important, right?

So when people are looking for guidance on new home construction, we need to be in that conversation, right?

So we have to be that.

The interesting thing with this industry is I think they have this education problem, but you also have an awareness problem.

So you've got to crack two nuts, really, when you're looking at this.

And that is, that's where you have to really think through.

How do you not only become the voice of trust, but how do you start showing up in conversation, showing up in certain places?

How do you get people realizing that there's.

There is an alternative option to traditional construction?

So really what we're saying here is don't just educate your buyer on modular construction, but really insert yourself much, much earlier into that conversation about construction.

Anything, right?

When they're thinking of should I buy a house or build a new house, like much, much earlier.

Again, when you think about the big five.

So cost and price problems, comparisons, reviews, and best of.

You have to go at all of those.

The thing that you have to think about is what are the comparisons.

It's not this modular construction company versus that one.

It's what's my alternative?

If I don't go with a modular construction, what am I doing?

So again, so it's buying something that's already built or starting from scratch on site.

The other thing that's really interesting with the rise of self selection tools, this is probably an area where these companies can start to gain some momentum.

Right.

Is who is a good fit for modular construction?

Right.

I'm sure we could come up with a series of 10, 15 questions that could help guide a guide a set of potential home buyers down the path of which is better for them.

And then you've got those on your websites.

We're doing traditional things.

Maybe we're even running some sort of ad campaigns to help push people to the self selection tool.

But you have to help make people aware that this is an option.

So you're gonna have your comparisons.

You're going to have problems that need to associate with the larger new construction industry and driving people to help them make the right decisions.

So when we're talking about becoming the voice of trust in your industry, sometimes when I say that to people, their eyes glaze over a bit and it's not entirely clear to them how that would help them.

They feel it's the right thing to do but they're more concerned about lead generation and how can I close more sales and how can I generate more revenue, you know, tangible things.

But you have seen the transformation companies go through when they actually tackle the bull and grab it by the horns and change that industry and do what's right and become that voice of trust in their space.

Can you walk us through what sort of the payoffs usually look like when you become that trailblazer?

You embrace buyer education, become that best teacher and the voice of trust in your space.

I think you have some trailblazers that started doing it at first and then you have this idea that it has to be done or Google and AI just are not going to reward you because the days of just keyword stuffed websites are over.

So you have to have helpful content.

That's really what we're talking about, is stuff that helps people buy if in the home.

This is the thing I always tell people if you're in an industry that is commoditized so people will buy something if they can get it for half a penny less.

The ask you answer is not for you.

But if there's a considerative buying process where people have to think and actually get to have a real conversation and really think about how they're going to do it, then they need education.

And so we want to be that educator.

And so I've seen companies that have become that educator, that have seen crazy amounts of folks on their websites, crazy amounts of folks converting, downloading things, interacting with their sales teams.

Really changing from small businesses to these large scale organizations that are just known now is the educator in that.

And you can tie millions of dollars back to this stuff.

But it's content that helps people make buying decisions, is the content that all of us are searching for when we're the consumer.

And the biggest switch that has to flip for folks is will it induce more trust if I talk about this thing?

If the answer is yes, then that's what we need to do.

And really where Becoming the voice of trust, executing the ask you answer is key.

Yeah.

That's why the podcast is called Trust Builder.

You mentioned the big five and you mentioned educational content.

What are some of the other key steps that someone has to take to become the most trusted voice in their space?

Yeah, listen, there's a couple of things, right?

We always say you got to be willing to talk about what nobody else will talk about.

You gotta be willing to show what other people won't show.

You gotta sell in the ways that others won't sell and you have to be more human than others.

And all that's great and it's all true to become the voice of trust.

But let's go down to.

Okay, cool, we've done all that, but what else do we need?

You need a website that's built to convert, right?

So if you've done all of this work, you have all these articles, you've got all this stuff and you don't have calls to action that are aligned with what you're saying.

If you don't take people through a journey on said websites, if your websites are slow, if they're not optimized for mobile, you're only doing a part of it, right?

It's got to be this full circle or you're not going to see those rewards that are there.

So it is multi.

Tiered.

But the hardest part for folks is getting over the bias, writing educational stuff and keeping the consistency that's needed.

You build that while that's happening or after that habit's built, you go fix the website.

Do we have the right things?

Is the, is it quick enough?

Is it aligned with Google Core Vitals does it have strong baseline SEO?

Right.

Do we have calls to action?

All those things are part of this so that you have the right machine in place.

Yeah, I looked at around 200 modular construction websites and if I'm honest with you, most of them have very detailed pricing information.

Most of them actually don't.

And the ones that do have some sort of dollar per square foot, that kind of thing, but very, very few are really explaining pricing in an educational way.

