A few months ago, I got out of the real estate game for the second time in my life so that I could vigorously pursue a career as an author and professional blogger. And, while I enjoy my current chosen profession tremendously, I am still connected with many folks in the real estate community both locally and nationally. As such, I have listened to a chorus line of the same, tired recurring gripe. What is it? Not enough leads.
FALSE: Lack of leads is not your problem. Lack of commitment, however, is.
There are hundreds of people entering the home buying and selling market daily in the San Antonio area, and around the country. The issue is that they aren’t entering that market with you. Even though many of these folks have a friend, cousin, sister, aunt, uncle or brother who hold their real estate license, they might not have complete confidence in their agent du jour, which might be why they seek out help from someone else. These are leads. Hundreds of them. Each day. And over 97 percent of them look for their agent online. So why aren’t you capturing and converting them?
Easy. Because you are so busy chasing every rabbit you find and jumping down a rabbit hole every time you think you “have a hot one” that you are missing out on leveraging opportunities to capture new leads. And, I’ll prove it to you.
THE SOCIAL EXPERIMENT
To prove my point, I conducted a social experiment. I advertised a house (my house) using Vflyer, FSBO.com and Craigslist. Within 30 minutes, I had five leads. Out of those five leads? I converted five into both buyer and rental leads…all who wanted to work with me and me alone.
HOW DID I DO IT?
The majority of my leads came in through text messaging. Why? Because that was how I specified my preferred method of contact in my ads.
And does it work? Can you really convert a lead into a client via text messaging alone? Yes. Yes you can.
As interested folks began texting me, I texted them back, but instead of being the pushy, “I need you to come into my office because my broker said so,” type of person, I simply began asking questions. In just a few minutes, I learned each person’s motivation for buying, where their down payment was coming from, how much of a down payment they had and whether or not they were pre-qualified. Just minutes after that, I warmed them up to the idea of getting pre-qualified beforehand, why it is important and their options if they didn’t qualify right now.
I customized each conversation, got email addresses (and phone numbers, because they texted me already -- duh) and put them into a contact management tool. Just minutes after that, they all received a blog (which I got paid to write and get paid on per click thru) about the home buying process.
Tomorrow, each newly converted lead will get another blog about the loan process (which I make money from also) and on and on the cycle will continue, giving me the opportunity to not only become a subject matter expert in my field (which isn’t even my field anymore), but also to gain their loyalty and trust as they see I am published on several websites as a subject matter expert and that I am here to educate them, not to sell them anything – this makes a huge difference, by the way.
The total time I invested in this experiment was two hours, and it earned me five converted leads. From there, it snowballs – I know, because I have done this before – and I will gain more referrals and leads than what I could humanly handle.
The process is simple:
Step 1: Ask questions, assume nothing.
Step 2: Get their contact information.
Step 3: Put them in your contact management system and redirect them to your blog – a blog that should have lots of helpful information for them about the home buying or home selling process, frequently asked questions, common pitfalls, recent successes, industry information and current market trends.
Step 4: Keep them coming back to your blog by emailing content to them once a week or once a month.
Step 5: Add them to your social media business pages, channels and more.
Step 6: Follow up until they close.
It might sound like a lot of work, but if you automate the process, it really isn’t. By managing customer expectations from the start, not only will you gain their immediate respect, but you are putting professional boundaries in place so that you, as an agent, don’t get used and abused. Sure, it all sounds technical and difficult, but when you have mastered it, your business will flow with an endless sea of leads.
Ask yourself: If you had the power to convert five leads a day, what would that do for your business?
Your problem is that you are spending so much time trying to “do it all yourself”, even when you hate prospecting. You’re wasting time trying to create all of your own marketing collateral, learn new social platforms and stay ahead of ever-changing trends. And you are losing business because of it. Every day.
If you prioritized your marketing dollars – and if you follow a proven system – all of that time, effort and energy could be fully automated, leaving you time to do what you do best: sell real estate. And I know it works, because I just outsold 60 percent of the agents in this city five to one doing it.
Shauna Zamarripa is CEO and Founder of Valkeryie Consulting, a marketing firm dedicated to increase your bottom line both passively and actively, using blogging and social media as the primary venues – helping you work smarter and not harder. You can find more information on her at her website, on Facebook, Twitter, Google+,LinkedIn and Instagram. You can also buy her latest e-book, “How to Make Big Money Blogging in 90 Days or Less” on Amazon.com.

Originally published on LinkedIn.