Do you ever feel like you’re spinning your wheels with prospects? Have you ever had months when you weren’t sure when or if your next listing would come? If you want to be a million-dollar real estate agent, you need a real estate lead follow-up system that’s designed to get results. When you’re following up effectively, you don’t have to increase your ad budget or spend additional hours pounding the pavement – you can just make more money by converting more of the leads you already have.
The truth is that many real estate agents don’t have the resources to create an effective Real Estate Lead Follow-up System for following up. Many don’t have CRMs, while others spend time researching leads instead of closing them. However, that’s not a sustainable way to grow your business.
If you’re interested in learning how to be a successful real estate agent and you’re looking for a realtor lead generation strategy that works, you’ve come to the right place. Keep reading to learn all about million-dollar lead generation for realtors and its lead follow up strategies.
Real Estate Agents and the Experience Economy
Before we start explaining the process of following up on real estate leads, it’s important to spend some time discussing the “why.” Back in the ’90s, the Harvard Business Journal observed that people were increasingly spending money on items that would affect their lives in the form of experiences. This is what they called “the experience economy.”
Or, to put it another way, people might buy an item or a service, but they expect to get a full-fledged experience out of their purchases.
Here’s how this applies to your real estate career:
For most folks, housing is an absolute necessity. Even so, however, the experience you give your leads will directly impact your ability to get hired.
Are you contacting people quickly? Are you providing immediate help? If you want to be a successful real estate agent, you’ll want to make sure that you’re leaning into the experience economy by creating a friction-less process.
Qualities of a Winning Follow-up System
We’ve just talked about the experience economy and how it might impact your purchasing opportunities. How do you know if you’re building a system that will work? There are at least four general characteristics that every effective follow-up system should have:
1. Runs on Tech
According to research, automation technologies made workers 31 percent more productive in 2019. If you’re a real estate agent, the chances are that you use your cellphone and your work computer on a regular basis. But are you using your tech to its fullest potential?
From software-based CRM solutions to text reminders and email management, it’s possible for you to build a tech stack that does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. All you have to do is map out your lead nurturing process before asking yourself the question, “Are there any assets I can use to educate and qualify my leads?”
Once you start using technology-based solutions, you’ll be surprised at how easy it’ll be to qualify and nurture more leads at once.
2. Your System Should Be Systematic
Imagine there’s a local restaurant in your community that’s known for having extremely inconsistent customer service and food. Would you hire this place to cater a wedding or a baby shower?
Probably not. Why?
Because you don’t know what to expect and the stakes associated with your wedding reception are high enough that hiring this restaurant would be risky. You don’t want to become the real estate equivalent of a risky hire.
That’s why it’s important for real estate agents to have a systematic workflow and process that allows them to go from the first call to the closing appointment with precision. Have a script ready when you call your leads and pre-write your follow-up emails. This will save you time while also giving your leads a consistently high-quality experience.
3. It Has a Set Schedule
What do part-time and full-time real estate agents have in common?
They all have extremely busy and unpredictable schedules.
One day, you might have an open house showing in the afternoon. And then the next, you could be convincing a home seller to take you on as an agent. If you’re relying on your memory and a few pieces of paper to track your follow-up system, you’ll likely forget to pencil in your daily catch-up and follow-up.
For this reason, it’s highly recommended that you make following up the first and last item on your daily to-do list.
4. You Execute the System Relentlessly
You can’t lift weights for a couple of days in fitness and expect to look like a bodybuilder. Why? Because that muscular physique is the result of dedicated dieting and a commitment to working out over time.
Similarly, you can’t follow up with leads one day and then look at the phone while wondering where your leads have gone.
You could write the best phone script ever, and your videos might look like a Hollywood studio-produced them – but you get what you put into the system. If you want to have a multimillion-dollar year, you’ll have to put the time and effort in.
Here’s How You Can Build a Follow-up System That Works
At this stage, you understand the value of creating a real estate follow-up system, and now you know how to spot a winning system in the wild. Here’s a list of three rules that you can use to generate more leads and more sales.
1. Put Every Lead Into Your CRM
When you’re used to collecting business cards and relying on your notepad to get in touch with people, integrating your leads into a CRM software solution can be tricky. But it’s a step that can nonetheless make a world of difference.