Self service tools, I would say 5% maybe have some self service tool, but there's not really much there.

So there's.

The good news is though, there is massive room for improvement right now.

When I have these discussions, a lot of times marketers get it, they understand why we need to be transparent and they want to drive that change, but they immediately back away and say, well, you know, management is not going to agree with this or we can't put price pricing on this on the website because our salespeople feel like they need to share that pricing, they need to be in control.

So they ask you answer or educating your buyer and becoming that voice of trust.

A lot of times must be a culture change that has to happen in the organization first before we can start tackling all those little things.

Yeah.

And I can sum it up really quickly.

You have to be willing to be truly buyer centric, meaning if they've asked us the questions, we should answer them because we would answer it in a sales conversation.

So why wouldn't we answer it to everybody?

So that's a huge part is that we have really embrace the buyer and almost shut out anything else because all the rest of it is just really noise.

That's number one.

And number two is we have to get everybody in the organization to understand that they have a role in the growth of the company and got to do those two things if we're going to effectively bring the ask you answer to life.

Because the ask you answer is a business philosophy, it's not a marketing tactic.

So Chris, what role does sales play in this?

So I think the biggest thing is they got to realize that marketing is more intertwined with the sale than they are at this point.

And what I mean by that is buyers are getting considerably closer to making a decision before they ever talk to sales, which is a total shift.

Because if we go back, I always joke around about when my dad bought us a new TV in the 90s, like he showed up at the big box store and there was some 20 year old kid that knew everything and my dad knew nothing other Than I want a big tv.

And now my kids got exactly the specs, everything that he wants for his tv.

And it's like in my Amazon cart.

So it's like one of those.

It's just a different world.

And sales folks need to realize that is that you're not showing up to a buyer that's uneducated most of the time.

Most of the time, they know almost all the stuff that you do, except for maybe the specifics.

Right.

And so we got to know that the next piece is they are probably the closest to the buyer.

So instead of in today's world, it's not.

The days of marketing just sitting around in a huddle and making stuff up are over.

Right.

We need, like for marketing to be effective, we need to know what buyers are saying and we need to have those conversations.

In the book, Marcus talks about sales guys, if you hear a question in the sales call, ask yourself, is it answered?

And then go tell marketing.

And I taught that for years and it's never worked because when Marcus did it, he was the owner and so he like made it a point to make it remembered.

So this is where it's like, sales folks, if you don't like recording your sales conversations, get over it.

Because it's not just like part of it's about how do you get better separate conversation.

The other part is and leadership needs to hear how buyers are talking to the company.

There's nothing better than hearing a buyer interact with our sales teams to see what questions they still have, to see what fears, worries, concerns, or issues are top of mind for them.

Do buyers think it's going into the modular construction?

Do buyers really think that it's cheaper or is that a story that we're telling ourselves?

Because again, for me, I have no idea.

My notion is so here's my notion as a homeowner that will someday probably buy another home is so modular construction.

I'm assuming instead of looking at a set of blueprints, I'm going to pick different layouts that I like that all could piece together like a LEGO kit set.

That's to me, that's what comes to mind with modulars.

Oh, so you've got living room A through F and I get to pick which one I want, but only A through D go with kitchen and it's this thing.

It's the ultimate self selection tool, by the way.

Holy smokes.

How do we not have here's all the different layouts and here's the ones that go together.

Go build your dream home.

There you go.

Modular constructors.

Go build that like a car configurator on BMW or like a boat configurator on Barletta.

Boats like those.

That's how I think about it.

Right.

So are we telling ourselves this story that modular construction is like a trailer park putting trailers together?

I don't know.

I don't know.

But the idea is, do you know who does know you're flipping customers who are talking to your sales team.

So go listen to those conversations and you're going to know if people are excited.

Like I just got excited thinking about that.

Are they like, yeah, I only have X dollars and so you're my only choice.

Right.

Because that's not the place that we want to be in either.

No, certainly not.

So one of the main drivers that I really see transform the clients that I work with is the alignment between marketing and sales.

Right.

Having the sales team and the marketing team get together as part of a revenue team every two weeks or every week or whatever it is and be in a room together and just talk about the questions that buyers are asking and the content that we're putting out, et cetera.

So now all of that is really improving not only the quality of the content that producing, but how much, how much it aligns with our buyers needs and worries and concerns.

Yeah, listen again, will it build more trust?

How are things working?

What are I actually, I don't, I.

When I coach companies, yes, I do revenue teams, I prefer though marketing to go to sales role play sessions and sit in on sales meetings because I'm less concerned about how's the content working and I'm more concerned about hey, we lost this deal and marketing hearing why they lost it.

