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Tulsa-Based Homebuilder Sees 71.43% increase in Signed Home Contracts After Implementing HubSpot Sales Enterprise

Challenge:


Capital Homes is an established home builder located in Tulsa, Oklahoma with over 40 employees, 30 years of experience in the industry, and eight active new home communities. Capital Homes purchased the HubSpot Growth Suite (Marketing Pro, Sales Pro, and Service Pro bundle) and attempted to self-implement before engaging with Ascend. Their initial implementation was focused on Marketing Hub, and the sales team was not involved. Capital Homes later found that they faced major reporting challenges without the sales team involved. These challenges included incomplete lead attribution, missing conversion data, and an overall lack of data structure to allow for the custom reporting they needed to provide individuals, teams, and leadership with clear, aligned, and actionable insights. 

While the main challenge and business need centered around data structure and custom reporting, it became clear during discovery that there was also a lack of HubSpot buy-in across the sales team. While sales was now involved, resistance to using HubSpot remained since the team was not heavily involved in the initial HubSpot setup. 

Solution:

Capital Homes’ key requirements included:

  • developing the ability to track multiple buyer types (i.e. husband and wife, realtor, etc.);
  • defining and implementing contact lifecycle stages;
  • defining and implementing lead qualification parameters;
  • and auditing and documenting all data points coming from their current IHMS (legacy homebuilding software) Integration to improve sales processes run by workflow automation.

Before addressing Capital Homes’ challenges, we wanted to better understand their existing tech stack. We performed a tech stack audit to determine each software tool’s functions and purpose. 

Capital Homes’ tech stack included HubSpot, EZ-Texting, CallRail, Builder Cloud, and a
proprietary database called IHMS. IHMS is a custom home builder system used by their Sales,
Service, Warranty, and Construction teams to manage warranty tickets, home design
information, trade partner information, invoicing, and loan applications. The system is integral to operations at Capital Homes, and while it is integrated with HubSpot using the IHMS API, there was little to no documentation around which data points come into HubSpot and when. 

During this audit we identified several opportunities to integrate or replace existing tools with HubSpot. 

While Capital Homes makes buying and building a home as seamless as possible for their
customers, it is not a simple process – there are tons of data points generated, from initial
inquiries to in-person visits to contracts, to get a deal to close. Capital Homes employees
create and interact with a large number of data points across two primary systems (HubSpot
and IHMS) through the course of working with their customers. They need their processes and
data to be clear and organized in HubSpot, as it would now be the company’s source of truth
CRM.

After thorough discovery and planning with the Capital Homes team, Ascend designed,
recommended and implemented a solution that streamlined sales processes and organized
data around a new Custom Object: Families. 

Ascend advised Capital Homes to upgrade to Sales Hub Enterprise to unlock Custom Objects to truly power their data and reporting capabilities, as well as their sales team. Organizing their CRM around the Families Custom Object allowed Capital Homes to track their data and organize all stakeholders involved in the home buying process around what’s most important - the customer. 

With this solution, at different points of the process, HubSpot users can use and reference contact, deal, company or family records while all important information is pushed back to the Family for precise reporting and analysis. With this Custom Object, we designed insightful, actionable custom reports to present meaningful KPIs to individuals, department heads, and leadership. In an effort to maintain the solution’s viability and best prepare for future expansions, we built it in a way that continues to scale as their team grows and their customer base increases. 

More specifically, we used our findings from our tech stack audit to design their system so that we can further integrate IHMS with HubSpot and move the Warranty ticketing process into Service Hub in 2024/2025. After the project implementation concluded in July 2023, Capital Homes signed on for Ascend’s ongoing HubSpot Revenue Operations support to continue to maintain and optimize their portal moving forward.

Results:

Post-implementation, Capital Homes experienced a measurable improvement in their operational efficiency:

  • Sales appointments booked increased by 32.65% in the first month post-launch, with a subsequent 10.77% increase the following month.
  • Attendance at sales appointments rose by 27.27% initially, followed by a 14.29% increase.
  • The number of new home contracts signed saw a significant turnaround from a 26.32% decrease to a 71.43% increase in the subsequent period.

Impact:

The project dramatically transformed Capital Homes' business processes and data visibility. The custom HubSpot configuration provided a robust framework for tracking and managing customer interactions and internal operations, leading to improved sales performance and customer engagement. This strategic enhancement also supported a culture of data-driven decision-making across departments. Furthermore, their sales team is now fully bought into HubSpot. Biweekly RevOps check-in meetings with Ascend and Capital Homes’ Sales & Marketing stakeholders ensure that sales and marketing continue to remain aligned.