You’re busy. We get that. So let’s not waste time – we’ll jump right into the in-thetrench tips that we see working for us in the communities that we are actively managing day-to-day. Some of this comes from our 30- year experience in the real estate industry and some of it is trial, error, tracking and analyzing. Here you go…
1. THIS IS A CONTACT SPORT. That is what we were told when we entered the business back in 1990, and it’s still true today, albeit the way that we contact our customers has certainly changed. If you spend the money generating leads and expect that those leads will magically turn into buyers, you’re going to miss out on a ton of sales. Leads cannot just sit and go cold. The first step is a mental commitment or maybe it’s a work ethic commitment. Are you willing to put in the time and force yourself to do the menial tasks that go hand-in-hand with following up on leads? Yes, the systems can be automated today, but you still have to do those tasks that will lead to success. Timely responses, proper grammar in your emails and eblasts, personal attention (it can’t all be corporate messaging on an auto-cycle) are just some of the foundational elements. Some of it comes down to simply making the calls and talking to people. Simple, right? You would be surprised how many sales executives struggle with that. In short, you have to put in the time and effort, with a sophisticated game plan for contacting your customers once they enter your database. Which brings us to #2.
2. HAVE A DATABASE THAT CAN DO THE HEAVY LIFTING FOR YOU. We won’t take this space to promote one over the other. There are plenty out there that are robust enough to handle the communication process in an efficient way. Here is what we will say make sure you are using the CRM system to its full capability. There’s nothing worse than installing a system, using it to do the basics and ignoring all of the creative and impactful elements that the system has built into it. If you don’t know how to use it all (as salespeople, we’re not always the best at the technical aspects) find someone who is good at that and pay them to setup your follow-up and tracking features. It will be the difference between getting results and getting by.
3. AUTO-ENTER YOUR LEADS. Here’s why. Either it’s your job to enter your own leads or you have a person dedicated to doing it. People take off a few days a week. People go on vacation. People get busy. Heck, if you are a good salesperson, much of your time is spent out of the office with customers. Leads can sit for days, and customers today have too many other choices and, in the age of instant everything, they don’t have the patience to wait for you to get back to them (or get the information out to them).
An analysis of more than 2,200 American companies found those who attempted to reach leads within an hour were nearly seven times likelier to have meaningful conversations with decision makers than those who waited even 60 minutes. Autoentering your leads allows you to never miss a lead (yes, they get lost, thrown out, misplaced), and ensures that the customer journey starts immediately, with a creativelycrafted auto response email sent out within minutes (that reads as if it’s coming personally from your sales agent). This key step allows the conversation to begin (also known as the all-important nurture process), and that nurture process is the key to helping leads come further and faster down your sales funnel.
4. DON’T ASK FOR TOO MUCH INFORMATION TOO SOON. Okay, so this isn’t necessarily a tip on converting leads as much as it is capturing leads. When doing online marketing, keep the “ask” simple. If you were a single person looking to date, you wouldn’t walk up to someone you want to meet and and immediately ask for their phone number (at least we hope you wouldn’t)? You would first try and find out about them, build some rapport, find common interests, build some trust, etc. Common sense, right? So why do we ask our customers, who we’ve never met and they aren’t even sure if they have an interest yet, for a long list of their required information – their home address, level of interest, type of property they want to buy, which model they want to view, (and the list goes on). Only 19% of customers want to engage with a salesperson while they are in the awareness stage of the buying process to begin with, so we need to be respectful of their initial apprehension.. So, you’re desire to overqualify at this stage could be the very thing that keeps people from exploring your offering. Too much too soon and you’ll scare them off. We recommend keeping the requirement to begin the investigative journey as simple as possible. Name, email and zip code (we have even tested some qualifying questions with good success, with the caveat that they must be presented a certain way to show a benefit to the customer). We can even ask for mobile number and still get a good quantity of opt-in leads,
although calling may not be the best initial way to reach out (more on that below). But keep in mind, this is just a way to “begin” the potential relationship, so going after too much “qualifying” information upfront can be too much friction for the customer, and can keep very good leads from starting the journey with you.
5. MEET YOUR CUSTOMER WHERE THEY ARE. No, we’re not talking about physically going to meet them. That could be considered stalking – not a good strategy by any means. We’re talking about matching up your communication with the way they live each day – which is, to say, on their mobile phone. That is how people communicate this day and age, and picking up a call from a number that they don’t recognize isn’t likely to happen. Think how you operate. If you’re like us, if a call comes through from a number that you don’t know, you click it over to voicemail. Same with your customer.
Now, if you get a text that tells you who it is on the other end and why they are reaching out, that is a whole different story. You are much more open to starting a brief backand-forth through texting than you would on a live phone call, wouldn’t you agree? Again, same goes for your customer.
That stats are eye-opening. We see 96% open rate with our texts, and 3x the engagement rate compared to email. Why? Because unlike email, customers only have one mobile phone, so when you send something to them, they’re going to see it. Customers can have multiple email addresses and some of those they rarely check, so texting is the best way to ensure that your outreach hits their eyeballs.
We could write pages of the things you should (and more importantly, should NOT do) with respect to texting. For now, here are three of the most important:
1. Only text those that gave you permission to receive a text from you. This is done mainly at the time of opt-in (from an ad or online form). Yes, you can go back to your existing database and seek that permission, but those numbers will be much smaller than what you get from an online ad (done correctly). We can help show you how to do it, how to stay compliant and how to quickly build a database of opt-in leads that are expecting your text communication to their phone.
