A Tiered Prospecting Strategy Will Lead to Increased Sales and Income
We all love it when a family member, acquaintance or past client calls for real estate help. This is the real estate industry’s equivalent of “manna from heaven.” and it makes the work of prospecting both easy and enjoyable. But what happens when you time-block for prospecting and don’t have a specific person queued up to call? Do you have a plan to ensure that your dedicated prospecting time—which hopefully you regularly set aside on a daily or weekly basis—does not pass idly by?
A tiered prospecting strategy is an invaluable tool that you can use to always make all of your prospecting time productive. Here is how it works:
Tier One – Active Prospects: This is your “A” list, and it includes all contacts that you know are immediately considering listing or buying a home. This list includes prospects in your extended sphere as well as current leads generated or purchased through your marketing efforts. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to know that these prospects are your top priority because they all have a degree of urgency. So, whether or not they have committed to using you as their agent, these prospects are at the top of your list, and you must review them daily and stay in close communication until you earn their business.
Tier Two – Your Database and Warm Leads: Once you have addressed your Tier One prospects, move on to your other contacts that you are cultivating on both current and long-term bases. This list includes your sphere, your past clients and everyone else in your database—known or unknown—that you are staying in contact with systematically. Hopefully, you have your contacts set up with calls on a planned schedule, in which case you will simply call them as they come up in your system. If you don’t have that scheduled, simply take the number of contacts that you have (e.g., 300), divide them into a monthly number (quarterly calls = 100/month), and then call as many as necessary to get through your list (3-5 calls per day = 100/month).
Tier Three – New And/or ‘Less-Warm’ Leads: Now, let’s say that you are blocking off two hours per day for prospecting and on a given day you finish your Tier One and Tier Two calls in 45 minutes. Who do you call for the next hour and fifteen minutes? You must plan ahead by having “go-to” or “fall back” prospecting lists to stay productive. There are countless sources for these lists, with common examples including FBSOs, Expired Listings and homeowners in target neighborhoods. While these calls may not be as easy as the first two tiers, it is imperative that you and any team members have these lists available to keep your income producing activities going in the moments when many, if not most, other agents simply stop doing their prospecting altogether. In fact, some agents create exceptional success focusing solely on these categories, and I recently interviewed an agent in the Midwest that won 27 listings in four months just by prospecting expired listings. He is a great reminder of the value of “Tier Three” prospects, so include this in your plan to keep your prospecting productive no matter what.
Committing to a consistent amount of prospecting per day or per week is a must for current and long-term real estate sales success. A tiered prospecting strategy is a valuable tool in staying productive, so implement it into your activities to stay reliable, purposeful and effective in generating new business.
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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. For more information, please contact coaching@sherrijohnson.com or 844-989-2600 (toll-free) or visit www.sherrijohnson.com.