Finalizing is a term that’s become quite the buzzword in business of all types over recent years, and in many ways it has superseded closing when it comes to turning a lead into a sale for by and large and anyone who does sales of any sort. It’s been particularly well adopted in real estate too and as it pertains to real estate leads here it really does highlight how a there is a real chasm that has to be crossed when you go from receiving a lead to having those persons by or sell a home.
That will mean convincing them to work with you as their real estate agent. The fact there are far greater numbers of active real estate agents than there is sufficient homebuyer and home seller business to go around means plenty of others will be aiming to do the same thing. Does this mean that realtors have to know how to present themselves in the best light in every way? Absolutely, but there’s more that goes into the best ways to generate leads for real estate. You do need to be persuasive in ways that break away from the norms where most realtors approach clients the same way.
But it is true that the more leads you are able to drum up, the more likely it is any given number of those leads will turn into real estate clients for you. It’s for this reason so many realtors are using paid real estate lead generation services like the one we make available here. But let’s go ahead and assume that any realtor who is going to pay for leads will want to be sure they are doing the best they can and having maximum success with their efforts to convert online leads.
So what we’ll do for our blog entry here this week is go into real detail about the best real estate lead conversion strategies for 2024, and hopefully as someone who may be new to working as a realtor in Canada you can find good ways to incorporate them into your efforts too.
Conversion Rates Focus
Every agent tends to be a busy agent, and that may be true even if that realtor isn’t enjoying a steady income from their career at that time and of course it is at times like these that you want be converting as many leads as possible. Is that more difficult for those who are newer to the business? Absolutely. Like anything you become more proficient and it is understandable if in the beginning feel practically impossible to understand the numbers behind your marketing efforts. Calculating conversion rates for real estate leads is crucial in 2024 in the same way it has been for years previous .
We’ll also assume that most realtors will know what a conversion rate is, but if you don’t then the conversion rate is the rate at which your real estate leads are turned into clientele who participate in a home sale or buy a home and either results in you earning a commission. Fairly straightforward, and to calculate the conversion rate you go through a basic equation working with the number of leads generated and the number of leads who became clients.
As an example, if you generated 500 leads for June and 25 of them became clients, your conversion rate would be 5%. Simple enough, but big decisions shouldn’t be on how to spend your marketing finances to get better conversion rates. Instead, you should focus more on improving your lead conversion rates for 2024. Keep in mind as well that different marketing channels will have different conversion rates.
This creates a reality where some leads are worth more than others, and to determine which lead is worth more you need to put another equation to work. It’s also relatively simple; divide the total revenue gained from a specific marketing channel by the number of leads gained. Because even as little as a 1% gain can have a profound effect on your business, and anything that adds incrementally towards that will make some marketing channels immediately more valuable than others when it comes to better lead conversion rates.
Be Channel Choosy
It makes so much sense to invest more readily in a marketing channel that has better lead conversion rates. You need to work on your follow up, communication, and relationship-building to improve converting leads to customers. Is there a national average for realtors and how often convert leads into clients? Apparently there is, and what we’ve learned there is that 3-5% is standard for conversion rates. But this is based on the agent’s market, so it possible the average rates are lower and maybe even much lower.
That may be discouraging to some, but even without those low numbers the important takeaway for you is that converting leads into clients doesn’t happen often at all and this emphasizes how important it is to be as good at it as you can possibly be.
So let’s swing around now and talk about the main reasons leads that might have been converted end up staying unconverted, and a part of it does reinforce the fact you do need to be about which marketing channels you choose to put your time, money, and focus into.
One of the primary reasons for failure here is that the realtor’s follow-up is poor and the would-be clients is majorly dissuaded by that initial impression made on them. All too often it isn’t your online leads that are inferior and it’s much more in the way you approach these prospective clients with that all-important first impression.
If after months of effort your lead nurturing tactics aren’t generating leads and seeing them converted, then it’s time you made changes to your approach. The best advice is to take a look at your entire process to determine what you can do to improve. It may be that you are too focused on short-term success, and if so then your correction needs to be to understand that real estate is all about long-term success.
The ones who are most successful are growing their sphere of influence, nurturing relationships slowly over time, and establishing themselves as a trusted advisor long after a sale is completed.
Misidentifying Most Valuable Leads
Research done in 2020 indicated that 1st-time buyers made up 31% of all home buyers, a dip from 2019 33% and for 43% of recent buyers. As it relates to real estate leads the first step that they took in the home buying process was to browse properties for sale online, with another 18% of those buyers reaching out to make first contact with real estate agent. That leaves another 82% of those participants available to be contacted by a realtor.