2. With EVERY text you send, make sure you give them the opportunity to opt-out. We see this violated every day and it’s one thing that can annoy your customer (not respecting their sacred ground – their cell phone – and making your message feel, to them, like they are in a spam trap with no escape. It’s the quickest way to
harm the relationship with your customer. Opting out is as simple as them typing back STOP, and they text software makes sure they don’t get another text from you (the good news…only about 6-10% of customers opt-out when your texting campaign is done the right way).
3. Make sure the text feels authentic. Make it come from a single person (“Hi, this is Steve at Luxury Residence Realty” and not “this is the sales team at….” or just some general marketing message. People want to interact with people, not companies are departments. On that note, always acknowledge that you respect that their phone is sacred – “I am sending this to you because…” (and then give them a reason why the text is important or timely so they don’t think your just spamming them with a n ad to their phone). We go as far as to start every text with “This is Jim at Rocket Science – I hope I’m not intruding, but I just wanted to send over ____________ since I thought you might want to hear about it” and then conclude the text with “if this is intrusive in any way, just reply with STOP and I’ll take you off of our update list”). We retain 94% of our leads. Why? Because they see I am a real person, I am respectful of their phone and I make sure the content I send them is interesting and/or of value to them.
Start with a texting platform (we use SimpleTexting) and automate your process so that, within 5 minutes of a lead opting in, they get a follow-up text from you that invites them to dig a little deeper into what you have to offer and/or gives them a reason to reach in (with a question or request), which inevitably leads to you texting them “great question, is it ok if I give you a quick call – may be easier for me to explain than type a novel on your phone!” They usually say yes, and now you’re one step closer to helping them find what they are looking for.
6. FIND YOUR COMFORT LEVEL WITH RESPECT TO VOLUME . What we’re referring to here is how often you reach out to your database. It’s an art as much as it is a science. Different platforms have different best-practices. For social media it could be several times per week. For email marketing it might be once or twice a month. For texting it might be at opt-in (automated) followed by monthly (be careful here, less is more). This is where you have to experiment, track the metrics and analyze. Yes, there is a line where it’s too much and there’s a line where it’s too little. The only way to know for your community/product/price point is to experiment, track and analyze, because there
is a sweet spot that will make a difference in conversion. It just takes trial and error (and time) to find it.
7. JUST BECAUSE YOU SAY IT ONCE DOESN’T MEAN THEY REMEMBER IT. If you put out an offer to come and visit or advertise an event, just because you delivered that information to the customer doesn’t mean they retained it. To get someone to visit, you have to put that visit offer in front of them consistently (again, see point #6 above this isn’t meant to encourage bombarding someone over and over again). The distinction here is that when you do find your ideal cadence level on each platform, make sure that you end your message with that same call-to-action…the visit or appointment. Nothing happens until they get in front of your sales person face-to-face (for the most part, of course). So, encourage or entice them to visit with special offers, special visit incentives and messages on multiple platforms. Eventually, you will hit them at the right time.
8. ADVERTISE A SPECIFIC PROPERTY. Maybe this goes without saying, especially in the builder world, but sometimes we see ads for the community (again and again), when a singular home can be what catches someone’s eye. We like to use Matterport virtual 3D walkthrough imagery to catch the attention of our database customers, which gets more engagement tha n most 2D collateral materials or photos, so that engagement helps convert more visits. See example here: Matterport 3D Experience.
Of course, there’s a myriad of ways that you can do similar, creative outreach to increase the probably of getting a higher level of engagement (video, live streaming, 360 photos, etc).
9. TRY BOMB BOMB. This is an eblast software that lets the sales agent record a personalized message, insert it right into the e -blast and send to the customer, all in one easy-to-use software package. The video stays in the eblast (clicking it doesn’t take the customer away to another page where the video is embedded, thus increasing the chance they won’t come back for the call-to-action). Instead, the video stays on the same page and the customer can read the rest of the message (if there is a written message) or can easily reference the sales agent contact info. The customer can even reply back by video message, although most don’t. The engagement rates and open
rates are two or three times the normal rates for regular eblasts, so it’s worth looking into. We’ve seen an increase in customer engagement, which leads to more visits. www.bombbomb.com is their site.
10. GIVE THE CUSTOMER A REASON—PLAN EVENTS. We see a big uptick when we have a dedicated or themed event. So, naturally we spend a lot of time when doing our budgets thinking through and planning events throughout the year. Some are BBQ’s on the event lawn, some are chili-cookoffs, wine tasting, food truck Fridays…the sky is the limit (but the budget is not, so creativity goes a long way here). When you market the event, it allows you to get creative there too, so your messaging takes on a fun and energetic tone, which also helps leads convert to tours (everyone has some degree of FOMO, right)?
There you have it, ten ways to increase your chances of turning the leads you generate into tours. While these may seem simple, what really moves the needle is how well you execute on each one.
If you ever want to get some help with getting the most out of your database or if you need help in getting more leads INTO your database (especially leads that are already warm and further down the funnel), we can help. We have two cutting-edge programs, both using enterprise-level data. Click below for more details or contact us anytime to discuss. We hope you found this helpful and feel free pass this along to anyone looking to ma ke more real estate sales.
To learn how to use science, data and predictive analytics for your lead generation efforts, visit www.RSID.IO
