Follow-up

3 minutes
Collaboration with tablet and laptop

The Path Toward Real Estate Success: Conversations Into Appointments

Real Estate Advice
Joshua Smith
Real Estate Success

Consumers love to consume (in this case, buying and/or selling real estate), but they HATE being sold to.

To find success in real estate, your mindset must be to come from a place of adding value by leading with contribution. And know that once your contacts are ready to buy and/or sell, they will think of and reach out to you.

So, yes, more frequency than ever is required to convert leads into appointments; however, you do not need to resort to using high-pressure tactics. In fact, when delivering high-pressure scripts, you will end up turning off far more people than you are allowed to help.

The goal is to follow up frequently, lead from a place of contribution, and develop a relationship over time.

Let me give you an example:

My team generates a ton of leads and business by running Facebook Ads. These leads register on my website to unlock the ability to search for homes. Let’s say I just received a new lead who saved a property as a favorite on my website.

I would call this lead ASAP and say “Hi (lead's name), this is Joshua Smith with REVISITO Real Estate. I wanted to reach out, as I noticed you saved (the property address) as a favorite on my home search website, and I wanted to see if you had any further questions on that property, as well as see if there is other info/data on that home and area I can send you. (Pause to let them answer, answer any questions they may have, then try to set an appointment). I have some time this evening between 5pm and 7pm if you would like to meet at that home on your way home from work and spend a few minutes checking it out. Is that something you would like me to set up?”

IMPORTANT NOTE: Remember from Creating Real Estate Success: Lead Follow-Up, that the same lead will reject you for an appointment five times before saying yes. So, I am expecting a no and will then say, “No worries at all. If you have any further questions, or ever need anything, please feel free to reach out anytime! Have a great day!”

The goal is to follow up, lead from a place of contribution, try to set an appointment, and if unable, repeat the process.

As you can see, my lead follow-up is far from pushy, but I do follow up frequently with courtesy check-ins.

As the famous sales saying goes, “The fortune is in the follow up”. And I have seen time and time again that it really is.

To make your life easier and your business manageable, a lead follow up plan/system is essential. But the plan or system is not enough. You also have to execute. Please know that generating leads is not the main issue. Converting leads into appointments is a much more crucial step, and one that most realtors struggle with, as they do not have a dedicated lead follow-up system in place. 

Thanks for reading!

  Joshua Smith, Realtor/Mentor/Entrepreneur

-Voted 30th Top Realtor in America by The Wall Street Journal

-Over 5,000 Homes Sold & Currently Selling More Than 1 Home Daily

Joshua Smith Apr 3rd, 2020
2 minutes
Typing on laptop

The Path Toward Real Estate Success: Lead Follow-Up

Real Estate Advice
Real Estate Success
Joshua Smith

The average realtor follows up with a lead within 40 minutes and only follows up twice. These numbers are just not good enough for any agent to ever be able to create a profitable real estate business. As you read in Creating Real Estate Success: Lead Generation and tracking, the average realtor only converts .5% of leads into a closing. More on predictable lead generation systems here.

But as you have demonstrated by your dedication to learn to perform at the highest level in the real estate business, you are not the average realtor.

Let’s now dive into what steps you can take to turn your leads into appointments and point them toward closing.

Consider these averages about lead follow-up:

-- You must follow up with a lead fifteen times before that lead will reach back out to you.

-- Each lead will reject an appointment five times before ever agreeing to meet with you.

-- Every consumer is sold to 2,000+ times each and every day.

You must be diligent about lead follow-up. I recommend, at a minimum, that you follow up with every lead 21 times in the first 30 days. You can use any combination of phone calls, emails, and text messages, but the key is to reach out 21 times in the first month of your relationship with a lead.

Plan to get voicemails and few responses. That’s okay and is expected industry-wide. You can only focus on and control your actions. So your job is to continue to follow-up via phone, email, and text until you can get a lead to respond to you. At that time, you can work with that lead to identify goals, expectations, and time frames for purchasing or selling a home. More on how to turning conversations into appointments here.

In real estate as with anything else, hard work and persistence are key.

Thanks for reading!

  Joshua Smith, Realtor/Mentor/Entrepreneur

-Voted 30th Top Realtor in America by The Wall Street Journal

-Over 5,000 Homes Sold & Currently Selling More Than 1 Home Daily

Joshua Smith Mar 27th, 2020
5 minutes
Real estate agent showing a property to a couple.

The Path Toward Real Estate Success: Become The Information Portal

Appointments
CRM
Follow-up

We are living in the “Information Age,” and to stand out from our competition, you must learn to win the game of delivering great information to the marketplace.