Many of them will be contacting a realtor who has been referred to them by family, friends, or coworkers. Referrals are the way most buyers find their agents too and while you can generate real estate leads online, it’s often not as effective as nurturing relationships with past clients – the same people who will be most likely to refer you. The people you’ve already worked with are much more likely to convert again or provide referrals.
The point here is to not neglect your most valuable leads. Follow up with clients after the sale and it’s not to difficult to do that and not comes across as being overly pushy or anything of the sort. And as we know there are many different off-line ways of getting leads in real estate.
Focus on building a relationship first and the business will follow. And understanding that a larger marketing budget isn’t necessarily the solution. If you want a more guaranteed-beneficial way to put money into your client generation efforts you may be best to put that into real estate search engine optimization for your website.
Gaining Clients from Real Estate Leads in 2024
All sorts of tips for agents abound online, but most will be squandered if a realtor doesn’t know how to convert leads into clients. You need a plan, and you need to have experience making those conversions and the understanding you need to get better at it.
There are some tips that can apply to all realtors no matter their personality of how they like to build clientele. We can start by saying that timing is often an integral factor, as most people will choose to work with the first realtor they speak with. Long story short – the quicker you respond to a lead, the better when it comes to real estate leads. The best overall strategies will include a plan for initial response to leads as well as ongoing contact.
Next you’ll need to know how to best stay in touch with clients that are warm leads but not hot leads where the people are ready to make a real estate move nearly immediately. This is best done by staying at the forefront of their minds, and you do that by having a follow-up system in place. Many realtors will use e-newsletters that former clients can opt to receive and if they do then it’s a way of keeping you as that realtor that is at the front of your mind .
It will also be best if you are able to have a distinctive value proposition. The best approach for real estate leads and real estate lead generation is a multi-pronged one that focuses on having a unique value proposition. Start with the standard introduction to your prospective clients, but then shift your focus to the clients and it’s here that you want to be as catering and complimentary as possible.
Being especially upbeat about their home and its value is a great launching point that you can’t go wrong with. There are other approaches you can try to, but once you establish that identity with them then you will next need to evaluate your clients and try to determine where they are in the sales cycle. Because part of effectively converting real estate leads into clients is being able to accurately access where they are in that.
As is the case again here, it is something that you get better at with practice. But something you can be very proficient with right away is showcasing your local neighborhood knowledge. This is a huge part of organic lead generation and especially with ensuring people think of you when they’re asked to recommend a good realtor for acquaintances to work with. Be focused on providing relevant local information, and if that can be paired with individual property information then it can help you demonstrate a level of expertise that few agents can match.
Earn Testimonials
If being able to convert online leads better as a realtor is a priority for you then you can get a lot of support from having many former clients leaving online testimonials for you. It is always true that potential customers hold testimonials in high regard, seeing them as means of confirming that you understand what you are doing. You need your leads to trust you and feel they have nothing to risk. Most realtors are all too happy to put these reviews and testimonials on their personal real estate website and they can go into social media profiles too. But once you have these online real estate leads, what can a realtor expect to happen next? After receiving responses to your online campaigns or using real estate search engine optimization strategies, you may find that this can go one of two ways.
We talked about not neglecting leads, but let’s put a similar emphasis on the need to follow up immediately. You never want to make leads wait, and there has been consumer research that the initial interest level of a prospect drops considerably after an hour. It is truly important to follow up immediately with prospects. One idea is to direct online leads to a company email to which several people have access.
This will ensure quick handling of leads and will increase the chances of converting them to clients, but from there they will need to be qualified. So what is the best way to qualify real estate leads? You again start by knowing which stage leads are in you will know where and how to invest your resources to convert them to clients.
And a part of qualifying the lead first is to make the good 1st impression that we talked about a number of times already here. And even if a lead is warm and you reach out promptly and properly the potential client may genuinely just not be ready to take the next step yet. But if the lead has shown interest in your service then you definitely don’t want lose the opportunity to keep them warm.
Be Attentive
An equally essential part of converting real estate leads into customers is optimally listening to them. Rather than rattling of any standard sales pitch, you should instead pay attention to their problems and needs and that means you need to have good critical listening / understanding skills. It’s your job to educate the prospect to become aware of the problem and how you can help them solve this.
Moving forward from there it helps a lot if you have a strong understanding of the conversion process. It is good if you can use analytics software to show how many leads are entering your CRM system at each stage of the sales funnel and how many are converted to clients who buy or sell real estate through you.
