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Posture and Control in Lead Conversion

By Glenn Sanford

Real Estate Agent with eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC

June 06, 2010 06:46 PM

I recently got back into lead generation mode. Different then before I'm prospecting for agents / brokers for my company, eXp Realty, however the current process has lead me back to some things that I inherently know about lead conversion and am now executing against.

The two initial secrets to Lead Conversion and they are generating more leads then you can handle, and making sure that the copy of the ads puts you in the seat of expert or trusted advisor...

To do that do 10 times as much as you would expect to have to do on the lead generation front and you should have more leads then you can handle and assuming you did the second part well now you can go onto the

Now that you have enough leads that you really are getting busy, now the real Posture and Control kicks in...

Since you can't obviously handle all the leads with long winded personal phone call we need to take the leads and funnel them through a sorting process where the leads self filter themselves. What is self filtering... If while providing value along the way, the consumer or prospect jumps through enough hoops you have created a self qualification method at least in terms of desire to complete or make a change or take action. This is key since we want clients who are sufficiently motivated to do something.

Once they make it through the self filtering process, now it is your job not to drop the ball. Even though they are self motivated, that doesn't mean they have to work with you, it simply means that you have someone who is sufficiently motivated if the right opportunity comes along to pull the trigger.

Rules to High Lead Conversion

Generate More Leads then You can Handle
Respond with Quality Content via email
1. Provide a Context for Continued Dialog
2. Clients should be motivated to Call You not the other way around.
  1. Body should also suggest that you may call them direct in a few days (usually 3) if you haven't heard from them first. This in my opinion is a last ditch effort and only if you aren't already too busy with clients who call you first.
Do something with your prospective client that other agents / brokers are either unwilling or unable to do that provides significant additional value to the interaction.
Add all new leads to your CRM
1. Drip on the Clients as if you were following up with them as a conversation. Continue the discussion even if it is just one way.
Respond to those clients who call you directly
1. If they call you, you are in control, you are the one providing value to them.
  1. You can interview them
  2. Establish that your Lender or someone else is going to follow-up with them as well
  3. Determine Time Frame and Seriousness
  4. Set-up Searches for the Client
Set-up Manageable expectations
1. Wow them by keeping your small promises.
2. Remember You are the Trusted Advisor. You control where the conversation goes, not the client. If necessary pull the client back to the task at hand, recognizing that you do need to learn about their wants, needs, desires, background for the move etc...

Other key Rules

Don't Operate from a Position of Scarcity
1. They are not the only fish in the Sea...
2. You need to be busy servicing clients
  1. If you do, its guaranteed that the sales will come
3. Your time is valuable. Treat it as such
4. All this comes from Generating More Leads then You can Handle
Don't play 20 answers.
1. As the expert you need to ask most of the questions
Be Honest
1. The overall housing market is suffering.
  1. Don't sugar coat it. They won't trust you if you do in which case you'll lose the credibility of Trusted Advisor
2. Have a strategy ready to go for your client that will give them a perceived advantage in the marketplace.
  1. As an agent I would encourage my clients to make a low offer, however I put in the context of finding the seller's bottom dollar and that I wasn't satisfied that we had found out what that is or was until the contract had went back and forth at least 3 times. By doing so I set the expectation up front and let them know that I wasn't against working hard negotiations.

Well that's about it for this blog post. I was thinking about this a bit earlier this evening and I think I'll present on this tomorrow morning @ XCamp.

All the Best

Glenn Sanford

Founder / CEO

eXp Realty LLC

Direct: 360-389-2426

http://www.exprealty.com/

"The World's First Fully Immersive Web 3.0 Real Estate Brokerage"

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Ralph Gorgoglione

Metro Life Homes - Palm Springs, CA

California and Hawaii Real Estate (310) 497-9407

It can be a very slippery slope, though.

If you invest your time if pursuing huge numbers of leads where the conversion rate is very low, it could be dangerous to your income.

Jun 06, 2010 06:50 PM

Cameron Novak

The Homefinding Center - 1000 Palms, CA

Real Estate Broker since 2008

Trick is to get leads without paying for them. High quality/high conversion leads come from referral sources, not paid sources.

