Leads are the lifeblood of any real estate agent’s career. If you’re a realtor, you’ve probably been bombarded with ads about getting more leads and generating quality leads.
Here’s the thing: There is an ongoing conflict between marketers and sales personnel about the definition of a lead. While a marketer defines a lead as anyone who has shown interest in the product or service being offered, a salesperson’s definition of a lead depends on the intent, desire and ability to purchase.
In reality, someone interested enough to receive information about a product or service may have a buying intent in the future, if not now. This is why salespeople should not stop leads from entering the sales funnel. In fact, every real estate sales agent needs proper processes in place to generate leads, qualify leads, follow up with leads and nurture them.
But what is a sales funnel, and where do leads fall in this?
The sales funnel is the journey a potential customer goes through until they make a purchase. The real estate sales funnel looks like this:
It is essential to keep filling your sales funnel for a successful real estate business. In this session at Bayut Academy, we discuss the essentials of a real estate lead’s journey from start to finish, that every real estate agent should know.
LEAD GENERATION: The start of the journey
Real estate leads come from two sources – lead generation and prospecting. Let’s take a look at the differences between the two processes:
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Lead Generation
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Prospecting
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Lead Generation
Leads that initiate contact with you
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Prospecting
Leads whom you initiate contact with
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Lead Generation
Activities led by your company and/or you
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Prospecting
Activities led solely by you
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Lead Generation
Example: Quality Listings on Bayut and dubizzle, Open Houses, Social Media, Email Marketing
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Prospecting
Example: Warm Calling, Networking, Email Marketing, Open Houses
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Inbound leads can be great opportunities for business, but you need to handle them correctly. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind when receiving an inbound call:
- Pick up the phone. Ensure you’re available at all times, and respond promptly to calls from leads.
- Listen to the lead’s concerns and be helpful. Address their concerns and answer their queries.
- The first five minutes represent a golden window for making contact, keeping the lead engaged and establishing rapport. Make your call within this golden window.
Lead response times are crucial if you are looking for long-term growth in your real estate career. The faster you respond to leads, the more likely you can send them further down your sales funnel to convert.
In fact, according to a Lead Response Management MIT study, the faster you respond to leads, the more likely you can send them further down your sales funnel to convert.
PROSPECTING plays an essential role in lead generation. It is the process of finding new contacts and turning them into leads in order to grow your business.
The aim of prospecting is to develop a database of likely customers, communicating with them having an end goal in mind. By end goal, it could just be setting up a meeting, arranging a viewing or creating a listing presentation for them.
There are a few challenges of prospecting that realtors may face, including:
- High competition
- Limited target audience
- Not likely to be engaged
Check out our guide to prospecting for realtors to learn more about the essentials of prospecting, and how to master this skill.
LEAD QUALIFICATION
Getting the lead isn’t enough; you need to be able to move more people down the funnel. This is where lead qualification comes in.
Lead qualification is gathering information about your leads to evaluate whether they’re ready, willing and able to buy or sell.
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Lead qualification helps you save time by prioritising clients who are most likely to move forward with buying, selling or renting a property.
With lead qualification, you can identify serious and motivated buyers, while moving less qualified leads to “B” leads (or warm leads) or disqualifying if there is no potential for business moving forward.
You can use our lead qualification checklist to qualify your leads. It is as follows:
- Location
- Reason
- Preference
- Budget
- Timeline
- Viewing
Let’s go into detail with each part of this checklist:
Location
Ask your clients how much they know about the communities they are interested in. Generally speaking, the more qualified they are, the more knowledge they have.
Check if they would consider other communities. Again, someone who is qualified has likely made their final decision or narrowed their location pool to one or two communities.
The more communities you can disqualify, the faster they will be in making a decision.
Reason
- Are they first-time homebuyers
- Buying for capital growth
- Are they upsizing or downsizing
- Is it a holiday home
- Are they tired of renting
Preferences
Here, you ask about specific preferences.
Qualified clients tend to have more specific preferences, which is why you can get as specific as possible about the property.
- Are they aware of the type of communities in an area
- What do they want out of the property
- Is there anything specific – Vastu compliance, a bedroom downstairs, closed kitchen, etc
Budget
What price points are they looking for?
Wrong ways to qualify a client:
- Making assumptions
- Rushing the process
- Overpromising
- Neglecting to follow up
- Being too pushy
- Failing to document information
- Disregarding negative signals
Now let’s talk about follow-up:
The fortune is in the follow-up. Less than 1% of sales are made in the first contact – 80% of sales are made in the fifth to twelfth contact.
Here’s a brief overview of the best practices for following up on different types of leads.
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A Lead (Hot leads)
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B Lead (Warm Leads)
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C Lead (Cold Leads)
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A Lead (Hot leads)
These leads plan on purchasing property in 1-30 days
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B Lead (Warm Leads)
These leads plan on purchasing property in 30 to 60 days
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C Lead (Cold Leads)
These leads plan on purchasing property in 6 to 18 months
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A Lead (Hot leads)
Contact them twice per week
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B Lead (Warm Leads)
Contact them once every two weeks
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C Lead (Cold Leads)
Contact them once every two months
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A Lead (Hot leads)
Use a combination of calling, texting, meeting and showing properties
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B Lead (Warm Leads)
Alternate between phone calls and texts to stay in touch
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C Lead (Cold Leads)
Alternative between phone calls and text
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A Lead (Hot leads)
The goal is always to have the next appointment or step scheduled
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B Lead (Warm Leads)
The goal is to find out when they should be categorised as a hot lead (A lead)
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C Lead (Cold Leads)
The goal is to stay in touch to determine when to categorise them as either A or B lead
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A Lead (Hot leads)
Examples of follow up includes sending them new listings and hot property updates
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B Lead (Warm Leads)
Examples of follow-up includes sending them market updates and newsletters
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C Lead (Cold Leads)
Examples of follow up includes sending them ‘just sold’ quarterly newsletter
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To summarise, every real estate sales agent needs proper processes in place to generate leads, qualify leads, follow up with leads and nurture them. Check out our in-depth resources on Lead generation and qualification, and Lead Follow-up and Nurturing to learn more about these useful real estate skills.
Join us for the All About Leads workshop at Bayut Academy, where we take real estate professionals through an interactive learning session.