For realtors, the name of the game is: Get people to know you, like you, trust you, and become aware of what you do for a living. Then, as long as you stay in touch frequently, your business will grow.

The internet and technology continue to change how this mission is accomplished, so you must always be adapting to the changes to continue to thrive.

Today’s consumer can search homes, get information, see photos, and much more without our help. No longer is the realtor essential in the home search process; well, at least that perception can be the consumer’s sentiment. So we must ask about which things can be really difficult to find information. What are things important to the consumer that can’t be found on Zillow or other major online search sites? Spend some time on those sites, and you will quickly find out.

If you can deliver the hard-to-find information consumers are looking for, you become valuable. And if consumers continue reading/watching your content, they will get to know you, like you, trust you, and become aware of what you do for a living. And when they are ready to buy or sell real estate, the chances of their choosing you greatly increase.

The cool part is that this strategy is essentially free. Let’s break down a few things to give you some ideas.

What and How To Create Content To Become The Information Portal In Your Market:

First, let’s break down the “How.”

#1: Get a camera that shoots good video (an iPhone or any new cell phone will work). I am sure you already have a cell phone, so this should not cost you any additional money.

#2: Have a website with a blog feature, and which is connected to a CRM/database. I am sure you already have one, as it is essential to have in the time that we are in, so again, should not cost you any additional money.

#3: Set up a YouTube channel. YouTube is 100% FREE.

#4: Have a Facebook account. Facebook is 100% FREE.

Now let’s break down the “What.”

#1: Create a weekly video in which you interview a local business owner. Make the interview about the business owner and not your business. Discuss what the business does, how long they have been open, do a tour of the facility, etc. Keep it under five minutes.

#2: Create videos of local parks, amenities, schools. Anything nice about your area and would attract people to want to live there.

#3: Create videos of local subdivisions/communities.

#4: Create videos of all new build developments.

#5: Create videos of all your listings and any nice homes that you see/preview.

#6: Create a monthly video market update about your local real estate market.

Now that you have all this great content, what do you do with it?

#1: Upload the videos to YouTube and make them public. Make your channel in your name, with your photo, and make sure to put in a great description. 

#2: Embed the YouTube video into your website blog, so now you have a video blog, AKA “Vlog”, then do a written blog about the video you created.

#3: Mass email your blog link to your database as soon as you release your blog (weekly is a good timeframe).

#4: Share your blog on your Facebook page, as well as any other pages or social media accounts you have.

#5: Create a local area Facebook group: Example “Living In XYZ City, State”... Make it a group, not a page, and allow anyone to join. Post each blog in there (again weekly is good).

Yes, this is a lot of work, but work which is well worth it. Think about it this way: As a realtor, you are applying for a job to work for buyers and sellers. When you apply for a job today, what is the first thing the potential employer does after reading your resume? They search for you online and on social media. YouTube is the number two search engine on the planet. And YouTube is owned by Google, which happens to be the number one search site on the planet. Google will drive consumers to your YouTube channel to watch your content, and embedding a YouTube video on your blog is one of the quickest ways to build up SEO (Search Engine Optimization = getting your website to pull up organically on searches without having to buy ads on Google).

In addition to the points in the above paragraph, at minimum you are delivering great content to your database (valuable on its own merit), which then drives your leads back to your website. With Facebook, you are building a local community of people who live in your area and are building connections and allowing potential clients to get to know you, like you, trust you, and become aware of what you do for a living.

As with anything new you take on, this shift in action does come with a bit of a learning curve, but eventually you can can accomplish all of the above in about five hours out of your week. You will meet all the local business owners, builders, school principals, etc. Not bad people to have good relationships with, and you will become “The Information Portal In Your Market”.

Thanks for reading!

  Joshua Smith, Realtor/Mentor/Entrepreneur

-Voted 30th Top Realtor in America by The Wall Street Journal

-Over 5,000 Homes Sold & Currently Selling More Than 1 Home Daily

Joshua Smith Oct 16th, 2020
4 minutes
Woman happily talking on the phone.

The Path Toward Real Estate Success: Overcoming Fear

Joshua Smith
Follow-up
Making Money in Real Estate

Those who wish to create success must first learn to face their fears.

Please understand that we all experience fears. If you are struggling with something, you are NOT alone! Feeling like you are the only one struggling with something, but everyone has fears. And a fear of rejection and reluctance to make calls are very common feelings for real estate agents.