Here’s why:
For most people, buying and selling real estate isn’t a regular annual event. As much as nobody likes to admit it, realtor lead generation is often about being in the right place at the right time.
That lead you’ve just added to your CRM might not be ready to sell right now. And if you’ve left their phone number and email address on your pen pad, you’re one coffee spill or crumbled paper away from losing that contact information forever.
Once you have their information in your software, however, you’ll be ready in a few months or years when the lead is looking for a realtor to sell their house.
2. Send Every Lead an Immediate Video Autoresponder
How many times have you signed up for an email list or an offer and immediately seen an email in your inbox? If you’re like most people, the answer to that is, “Practically every time.”
In many cases, however, video autoresponders are an underutilized way of reaching out to leads and helping them get to know you.
By the numbers, branded video content has been an effective client-getting strategy for 93 percent of businesses. Whether you’re posting on YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram, video can help you stand out from all the other agents who don’t send videos of themselves to their clients.
3. Try to Call Your Leads in Less Than Five Minutes
How long does it take you to get back in touch with new leads? A few days? An hour? A week?
According to a study that MIT ran, you’re 100 times more likely to establish contact with a lead if you call them within five minutes as opposed to within 30. To make matters worse, if you wait too long to get in touch with your leads, you may have an even harder time converting them.
Of course, nobody can answer their phones 24/7. You have a social life, family obligations, and work obligations to tend to. But if you can get in touch with people quickly, you can dramatically increase your chances of making a sale.
Realtor Lead Generation Best Practices
For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that you’ve been reading along and you’re convinced that following up is your best shot at becoming a successful real estate agent. We’ve put together a list of real estate lead follow-up techniques that will make your day.
1. Be Ready for Day 2
A lot of people pick up the phone on the first day and then think that the job is done. However, that’s not actually the case.
In the MIT study, we’ve just highlighted, the best times to call are between 8 and 10 AM and then 4 and 6 PM. When you make contact with your lead, you’ll want to use every touchpoint that you can.
Call them, text them, and then shoot them an email if nothing else works. And if you’re still not able to reach them in the afternoon, you’ll want to reference the earlier missed call if you can.
Although it might feel a little awkward to be constantly calling and emailing people at first, you’re moving in the right direction when you take this step. This lets people know that you’re serious about your business approach.
2. Have a Dedicated Follow-up Day
Be honest. When was the last time that you sat down and contacted everyone who’s ever been listed in your CRM?
Many real estate agents do a fantastic job of doing next-day follow-up with their newest leads, but what about the prospect who’s currently saving up for a down payment? Or that elderly couple that wants to sell their house and then downsize in a few months?
This is where your weekly follow-up system can come in handy.
All you have to do is block off time during a weekday that will allow you to pick up the phone and let people know that you’re there to answer their real estate questions at any time.
3. Work on Your Fundamentals
When you’re trying to generate new leads, it can be tempting to create a bunch of complicated rules and apps that will hopefully convince everyone to take you on as a realtor. But before you start perfecting your system, it’s important to make sure that you have a solid grasp of the fundamentals.
Are your emails full of typos and grammatical errors? Are there problems with your website that are costing you leads right now? Do your messages routinely get caught in people’s spam folders?
The beauty of a well-constructed real estate lead follow-up system is that it can generate leads for you indefinitely. But to get the most out of it, you’ll have to make sure that your assets and your real estate lead follow-up techniques are simple and easy to execute.
4. Don’t Stop
You’ll need to keep creating new touchpoints after you’ve got your real estate follow-up system up and running. For many real estate agents, this might look like running a dedicated Facebook ad campaign with social proof ads.
Did your office overcome the odds to make a sale? Were you able to sell a property for significantly more than the asking price?
Shoot a video or write up an ad and then boost it to your list. You never know when your leads may be ready to enter the market.
Is Your Real Estate Lead Follow-up System Getting the Job Done?
Whether you’re a grizzled real estate veteran or you’ve just earned your realtors license, there’s one thing that all realtors can agree on:
If you don’t have a strategy for real estate lead follow-up system, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
Different real estate agents will use different sales strategies to close deals. But very few million-dollar agents are able to reach that level without a proper follow-up system.
iNCOM’s full-featured website + CRM solution can help you streamline your sales process. Try it for 30-days, risk-free today.
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