It’s one of the best parts of your day: that moment when you check your email and there’s a new “hot” lead waiting for you. What a feeling… your next deal has just arrived!
But then reality hits when you call and there’s no answer, or worse yet, when you discover that none of the lead’s information is valid. Then you ask yourself, “Did I really just pay for that lead?”
If invalid contact information or non-responsive prospects were the only issues when purchasing leads, that would be ok from a business standpoint. It’s just the price of doing business, right?
Wrong.
The bigger issue surfaces when agents don’t even bother to call their leads. Not even once. Agents pay over $15 Billion (yes, with a capital “B”) in leads annually, yet a whopping 45% of those leads don’t receive a single phone call. That’s naive, wasteful, bad business.
For most agents, the hope is that hot prospects are going to simply jump into their boats, like Asian carp, as they coast down the river. Again, that’s naive, wasteful, bad business.
Agents think they’ll be able to handle the rest of their business while leads magically appear and qualify themselves. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it doesn’t happen like that.
Instead, agents need to start following this Formula for Lead Success:
A. Call every prospect
B. Follow up diligently
C. Keep meticulous notes
D. Send out drip campaigns*
E. Personalize your service
F. Nurture each lead
G. Be creative
In other words, expect to treat leads like prize clients, even when they’re not that into you. It’s HARD work. It takes patience, perseverance, and persistence; no wonder it has been difficult for agents to engage and nurture all of the leads they have paid for. Until now.
Right now it’s time to take a long hard look in the “truth” mirror of lead generation: Have you truly capitalized on your investments or have you hoped that the fish were simply going to jump into your boat?
Sadly, most agents will have to admit to the latter.
After coaching thousands of real estate agents, I’ve learned that one of the most important things you can do is to take a serious look at where you’re spending your hard earned money. Make your investment prove itself! Stop throwing your money away in hopes that high quality prospects are going to simply jump into your inbox. You’re letting your lead sources take advantage of your hopes and dreams without promising anything in return.
Now is the time to start aligning yourself only with people and companies that can help take you to the next level.
This is YOUR business. Nobody else’s. When you waste a lead, you may as well be setting your money on fire. Failure is NOT an option.
NOTES: A drip campaign is a method used in direct marketing to acquire customers through repetitive marketing actions. It involves sending marketing information to prospects repeatedly over longer periods of time in order to nurture prospects or leads.