Shift Happens: Get to the Table – Lead Conversion

Shift Happens: Tactic Five – Get to the Table – Lead Conversion (by Angi Bell, Results Coach)

Great agents know that if they make contact with a motivated lead, it’s theirs. There’s no doubt in their mind about their ability to persuade, engender trust, and gain the lead as a customer. Their experience, knowledge, and confidence are what make them successful.  (From KWU Shift Tactic Five)

If you’ve been following my previous Shift articles, then you know that a shifted market is a skills-based market. Unlike the hot real estate market we’ve been experiencing the last couple of years, which has certainly been a market of the moment, a shifted market will both test your skills and expose your conversion rates.  So how do you prepare to not only survive, but thrive in the shift?

The 4 C’s of Tactic Five (Capture, Connect, Cultivate, Convert) are critical to ensure that your lead generation efforts are not in vain.  Let’s break them down:

1. Capture – Capturing leads is not just about getting a name and phone number. It’s about setting up a system to help you capture the right information that will enable you to accomplish the other 3 C’s. Are you using a lead sheet for each and every contact you make? Do you have an intake form that insures you capture all the information that matters to you and your business? (Name, address, phone, email, family info, social media platforms, personal interests, etc.) Do you have a system in place to ensure that all applicable info gets added to your database in a timely fashion? Do you have a universal 8×8 that concludes with adding every appropriate new met to your 36-Touch as well as adding the potential sellers and buyers to your pipeline report?  In short, the first C is all about your SYSTEMS!
2. Connect – Connecting with your leads (aka your new Mets) is taking the relationship to the next level. It’s about investigating (not interrogating) and discovering who is motivated to sell or buy in the near future so they can be added to your pipeline and communicated with in a very specific way to ensure they are receiving information valuable to them based on their situation. Connecting is about asking lots of questions and providing custom answers.  It’s about building relationships and finding the motivated.  It’s about determining who is a “now” versus a “not now but later” versus a “never” contact.  How you accomplish this is through a relationship-building conversation.  Susan Scott, author of Fierce Conversations says, “the conversation IS the relationship.” How can you have better conversations? Learn your scripts and dialogues and role play!  Then have purposeful conversations face to face or over the phone.  The second C is all about your FOCUS!
3. Cultivate – Cultivating is where most agents drop the ball. If they don’t get the appointment right away, they move on and neglect to cultivate the relationship that they formed in steps one and two. Cultivation is the understanding that you need business today AND tomorrow and although you don’t know for sure when the person will need you, if you nurture the relationship, then you’ll be there when they actually do. Leads in your pipeline must be touched weekly and monthly above and beyond your 36-Touch because although the 36-Touch will remind them regularly that you are a real estate resource, they also need to receive something additional from you that speaks to their specific situation as a seller or buyer. Lead cultivation is an important part of your weekly lead generation activities and should be scheduled and systematized. If you don’t want to lose what you’ve worked so hard to get, then you’ll understand that the third C is all about COMMITMENT!
4. Convert – Sue Adler, Mega KW associate in New Jersey, conducts live seller and buyer interview panels called “Hear it Direct” (watch them on YouTube) to determine what the consumer wants and assess how well agents deliver. When asked what the agent would have to do to get the consumer to go into the agent’s office to meet with them to discuss their wants and needs, the consumers on these panels unanimously responded, “ASK US!” So there you have it, direct from the mouth of the public! Just ask! Ask for the appointment! I hesitate to even write any more on this subject, yet I hear the questions in the readers’ minds. What’s the best way to convert a lead and get an appointment? Let me remind you what the consumer says—ASK!  So how do you develop the confidence you need to be able to ask every time? Learn your scripts and dialogues, role play, know the market, know the numbers, preview properties…and then repeat – week after week after week!  I’m sure it’s apparent to you that the fourth C is all about CONFIDENCE!

Now that you’re clear on the 4 C’s of Lead Conversion, it’s mission critical that you track everything you do. Track your leads to appointments.  Track your appointments to contracts.  And track your contracts to closings.  Then review these numbers weekly, monthly, and quarterly.  Where your conversion rates are low, find the leverage (training, systems, people) to help you improve. Get an accountability partner or a coach to ensure you stay focused. In a shifted market, you cannot afford to wing it or you may find yourself in the ranks of the many who leave the industry when the going gets tough.

As Gary Keller writes in Shift, How Top Real Estate Agents Tackle Tough Times, “if you commit to mastering the skills of lead conversion, you will lift yourself above the competition…it is where the possible business that comes from your lead generating activities can turn into probably business and ultimately, into profitable business.”  If you’re looking for someone to help you tackle tough times in business and in life, contact me for a free consultation to learn how coaching can help.  And tune in next month for “Shift Happens:  Re-margin Your Business – Expense Management”!  Preparing Real Estate Agents for the inevitable market shift!