Jun 06, 2010 07:01 PM

Glenn Sanford

eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC - Bellingham, WA

Ralph: That could be the case, however there are tons of free ways or very inexpensive ways to generate leads in most markets. Take Craigslist. In most markets you could run a 5, 10, 15 different ads in the Real Estate Section each day with unique content and offerings. In most markets the real estate for sale section isn't a paid section so if you do a good job with your ad copy and maybe even have some inventory you should be able to generate more leads then you can handle and do it inexpensively.

Think about all the free places you can do advertising... Think about the value you could provide to clients and build that into your ads and offerings.

I'm a big SEO proponent as well as generating leads from IDX and Forms off of Organic SEO lead generation. Here again for those willing to put in 10 times as much work doing the content writing and back link campaigns you should be able to generate more leads then you can personally handle.

The problem exists that most agents think lead generation = money being paid out. There could be an element of that. Bid Optimized PPC campaigns could work however the goal should be free or low cost.

There is Trulia Voices, Zillow Advice, Personal Blogs, Blog Commenting, Neighborhood Fanpages, Property Fanpages, Developing Autofollow Twiiter Campaigns...

Bottom line is become an expert in what costs very little money and do that... Most agents have more time then money. Use that time constructively to build your content, do your SEO, write Craigslist Ads, build your drip campaigns.

Offline strategies... Do 5 Open Houses a Week in a particular area of town. Have people see your signs everywhere even on weekdays... You've got a laptop and high speed internet pretty much everywhere. Make your clients homes your office for a few hours each day until you have more business coming in then you can handle...

The problem that I see is most agents aren't willing to do the work mainly because they don't know how high they need to raise the Lead Generation bar... If they raise it high enough they can then effectively Posture and Control in the Lead Conversion process.

Jun 06, 2010 07:03 PM

Glenn Sanford

eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC - Bellingham, WA

Cameron: I totally agree, however I'll also admit, referrals has never been my strong suit. I have a nack for establishing credibility, Posture and Control early on with clients. I think that's 25 years of having worked in different facets of Sales and Marketing, not to mention having a fair bit of life and business experience. That doesn't mean that I don't have repeat and referral clients. I do, but lead generation has always been my strong suit. That has been the backbone of growing in the last 8 years from being an agent to now running a real estate firm in 10 states. I've always thought about my real estate practice even when I was starting as a big business and something that I knew would only grow through leverage...

There is strength in "Growing a Business". I know that a lot of clients used me as their agent because I have always been innovating in the real estate space. This made me much more interesting in their mind then an agent who simply was chasing the next deal.

Jun 06, 2010 07:07 PM

Chris Lefebvre

eXp Realty - Methuen, MA

Methuen MA Real Estate Pro

Great tips Glenn!

Ralph and Cameron,

I agree with the concern about paying for leads. I have tried that in the past and sure I got business out of it, but it was like I was working for Google! They have enough money already and that model didn't make any sense. Since starting to work with eXp in March I have generated 89 leads for free using the techniques I have learned. The only investment was time. You can't beat that type of response. My first self generated lead from March went under agreement a couple of weeks ago and I have many more in the pipeline for the fall.

Jul 03, 2010 04:03 AM

Anonymous

Dean Hayes

Glenn,

What an awesome outline. This is exactly how I run my business, and it's succeeding very well. I'm always trying to tweak things here or there, learning how to add more value with the least amount of effort (automation) while still maintaining a high level of trust.

I especially like how you said "Establish that your Lender or someone else is going to follow-up with them as well". Too many times, a Realtor will give the prospect 3 business cards and ask them to call one of them. A study by Fannie Mae found that 89% of the population suffers from call reluctance. They won't call because the fear the outcome or a negative response. Instead, I ask my Realtor partners to suggest to their prospect as a next step that they will have me call them. This removes the uncertainty of the prospect not calling, and it puts the control in our team's hands.

Now, you might say, "Yea, but having the prospect call shows initiative and that they're motivated." Plus, as Glenn states, it shows commitment on their part. True, but why rely on their fears to get commitment?

Instead, after I call the prospect and perform my initial interview, I'll ask them to my website to fill out an application online, and I'll ask them to provide me with a signed credit authorization and credit card information so they can pay for their own credit report. These items are my filter for determining if a client is motivated or not, and a filter is extremely important to have to weed out the prospects from the wanna-bes.

Way to go, Glenn! I love your outline.

Jul 16, 2010 08:15 AM