So they can come up with stuff and this isn't, this is based on stuff I've seen.

So I work with a client in New Zealand.

Marketers sit in on the sales role play sessions.

I actually have one this evening.

Literally what happens is the sales people say stuff and marketing goes, I know what I need to do now.

And they go create something new and they have a discussion there and they go, oh yeah, this is how we would do it.

This is how, this is how that.

And so it just, that is, that's the type of stuff that teams need to do.

And you only get there if sales is open to letting marketing be there and open to really talking about when things don't go perfectly.

Yeah, definitely.

Someone who might be listening to this podcast and they might be a modular construction company or they might be a different industry.

But similar size company.

So meaning you as the CEO, you might be the business owner and the business founder, maybe you have one or two marketing people and you might be actually doing a bunch of sales, maybe you have a few salespeople, but you're relatively small team.

Now, listening to all of this, you know the need to create content and be the most trusted voice in your space.

And you and I, we always, you know, coach our clients on.

You have to bring the content in house.

Someone else being your voice to the world isn't authentic.

It just isn't going to work.

So what advice would you give someone who's struggling that.

Struggling through that decision whether or not they should outsource their marketing or bring it in house?

Yeah.

And listen, in today's world, where you can go to ChatGPT or Claude or Google Gemini, you don't know what you're buying.

So there's something to be said about having that person internal.

Not there's anything wrong with creating content using AI.

I do it all the time.

But you still have to make it yours.

And you can't just do this.

But listen, content needs to be part of who you are, and that's why it needs to be in house.

And if you need to do something quick, it needs to be executable.

But when I hear of setups the way that they are, I'm like, cool, is it working?

And if the answer is yes, great, have a great.

But we're not talking to folks that are coming and going.

Everything's great.

Love spending tens of thousands of dollars on ads and not getting any sales from it.

Like, nobody's coming like that.

They're going, we don't have enough leads.

This is how we're feeling, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And so if you actually want to change, you have to change how that's going.

And so we as coaches have to ask the hard question.

Great.

Are you willing to do about that or are you going to accept the industry standard, the norm?

This is how it's done in our industry.

I think that's hogwash.

Yeah.

So just to finish us off real quick, implementing, they ask, you answer.

Because it's such a game, changing business philosophy, right?

With culture and it touches your marketing team, your sales team, your management, a lot of times even your customer service team.

It takes about 18 to 24 months, depending on how fast internally you can drive change and how your team is set up, etc.

But that sounds like a scary number to a lot of people.

And they think, oh my gosh, am I not going to see results in the next 18 months.

Well, I know that's not true, but from your experience, when can people expect seeing results?

When they implement the ask, you answer.

Yeah, it depends, right?

So if executed properly, you'll start seeing results as soon as your sales team starts leveraging one to one video using content in the sales process, even if that content is just them answering questions that they know are going to come up or a sales call.

I call it setting the conditions before conversation so that hap that can happen immediately.

When will Google start to recognize you?

Somewhere in that six to nine month range.

If you go out and be bold and you use a tool like score app and you build a self assessment tool, you can start seeing some of that stuff happen quicker.

If you're in a visual industry and you start really leveraging shorts on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok, depending on where your buyers are, you can see that stuff happen sooner than later.

Especially if you're still leveraging this to be educational and helpful to them, not just all about you.

You will.

So that's like businessy results internally.

The second you start focusing on this, you should see a shift and how your folks show up.

Now it's about how is this helping the buyer, how is this helping sales?

How are we doing this, how are we doing that?

People start talking, I heard a buyer say this or I heard sales mention that and you start to see a shift towards growth the organization which is as much a benefit as anything else.

This is actually one of my favorite parts of implementing.

They ask, you answer, because when you see that happening, it's almost like an invigoration of the whole team and they're like, oh yes, I know why we started this journey, I know why we're here and why we're doing this and this is all going to work out.

There's like this shift and then everyone gets behind it and it's just so amazing to see.

Now when you read the book and I know the new edition is coming out, endless customers of the book and there will be a shift.

But when you read they ask, you answer.

So when you read the book there is this feeling of oh my gosh, I need to do this, this, this and you start making a list, Right?

But why would you recommend that someone goes with a coach, whether that's an impact coach or a certified they ask you answer coach to help them guide them through that journey?

It depends.

So I've known people that have done it on their own.

That's great.

But you have to think about it in the same way that the best of the best always have a coach.

So whether it was Michael Jordan, whether it was Kobe, whether it's Tiger Woods.

Keep inserting, folks.

They have coaches to be a mirror, to be a guide, to hold you to your own stuff.

So when you do this on your own, you're holding yourself accountable and you've not done it before.

