The largest mistake I see in lead conversion is the lack of phone call follow up to Internet leads. Most of the Agents and Brokers I train have very little understanding of what to do with an Internet lead. The most common response I see is an email saying, “Thank you for using my site, if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.” That’s pretty much their entire lead conversion program. Most Agents are afraid to pick up the phone and are losing out on thousands and thousands of dollars in commissions. It’s not rocket science!
I’ve never really understood the fear in making calls. What is the worst case scenario that can happen? Someone might tell you they are not interested. Someone else might hang up the phone on you. Does it really matter? For those who follow my lead conversion systems, each call is a warm call. After all, they registered on your site and gave you a good phone number. That’s usually a good indication that they would like a call. Still, most agents will not call their leads. The problem is, if you are not calling, then another Agent most likely is calling. Look at it this way. If you just send listings and never talk to the customer, how do you expect to build a relationship. Most Agents think of a lead buying months from now as very far away and having no value. True lead conversion people like myself look at a lead buying in a year and realize this will give us a great 12 month opportunity to build a relationship. That must be the mindset in building your Internet program and phone call follow up program.
Your phone call follow up should be designed around the buyers buying time frame. For instance, we call our leads, after the initial call, after the first week and then once every two months until they get to 6 months. Then they go into our 6 month call back of once every 6 weeks until 3 months. Then they go into our 3 months and so on. It’s a system. The better your call back system goes, the more sales you get!
Now start calling your leads!!!
Mitch, I loved the first sentence of the post. As a matter of fact, I’ve also found this. Just because a lead does not return to your website more than once does not mean that they are not serious. In fact, 2 of my most recent accepted offers have been because I called the leads that only came back to my site once. Consumers only remember your website for 12 hours. It’
s up to you to keep them informed and build the relationship that you talked about.
July 13th, 2011 at 2:39 pm
Get Blog. It’s always good to have somebody bring you back to the basics.
July 15th, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Nice post on Phone Call Follow Up, thanks
August 2nd, 2011 at 12:28 am
You should call back everyone and put together a basic script to follow for each particular time frame the potential buyer may be in. Phone sales is nothing more than practice. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. If you don’t do it — and get good at it — as Mitch says, you’re costing yourself a lot of money.
September 15th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Absolutely on point. My website generates numerous leads and the timely call back and follow up email campaign are critical to success here. People are into immediate gratification and generally the first phone call wins if the person is professional and presents the right information.
May 11th, 2012 at 8:31 am