3 real estate lead strategies of top-producing agents

How much money do you spend every year on marketing your business? While we weren’t able to find a reliable source, one company that offers agent marketing services claims that agents, as a whole, spend about $9 billion each year.

This site also claims that nearly 60 percent of that money is spent on buying leads. Why that’s considered a marketing expense isn’t explained. Paying for a lead requires zero marketing.

At any rate, it’s safe to say that from postcards to auto-dialers to email campaigns and websites, top producing real estate agents spend a butt-load of money trying to round up clients.

Many are seeking “right now” business, and many fail. You’re not in retail. You won’t make immediate sales and walk away at the end of the day with cash in your pocket.

Real estate is a long game, a lot like golf. If you hope to make the ranks of the top producing real estate agents, put your putter away and get out that 7 iron because you’ll need to hit and walk and hit and walk some more.

1. Top producing real estate agents spend money

We hear you: “Well, they can afford to spend money.” Hogwash.

Any agent with at least one deal under their belt should be able to spend some of that commission check on marketing.

Agents spend $65 a year, on average, to maintain their websites – potentially the biggest driver of business, if used appropriately. Yet they spend 45 times more money each year on their vehicles.

In a business where the majority of agents spend more on their cars than on marketing their livelihood, it’s safe to say that priorities are a bit messed up.

Top producing real estate agents delegate – they hire help. Whether it’s a virtual or in-house assistant, a social media specialist, marketing help, ghost blogger or answering service, delegation frees the time necessary for these agents to do what they do best: make money.

So, yes, “help” costs money, but it also helps agents make money.

The fix: Commit to saving a certain percentage of each commission check to use to market your business. Start small if you must, but start.

2. Top producing real estate agents respond to leads quickly

The aforementioned agent services website claims that “the industry average lead response time is 3 hours and 8 minutes.” Although that’s rather precise, we couldn’t find a source for this information.

What we do know, from speaking with both real estate consumers and through our own experience, is that, by and large, underperforming agents don’t seem to understand how critical it is to respond to a lead immediately (this is where that hired help pays for itself).

The more successful agents we’ve spoken with find a way to respond to an incoming lead within minutes.

They get it. They’ve read the statistics:

“If you respond in under 5 minutes to your sales lead, you’re 100 times more likely to contact them and 21 times more likely to get them into your pipeline,”

according to research conducted by InsideSales.com. Wait as little as 30 minutes to respond and your chances for both decrease more than 20 times that of a 5-minute response.

Yes, you’re busy. And incoming calls from leads may come at the absolute wrong time, such as when you’re in the middle of a listing presentation.

Lead generation means nothing if you aren’t willing to spend what it takes to capture and convert that lead.

The fix: Hire an assistant, answering service or purchase the services of lead response management companies, such as Agentology (not an endorsement, we’ve neither worked with them or know anyone who has).

3. Top producing real estate agents have wiped “dead lead” from their vocabulary

Successful real estate agents don’t declare a lead dead unless they have a coroner’s report. Seriously. Dead leads are so rare to them that they pretty much require a death certificate as proof.

A lead that has expressed interest in your services but isn’t ready to act right now is just as living and breathing as the guy who is relocating for his job and needs to sell now.

Sure, these further-in-the-future clients require more work, but giving up on them is just plain stupid.

The fix: Become the consummate lead nurturer. Learn all you can about the topic and automate as much as you can without coming off like a robot.

Success in real estate depends on developing some basic habits. Stop pinching those pennies, act quickly and work harder on your long game. There’s a lot of hitting and walking to do between the first tee and that ice-cold beer at the clubhouse.

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