In my previous blog, I shared there are two types of leads that real estate agents get: suspect leads and prospect leads. Here is the difference between the two.
A suspect lead is a name and contact information that we suspect is interested in doing a transaction, either selling their home or buying a home. A prospect lead is a lead who has told us specifically they are interested in buying or selling a home. If you think in terms of a “Come listing me now!” phone call or the “Help me buy a home right now!” phone call, both of these are prospect leads. In the previous blog I talked about how you generate suspect leads. Today, I want to talk about how to generate prospect leads. Prospect leads are more fun to work with because they call you rather than you call them.
How do real estate agents get prospect leads most effectively?
The most important way is by staying in front of the community with information that gives homeowners a reason to call you. Let me give you an example. I was working with a client of ours; his name is Jason. He owns the number one RE/MAX team in the world that does over 1,000 transactions a year. Jason spends $100,000 a year on brand marketing. He’s on radio. He’s on billboards. He’s on park benches. He’s at the athletic field and in grocery stores. He’s everywhere you go. He was mailing to a community of 2,000 homes for six months and had only two listings respond. He asked me for help. I told him he needed to work on professional branding. He said I’m already doing branding. And he shared what I just shared with you. So I asked him an important question. “How many came on the market in the 2,000 home community in last six months?” He said, “A couple hundred.” I asked, “How many of those listings did you get?” He responded, “Two.” I asked what I thought was a great question: “If you are so well branded, why did only two people think enough of you to give you a call? There was a long, pregnant pause. And he meekly said, “I don’t know.” This is a problem with most real estate agents. They don’t understand marketing and they don’t understand how to get real estate leads. So I asked him if he would like to know why they weren’t calling him and what to do about it. He said, “Yes.” I shared, “They aren’t calling you because they do not see you as any different from any other real estate agent. In their mind, they could pick any agent and get the same results.” He agreed. You have to look at things from the homeowner’s mind. Until you set yourself apart, you are no different than the other person. I knew Jason was a lot different. On the call was his assistant, Cam. She had been working for Jason for about ten years. So I gave an example. Suppose for a moment that all of the homeowners in that 2,000 home community was Cam. She knows everything about you as a real estate agent. She knows how hard you work. She knows all your secrets, your diligence, your expertise. She knows how much better you are above all the other agents. If all the homeowners were Cam, how many of those listings do you think would have called you to sell their home? At this moment, Cam broke into the conversation and said, “All of them.” What’s the difference? Branding is not about getting your name out there. It is about telling homeowners what makes you unique and special so they want to choose you over everyone else. If you want to generate prospect leads, if you want homeowners calling you to sell their home or to buy a home, it takes a different type of marketing. It takes marketing that we call professional branding or what we term “Reasons Why.” Here is the simple way to understand it. If you take your listing presentation and go through it, you will find that it typically articulates why a homeowner should choose you over other agents. Simply convert each page of your listing presentation to a bite-sized nugget and communicate that one page at a time through postcard marketing or another format so that over time you are frequently touching homeowners with reasons why they choose to do business with you. Once they understand what makes you significant and unique, you will get a lot more phone calls and a lot more prospect leads. This is one of the secrets we apply to get such outstanding results for our clients.
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