Your ship has come in! Sales are increasing, inventory is stabilizing, interest rates are flirting with all-time lows, prices are at or near the bottom of the bottom! When has there EVER been a better time to be a Real Estate Agent? NEVER! When has there ever been a better time to list or sell? NEVER!
THIS IS IT! It's time to get your business in ship-shape condition for smooth sailing. YES! It's time for fine tuning, for helping buyers and sellers with your expertise (and if you are reading this you probably ARE more expert than 98% of your agent competition) and reaping the rewards as the great Agent you are. Working hard to learn and get better every day... to serve your clients with the BEST real estate services available in the market! They NEED you... your pricing and marketing expertise -- and they need you to be in great shape in your business too. It's time to work on a checklist of potential challenges that could slow you down or cause your ship to slow or stall.
Number 1 in this series is Lead Follow-Up
Have you ever generated (or been referred or even handed) a lead, only to let it "slip through the cracks" and never follow up on it? Have you ever promised someone a CMA or information on a home, never to call on them again? Have you ever found a piece of paper with a lead on it 2 weeks later and were too embarrassed to call?
This Leak in your Ship is in Lead Follow-Up. I firmly believe that this is the biggest and most costly leak you can have in your business. And SOLVING this one will take you immediately to the next level! Too many agents are so busy "generating business" that they lose the business they HAVE in their hands! What is the system you have for leads? Do they all go to a central database? Do you check that database every day? Do you do lead follow up every day? Why not? What is getting in the way?
Your system should be nearly fool-proof and this one area needs more hours daily than most agents give it in a week I pose to you that a contact to a Lead is MORE important than a contact to a cold prospect. You need a SYSTEM.
Steps in your system could look something like this:
- EVERY lead generated - no matter where from (by prospecting, referral, floor time, etc.) immediately goes into your lead database system. If you have a web based system, that becomes easy on your smartphone. If it's in excel, or other program or even in a special folder, that's fine, but put it SOMEWHERE consistently.
- Start every day with lead follow-up immediately after your affirmations. Who do you need to do something for? Who do you need to call to see if they got what you sent? When do you need to contact them again?
- Prioritize the leads into categories. HOT, WARM, COOL - if they are COLD they don't belong in leads... maybe a COI file or referred to someone that can help them, but not in your leads! The purpose of contacting WARM and COOL leads is to get them moved into HOT, or defined as COLD and OUT of the leads. You can have TOO many leads, so know your limits and stick to it.
- Figure out how many HOT leads you need at any given time to reach your goals. This requires you TRACK your # of leads and # of transactions for a period of time. (I can help with that if you don't have a system)
- Get a Coach, Broker, Manager or accountability partner to talk to about your hottest leads each week and ask them to hold you accountable to moving the leads forward or out.
Next segment in the leaky ship series is on CUSTOMER SERVICE for both existing leads and clients as well as past clients.
Watch for it soon! Would love your comments and to hear what YOUR biggest Leak is... let's brainstorm together. Thanks!
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