In our most-read blog post to date, Dale Warner made a big case about why web-purchased leads should only account for 5% of your marketing budget, if not 0%. His argument was based on some real data about percentages of agent lead sourcing, that less than 11% of our leads actually come from web-purchased.
There are thousands of articles on the web offering scripts for asking for referrals, ideas for “referral rewards programs,” and marketing ideas that involve including “I <3 referrals” in your email signature.
These are all full of great tactical advice. I'm even going to link to some of these articles in a few minutes, so you'll be able to check them out—but don't jump ahead just yet.
“There is no magic shortcut. Contrary to what the gurus tell you, referrals need to be earned; they are not given simply for the asking.”
- Kendyl Young, DIGGS
That's the most important thing to understand about referrals. You have to earn them. You have to build trust. Without laying a foundation of trust, even the cleverest referral script or rewards program in the world will have you coming up empty.
In addition to building trust, you need to examine your process and make sure you're providing a memorable, remarkable experience—something people will be moved to talk about. What do you do that is unexpected? How do you delight your clients?
"Ask yourself, am I providing a referable experience?"
- Dave Silva, Dave Silva Realty Team (Re/Max)
So, that's what it comes down to: trusting relationships and a remarkable client experience. I'd love to tell you that I've found 6 quick, easy tips for accomplishing these two objectives and earning tons of referrals. But it's just not that simple.
Instead, I have 6 not-so-quick or easy steps to earning referrals.
Where do your leads come from? And could you convert more with a real estate lead management system?
Your prospects come from a variety of sources: referrals, ad calls, expireds, door knocking...and from online lead generation websites.
You've heard us say before that online leads shouldn't be your top priority—but that doesn't mean they have to be totally absent from your lead generation strategy. In fact, I've been a huge advocate of using web leads my entire career.
I started in real estate sales in 1987. The internet wasn’t in common usage until the late 90s. At that time, I remember coaches telling agents to sift through web leads and only pursue the hot buyers and sellers. (Really! They really said that!) But the truth is, internet leads are gold if you have a good nurturing system.
In this blog post, I'm going to talk about some tactics for using your real estate lead management system (or CRM) to convert your online leads into clients.
There’s a fine line between staying in touch and being annoying.
In this blog post, I’ll help you determine whether or not your emails have crossed that line. All you’ll need to do is ask yourself five questions:
And if it turns out you are annoying your leads, there’s no need to worry. I’ll tell you how to transform your emails from nuisance to must-read!
So, let’s dive deeper into each of these questions.
You have plenty of real estate leads coming in from your website...but that’s where the action stops. They’re not interested in doing a walkthrough of your property, they’re not answering your emails, and you can’t seem to nail down a second phone call.
What gives?
In this post, we’ll shed some light on why your real estate leads might not be converting to clients. Read on to find out if you are making any of these common mistakes!
Some experts seem to think so. Others argue that it’s still an effective means of generating leads. But one thing’s for sure—it’s got nothing on warm calling.
Warm calling is when you reach out to someone with whom you have had previous contact. They’re already in your CRM database. You know them and, more importantly, they remember being contacted by you. There’s already a tiny sprout of trust.
With warm leads, you know they have at least a little bit of interest in working with you. And you have useful data stored in your CRM, like what type of property they were looking at online or whether they have kids.
And that’s the second part of warm calling—when you’re reaching out to someone you’ve already connected with, you are able to provide more value. You can offer to show them more properties like the ones they are interested in, let them know which neighborhoods have kid-friendly sidewalks, and so on.
Doesn’t this sound way better than calling a list of strangers who don’t know you, and who might have zero interest in buying or selling a home? Warm calling is less intrusive, and it feels way more genuine and human.
Read on to learn why warm calling works and how to use your CRM to make it happen!
The ways you can follow up with real estate leads and prospects have increased considerably in the past decade.
But the fundamentals of follow-up haven't changed...not to mention that the expansion of lead generation opportunities in real estate has brought some new twists and turns to some of the same unresolved lead follow-up challenges.
Can you relate?
You see that you have a new prospect or client to reach out to, so you look at the listing forms they've filled out and any other information you can gather about them in your real estate CRM.
Then, you quickly type up a follow-up email asking to meet up for coffee or a showing. And then you wait. And wait. And wait some more.
They never respond.
The truth is, buyer and seller leads often require more than one email before they’ll take action—or even respond. So, it's up to you to figure out a way to connect with them multiple times without being obnoxious. In this post, we'll explore three tips for creating an email sequence that will get you the results you want.
