It is infuriating that sales leads slip through your fingers. Even more so if it happens as you approach the estimate (and the signing of the warrant that logically should have ensued). It’s all wasted energy, effort and resources. It's also, of course, a little disheartening.
In short, no one wants to lose real estate leads on the road.
But how do you prevent this? There is no silver bullet to keeping your salespeople on the right track and pushing them all to the end of the tunnel. What you can do is inspect your sales journey and identify what is hindering the acquisition of "good" sales leads, then their progression to the conversion stage, and thus correct these negative points that cause you to lose valuable qualified real estate prospects.
To do this, start by realizing the mistakes you may be making. Here are seven!
Mistake # 1: not having created personas to properly define your real estate prospects
If you don't know who to talk to, you might not be talking to anyone! It’s a marketing classic whose importance I cannot deny.
Before even launching marketing actions, you must identify your target real estate prospects and define a complete standard profile. This profile is that of the "ideal client", the one you hope to encourage to sign a mandate. In this article, we're looking at sales leads - but targeting sales owners isn't enough to make good personas!
A persona must resemble an actual character, having everything a real one: an identity, an age group, a profession, hobbies, consumption habits, etc. Of course, by adapting these characteristics to your field of activity. For example, your ideal salesperson will be called Michel, will be 40 years old, own a townhouse, and will be unique in searching for information on social media.
This fictional character allows you to adapt your offer to concrete needs, depending on the issues and obstacles that you will have determined in advance. And direct your marketing actions towards "good" real estate prospects, those who are likely to want to subscribe to your service offer.
Mistake # 2: not targeting your sales leads carefully
The target differs from the persona: the latter is a fictional character that allows you to refine your offer and make it more relevant, while the former gives you an idea of the audience you are going to reach - for the sake of customization.
You should know that mass communication is no longer valid. Or rather, it is no longer accepted by consumers - although many companies still use it. People expect brands to speak to them personally that is, to tailor their communication to their prospects, to make their messages more relevant.
If you have ever received promotional messages that do not in the slightest correspond to your needs (for example: for a new generation pair of skis when you hate snow and winter sports), you understand how much this form of communication can be annoying.
If this is what you are doing as part of your marketing, this is probably one reason you are losing real estate leads!
It is therefore essential to clearly define your targets, with maximum precision:
- Primary target (for example: sellers);
- Secondary target (for example: house sellers);
- Niche target (for example: sellers of houses who wish to buy other housing better suited to their additional needs).
It also means considering the right communication channels, in order to interact with your real estate prospects on the media they use: search engines, social networks, emailing, flyers, local magazines, etc.
Mistake n ° 3: not responding to your prospects' issues
Knowing your real estate prospects, communicating with them through targeted and personalized actions, all this only makes sense if your offer can respond to their problems. Or, to put it another way: to remove obstacles they encountered in the past, that they continue to encounter in the present, or that they may find in front of them when they finally set out.
Indeed, there is only an offer to meet a need. However, not only is it a matter of targeting real estate sellers who actually have a plan to sell, or who could have one in the long term, but it is just as important to suggest to them that your offer is likely to respond precisely to their needs. Needs. Otherwise, your messages will remain promotional communications like any other, with no impact.
This supposes having fulfilled several prerequisites:
- Know your real estate prospects and their decision-making process;
- Have identified their issues (sales context, motivations), the obstacles they encounter, and the solutions they are looking for;
- Have defined your service offer upstream (see this article on this subject);
- Ensure that your offer responds point by point to the problems of your prospects and that it removes their obstacles.
If you come up with an offer whose products or services specifically address one or more issues, with good timing, you have every chance of keeping your real estate prospects close to you. Otherwise, you will have all the trouble in the world attracting them to your store, and it will be in vain since they will not care about what you offer.
Mistake # 4: not tracking the progress of your real estate sellers
The decision-making process for a prospect is more or less long, depending on the area concerned. In real estate, it is always long, potentially very long.
It is rare that a salesperson falls into your pocket without you having implemented dedicated acquisition actions, because there is no such thing as chance in this business. If an owner pushes the door of your agency, it has encouraged them to do so if only by relying on your brand's reputation in the industry - and that too is the culmination of extensive work.
All this to say that a prospect, even qualified, even forced to sell as soon as possible, is never won. Never. You can lose it.
Hence the importance of setting up rigorous monitoring of your real estate prospects, so as not to let them go throughout their customer journey, and until I decided. Once they have taken stock of your territory, you must walk them step by step towards the last stage - the signing of the warrant.
This requires keeping in touch, therefore having the means to communicate with them. In particular, you need an email address per prospect, in order to launch a sequence of messages adapted to their progress, and to give them, mail after mail, the desire to go further.
In a sequence of emails, we put ourselves in the shoes of the sales prospect; we share an experience; we provide solutions. In short, we show we are the most qualified brand to take charge of our sales project - because we know how to do it, and because we prove it is the case.
This follow-up ensures you lose as few real estate prospects as possible on the way. And to close the process.
Mistake # 5: not making an empty promise
At the base of every offer (of service or sale), there is a promise.
The promise is the horizon of your offer, the one that your real estate prospects hope to reach. This is what you can do for them.
Without a promise, there is no genuine commitment on your part. It's less responsibility, obviously; But an offer without a promise is also less attractive to prospects who wonder why they would trust your brand rather than another, since you are not committing to anything.
A promise plans a benefit for the prospect, while highlighting the constraint to which this benefit responds. For example, for a robot vacuum cleaner: "A clean house without getting tired" (cleanliness as a benefit, without the strain of fatigue generated by a traditional vacuuming session).
But making a promise isn't the hard part. Because then you show you can hold it. This implies planning it correctly at the base.
Anyone can promise something. For example, that you are going to help your landlord sell without the buyer negotiating the price. I will not penalize you for a false promise if there is indeed a negotiation and a drop in the price. You will not have to repay the underpayment. But your brand image will suffer.
The hardest part is to come up with the levers that will allow you to keep this promise ... and to plan it in such a way that you do not turn it into a casus belli! In short, only promise reasonable things.
Mistake # 6: focusing on closing the sales process
Here is a classic mistake, more global, which consists in believing that the signing of the mandate is the essential thing and that we must focus on it.
Of course, the mandate is important: it is the goal you seek to achieve. But you understand this aim is only yours, and that your real estate prospects do not care how many mandates you complete in the month. What they want is for your offer to allow them to carry out their project under their own terms. And this they will realize from the first moments of your relationship.
What you might forget, and the reason you lose salespeople (well) before the signing stage, is that starting the process is just as critical as ending it. In order to successfully lead sales leads, you foremost ensure that they are qualified leads and that they are likely to use your services. This implies knowing them well in order to target them better, and supporting them throughout the process (see the previous errors).
Which also means attracting the right traffic to your real estate website. Because a good part of this customer journey will take place there, online, on your real estate agency, agent network or developer site.
Identify the beginning of your ideal client's journey: this is where you need to inject some of your resources to capture their attention from the start of their project.
To avoid all these mistakes, and try to keep as many of your real estate prospects as possible, there is an effective method: setting up a sales funnel.
This tunnel allows you to bring in your real estate prospects at point A, to accompany them throughout their journey without letting them go (and by concealing as much as possible the exit routes from them), and to push them until conversion. (point B) through a form.
And you, what are your methods so as not to lose your future customers?