You don’t even have to have visited Manitoba to know that it’s at the Hundredth Meridian that the Great Plains begin. There’s nothing but flatlands until you get to the Rocky Mountains, and this part of Canadian geography has been immortalized in song in a very nice way. There are people for whom the Province is home, and others who are hoping to make it their home as they relocated from other parts of Canada or elsewhere in the world. The real estate market in Winnipeg is never going to be heated to the extent it is in other big cities, but Manitoba real estate agents have to have the same level of hustle that others do.
That’s because one of the things that is as true for Winnipeg as it is for Toronto or Montreal is that there is an overabundance of people working in real estate and as such it’s a very competitive business where it’s not so easy to create the commissions earnings a realtor will need for themselves. Sure, the cost of living is lower here and in Saskatchewan next door too, but a realtor needs to be pursuing every opportunity they can if it means a leg up on the competition. And better real estate lead conversion rates are a must because of this competitiveness.
Getting the leads in the first place is where they should be putting their focus to start, and for a paid real estate service in Canada you can’t do better than going with ours here at Real Estate Leads. We have realtors in Winnipeg and elsewhere receiving monthly quotas of buyer and seller leads for would-be clients that live in the same area where they are working as an agent. Or ones that would like to buy a home in Manitoba and be moving to the Province for work. Acquiring Manitoba property leads for people who looking to sell their home will always be a focus too.
Drumming up leads is one thing, but the trick is always going to be in converting leads into clients for real estate and it seems that is something of a mix between a science and an art. The way it usually works is that realtors get progressively better at it through trial and error as their career progresses, but if you can speed that up and do better with it NOW then there are huge advantages to be gained. First and foremost of them are going to be greater numbers of people buying or selling a home with YOU as their Manitoba real estate agents. So what we’re going to go over with this blog entry are good lead follow-up tips for realtors along with proven follow-up strategies for the Manitoba market. Let’s get right to it.
All About Follow-Up
One thing we’ve heard time and time again related to this is that agents who master the art of personalized communication are the ones who convert leads into clients most often. Successful agents will get that prompt, personalized communication can be the difference between client conversion and having a lead fade away and possibly be lost to another realtor. Being able to speak with a mix of authority, friendliness, and seen expertise is something you can work on, but following up on real estate leads is something you can start doing more effectively right now.
Leads are the lifeblood of any real estate business, and the way an agent handles is going to directly factor into what level of success they have in building a client base. Let’s start by considering that there was a study that found that following up within a minute of an inquiry meant the chances of lead being converted increased by nearly 400%! At the same time and delays in communication resulted in missed opportunities and lost leads a lot of the time, and this is something that is very noteworthy when it comes to real estate lead conversion.
A well-crafted follow-up strategy should also be something that Manitoba real estate agents put together for themselves. It’s perfectly fine to read from a script if you are speaking to a lead over the phone or to write it out in an email, but the focus needs to be building trust, keeping you top of mind when they eventually do decide to work with a realtor, as well as starting and nurturing a professional relationship with potential clients who may only be warm real estate lead at this time but likely to buy or sell a home in the future.
So what are the best practices for lead follow up then? To optimize your lead follow-up process it is going to best to adopt a consistent, strategic approach. Here is what agents who do well with this will recommend for you:
Send Response without Delay
Time is of the essence when it comes to lead follow-up. Faster responses to any inquiry will mean you are more likely to be converting that lead into a client. If you can be so fast as to get back to them within five minutes – something that’s very possible with smartphones nowadays – then you’ll have the highest chance of success. But even a 30 minutes delay between their sending the inquiry and your response to it can drastically lower your conversion rate. Automated responses may be a good idea and you can set them up, especially if there are times of the day when you can’t be on top of all your messenger apps and emails via your devices. With good automated responses you may well be buying time for a more personalized follow-up later.
Personalize Communications
Send a lead a generic, entirely ordinary response to their inquiry may make them feel disillusioned about working with you. It’s worth the time and effort to make the time to tailor your messages to each prospect’s specific needs as it relates to Manitoba property leads. Be specific with details about the properties they’re inquiring about, their preferred neighborhoods, or their desired price range. If you can also have the home-buying or home-selling insight to predict other considerations that may come up for them you’re really going to be showing your worth as a real estate agent.
It will show buyers you’re paying attention and are invested in their search, and with a personalized follow-ups about a homeowner’s individual property you’ll be building rapport with them. Perhaps to the extent that they’ll be inclined to recommend you as a realtor to others they know who may also be considering putting their home on the market.
