Never Miss An Opportunity Again to Lack Of Follow Up

As a dedicated broker with a desire to grow your team and increase their production, you can’t afford to ignore the importance of follow up. Whether a lead is purchased or organic, it will require prompt, consistent, and personalized follow up if it will ever transition from a contact to a client. In fact, statistics show that for every 100 leads that an agent acquires, only 1-5 of them convert to business. If you and your team of agents are ever going to reach your goals, every lead will need to be treated like a VIP.

The Value Of A Lead

To really set the stage for how important follow up is, it helps to remember that a lead is so much more than just a lead; it is a lifetime opportunity. It is an opportunity to close multiple deals with that buyer or seller, and everyone that they refer to you. As a broker, you already understand that point because you have paid your dues and served your time as a real estate agent trying to build a business. You also know that it is far more expensive to find a fresh lead than it is to acquire deals from an existing client. For all these reasons and more, facilitating follow up by offering training, tactics and tools for your team, should be high on every broker’s priority list.

The First Follow Up Should Be the Fastest

In today’s fast paced world, it is more important than ever that a lead receives contact within 30 minutes of “raising their hand” by phone or online. It is not uncommon for qualified leads to fall through the cracks because they don’t receive the immediate and necessary attention they deserve from overwhelmed agents. In fact, a Harvard Business Review study concluded that nearly 71% of all qualified leads are never followed-up with because it can be so challenging to execute without the proper tools and systems in place. Yet, the fact remains that the faster they get a response, the more likely those leads are to become a client.

For example, Weichert, understanding these lead dynamics invests in a highly sophisticated national lead processing center which screens all calls and web queries, then transfers qualified leads to local Weichert agents across the country within minutes. With so many agents competing for leads, it is this kind of turnaround and responsiveness that really maximizes the engagement rate within a brokerage.

Keep Clients Close

The commitment to consistent follow up should not waiver after the sale–or even if a sale is not made. To extract as much value as possible from each client engagement, there should be continued communication on birthdays and anniversaries, as well as, newsletters, market updates, and other valuable content. This is one place that a Client Relationship Management tool (CRM) can really be valuable. By using a CRM to keep track of these relationships and creating a schedule to maintain that consistent, regular contact, your agents will get in front of more and more deals without having to work harder than necessary. As an example, the WeichertPRO CRM empowers agents to achieve success by nurturing their leads with automated, yet personalized emails, easy advertising of new listings, Open Houses and more. All of this having the effect of reducing the number of potential sales that slip through the cracks. Regular promotion, planning, and timely follow up are all part of the WeichertPRO CRM’s wheelhouse, making it an invaluable tool for both agents and brokers alike.

Strike a Balance Between Automation and Conversation.

The founder of Weichert, Realtors®, Jim Weichert, will tell you that selling real estate is nothing if not personal. He is famous for saying that “people buy people before they buy your product or service” and it’s that people-first philosophy that pervades everything Weichert teaches their affiliates. So by all means, use the latest technology and real estate CRM systems to stay front of mind with your clients and to follow up with regularity. But making these automations as personalized as possible, and supplementing them with actual personal contact, is the key to effective follow up, and building your business for the long haul.

A national call center and proprietary CRM are just two parts of a full suite of systems and programs available to Weichert affiliates. If you are looking for a blueprint for success that you can plug your business into, contact Weichert Real Estate Affiliates, Inc. at 877-746-2067 or go to weichertfranchise.com for more information.

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/never-miss-an-opportunity-again-to-lack-of-follow-up/