Lead generation... two words that strike fear, anger and resentment in the minds of real estate agents, brokers and marketing professionals across the globe! If you haven’t personally been ‘burned’ by bad lead generation solutions, you definitely know someone who has. But, lead generation is a critically important part of your business model, and it’s time to get over the stigma and embrace the process…regardless of past experiences.
Fact: In order to grow, you need new customers.
Whether you tackle your lead generation yourself, or rely on a 3rd party specialist, lead generation is a mandatory part of your business strategy. The benefits of relying on a 3rd party specialist allows you the freedom to focus on what you do best and leave the lead generation to the specialist who’s doing what they do best, but to be truly successful from either side there needs to be a collaborate effort. Your lead generation specialist is focused on bringing in the leads, but YOU need to be focused on providing intelligent, thoughtful outreach or the lead will be deemed “no good”.
Fact: There are no “good” or “bad” leads, but there IS bad follow-up.
From the 3rd party specialist standpoint, we hear professionals claiming their leads are “no good”, so we’ve spent year digging into every facet of the lead lifecycle. Why do you think your leads are no good? Where is the disconnect between the capture and the follow-up? Why do some of your colleagues claim mad success with the same level of leads while others (you?) fail? Our findings across the industry point to the art of the follow-up.
Fact: Leads need an average of 8 - 12 touches in order to engage.
Imagine this: You’re interested in a specific product or opportunity. You raise your hand. By the time you receive outreach, you’ve moved onto something else and/or are too busy to respond at that given moment. You think “I’m interested. I’ll respond tomorrow when I have more free time.”. Tomorrow comes and goes. You didn’t receive any outreach specific to the opportunity and life kept you focused elsewhere. No harm. No foul. That doesn’t mean that you aren’t interested, it just means that other priorities got in the way of pursuing this one particular opportunity. BUT... if the opportunity doesn’t present itself in front of you again (and again... and again) and catch you at the right moment, it will slip away over time.
Sound familiar?
Now imagine this: You’re interested in a specific product or opportunity. You raise your hand. You receive immediate outreach and are able to to respond immediately. Awesome! Or, perhaps you received outreach but have already moved onto something else. That’s okay, because you received some level of outreach that empowered you to take action on your own timeline and terms and you plan to follow-up as time permits. The next day, you receive another touch that reminds you of the opportunity. Your interest is sparked again, but once again…perhaps you are too busy to respond. No worries, because those polite, friendly touches keep presenting the opportunity in front of you. The opportunity appears not only in email and text, but it also starts showing up in your online searches and social media engagement. Before you know it, you can’t keep making excuses. The opportunity is too strong and your interest is peaked again and again. Therefore, you MUST take action.
Bingo! The art of the follow-up wins.
Fact: An intelligent lead workflow strategy delivers results
Statistically in the real estate industry, for every $1,000 spent on lead generation, only $10 is spent on follow-up. So to revisit an earlier question posed: Why do some of your colleagues claim mad success with the same level of leads while others (you?) fail? The answer is in the follow-up!
FREE DOWNLOAD: Lead Generation “Secret Sauce
In this free guide, you will learn how to stand out from the crowd, build a successful pipeline, and drive conversions. Your FREE GUIDE is packed full of easy-to-implement tips, tricks & strategies, an overview of how Elevate’s lead generation technology does 90% of the work for busy real estate professionals (including the follow-up!), and a bunch of special offers to jumpstart your online lead generation.
In today’s low-inventory market, lead generation is more important than ever. Isn’t it time that you focused on what’s truly driving your business and put intelligent lead generation (and follow-up) strategies in place? Yes... yes, it’s time.
Elm Street Technology offers a growing portfolio of real estate technology and marketing services with the goal of providing one vendor and one point of contact, fully fused into one singular platform – Elevate - to capture and nurture more leads into closed business. Elevate allows busy real estate professionals the ability to streamline and automate their marketing and day-to-day business objectives by offering high-end IDX websites, lead generation tools, a powerful CRM, email, social, text and blog marketing automation, recruiting and retention tools, and more. For more information, please visit tryelevate.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bondilyn Jolly, Managing Partner3sixtyfive.agency
Bondilyn Jolly is an Internet Entrepreneur, Investor, Mentor, and the Founder and CEO of NMD, Inc. | eMerge, a North-American software company offering the eMerge platform, the leading email platform in the real estate sector. With eMerge's merger into the Elm Street Technology (EST) suite of products, Bondilyn now serves as VP of Marketing within EST and is the Managing Partner of 3sixtyfive.agency, a full-service creative and digital marketing agency offering business growth strategies to the real estate sector and beyond.