Real Estate Lead Follow-Up Tips: How to Convert More Leads
There are a handful of sales statistics floating around that are designed to inspire persistence. Most sources will claim 70 to 80 percent of leads drop off after the first call or half of leads are never touched. Although leads abandon sales funnels at each stage and agents sometimes have too many leads to handle, these popular figures are a poor representation of actual sales data!
However, behind every myth lies the hidden truth — in reality, the secret is to know how frequently to call, text, and email your leads before overwhelming your prospects with spam. Read below for tips on following up with your real estate leads to get the most out of your pipeline.
Automate Timely Follow-ups
The key to making your lead generation efforts worthwhile is to make sure the first contact attempt to a new prospect is made in a timely manner. According to a National Association of REALTORS® study on home buyers and sellers, 70% of people will hire the first agent they talk to. Your lead conversion rate will be directly related to how quickly you can contact your leads. The simple act of placing a phone call to a new prospect within a minute can increase your likelihood of conversion.
One of the best ways to stay in front of leads is by automating your first touch. Without the right technology to automate the frontline work, you’re wasting time by manually contacting each lead while bleeding potential sales!
“Leads that are contacted within 5 minutes are 21 times more likely to convert,” MIT, Lead Response Management Study
The Science of Follow-up Frequently
When a lead first comes into your CRM, the probability for a successful connection rises with each following touch. From Leadsimple.com and Velocify, 48% of leads pick up the phone on the first call attempt, 81% pick up the phone by the third attempt, and 95% of leads will pick up the phone by the sixth attempt. However, not all lead follow-up strategies perform the same for every agent.
In order to see the actual health of your follow-up efforts (and your overall lead conversion strategy), you’ll need have a system to track engagement touch by touch. Make sure to track and measure your efforts in order to maximize growth and optimize pain points in your funnel by using the reporting features built into your CRM.
Here is a list of metrics you should track using your CRM:
- Lead growth, including volume of leads by source and conversion rate
- Sales volume, including the number of closings
- Calls, including the number of dials, successful connections, call tagging based on results
- Texts, including the number of texts sent and replies
- Emails, including opens, clicks, and replies
It’s important to have a system which automatically monitors the performance of your follow-up strategies so you know which aspects of your lead conversion strategy are working and which need adjusting. Using the right CRM will help you measure your efforts, so make sure to schedule a free demo with a productivity expert to help you better understand how Chime will help you meet your lead conversion goals.
“Not all forms of marketing or prospecting yield the same results. This is where keeping close watch on your own success rates will help you determine exactly what amount of effort is required for each transaction,” excerpt from Nick Dreher in Mindset, Methods and Metrics
Know How and When to Use Your Tools
In addition to time and frequency, you have three primary touch tools to help you execute your lead conversion strategy: Calls, texts, and emails. Regardless of the lead source — whether the lead is from a networking event, a listing portal, or purchased from your franchised or independent broker — knowing how to properly use each of your three tools to convert more leads will be the backbone of your business.
Sign up for a free demo with a Chime productivity expert to learn how Chime’s suite of powerful sales tools will help you convert more leads into appointments.