Real Estate Lead Generation Is Easy – Lead Conversion Is Hard – Productivity Nugget #121

Real estate lead generation is easy.

Every day your MLS generates leads for your real estate business. The MLS tells you what listings have expired. Those are leads.

Every day, if you took a different route to and from work you would come across a FSBO. That FSBO is a lead.

Those are all leads and you didn’t have to do a damn thing to generate them.

The challenge was, as a real estate agent, from 2002-2007 or so, you didn’t really need to have a real estate lead generation strategy. Buyers and sellers were generating AND converting themselves. They were closing you. Sellers were telling you at what price they were going to list their home. Buyers were telling you at what price they were going to offer. And it worked.

For most real estate agents, this is still happening. But now it’s not working.

“In a prosperous market, there are usually many agents relying on passive lead generators, causal referrals, and luck to create business. I call the Lead Receiving. Unfortunately, real estate agents who are in the business of Lead Receiving may find themselves selling very few houses when the market shifts.” – Gary Keller, Millionaire Real Estate Agent

So, now what do you do?

Why Lead Generation Isn’t The Answer For Many

Back during that boom time, even if you were lead generation or lead receiving, you probably didn’t make as much money as you could have. I guarantee you didn’t make as much money as you could have. The reason I can guarantee that, is if you are like 98% real estate agents you don’t have a follow up, lead conversion process.

That meant you missed out on transactions, just because of your lack of follow up.

People tell you to lead generate, lead generate, lead generate all day long. But lead generation is just one step, a small step in the over all sales and business development strategy.

Your real estate lead generation strategy could involve internet marketing,  real estate blogging, print advertising, posting on craigslist, using facebook, using twitter, creating video, building a referral network, phone prospecting expireds and fsbos, staying in contact with your sphere, doing open houses, direct mail and networking. But if you don’t have a lead conversion or follow up system you are actually wasting time and money on generating those leads.

Lead Conversion Is Underrated

Doing lead generation activities without having a lead conversion plan is like exercising while you continue to smoke and eat junk food. It’s better than not exercising at all, but you are not getting the full benefits of your effort because you fail to change other unhealthy habits.

Micheal Gerber writes in E-Myth Mastery, “…without a disciplined focus on lead conversion, your company cannot achieve the objective of becoming world class.”

Let me make that more blunt. With out a real estate lead conversion strategy  in today’s market you will fail and go out of business. You will make excuses about why you failed and blame the market and the mortgage industry. You will blame government and wall street. You will speak fondly of the good all days when you made $200,000 year, when you had no systems and no strategy. You will fail and never take responsibility for your lack of having a lead conversion or follow up system. Micheal goes more in depth about lead conversion,

“The lead conversion discipline enables you to convert every possible opportunity your company will ever have into revenue, to the degree that is possible, which in turn will grow your company, which in turn will expand your company’s reach, which will in turn touch more people, which will  in turn creates more awareness, acceptance and preference for your brand, which will in turn achieve your objective, which is to become the preeminent company in your chosen market, in your chosen industry, in your chosen worlds, the ultimate realization of your vision.”

So do you have a lead generation or a lead conversion problem?

Do you have enough leads that if converted you would reach your goals? The answer to that question will tell you what your problem is.

Oh by the way, failing to sell a listing is a conversion issue also.

In Productivity Junkies Coaching I work with you on your real estate lead generation and lead conversion.

We create systems and action plans for you to stay connected and systematically follow up.