What lead generation looks like inside a real estate agency
Lead generation is one of the biggest issues for any business. I’ve said this before that leaders who also know how to drive revenue have a unique skillset. This was certainly the case when I took over Nitschke. I was a leading salesperson with a deep understanding of what drives deals.
If you want to learn more about sales systems, book a free 15-minute strategy call.
Back to lead gen. It’s a multi-step process, starting with a core philosophy.
Relationships first
Our goal is to have a relationship with as many owners of real estate in our core area – which is a defined geographical area in the Adelaide Hills. Our goal isn’t to go straight to the sell. Our entire focus is to start and nurture relationships where owners consent to hear from us and actually want to get to know us in the community.
The size of this area serves as a way to calculate our KPIs. We measure the size of our ownership database as a key number. Our whole focus is to start relationships.
Nurturing second
Once an owner enters our CRM, they go into what we call Nitschke Nurture – our structured contact strategy.
Here are a few touchpoint examples:
- Anniversary call every year, on the date they purchased the home
- Prospecting letter once a year, to get their home appraised
- Two digital market updates yearly, to share key information about surrounding sales, market stats, and local news. This is sent via text.
- Weekly email newsletter, with local insights, news and happenings, across real estate and lifestyle.
We’re realistic about our numbers. At any given time, only 10% of our total ownership database is going to be in ‘real estate mode’ at any given time. So, it’s important to communicate consistently to stay top of mind today. Focus on the relationship, not the sale. Frequency of contact over a long period of time builds trust, so when they do have a real estate need, they’ll feel comfortable reaching out.
I tell my team: Be persistent, but don’t be a pest.
Get out of real estate brain for a second and be a human. Think about what’s going to matter to them. The same goes for listing presentations. I wrote about that here.
Tooling third
With a shared philosophy and strong systems, we can then lean on tech to help us retarget and reactive leads. This includes social media marketing ads that retarget our database audience, showcasing sold stories and market content so they can see we’re getting good outcomes for others.
As a sales team, we aim for 17 new ownership data records each week. We track it weekly in our scorecard system (using EOS), like we do for other workflows in the business. Our digital marketing efforts should also contribute to that 17 per week, so we audit that closely too.
These 17 records drive the outcomes we want downstream. In summary, the funnel looks like this:
- Database growth: 17 new records per week
- Nurture/relationship building: Nitschke Nurture flows
- Appraisal lead: Regular equity checks or they’re making a move
- Appraisal-to-listing conversion: The end goal.
As a business owner, it’s my job to monitor the lead sources generating those outcomes. Owning this funnel, from database growth through to conversion, is a big part of my role as Visionary/Managing Director at Nitschke.
Book a free 15-minute strategy call if you want help building out your own lead gen system.