Quality leads are gold in the world of real estate. But what are the best practices for following up? Find out everything you need to know here.
If your lead generation and marketing strategies work, your pipeline should be full of real estate leads. But too often, leads are stuck at the top of the funnel because agents don’t know how (or don’t take the time) to follow up. Lead follow up, crucial to every real estate business, takes time, thoughtfulness, and follow-through. The stakes are too high, and follow up is too easy for an agent to skip this critical step in the sales life cycle—so we’ll show you how it’s done.
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Why lead follow up matters
Converting leads into clients is the only way to build a sustainable business. It doesn’t matter if your lead is warm, hot, or freezing cold; if you don’t follow up regularly, there is a slim chance of converting your lead and ending up at the closing table. Once you’ve converted a client, long term follow up strategies ensure they turn to you for all of their real estate needs, and so do their friends and family.
The good news is that real estate lead follow up is simple, cheap, and everyone can do it well with a little bit of thoughtfulness. The most important thing to remember is that in real estate, lead follow up is about creating and maintaining lasting relationships.
4 simple rules of lead follow up
There are four simple “p’s” (or rules) for top-notch lead follow up. These four guideposts will keep you on track for successfully establishing and building long-term relationships in real estate. For top-notch follow up, you must be:
Polite: When you are polite, you recognize your lead’s boundaries and time, reassuring them with consideration. Remaining courteous and thoughtful sets a foundation for a relationship built on lasting respect.
Professional: When you are professional, you offer something of value to a lead, whether it is a listing or a market report. Your outreach and follow up shows you are a real estate expert who can solve a lead’s real estate problems and have the chops to guide them through a complex process.
Personal: When your messages are personal, your leads feel appreciated and heard. They sense that they matter to you and that their business is valued. You are conveying that you are not only an expert but also the ideal expert to help them specifically.
Persistent: Major studies show that converting leads often takes at least eight touchpoints in a sales cycle. When you remain polite, professional, and personal, it’s ok to be persistent. Don’t hesitate to follow up with leads on a regular cadence that will eventually lead to conversion.
Steps for follow up in real estate
Now that you know the four basic rules of real estate lead follow up, here are the steps needed to convert your leads to clients through your expert and intuitive nurturing.
1. Set your own expectations
Be clear about your goals. Lead follow up is about nurturing, and that takes time. It could take months or even years to see the results of consistent, thoughtful follow-up. Ensure you are setting attainable goals so you don’t get discouraged.
- Make follow up part of your annual strategic plan.
- Set aside whatever budget you might need.
- Regularly track your follow up communication to see what’s successful, adjust what’s not working, and monitor your ROI.
2. Create accountability for yourself
Every day, set aside a block of dedicated time to engage with your leads, clients, and former clients. Regular follow up is crucial for lead conversion, referrals, and repeat business, so set tasks to ensure that it doesn’t get pushed aside on your daily to-do list.
- Establish and automate your CRM’s daily tasks, alerts, and checklists to follow up with leads or clients.
- Set goals to send a certain number of emails, texts, phone calls, social media interactions, and in-person invitations.
- Carefully track what works best with each lead and client and ask for feedback. Establish a communication cadence that works best for them.
3. Personalize your outreach
A general sales blast to all of your contacts will go straight to the trash, so your follow up communication must be always personalized. Spend time making your messages about your client, their needs, their lives, and their real estate dreams. People remember how you make them feel—make your leads feel like the most important person in your whole business.
- Add specific details about your leads and clients in your CRM; when you reach out, use this information to show that you’re listening. “How was your recent vacation to Paris?” “How was your parent’s 50th-anniversary party?” “Did you win that pickleball tournament?”
- Use automations in your CRM so that your leads, clients, and former clients receive communication addressed to them, particular to their needs and interests, and at the appropriate cadence for where they are in the sales pipeline.
- Give something of value to your leads and clients that pertains specifically to them, whether it’s a monthly market report or a seasonal list of local events. It allows you to be in regular contact and establishes you as the area expert.
4. Utilize multiple communication channels
Successful real estate follow up means utilizing multiple communication channels, including email, text, phone calls, in-person connections, and engagement on social media. The best lead follow up strategies combine all these channels into a personalized mix.
Phone calls and texts are more active, whereas email and social media are more passive. But all can be effectively leveraged so your lead feels a connection that is not too high (or low) pressure. Don’t hesitate to ask your leads about their preferred method of communication.
- Your CRM should allow you to access most of these communication channels from within its platform, which is an advantage for tracking and monitoring what’s working.
- Even if you hate making phone calls or detest social media, make an effort to blend in all of these follow up methods. Being outside your comfort zone will pay significant lead conversion dividends in the long run.
Crucial tools for lead follow up
When it comes to following up with real estate leads, you don’t have to do it alone. Here are the tools to make the work easier:
Your CRM
A stellar CRM is an agent’s greatest tool for lead follow up. A strong CRM platform allows an agent to create messages through various communication channels, often using a library of pre-written templates. You can also personalize your messages and automate their transmission.
And finally, CRMs often offer sophisticated monitoring tools that track your successes, tweak what’s not working, and evaluate your ROI. The best CRM isn’t necessarily the most expensive or the one with every bell and whistle—it’s the one you will actually use.
AI
One of the hardest things about follow up in real estate is thinking of what to say and writing it. The good news is that artificial intelligence tools take this time-consuming task off your plate. For example, with simple prompts, ChatGPT can craft everything from an entire drip campaign of emails to a simple how-are-you-doing text message.
Lead generation + follow up with Luxury Presence
How well an agent follows up with their leads can make or break an agent’s client base and sales record. By following these guidelines for real estate lead follow up, agents can establish strong communication patterns, create lasting client relationships, and generate more sales.
Luxury Presence helps agents generate leads through sophisticated marketing, digital tools, and AI nurturing. Schedule a demo to learn how Luxury Presence can transform your lead generation and follow up.
