Leads are easy — closing them is hard

Leads. They are what many real estate professionals consider to be the life blood of their business and the essence to success.

Historically, the main point of concern around this hot topic has been related to obtaining leads and keeping a consistent lead flow. Another debate pertains to lead quality and how some sources are better than others. Thanks to the abundance of lead generation resources, obtaining leads is no longer proving to be a difficult task. However, perfecting the art and science of effectively converting these leads better and faster than your competition is where the real challenge sets in.

Most agents rely on technology to some degree to assist with lead correspondence. However, the majority of CRMs and lead management platforms tend to pester leads with ill-informed and ill-timed follow-up. Oftentimes the leads you worked so hard to get are turned off simply by the way they are nurtured through your CRM.

A successful lead generation strategy must involve both the art and science of closing a lead that spans well beyond simple drip campaigns and search alerts. Here are the most important strategies to have a big impact on how many leads turn into deals:

1. Know and understand your lead source. Not all leads are the same, so it’s critical to understand where they came from and what caused them to convert to a lead. The only way to send effective follow-up is to understand their needs and not send generic, unwanted information.
2. Ensure you funnel leads into a CRM that does more than launch generic drip campaigns. Every follow-up should be personalized, timely and consistent. Your CRM should keep track of all engagements and alert you to actions you need to take to stay in front of your lead consistently.
3. Become superhuman with smart tech. It’s impossible to follow up with leads every hour of the day and give them the personal attention they need while you are also doing the millions of other things your job requires. Sophisticated tech like the kvCORE Platform with behavioral automation (which triggers timely response based on activities) and artificial intelligence (which understands and infers the information they want) lets you respond faster and more accurately than humanly possible.
4. The last critical piece is the art — the personal touch. While technology (the science) can be a very potent tool in generating and nurturing warm leads, it is still critical to personally engage with leads at the most opportune of moments. For example, being attentive to questions that come in with a quick phone call or personal message will always trump automation, so blending the two and letting “smart tech” warm up your leads for you behind the scenes, then giving you the most critical step to reach out at the right time, is the balance you need.

As a broker, your profitability directly correlates to the flow and proper management of leads by your agents. Unfortunately, many CRMs are not built to effectively convert leads, although they may claim that they do by offering a follow-up email or text. If your CRM is not built to engage leads in a productive way using smart technology that enhances and improves lead close rates, then you are losing out to your competition — and losing money.

Success is identifying and deploying a technology system that will manage lead engagement (not just lead follow-up) for your agents, and engage direct communication with the lead at the most opportune time. kvCORE Platform was designed with advanced behavior automation and smart, AI-infused tech built straight into its CRM. The blend of sophisticated tech that engages leads behind the scenes, and then goes further to prioritize your personal outreach based on engagement, is the perfect blend of art and science you need to close more deals.

Leads are easy — closing them is hard curated from Inman