Jacqueline Kyo Thomas
Let’s discuss how to follow up with prospective real estate agents.
Following up isn’t just nice to do: it’s absolutely essential if you want to grow your real estate business.
Your marketing may do a lot of hard work by introducing your business to prospective clients. Without that, they may never know that you exist. But after they discover you, what happens next?
The ball is in your court to ensure that they don’t forget about you. They may not be ready to buy or sell yet, but ultimately, they’ll need your help to solve their real estate problem, whether that's to sell their property for top dollar or to finally find their dream home.
Following up is one of the most important habits you can develop now to set you up for long-lasting success. As mentioned above, even if your marketing game is impressive, it won’t be enough to actually win over the prospective real estate client. You've got to follow up with your prospective client for weeks, months, and sometimes even years before you can earn their business.
But don't let that dissuade you.
Eventually, every person who you encounter will either need your services or know someone who does. If you're patient and able to nurture that relationship through a thoughtful strategy of follow ups, you'll remain at the top of their mind (and list) when it's time for them to use your services.
1. Follow Up With Everyone
Don't throw away lukewarm leads. Every lead is a potential client. Some leads need more nurturing than others.
You may worry that when a prospective client doesn’t answer your phone call, they are intentionally rejecting you. And it's hard to deal with rejection. But, to be a successful real estate agent, rejection is something you must confront and get over quickly.
And rejection isn’t always the reason. Many times, the prospective client doesn’t answer the call because they don’t hear it, or they’re busy, or they don’t recognize your phone number. Sometimes, it takes multiple calls (and voicemails) for a prospective client to be receptive to answering. Receptive can mean in the right time and place to answer your call. This is why it’s so important to vary the times that you place your call.
Remember that the more persistent you are, the more likely you'll eventually reach your prospect. Also remember that the prospective client gave you their phone number for a reason. They actually want you to follow up.
2. Ask Your Prospects How They Prefer to Communicate
Everyone has a communication preference. Give your prospective client a choice on how to stay in touch with you, whether that’s through email, text, phone calls, in-person, snail mail, social media, or some combination thereof.
3. Make Each Interaction Valuable
Bring value in each follow up interaction. You’ll do that by addressing their end goal.
During your initial contact, find out your prospective client’s real estate goal, whether it’s to buy, sell, or invest. Then, in your follow up communication, focus on that goal. This makes your emails or other forms of communication more personal and valuable to your prospective client. They should learn something new that will make them feel more confident in you and more educated and/or empowered to solve their real estate problem. They’re more likely to consider following your call to action because you’re speaking directly to them.
4. Rely on a Script (But Don't Be Scripted)
Scripts are great for guiding a conversation and ensuring that you're sharing everything you want to say. But you don’t want to sound like you’re reading from a script because that comes off as impersonal and robotic. Instead of writing a word-for-word script, create an outline that you can use to build confidence in your follow up conversations with prospective clients.
By the way, scripts can be added to your real estate customer relationship management (CRM) software. This makes it easy for you to pull up a list of talking points when it’s time to follow up.
5. Create a Follow Up Schedule
It's not enough to dedicate an hour of your day to following up with prospective clients. You must also create a follow up schedule that you’ll use to stay in contact with your prospects without annoying them.
Avoid reaching out to your clients every day at the same time of day. That’s not going to get you the results you want. They’ll either not answer or report your emails as spam.
Instead, consider implementing a seemingly random (to the prospective client) series of outreach. This way, you’ll avoid looking like a marketer. Don't call back to back every single day. Consider reaching out to prospective clients a minimum of six times, once each on day 1, day 3, day 7, day 13, day 18, and day 24.
As in the above example, space out your follow up over the course of a month. Studies show that you may need to follow up with a prospective client at least six times before they actually answer. However, most real estate agents never get to that 6th call, or even the 2nd.
Also, randomize the time of day for your outreach. Send the day 1 email in the morning, send the day 3 email in the afternoon.
6. Mix Up Your Communication
If you have permission to reach out to your prospective client on multiple channels, do it. Don’t just send messages via email. They may not check their email regularly or it may not be their preferred communication style. Instead, switch it up and improve your chances of being seen. Send via email, text, social media, and snail mail. Also, don’t be too shy to call.
7. Create Email Templates
Email templates are the secret to being more productive in your workday. Instead of writing each follow up email from scratch, create several templates and then personalize those templates when the time comes to follow up. You’ll save hours each week by inserting a name here and a fun detail there but not having to write the entire email from “hello.” You can also save these email templates in your real estate customer relationship management (CRM) software.
Be sure to include three essential things in every email template:
- An introduction - Always introduce yourself and remind the prospective client on how they may remember you (i.e. loved meeting you at my open house on 6th street).
- A value - Give them something that makes reading the email worth their time, such as a free guide to house hunting.
- A call to action - Always end the email by giving the prospective client the next desirable step (i.e. set up your appointment with me now).
8. Use Video in Your Follow Ups
Are you using video in follow up? If not, you should.
Video is everywhere these days, and there’s a good reason why: It’s easy to create. If you have a smartphone with a working camera, you have everything you need to produce a winning follow up video.
Video works in follow up because it adds a level of humanity to your interactions. Text can only get you so far. But sending a video as your follow up can shoot you to the top of the pack.
Videos can be friendly and personable. Even if the video is re-used for multiple prospective clients, each client will feel like you’re speaking directly to them.
To be effective, your follow up video should be short and to the point. Try not to go over two minutes, and keep it focused on value for the prospective client. Remember to be enthusiastic, because it’s contagious.
You can send the follow up video via email or text.
Final Thoughts
When you work in real estate, your follow up game has to be second to none. Your persistence and the familiarity that you’re able to establish that will ultimately convert a prospective real estate client into a real one. Use the above tips to create a follow up strategy that can attract more clients and successfully grow your real estate business.