Top Three Real Estate Lead Conversion Mistakes

Let’s be honest. Being a real estate agent is not for the faint of heart. It’s a difficult job at almost every turn—you work extremely hard to get each and every client, and then even after getting them to work with you, the work is just beginning. As many of our coaches say at Smart Inside Sales, working in real estate is more of a lifestyle than just a job.

Do you know what makes it significantly easier and less stressful? Knowing that you have a lead conversion process that is reliable and that consistently works. That’s what we teach in our Conversion University course and training here at Smart Inside Sales.

On that training and learning note, I wanted to highlight some of the most common real estate lead conversion mistakes that I see and that our coaches see. The three top ones are:

• Ignoring lead sources
• Relying too heavily on scripts
• Speaking too much on their sales calls

Let’s go over these top real estate lead conversion mistakes one by one.

Real Estate Lead Conversion Mistakes: Ignoring Lead Sources

It’s not always practical to work every single lead source all the time. Depending on the size of your team and stream of leads from certain sources versus others, you may have to focus on the most productive sources at the expense of less productive ones. But if you have a real estate team with multiple inside sales agents, then the critical thing to do is prioritize lead sources for your different ISAs, depending on their skill and experience level.

Basically, you want to prioritize certain lead sources over others, but you want to try to work them all. Generating leads through calling FSBOs, expired, and withdrawns, as well circle prospecting, is definitely a more difficult route than following up with inbound leads. But, as I’ve said before, the low hanging fruit isn’t the only fruit on the tree.

The key to gaining an edge over your competitors is by mastering multiple lead sources.

Relying too Heavily on Scripts

Real estate scripts are useful for lead conversion, but they should not be read or stuck to blindly. Their primary value comes from helping you remember which key questions to ask and to have a framework to fall back on if you get into the weeds in your conversation.

More experienced real estate agents and ISAs, on the other hand, understand the basics of speaking with outbound and inbound leads, and probably have developed a decent repertoire of questions and responses. More than scripts, seasoned real estate ISAs and agents need to hone and perfect their discovery, objection handling, and closing skills. This is where we come to using scripts as part of a wider conversion system.

Instead of focusing your efforts on memorizing scripts, you want to learn conversation techniques—so you can gather all the necessary information, sound like a real human, and make the sale.

Speaking too Much on Their Sales Calls

The last big real estate lead conversion mistake that many agents and ISAs make is talking too much. The key to discovery, closing, and successful lead conversion is listening to what the person has to say on the other end of the phone.

You should be listening carefully not only to what the prospect is saying, but how they are saying it. What are their main pain points? What is their underlying goal (hint: it’s almost never just buying or selling a home)? How do they think they will accomplish that goal?

Many sales people make the mistake of thinking that they hold all the power when they are doing most of the talking. That’s just wrong. You hold the power when you guide the lead with the right questions and get them to give you adequate, useful responses that you can then circle back to when you close.

If you’re serious about converting more real estate leads, then check out Conversion University. It teaches you both the conversational framework you need, and you have a coach to practice all of the concepts until you master them.