Go with Multiple Touchpoints
Emails and phone calls continue to be the most traditional forms of lead follow-up, incorporating a variety of touchpoints — such as text messages, social media outreach, and direct mail — can keep your brand top of mind. Some clients may let you know that one form of communication is better than another for them, and if so it’s important to be flexible and cater to that preference. Flexibility will always be beneficial for realtors here, along with being realistic about what types of successes can be expected when someone is new to the real estate business.
Create Follow-up Schedule
You’re going to find that most of the leads that Manitoba real estate agents gather are going to be only warm, or even cool ones where there’s nothing to suggest they will likely list or buy eventually. For this reason it’s good to establish a follow-up schedule to ensure that you’re checking in with leads over time and being consistent about it.
The smart approach t this will be to include a series of touchpoints over several months, with different messages tailored to each stage of the buying or selling process. It’s here that a good customer relationship management system (CRM) can be worth its weight in gold if it is helping realtors effectively manage and automate these touchpoints so that not even one lead is likely to fall through the cracks and be lost. Be very aware that the leads you lose may well eventually becomes clients for another realtor working in the same city or town that you are.
Mindful Persistence
There’s a fine line between pursuing a lead and being seen that you’re pestering them. Follow-up is important, but realtors need to avoid overloading leads with constant messages and especially if they are constantly re-inquiring about whether or not the person or couple is ready to buy or sell. It’s good to spread out your communications and mix up your approach to keep your follow-up efforts professional and respectful.
What’s suggested here and seems to be the consensus is the realtor community is to follow up twice a week at most, and then gradually decreasing the frequency if lead is choosing to not respond for whatever reason.
Use of AI for Lead Follow-Up in Real Estate
Artificial intelligence (AI) is elementally changing the way real estate agents manage their lead follow-up. With AI tools realtors are able to respond to inquiries faster as well as more effectively nurture leads over time. This is definitely something to note with proven follow-up strategies for the Manitoba market, and especially because even the most tech unsavvy realtor can be taking advantage of AI tools for real estate.
What we suggest here is to look for a type of tool that can help realtors manage their lead pipelines more efficiently. The best ones will analyze lead behavior, engagement patterns, and other key factors to provide the realtor with personalized insights on when they should be following up, and how best to do it. All based on what’s known about the lead and what is seen to make them unique. With machine learning algorithms these AI real estate lead tools can predict the best times to reach out and suggest tailored messaging to help move these folks into and through you sales funnel.
What’s also really advantageous is the way these tools can handle much of the repetitive follow-up work for an agent, as what can happen sometimes is the laborious and tedious nature of following up with leads can sometimes means the realtors neglects some as compared to others. For instance, the tool can automatically send follow-up emails at optimal times based on past engagement and this will promote more high-touch, strategic interactions with clients while keeping communication with all the leads consistent.
Benefits of AI-Driven Follow-Ups to Leads
Continuing with our look at what Manitoba real estate agents can do to convert leads into clients more consistently we want to continue to emphasize how it’s so good to incorporate AI if that’s something you can do. We’ve talked about how AI and a good CRM working together can make for improved response times, as well as sending a better lead follow-up response in the first place. The other huge gain for agents is their ability to get data-driven insights with AI analyzing large amounts of data to provide actionable insights on lead behavior.
There’s a lot to be gained from that, but tops is going to be helping agents prioritize the most promising leads. Personalization at scale is also a part of this, as with AI you can send highly personalized follow-up messages to a large number of leads and have them carry the right type of weight and sway of influence in helping them see you as a consummate professional in real estate and the type of realtor they will eventually choose to work with.
We’ll conclude this week’s blog entry by talking about how you can integrate it thoughtfully into your lead follow-up strategy and focusing on real estate lead conversion. You can start by using AI to set immediate acknowledgments to deploy when a lead submits their contact information through your website or a social media platform. Keeping leads engaged while you prepare a more personalized follow-up is good.
With these AI tools you can also assess a lead’s activity and have other inputs as to what can be ascertained from it. Examples could be how much time spent on certain pages of your website or engagement with emails. Taken together and analyzed they can give you real actionable insights into their interest level. You can then focus more of your time and energy on the most engaged leads.
Optimizing messaging becomes possible too, and realtors can have AI helping to create follow-up messages based on lead data. When this happens it becomes easier to send targeted communication that will resonate more with each individual and likely often to continue to do so into the future.
From there you’ll be able to better track the progress of the leads, and this will include being better informed to make the decision that what was once a warm real estate lead is now a cold or cooler one. Which is something that can be difficult for realtors to do sometimes. With AI agents can monitor how leads interact with their content over time, and what they do then is adjust their follow-up efforts based on that data. Indeed, these are all proven follow-up strategies for the Manitoba market.
