When leads for new listings come from everywhere, how do you manage and prioritize them to be the most productive? Here are 5 tips to manage sales leads.
1. Understand your ideal sales lead
There is little point applying lead management techniques until you understand what your ideal lead is. Who are they, or who do you want your leads to be?
Consider the following questions:
- Where are their properties located? Are there specific suburbs or even streets you want to focus on or ignore?
- What channel does your target market tend to favor? Do they rely on personal recommendations or do they prefer online search and digital reviews?
- Have you worked with them before? Are they already in your database, as a seller, a buyer or otherwise?
- How far into the selling process are they? Do you find your target market often makes cold requests for property appraisals from you, or are they usually closer to the listing stage?
If you know the answers to these questions, it will help shape your marketing and messaging. Ensure you maintain a presence visually in your target areas through signage and direct marketing. Maintain a presence in local community or sporting groups if your target market prefers word of mouth, or actively curate your online presence if they prefer digital research. If you find your best leads come from your existing database, focus on regular valuable communication with those contacts. Where a majority of your sales start with a cold appraisal, don’t discard those leads, however if you find it’s often timewasting, ensure the potential seller fits your criteria above.
2. Capture all leads
Is every single lead landing in your sales pipeline, or do you have a blindspot?
A listing lead might come anywhere. It could come from a casual conversation with an existing contact, it could arrive as an email from your website, a comment on a social media post or a cold call.
It can be difficult to keep track of all channels, so ensure your marketing team has the ability to add deals to your sales pipeline as they arrive.
Collaborating on a shared sales pipeline will give you the confidence that none of your leads are going unheard.
3. Apply a score to each lead
Based on your knowledge of an ideal lead, use lead scoring to rank each lead.
Although you might consider all leads worth pursuing, applying a score to each lead will assist with prioritizing your daily efforts to secure a listing. The higher a lead’s score is, the more qualified it might be.
Lead scoring is also a dynamic number. A low scoring lead may suddenly become a high scoring lead when the property owner’s situation changes.
Over a short period of time you will begin to notice a pattern that guides your action. A lower scoring lead might only be worth one or two phone call follow ups, with perhaps a single email call to action, while a highly scoring lead should be handled as a priority with personal attention and care.
4. Manage sales leads with grouping
Although lead scoring is dynamic, leads will fall into one of three categories:
- Will definitely result in a listing
- May result in a listing
- Won’t result in a listing
Ensure you’re being realistic with how you categorize your leads in your sales pipeline. Knowing which category your lead falls into will guide the level of nurturing it requires. A sure fire listing will appreciate a more factual communication approach to guide them through the selling process. Therefore nurture the leads in the second category to win more listings, while limiting the attention paid to any “zombie” leads that fall into the third category.
5. Set sales lead goals and review progress
As a Realtor, a database of contacts and a steady stream of leads is your lifeblood.
Ensure you’re gaining traction by setting goals for your leads and regularly review your progress.
You should focus on:
- Average listing sale value
- Average commission value
- Lead conversion rate
- Lead velocity (time from lead to listing)
Market forces can dictate listing volumes, however you are in control of how your leads perform. Applying these tips to manage sales leads will ensure you’re focusing your time and energy exactly where it’s needed.