Some people don’t do well with rejection, but they’ll do well to just accept it as being rejected really is a part of life. This is especially true for young people who are forging ahead and trying to establish a career for themselves. Sometimes they’re entirely qualified, but not any more so than some of their competing peers who are also out there looking for the same opportunities. There’s only so many of them to go around, and it’s similarly true that for realtors there are only so many legitimate client leads out there too. Some realtors are going to be rejected by leads. That’s just the way it is, but if they sign up for a real estate lead generation service the odds of that happening for many of their leads decline quite considerably.
Plus it can be the case that even the most knowledgeable and well-spoken realtors have leads that go cold on them. More often than not it isn’t because they’ve come up short in making the right impression on these people, and instead it will usually be because the homeowners or those looking to buy a home have already agreed to work with another realtor. You win some and you lose some, but any ambitious realtor is going to aim to retain as many leads as possible and eventually convert them into clients who buy or sell a home through the agent.
For a real estate agent in Canada that’s what it’s all about because that’s how agents get their commissions and make a living working in real estate. There are ways of making it more likely that leads will want to stay in touch with you and will be returning your calls, and that’s what we are going to look at with this week’s blog entry here. Many realtors are choosing to get paid real estate leads nowadays, and if the no return-call trend starts to appear with the leads it is doubly problematic for the agent because of the money they’ve invested in getting their leads each month. So let’s get right to looking at what’s the best way of dealing with a lead that seems to have disregarded you as the realtor they’ll be working with.
The Right Perspective
If you’re a realtor working in one of Canada’s densely-populated metro regions like Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Calgary then the reality of the situation is always going to be that other realtors will have also be in communication with the people you have as leads. Often times they may already have someone in mind, a friend, family member, or acquaintance. They may be working with the same realtor they worked with when they bought their current home. When realtors sign up for real estate lead generation service there’s less of a chance of that being the case.
Many of the survey participants that submit online questionnaires about real estate are going to be potential 1st-time homebuyers – an excellent source on new clientele for realtors and a real opportunity to build your client base and make a name for yourself as a local realtor. Lead nurturing is a big part of whether or not you convert leads into clients, and we’ve talked about that at length here.
But what if you acquire a lead and then you don’t even get the chance to start nurturing the lead and learning more about what these folks hope to do as far as buying or selling real estate? As we talked about at the beginning here, there are going to be times when leads don’t return your calls. They tell you that they’ll call you back but then you never hear from them again. Agents will do better if they have the right perspective when this happens, and it’s not good to assume that they’re brushing you off or that it’s their kids who have been stealing real estate agent signs in the neighborhood and throwing them into the creek.
Instead what’s really often the case is that those potential clients are just extremely busy with their lives. You shouldn’t assume they’re brushing you off. Can I call you later doesn’t mean they’re not interested and what may be more accurate is that they just can’t take the call right now. How many times have you forgotten to reply to a friend’s text or return a missed call? If a lead doesn’t return a call, email, or message over multiple sendings then it may be best to assume that they’ve done one of 3 things; already sold their home or bought a new one, put those plans on hold, or they’ve made an agreement to work with a different realtor.
Scenario three there is going to be the way it goes a lot of the time as so many people are working in real estate in Canada’s big cities and there will be opposite scenarios in the future where a client chooses to work with you instead of another equally-capable realtor. Establish good relationships with other realtors in your city, as you can refer business to each other in any instance where you’re not able to accommodate a client as well as they are likely able to.
In any instance like this you shouldn’t quickly move to downgrade your lead and put less of a priority on trying to stay in touch with them. Use a good CRM for real estate agents and the best of them will have options to schedule more intermittent contact means with these people just to see if there’s any continued interest in working with a real estate agent. And sign up for a real estate lead generation service like ours where the higher inflow of new leads means it’s less of an issue if leads go cold and you can expect a new supply of them with every new month. It’s a proven-effective way to get more new clients in real estate and so many realtors in Canada see it as a good investment.