How To Overcome Call Reluctance and Fear of Rejection:

#1: You MUST identify what you want most. Never sacrifice what you want most for what you want in the moment. Learn to be brutally honest with yourself. You will either have to learn to be told “No”, or you will have to learn to say “No” to the opportunities you want to create for yourself and your family! For example, if you don’t learn to become okay by being told “No” by a stranger, you will have to say “No” to your own personal goals, or maybe even have to say “No” to those who matter most to you. Would you rather have a stranger say “No” to you, or would you rather have to tell your kids “No” that you can’t afford to pay for them to go to college, as you were to afraid to do what it takes to create those opportunities for them? I know this sounds harsh, but the reality is we must get brutally honest with ourselves, otherwise the above scenario can become a reality.

#2: Track your numbers. Once you start tracking your numbers, you will quickly learn exactly how many “Nos” you need to get a “Yes”, which then allows you to attach to the process. Once we attach to the process, it makes getting told “No” so much easier. We then know, as an example, I need 49 “Nos” to get my 1 “Yes”. You can then turn it into a game.

#3: Ask yourself different questions. Instead of asking, “What type of rejection am I going to experience during this activity?”, ask yourself a better question: “What will the result be for my personal goals and my family if I don’t do this activity?”. This comes back to tip #1, in getting brutally honest with yourself.

#4: Practice your scripts. If I told you that tomorrow we are going to call 1000 expired leads, and you just showed up at my office, you may have massive fear and call reluctance, BUT if I told you to come to my office tomorrow, and we are going to call 1000 expired leads, and then gave you the script we would be using, and you spent three hours the night before practicing that script, the fear may still exist, but it will be much less. Spend time rehearsing your scripts; doing so will absolutely help!

#5: Take action! Like anything, we are typically not good at it when we first start, but the more we do it the better we get and the more comfortable we become.

IMPORTANT NOTE: A good book that will help with letting go of fear is “Go For No! Yes Is The Destination, No Is How You Get There” by Richard Fenton & Andrew Waltz.

Understand that the fear exists and is usually due to stories we have created in our heads about how bad it is going to go. These are just stories and is not reality, which is never as bad as we think it will be. Always remember why you are here, why you got started in real estate, and what opportunities you want to create for yourself and your family. Be willing to push through it and face those fears, It will pay off; I promise!

Thanks for reading!

  Joshua Smith, Realtor/Mentor/Entrepreneur

-Voted 30th Top Realtor in America by The Wall Street Journal

-Over 5,000 Homes Sold & Currently Selling More Than 1 Home Daily

Joshua Smith Jul 31st, 2020
3 minutes
Happy couple closing a real estate transaction.

The Secret to Real Estate Referrals and Repeat Business: Stay In Touch With Past Clients

Joshua Smith
Mastery
Making Money in Real Estate

Did you know that 88% of recently surveyed buyers and sellers said their realtor did a great job, and that they would absolutely use them again in the future? However, only 11% ever do a repeat transaction with that realtor.

Why aren’t past real estate clients doing repeat business?

You can deliver absolutely amazing service to your clients, but if you do not stay in touch after the fact, those clients will forget your name and not know how to reach you. Out of sight, out of mind. To ensure your past clients do future business with you (and equally as important, send you referrals) you MUST stay in touch!

Why don’t most agents stay in touch?

Two reasons:

  1. They do not have a CRM/database to stay organized to stay in touch. Read more about what to look for in an effective CRM here.
  2. They feel uncomfortable bugging past clients begging for business.

The great news is both of these objections are extremely easy to overcome:

  1. Get a CRM/database, and use it. Problem solved!
  2. You absolutely do not need to beg for referrals to stay in touch, but you must stay in touch!

But how do you stay in touch without coming across as an annoying salesperson? By checking in and always focusing on the human connection. As Dale Carnegie states in his amazing classic business book, “How To Win Friends and Influence People,” the way to build deep connections is by being “interested in others, not trying to be interesting.”

Here are 4 basic tips for checking in with past clients:

1. Put past clients in your CRM/database

Send a “Monthly Current Market Video Update” to keep everyone educated on what is happening in the local real estate market.

2. Send out handwritten birthday cards.

Handwriting the note is essential. The personal touch goes a long way

3. Send out happy holiday emails.

Be sure you are staying relevant and front of mind.

4. Pick up the phone, and call every 90 days.

Don’t make it about you, make it about them. “How is the Family?”... “How is Work going?”.... Etc. Ultimately, the law of reciprocity will kick in and they will ask about you, your family, and your real estate career.

Why bother staying in touch with your past clients?

By staying in touch, you will stay front of mind, which will absolutely result in referrals! Now, to be successful at staying in touch, you need a good CRM/database that will allow you to task yourself, take notes, and allow you to do mass emails.

Your past clients are truly your money tree, growing in your backyard. Don’t forget to water it!

This blog was originally published on December 1, 2016 and has been updated for clarity and with the latest information.

 

Dominate Your Real Estate Business
Joshua Smith Feb 17th, 2021
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