How to Convert Real Estate Leads: It’s All in the System
Real estate conversions are tough. A lot of the leads you are dealing with are talking to other agents, skeptical that you can sell their house better than they can themselves, or just flat out don’t understand the home buying or selling process. The good news is, although it can be extremely difficult to take someone from being a stranger to client, when you do convert in the real estate industry, it can pay off big.
Types of Real Estate Leads
First off, it’s important to understand that there are different categories of real estate lead sources.
- Inbound Leads – Inbound leads is the key lead source for you and your real estate team. These leads are people who have followed the trail of bread crumbs you have laid for them. Through going on your website, signing up on a lead form, responding to an email, responding to direct mail, looking on Zillow, or whatever the avenue may be, they have expressed interest in your company and what your company offers.
- Inbound Referral Leads – Inbound referral leads are similarly valuable. For some types of referrals, the concept is essentially the same as for other inbound leads. People are actively trying to solve a problem and so are going on websites like Dave Ramsey, Agent Machine, or Upnest in order to look for a real estate agent who can help them reach their goal. They are primed and ready for you.
- Expireds, Withdrawns, FSBO Leads, Past Client Sphere Leads, Circle Prospecting Leads – These leads can have great value, but should only be pursued if you have all the inbound leads covered. You’ll most likely meet some resistance with these leads because they did not actively seek you out.
Importance of Follow Up
When it comes to real estate lead conversion, no matter what the lead source, how quickly you follow up with a prospect is key. If a new potential lead enters your sales funnel, is looking at houses on your website, or looking on Zillow, it’s important to reach out to them within the first few minutes after you becoming aware of them. According to Forbes, an agent is 80% more likely to make contact with a lead if you reach out to them immediately. That number drops to about 20-35% if you wait over 30 minutes to reach out.
Apart from speed, the most important thing is consistency. This is especially true if the lead reached out to you initially. Believe it or not, about 48% of agents never follow up with a prospect who reached out to them. And only 12% make three or more contacts with a prospect. That means that almost half of real estate agents make no attempt to contact an inbound prospect, and 88% don’t attempt to follow up after the second point of contact.
Needless to say, your real estate lead conversion system is not going to function properly if you are not reaching out to your leads. There is no magic formula for this. You have to just keep following up until the lead buys, sells, tells you to stop calling them, or unsubscribes from your email list.
Follow up quickly and consistently any time a new prospect comes into your world, and anytime you have opened contact with a lead.
Conversion Funnel
A sales funnel is simply a visualization of the journey a lead goes through from being a cold lead stranger to a buyer or seller client. Cold leads typically start out at the top of the funnel through a newsletter sign up form, or some mechanism in which they express interest in your services and give you their email address.
Once you have a real estate lead in your email database, it is your job to “warm them up” and move them down the funnel. You’re trying to make it so that when they are ready to take action and buy or sell, they are either going to come to you, or they are going to say “yes” when you reach out to them.
One of the best ways to do this is with drip campaigns. Drip campaigns are automated email sequences that continuously send out emails to your database. The idea is to offer the leads on your list useful, valuable information, as well as inform them about your company and what value you can offer them. These shouldn’t be salesy, but simply informal, beneficial information that keeps your company top of mind for the lead.
Real estate lead conversion (and conversion in really any industry) becomes much much easier if the lead is already at least somewhat familiar with you. The goal of your real estate conversion system is to make the lead more and more perceptive to your brand and how you can help them achieve the benefit they want to achieve.
Fulfillment: Do What You Say
This one is simple and should be obvious. You’re not going to convert your leads into clients if you don’t prove to them that you mean what you say. Call them when you say they are going to call them, meet them when you say you are going to meet them, send the information you said you were going to send them. If you can’t come through on these little things, the lead is going to have little faith that you will be able to sell their house or find a house for them to buy.
Real Estate Conversion: Prove Yourself
The key to converting leads is contacting them consistently, doing what you say, and being a resource for them. That’s how you will take them through the process of going from a cold lead to a client who agrees to work with you. Track everything so you know what’s working and what’s not working and always be flexible enough to change up your methods if something isn’t producing.
If you talk to them like a real human and genuinely work to help them achieve their desired ends, then you’ll be able to consistently convert your real estate leads.