Studies have repeatedly proven that you don’t convert a lead to a client in a single conversation. It typically takes 7-8 touches for a lead to become your client. If you want to boost your production in real estate, you need to learn how to follow up on real estate leads.
This idea becomes increasingly important in a cooling housing market. Back when the market was hot, missing an incoming lead was ok because another lead would come along in a few minutes. But in today’s markets, leads are harder to come by. So you need to make the most of every single one. And that means systemizing your lead follow-up so no lead goes unserved.
Here is your new system for how to follow up on real estate leads.
How to Follow Up on Real Estate Leads
Quick note before we dive in: if you’re not generating leads, that’s a whole separate problem. Make sure your prospecting game and your marketing game are on point so you have leads to follow up on!
Ok, on to your real estate leads follow-up.
1. Respond Immediately
Buyers and sellers are not willing to sit around waiting for answers. They expect agents to reply immediately to their inquiries. In fact, 78% of customers eventually buy from the first person to respond to their inquiries. So naturally, you need to be the first person to respond when a buyer or seller makes an inquiry.
Perhaps more interestingly, data has determined that 5 minutes is the magic number. You have 5 minutes to respond to a lead before it goes cold. After 5 minutes, your chances of converting the lead decrease substantially. Take a look at this infographic on how to follow up on real estate leads from Icenhower Coaching and Consulting:
Courtesy of Icenhower
Now, I know what you’re thinking. I can’t just sit by my phone 24/7 waiting for an inquiry to come in. I’m out with clients, on the phone with other leads, and trying to have some semblance of work/life balance. How am I supposed to respond to every lead immediately?!
And you’re right. You can’t possibly answer every lead immediately. If you’re serious about converting as many leads as possible, you need to leverage a tool or two.
Tools to help you follow up immediately:
If you’re an established agent with a fair amount of incoming calls and messages, consider connecting those calls and messages to a live call center with trained real estate professionals to answer your calls and schedule your appointments. Services like UpCall have systems in place to respond immediately to every incoming lead. Even better, they capture those leads for future follow-up. And the responders are trained to land real estate appointments. They have this art down to a science.
If you’re a newer agent and don’t yet have the budget for live responses, consider an inexpensive automated response service like CallAction. For as little as $115/month, you can have automated messages immediately sent to every incoming lead. Naturally, this won’t be as effective as having a live human reply immediately. But it will assure your prospective clients that you have systems in place to reply to them and that you’re going to respond personally as soon as possible. These automated systems can also record incoming leads so your leads don’t fall through the cracks.
With these systems in place to automatically respond immediately, you’ll be able to focus on the next item: responding correctly.
2. Respond Correctly
I’m noticing that many agents are struggling to respond properly to casual inquiries (questions that come via social media, comments on your blog posts, the Contact Me form on your website, or text from someone who saw your for sale sign).
Let’s look at a common question from a casual incoming lead: How is the neighborhood?
Most agents give one of these 3 responses:
- The neighborhood is excellent! Great schools and lots of green space, perfect for families!
- The neighborhood is great! Are you available to tour that house this evening? Or
- Every neighborhood has its own unique vibe. I’d be happy to show you that neighborhood tonight if you’ve available.
None of these responses are wrong, exactly, but none of them are complete.
To be complete, your response should include 3 parts:
- answer their question
- make them want more info
- invite an appointment
Take another look at the example responses.
The neighborhood is excellent! Great schools and lots of green space, perfect for families! This is a good answer to the question, but where is the invitation to meet? What is the point of responding to a lead if you’re not going to even try to land an appointment? And what if your lead isn’t a family person? Your response just shut down the conversation for them.
The neighborhood is great! Are you available to tour that house this evening? First, does this really answer the question? “Great” is hardly a sufficient answer. Secondly, this reply doesn’t offer enough to make the lead want more info.
Every neighborhood has its own unique vibe. I’d be happy to show you that neighborhood tonight if you’ve available. This isn’t really answering the question. Don’t get so caught up in making them want more info and asking for the appointment that you avoid their question.
Here’s a better response:
The neighborhood is excellent! There’s lots of green space, the homes are well-maintained, and it’s conveniently located. And you should see the community amenities! I’d be happy to give you a private tour of the area. Would today or tomorrow work better for you?
This response answers the question, makes them want more info on the community amenities, and invites an appointment. Using this response formula will help you convert more leads into solid clients. And by the way, if you’re leveraging the services of a reputable real estate call center, you can rest assured that the agents responding to your leads understand the importance of responding correctly and have perfected their replies.
3. Capture the Lead
This step is critical to your success as a lead converter. You know it’s going to take several touches to convert this lead into a client. And if you’re ever going to follow up with this lead again, you must first capture it. That means logging the contact information into your CRM for future follow up.
So simple, right? That’s why this often gets overlooked.
Here’s your new rule: every single time you make contact with anyone who might ever buy or sell real estate, get that person’s contact info, log them in your CRM, and schedule your next follow-up. Even if the lead seems shaky. Back when the market was hot, you probably (correctly!) chose to disqualify iffy leads asap so you could focus on serious leads. But you have a little more time now to spend with the iffy leads. I’m not saying you need to waste a ton of time on them. But you certainly have enough time to add them to your database and schedule a once/month follow-up text.
Now, if you’re a brand new agent, you might not have the budget for a fancy CRM database. That’s fine. You can build your own spreadsheet. Or even purchase a simple template for under $10 on Etsy. No excuses! You simply cannot be a successful real estate agent without a CRM.
And if you’re leveraging the call centers or auto-response systems mentioned earlier, your leads will be automatically logged in the CRM provided through that company.
4. Commit to Following Up Every Day
In addition to following up immediately with all incoming leads, you also need to block out time in your schedule every workday to proactively follow up with all your leads.
Statistically, the best times to reach people are 8-10 am and 4-6 pm. So for the best chances of success, your follow-up should take place during those hours.
Open your day planner (or your Daily Action Plan) and block off at least half an hour each day right now. Because if it’s not on your calendar, it’s not going to happen.
Every day during this time, you’ll open your CRM, and run down your list of leads for the day.
And how will you know who to contact each day? Well, that’s where your lead follow-up plan comes in…
5. Implement an Effective Lead Follow-Up Plan
I’m going to outline a simple, but effective, real estate lead follow-up plan for you.
Day 1:
- Reply to the lead immediately (check!).
- Try to land an appointment.
- Follow up with a valuable freebie in the evening. A Best of List of the current best deals on the market is perfect for buyers. A checklist of the sale process is perfect for sellers.
Day 2:
- Follow-up call in the morning.
- If you had to leave a voicemail, follow up with a text in the afternoon.
- If your prospect doesn’t reply to the text, send an email in the evening.
Your voicemail/text/email can be as simple as: Hi, Alex. This is Michelle from Hummingbird Realty. Just wanted to make sure you’re getting all the info you need about those fixer-uppers. Did you have a chance to review my Best Fixer-Uppers List? I’d be happy to show you some of those this weekend. Do Saturdays or Sundays generally work better for you?
Days 3-30:
- Call once/week.
- Text once/week.
- And Email once/week.
Your weekly voicemail/text/email can be a simple, but valuable market update: Hi, Alex. This is Michelle from Hummingbird Realty. Just wanted to let you know that I have some buyers looking for a
