You hear it all the time. The money is in the follow-up, but it can be overwhelming staring at your lead database and wondering where to start. We get it. CINC training specialist Elliot Outlaw has coached up hundreds of teams and agents with these seven tactics to improve lead engagement and effective follow-up.
You certainly want to focus on the last time real estate leads in your CRM they were either on your website or recently engaged with text or email outreach, whether it was yesterday or an hour ago. Focus on those new opportunities that have presented themselves.
In our experience working with the CRM's of thousands of real estate teams and agents, it’s a best practice to focus on what we call the "P" & "F" filters - P stands for prospecting, and F stands for Follow-Up.
Leads in the "P" filter are the ones that haven’t been spoken to yet. They either just registered on your IDX website, and they’re brand new, or they have had one attempted call. When you consider communication best practices, one call usually isn’t going to be enough to consistently get in touch with someone since people have a lot going on throughout their day and could easily miss it.
However, if they see a number that is consistently trying to reach them over the course of a couple of weeks, that lead may have a higher likelihood of engaging. So going through the leads in your "P" filter can bubble up opportunities that are fresh and current.
Brokers & agents – make sure you’re scheduling reminders. If you tell a buyer or seller lead you’ve spoken to that you’re going to do something, you want to be sure to follow up with that action item, and the easiest way to do that is by setting a reminder.
Then, your "F" filter will remind you when that task is due or past due. This is critically important because, at the early stages, when you are earning that relationship with a new lead, the last thing you want to do is forget about something they expect of you.
Next, Elliot advises looking at your AI sales assistant filter if your CRM is connected to one. (Note - If you aren’t making use of an AI sales assistant in your business, this won’t apply. But do check out how CINC's AI real estate sales assistant can make a stark difference in your business). This filter will show what leads are engaging with your AI sales assistant and what leads are being marked as agent ready so you know which conversations to jump into and set up an appointment.
Another useful filter is "Contacted No Reminders". If your agents aren't prone to scheduling reminders, they will forget about the leads they've talked to, and the contacted lead will fall down lower in the dashboard. Without a reminder, there’s a good chance of forgetting to follow up with that lead. This filter saves you from missing that potential opportunity for follow-up.
Finally, think about your most active leads or oldest registered – the ones that have been in your system for more than a day. With these leads, a peek into their lead profile shows their history, whether they're opening your property alerts, and how engaged they are. These folks that have revisited your site time after time are the ones you’re more likely to move the needle on.
If you aren’t out doing showings or closings, you need to spend some time digging through your database. Build this into your daily routine.
Don’t think of it as babysitting leads, but rather, continuing to follow up with the information they need in order to get to the point of having a conversation and eventually getting in the car to look at properties.
If you need scripts to feel comfortable, we have them. Check out this script that has a 33% conversion rate from a contact in the agent's CRM to appointment set.
However, if you can’t translate the script into a natural conversation, they won’t do you much good. Practice roleplaying often so the conversation flows naturally. Real Estate Lead Follow Up Training like CINC's Conversion Day are excellent opportunities to put your scripts to work.
In your prospecting, we recommend aiming for 20-25 dials per day or 100 to 150 per week. Set aside time in the morning or afternoon to do your dials. If you repeat this daily and work through your database, that persistence will ultimately yield more conversations.
When a new lead registers, if they have questions about a specific property, they’re probably going to ask those to the first person they speak with.
Therefore, you should be reaching out to those leads as soon as possible - ideally within the first 5 minutes of them registering on your IDX websitesite. Call them often until you get them on the phone. Many real estate teams and agents will lose out because they wait too long and give up too soon.
Some people will let the AI sales assistant make that first introduction, which certainly could be the first interaction when a new lead registers. But if you see that the AI sales assistant has sent the text, call yourself to verify that number at least.
That gives you this peace of mind that even if they don’t respond the first day, your AI sales assistant is going to continue to attempt to make contact, and they may answer in the days that follow.
Schedule time to call every day. There is an MIT Study that suggests specific days of the week and times of the day.
They recommend calling on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 8-9 am and 4-5 pm. As a real estate broker or agent, your schedule might be fluid but think about the considerable number of people working a nine-to-five job Monday through Friday.
At those times, they might be in their cars driving to or from work. Those are likely the times you will have a more captive audience.
Also, think about what's going on around your area and how that will impact your dials. The day after a holiday might not be the best day to make your dials. Spring break week in your area might not be the best time. Adjust accordingly.
If you've been setting aside time every Tuesday morning at 9 am to call and you aren't seeing success, consider switching it up. It can't hurt to try different strategies throughout the week. You want to find a pattern that converts these leads.
Find out how many calls did you have to make? How many texts did you send? How many emails did the lead open from start to finish? That is what you're tracking. When you start seeing success, and you’ve tracked what it took to get there, you can start repeating that formula.
Remember, your main objective for the first call is to find out more about their search. You're selling your website, and you're selling the fact that you can set them up with property alerts that will start educating them on what's available in your market.
Use your outreach to find out two things: location and timeframe. Once you understand that, you know what direction to take.
If someone tells you they can't do something for a year from now, find out why. Let's say the reason is finances. Guess what? You can put them in touch with your lender. And once you know where they’re looking, set up saved searches for them so they can get property alerts (if your all-in-one real estate platform has this capability), and let them know that it's not a bad idea to start educating themselves on that market and what's available, and how quickly things are, coming on and off the market.
And while you’re already in your platform making calls, take a moment of that time to check your system one more time and see if there's anything that you can follow up with since the last time you were in the platform.
While we recommend working through the filters mentioned above, if there’s another group of leads that will get you happy and excited about prospecting, create and save those filters so that you can keep coming back to the group of leads that keep you engaged with your system. Watch the full video to learn how to set up custom filters.
If you’re writing correspondence for leads, save that content so that you can use it repeatedly. Depending on the real estate platform you are using, if you are routinely using a template, there are analytics that will tell you how successful your campaign is.
If you're seeing engagement, use it again! We want to know what leads are responding to.
It can be challenging to get people on the phone, so having the knowledge that a certain email or text campaign is working well is powerful. Use what works to engage your leads in your real estate CRM, and then move them to the next step.
When it comes to real estate teams' and agents' IDX real estate website's apps, we see one of two things – either they are severely underutilized, or agents blast out links to app to their leads without context to explain what it is.
Simply put, your IDX real estate website's app is an additional way for you to engage with your leads on their terms. Your leads can pull up the app on their cell phone and look up any property, ask you any questions, like properties, dislike properties, text you, call you, and set up saved searches. So, the app is another way for you to marry your lead to your system and know that they are consistently engaging.
Let’s be honest; no one wants to get a text prompting them to download an app that they know nothing about. So, if you are sharing your IDX real estate website's app, choose a specific group of leads to target. Sharing the app also gives you another reason to call your leads, as it's an effortless way to provide real value.