Data needs to be presented clearly in a dashboard with a CRM in order for you to see which levels of your sales funnel are leaking leads. Done properly it lets you to reach out and focus on those leads. Finding out how to convert online leads to customers takes you one step closer to your goals. And once that point arrives you will do well to have real estate lead conversion scripts that work and are ready to go.
There’s no such thing as a perfect script, and not every script works for every agent. However, having a decent one can do wonders for your lead generation and that is because scripts
- help you gain confidence with leads
- Promote learning new sales approaches quickly
- Allow scaling of your real estate business, and that’s even more true if you are operating as a team
Here’s a good example of some standard verbiage for a real estate leads script:
‘Hi —–. This is Ken with —–. You related to me that you are having challenges with ———. I have considered your situation and my experience in this market leads me to believe ——– is likely the best course of action to overcome this challenge and provide the perfect solution.’
Not long ago research findings published at salesforce.com showed that focusing on helping the customer results in an increase in lead conversions by up to 70%. With some prospective clients an approach that prompts them to volunteer their perspective right away is better, and here’s an example of a real estate client contact script like that.
‘My understanding is that you are looking for a 3-bedroom home in the ——- area as near as possible to —— school. Is that correct?’
It’s simple, it’s unassuming, and it’s a direct question that will necessitate a fairly clear response from them most of the time. Experienced agents will also know that it’s easy to score and convert leads from open houses. Open houses are also a good place to earn referrals. An open house-related script might go something like this:
‘Hi, my name is—– with —–. The purpose of this communication is to let you know of an open house event going to be held at (address) ——- this —— from —– to ——–. Do you know where this is, and might you have any interest in attending this open house?’
Making some type of positive personal connection is what you should be aiming for with any lead. Many times an initial phone call script is the best way to achieve this. Learn the scripts by heart isn’t necessary, but what is necessary is an understanding of the underlying principles that make them effective at converting online new home leads.
If you need any more convincing on this then how about hearing that as much as 80% of leads are lost due to poor or no follow-up efforts. So a reliable real estate lead conversion plan is needed, one where for the first 10 days you focus on following up on leads with phone calls, texts, and emails.
Here’s an overview of what that might look like
1st Day
Respond quickly once the lead contacts you, starting with a self-introduction. Let the lead know how you found them and why you’re very likely the best fit as their real estate agent. Ensure you come across as knowledgeable, helpful, and trustworthy while not seeming needy at all. You can contact the leads through email or phone calls.
2nd Day
You may not have heard back from the lead by this point, but that’s not a concern here as it’s fairly common. Stay informative and trustworthy with your tone in the communications, and be clear in how you can help the lead buy or sell their home. You can contact them through email and text.
3rd Day
Converting unresponsive leads is best done by staying persistent. Far too many agents will think a lead has gone cold after a day or two, but that is rarely if ever the case. That lead may still be interested in buying or selling a home. Send a short and concise follow-up communication here (often email is best, but text message is a possibility too) and this can be a good way to get a response without being annoying.
4th Day
Here is when you start to suspect that you conversion scripts are not working well. Make small changes here though rather than making wholesale changes to them – at least for the time being, and one thing you can try is switching up the time of day you send them messages. Reach out in the evening if mornings aren’t working and vice versa. Just send an email as a reminder that you’d still like to offer your service and assistance if they need them.
5th Day
At this point it may be that the prospective client is busy or isn’t ready to start the buying or selling process. Either way, focus on staying at the forefront of their mind and a means of doing this can be to call them on this day and send a text as well.
6th and 7th Day
This is not the time to pressure any lead too much. It’s wise here to give phone communication a rest for a couple of days, but you can stay positive and helpful in a short email sent on either of these days
8th Day
Take the opportunity here to remind the lead of your value. Aim for an upbeat tone when doing this and mention that you have useful information you think they’d like to have. One idea can be to send a text message in the evening when the lead has likely seen to everything they need to do that day.
9th Day
Here it starts to becomes possible that a different approach is needed this time. See it as a good time to showcase your unique skills as an agent, and you can state to the lead how you can help them with the buying or selling of their home. Plus, if they are hesitant to move forward then that’s perfectly fine and you are ready to help when they are ready. You may also mention that your negotiation skills can help the buyer save money and the seller net more money.
10th Day
This 10th day is final day in the conversion plan, and what you can do here is contact your lead by phone. You may also send a text before lunch and call in the evening.
Everything said there is no debate that converting real estate leads is an essential part of every real estate business. Well written seller landing pages will also help you generate leads, along with starting you on the path where you build a reputation as a realtor and start having your business grow organically along with what you’re able to do with your efforts to generate leads for real estate and pairing it with effective real estate search engine optimization.
