Maximizing Your Sales Funnel

In real estate, it’s imperative to build a healthy sales process that delivers consistent opportunities. 

This real estate sales process, or funnel, is just four steps - generate buyer and seller leads, convert those leads into clients, get your clients under contract, then close the transaction. 

While the four step process looks deceptively simple, there is plenty of complexity within. For best results, agents should be deliberate and proactive when it comes to building and running their sales process. The key is to make each step of the process as strong as possible, and be effective at linking from step to step. 

Lead Generation

Lead generation is finding and connecting with people that are planning to buy or sell real estate sometime in the near future, and getting their contact information so you can follow up and follow through with them to earn their business. 

This could be at an open house, connecting with a referral, online lead inquiry, etc. The goal is to get in front of people at a high clip and consistently convert those meeting opportunities into connections and further relationships. Essentially, this is your Golden Moment in Real Estate. 

Everything starts here. No leads, no clients. No clients, no career. To get the volume of leads needed to generate the earnings and make the numbers work for your business, you will likely need two or three lead generation systems working in concert - for example, working your sphere while also doing open houses on weekends, and rolling in some internet leads for additional swings at bat. 

Ultimately, the kiss of death for many an agent is working B and C grade leads like they’re A leads - wasting their time with less viable opportunities that then rob time from finding better quality leads. 

If you’re not getting enough people to talk to, or enough quality leads overall, this is an indicator that your lead gen systems aren’t strong enough yet and you need to improve your processes here. 

Lead Conversion

After getting leads, the next step is following up and following through with your contacts to add value, stay top of mind, and position yourself to be their agent of choice when the time comes for their transaction. 

While generating leads is the critical first step in your real estate sales process, many buyers and sellers are weeks or sometimes months out from pulling the trigger on their transaction. If you don’t have a process to effectively work buyers or sellers over time to earn their business, it will be difficult to get the conversions and generate the volume of business needed for your annual earnings goals.

The go-to recipe here would be to use a CRM (Contact Relationship Management tool… essentially a database to keep track of your prospects) to keep track of your touch points and notes, while also applying automated marketing to stay in front of them and further add value. At the same time, if you’re not a CRM user, at least have a methodical process to keep track of your leads and contacts. 

If you have enough people to talk to, but you’re losing touch and not turning them into further relationships, then it’s not so much a matter of generating leads that’s the issue, but rather converting those contacts into clients. For many agents, once they have cracked the code to getting leads, this is the next stage to master in order to build a healthy, successful business.  

Client Service

Client service typically implies you have successfully converted a lead into someone that is willing to work with you as their agent of choice for their next transaction, and you most likely have a buyer representation or listing representation agreement in place to indicate client status.

At this stage you are showing homes, writing offers and working to get your buyers under contract; or getting a listing up on the market, handling showings and incoming offers, and ultimately working to get the listing under contract. 

While finding and converting leads are some of the most challenging aspects of building your real estate business that you’ll encounter, there is still plenty of complexity at this stage.

As an agent you should be solid at these steps because (a) that’s what the client deserves and (b) because you have invested the time and effort in your skills and career. Ultimately, as difficult and challenging lead gen and lead conversion are, and as precious as every opportunity in real estate is, you’ll want to make sure you’re not shooting yourself in the foot and so easily squandering any viable opportunities unnecessarily due to lack of preparation or proper effort. 

Contract-to-Close

Now that you have your client under contact, the contract-to-close portion primarily deals with the escrow portion of the transaction and the steps that take the transaction from inception through closing. 

While client servicing is a relatively straightforward process (albeit with plenty of complexity and opportunities to win or lose the business along the way), the contract-to-close portion of your real estate sales process is even more straightforward yet. Of course there are lots of ways deals can fall (and about 20% do), and the goal is to control what you can control and professionally manage the process and relationships to successful ends. 

Takeaways

In short, lead generation and lead conversion are setting up the opportunities, and client service and contract-to-close are knocking them down. It’s like an input-output equation and mastering each stage and the linking from stage to stage is critical. Being able to visualize your sales process is a start to mastery, and the hard work and effort you pour in over time is how you eke out the results from that funnel.