Tips for Earning Buyers and Sellers Through Purposeful Follow-Up Conversations
Successful agents create opportunities to list and sell homes. They do it by hustle, by follow-up and by their expertise, but most of all they do it by talking about real estate on purpose.
From the point of view of a potential client, however, real estate may not be what they are thinking of at any given moment, so you and your team have to take the lead in these conversations. The question is, when your team is out and speaking to people in their sphere, or making follow-up calls to their pipeline of potential buyers and sellers, what is the most effective way to discuss the contact’s immediate real estate needs while keeping the conversation personal at the same time?
The answer is introducing purpose and preparedness to all of your team’s conversations with potential clients. To that end, here are four methods that your team can use to make conversations with their sphere personally impactful and effective at creating real estate service opportunities:
1. Look for life changes. Clearly, the most opportune time to be helpful to someone you are speaking with is when they mention a life change that they are either going through now or that they are looking to make. This could be a marriage, divorce, growing family, new job or retirement—anything that could impact their housing needs. Keep your radar up for this information and do not let the conversation go by without asking how you can help them with their real estate needs. You are both helping them and helping your business when you guide them on their next steps. If nothing specific comes up in passing, don’t be afraid to ask about any changes; this should be a regular part of your conversational repertoire, especially when making follow-up calls to your pipeline of leads.
2. Use notes. Not all agents are blessed with perfect recall when trying to remember where they met someone, how many kids they have or other personal details. Whether you maintain contact files in a CRM or keep paper files, do your best to immediately record personal tidbits about your contacts as you learn them. Then, just before contacting them for future follow-ups, briefly refer back to your notes. Referencing personal details and knowing their situations will solidify your relationship and raise the likelihood of them choosing you when they are ready to buy or sell. CRMs are extremely useful for this, especially if you have a mobile app version that you can reference on the fly.
3. Connect on social media. If you don’t already, get in the habit of quickly connecting with new real estate contacts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or whatever platform is appropriate for you and your potential clients. I recommend connecting with someone new as soon as possible after meeting or working with them while their memory of you is fresh. This is another resource that you can use to keep in touch with their life events and refer back to for personally important information.
4. Check Google. For those people in your pipeline that you don’t know quite as well, take a moment and use Google to search for information on them. This is not for legal or gossip purposes, by the way…this is simply to see if there is something positively noteworthy that you can refer back to the next time you speak with them. Maybe they are involved with a club you know, or a job announcement mentions that they are from your hometown. Simple information can create simple connections, so use this tool if it helps.
All of this is designed so that your team manages their conversations and pipeline of future business leads with two specific thoughts in mind: that they use personally connecting information about their leads to strengthen their relationship as their agent, and that they keep their antennae all the way up looking for opportunities to convert their leads to buyers and sellers.
Incorporate these methods into your team’s daily conversations and follow-up contacts, and they will create more buyer and seller opportunities and convert more leads into active clients!
For a FREE copy of Sherri’s exclusive GoldMine Pipeline© worksheet for tracking and converting prospects into clients, click here.
Sherri Johnson is CEO and founder of Sherri Johnson Coaching & Consulting. With 20 years of experience in real estate, Johnson offers coaching, consulting and keynotes, and is a national speaker for the Homes.com Secrets of Top Selling Agents tour and the Official Real Estate Coach for McKissock Learning and Real Estate Express. She is also an RISMedia 2020 Real Estate Newsmaker as an industry Influencer. Sign up for a free 30-minute coaching strategy session or visit www.sherrijohnson.com for more information.
