Vince Smith posted on February 23, 2010 09:35
Did you ever want to find out what the best techniques were for converting real estate leads into closed transactions? As I have mentioned in previous articles, it all starts with the lead. Here is some information about following up on leads that every real estate pro should know.
I mentioned in a previous article that leads are the life blood of your real estate business. Without them you really do not have a business. In this article, I will explain why so many real estate professionals get frustrated with real estate leads and what they should be doing to increase conversions.
Many real estate professionals get their leads from many different sources. Some purchase them from 3rd party lead aggregators and others generate them on their own using online and offline methods. Whichever method you use (if you are purchasing them then we need to talk... Seriously!), there are certain things that you should be doing to increase your chances of turning that lead into a closed transaction.
Before we begin, we need to define a real estate lead. In its simplest form, a lead is a name, email address and hopefully a phone number. For the purpose of this article, we will focus on leads that are generated via the Internet. The Internet is by far the greatest producer of leads for real estate agents.
Okay, now that we have defined our lead, let’s assume that we just received 2 leads that came to us by email. Let's also assume that you received them by email while you were out showing properties or running an errand.
What should you do first? Well YOU shouldn’t need to do anything; your auto responder should be handling that.
Auto responder, what’s that?
The first thing that should happen when you receive a leads is that they should receive some sort of automated response via email letting them know that you received their information and that you will be in contact shortly. Do not, I repeat, do not purchase leads or start generating them online without having an auto responder in place. This is of course unless you spend 14 hours a day staring at your email inbox with your fingers at the ready waiting to reply to email or call a lead.
For those not familiar with auto responders, it’s basically a system that will automatically send your email message based on some criteria that you set. They can be sent when someone makes an inquiry on your website or some other lead capturing site. The system should automatically send the requestor a message related to their inquiry. People on the Internet expect instant feedback and an auto responder is a great way to give them that without you needing to follow-up manually.
The second thing that you should do is follow-up personally with the lead. You need to call that lead ASAP if you have their phone number. Do not wait until the next day or even the next hour. You need to call within the first hour if possible.
I know, you are probably thinking; why do I need to call that quickly? Well, studies show that you have a much greater chance of converting a lead when you make contact within the first hour. The brains at MIT did a study that shows what happens to your chances of getting a sale based on how soon you respond and also the time of day and day of the week. This is a very good illustration of why quick follow-up is essential in making sales. You can find the entire report and their findings by visiting http://www.leadresponsemanagement.org/mit_study.
Folks, if there was ever one lesson that I would share with those of us in sales is that follow-up is key.
If you are interested in turning your leads into gold and exploding your business, then you should read the study that I mentioned above and change the way you follow-up on leads.
This simple change in your routine can pay off handsomely.