Growing and Maintaining Your Pipeline: 6 Do’s and Don’ts

Real estate is a dynamic market and while working in the industry takes unwavering determination, it also offers great earning potential, flexibility and freedom. To be successful, you must utilize your time wisely to equally focus on the important aspects of your business like prospecting, converting leads, delighting clients, and processing referrals. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to succeeding in maintaining and growing your pipeline in real estate, we've put together six do's and don'ts to guide you.

DO respond to leads quickly

In today's digital world, real estate professionals can expect to receive leads from a multitude of sources. With the increase of online leads, potential clients can fall through the cracks and you could be leaving money on the table! In order to effectively convert incoming leads, you must respond to them quickly. Within five minutes or less to be exact, because if you aren't someone else is! Fortunately we have a few simple tips to assist you in improving your response time and lead conversion.

DON'T reach out to leads with nothing to offer

While you may already be a pro at responding to leads in a timely manner, you need to make sure you actually have something unique to offer to set you apart from the competition. Not having something of value to offer could lead them to seek assistance from another real estate professional. Mike Barbanica, of RE/MAX Blue Line, says aside from persistence you want to prove your value up front. This could be as simple as opening the conversation with:

"Hello, my name is (your name) with (your company name). I received a message to give you a call through our website and wanted to make sure I got back to you. You had asked about 123 Main Street. I pulled that property up in the system and found some information. Did you have any specific questions about it?"

DO block time for lead generation

What's business without sales? No matter how hard you try, without new sales a business will never sustain growth. In order to effectively grow your business, you must continually generate and nurture leads. As a real estate professional, it is imperative to dedicate time to lead generating activities, whether that's making calls to a purchased list, following up with online leads or emailing previous clients for possible referrals.

DON'T forget to keep track of your efforts

There's nothing more embarrassing than following up with a potential client and probing them for the same information as the first time you made contact. In order to find true success, you must implement a system that allows you to follow up on a consistent basis with information that is valuable to the consumer. Top Producer® CRM is designed specifically to help you organize information about your incoming leads, follow-up with those leads and guide them to closing, and maximize repeat and referral business to turn more consumers into lifelong clients.

DO ask about communication preferences

It's imperative to consider the communication preferences of your leads and clients. Whether via phone, text, email or social media, understanding your client's preferences from the beginning, and abiding by them, will help strengthen the relationship and prove that you respect their time.

DON'T be too pushy with your communication

Your buyer and seller clients are human beings with emotions and boundaries! When they sense you are being too pushy, they'll feel pressured and quickly become agitated. It's important to never push the pace. Instead, develop a follow-up strategy to provide relevant information for where they are in the buying or selling journey. Alternatively, if they are further in the process, you can offer listing alerts with helpful information regarding their locations of interest.

Dedicating time to maintaining a healthy pipeline is crucial in real estate success. Download the infographic below to share these six tips to help you grow your business:

This article originally appeared in ListHub's newsletter.