The Top 3 Best Lead Sources

In the opening of this video series, I discussed the importance of CRM. CRM stands for customer relationship management. It’s the bedrock and the start of somebody’s career. We know that it is so important that we actually provide it for free to every one of the agents who work here in our office. I did a video prior to this that goes into a lot of details on CRM, I’d encourage you to watch it.

Once you have a CRM system in place, what is the next step? This is one of my favorite steps, and I love it when new and seasoned brokers alike come on and they’re working here at the firm. What I do with all new brokers is I have a whiteboard session. That entails sitting here in the conference room and identifying every source of business that we can possibly think of, and we’re throwing each one of those up on the whiteboard.

This tends to be an hour-long session where we’re coming up with every possible idea that we can, and then we’re going to go back later and we’re going to tailor that into something where we’re hitting the high points and the ones that will get us the best return on investment.

We’ve been doing this a long time, and one of the ways that we identify the best sources is the trial and error that we’ve had over the 20+ years that we’ve been in business. These things are always changing, you have to be adapting, but there are go-tos that are just tried and true that continue to work day in and day out. So we developed the short list of ones that we know will work if they are implemented properly, and that’s where we’re really going to start identifying the sources.

I love to keep things simple, so I’ll do the top three. One is online leads, which we’ve touched on before, that’s a huge element, because really it’s a guarantee. You’re putting in for a pay-per-click type ad, and you’re getting a name, a phone number, an email back from that client. Now you need to use your sales skills to be able to develop that relationship.

Number two is direct mail. I love direct mail, it has proven very, very successful for me in my career. I learn a community, I know everything that there is to know about it, and then as I’m the expert in that community, I start to routinely send out direct mail to each one of the residents and make sure that I can engage with those folks. So, that’s a great way to get listings and buyers alike.

Third on the list, is that anybody who’s getting into a sales profession like real estate is probably a people person. They love the idea of sales, they like meeting people. You need to be able to engage away from just an online presence and engage face-to-face, and opportunities at open houses are your way to do that. So, that’s a great networking opportunity and to show somebody what you can provide as a realtor.

Once you establish your short list of proven lead sources, we want to get really creative. Again, we’re throwing this up on the whiteboard, I’m talking with the agent in the coaching session and learning more and more about that agent. The more I know about you, the more I can help develop what those sources are, and we’re going to come up with those mutually together. One of the things that I love to focus on are what are your interests? What things do you like?

You might be into mountain biking, you might be into tennis, you might be into photography, you might have clubs and hobbies that you’re involved in. How can we identify some of those things that you already love to do and turn that into a source of business for you?

You might have an area that you love. I hope you do if you’re getting into real estate, that you’ve got an area that you’re truly passionate about. Let’s also look back at your past work history. Were you an attorney? Were you a general contractor? Were you a teacher?

We really want to get into you as a person, you as a broker, and focus on what the sources might be that would be best for you, for your education, for your past history, for your past jobs, and just truly what areas you love.

Once we’ve got our sources identified, we put everything up on the whiteboard. We’ve sort of developed it down into a business plan, and from here we’re going to keep it simple. We’re going to go to source number one, and what we talked about before is online leads would be source number one, so we’re going to go ahead and tackle that. That’s a big subject though, so on my next video we’ll cover online leads in more detail.

MY is a suite of real estate businesses designed to serve our clients through all of their real estate endeavors. From first time home buyers to investors to real estate developers, we have a service group tailored to provide you with results.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download