If you have a name, phone number and/or an email address…you have a lead.
Nothing fancy. No secrets here.
If you have that information, you’ve got yourself a lead.
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Now, while you’d much rather have a phone number, an email is at least an entry point for getting in contact – and staying in contact – with your listing prospects.
As well, if you have a name, there are other entry points to making and staying in contact with your leads, including any social media access point: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
For what it’s worth, Facebook is easily one of the best places to gather information on the leads you generate. Many people make available lots of intel on their Facebook page, making it possible for you to get to know them in a way you wouldn’t through texting, email or even IM’s.
If you’re not comfortable with how to work a lead through Facebook, this overview of generation and conversion process is extremely helpful.
Now that we agree what a lead is, let’s agree on something else: it’s nothing more than a lead if it sits in your database and you do nothing with it.
You see, a huge percentage of your leads (at least 80% of them) are more than 90 days from doing anything related to selling their home.
But, just because this lead isn’t ready to sell now, doesn’t mean they aren’t going to sell.
More importantly, because they’re not going to pop any minute, you need to work them – nurture them, if you will – consistently until they are ready to sell their home.
When nurturing leads, you need to be in regular contact with them through calls, emails, texts and when appropriate, direct mail.
The timing and motivation of each lead will drive the cadence of how frequently you reach out to each seller prospect.
Which means you’ve got to nurture them until it’s the right time for them.
Herein lies the number one mistake real estate agents make when handling leads: if it isn’t now business, they simply give up on it.
Unfortunately, this is why agents spend thousands and thousands of dollars generating new leads each and every year. It’s also why they are literally a slave to their business because they MUST generate new leads if they’re going to survive another day in the business.
The bad news is that eventually, like running on a treadmill where you can only go so fast, they’ll hit a barrier where they can’t generate any more new leads to make a significant change in their business.
Yes, your business needs new leads, but it doesn’t need to be a huge abundance of new leads if you’ve got a solid lead nurturing strategy in place.
In fact, it’s crucial that you nurture your leads. You’ve invested a boatload of time, energy and money generating leads, it’s time to get some return on those investments and nurture them like mad.
Stop treating those that aren’t now business – which is pretty much most of them – like they have a disease.
Instead, treat them like what they are, diamonds in the rough.
Because when you do, you’ll reap the rewards of your efforts in spades.
Here’s the thing, it’s going to take time. It’s also going to take money, effort and even some strategizing to put a solid nurturing process into place.
But it’s absolutely worth it.
When you nurture leads, you’re putting yourself into position to build better relationships, which will lead to a huge increase in your chance of converting them solid listing opportunities.
In fact, in many cases, you’re likely going to be the only agent these leads will be talking to since most other agents are so now-business focused.
As a result, when these leads are ready to pull the trigger, you’ll be in perfect position to convert that lead to YOUR listing appointment and then into YOUR listing.
No matter what reason you want to put behind it, you must nurture leads to be successful because most of your leads just aren’t ready to do business.
Starting today, look at your database of leads as a bunch buds on a flowering plant. Consistent sunlight and water are like calls, texts and emails. The more you do, the more your leads will bloom into big, beautiful prospects who want you to come list and sell your home.
Find out how to nurture your leads consistently to get more listings.