So it's like walking down a path without a flashlight.

When you have a coach that can guide you, it's like they're walking 10 or 15ft ahead with a flashlight.

I always like to think of it this way.

So one of my favorite meditation teachers, he was a Thai forest monk.

His name was Ajahn Chah.

And there's a US Guy named.

Oh, my God.

Hold on.

His name is Jack Cornfield.

How I missed Jack Cornfield, I don't know.

But.

So Jack Cornfield was a monk under him in, like the 70s.

And he used to get frustrated because he used to say, master, you contradict yourself.

And he's, I'm just a guide.

I've walked the path a little bit ahead of you.

I can see when you start to veer left, like you're about to fall off the road, and I yell, go right.

And then when you go too far to the right, I yell, go left, because I'm trying to keep you on that path.

That's the same thing that a coach does that works with all kinds of different industries, with all kinds of different folks.

They a have seen what's working and what's not working because they're in.

They ask, you answer every day.

They also will hold you to your stuff and tell you, hey, you're going too far this way, you're going too far that way.

If you look at the one of the oldest stories of the ask you answer with Yale appliance, Steve Sheinkauft gets into content creation.

He's doing it, he gets frustrated.

He finds Marcus and he says, I'm going to send you some stuff.

Tell me why it's not working.

And Marcus says to him, it's because, Steve.

You like to talk about Steve, right?

And from that moment, after Steve got really angry at Marcus, he realized what he meant.

He was talking too much about Yale appliance and not enough about the buyer and the subjects that they want to talk about.

And now Yale's on fire, right?

Like, they're one of the best examples of the ask you answer out there.

And it's because Steve, who's a brilliant CEO who understands marketing, who understands all this stuff, had somebody that was willing to challenge him.

And if you do this without a coach, you might have your team to challenge you.

But my experience in watching most organizations, internal teams don't challenge each other as much as they should.

Awesome.

That was such a great explanation.

Now I am an absolute book nerd.

You might not see this because my bookshelf behind me has just a few books, but I absolutely love books and I always look for new reads and a lot of my audience does as well.

So would you share or do you have a book that has changed your life that you read in the last, let's say 6 to 12 months?

So changed my life is going to be hard to not go back to all the Buddhist books that I've read over the years.

But I'm going to give you a different answer.

And it's a book that I think that all business folks should read.

So I just finished reading it.

It's Bob Iger's book, A Ride of a Lifetime.

It tells his story of starting out at ABC and then going to be the CEO of Disney.

And in that story you get an insight into, I think that he would like if people said that he was just pretty much a normal guy, had a normal upbringing that got a job as like a studio hand at ABC and then worked really hard.

People noticed him and next thing he knows he's buying Lucas film from George Lucas.

I think the most interesting part is he talks about working with Steve Jobs and the Pixar acquisition.

It was just this amazing insight into how two executives could work together.

But it also showed this more human side of Steve, which I really enjoyed.

And so I think it's a great book.

Even if you're not in a large enterprise company, you're just doing this like it's a really great story, a lot of leadership lessons in it and it was fun to read.

Awesome.

I'm definitely going to check that one out now.

Last but not least, is there anything that really annoys you that you could think of?

For our two minute rant, let's go with sales.

And this applies to everybody.

But ask follow up questions, stop going through checklists to validate things, stop like hearing something, making an assumption and moving forward.

Hate that because to us it's a signal that you are not listening to us.

And we all know that humans fundamentally want to be heard and.

But we also might not know what's supposed to happen in a sales process.

And so sometimes we're used to these sales folks going line by line.

And I'm telling you, the deeper you go, the better.

So the biggest thing that I see when I watch series of sales calls, when I see closed loss deals, when I see all that stuff, I sit there and I go back because I want to watch the first call.

Did we do deep enough discovery to actually understand what the heck was going on?

Do we know what they want?

So if we're talking the modular industry, did we dive deep enough to know why do these folks want a new constructed home versus buying for themselves?

What is that compelling reason?

Did we unpack it?

Did we really get them to discover why this is the path forward?

Or did we just say how big do you want the house and how many colors and how and what kind of finishes?

You sound like everybody else when you do that.

But if you ask questions to follow up to verse, validate, confirm or deny assumptions, you stand out as different than everybody else.

And that is the fastest way to grow as a sales professional today is how good are you at asking great follow up questions?

If you're in the top 10% of that, you're going to be in the top 10% of salespeople.

So ask better follow up questions.

Love it.

Chris, it has been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, sharing your insights and your wisdom.

And I will make sure I'll include the link to your LinkedIn profile and how to get in touch with you in case people want to reach out.

Thank you again so much for being part of the show today.

You're so welcome.