2 Things You Need to Avoid Bad Real Estate Leads

Hung-up on again…

You called another lead and before you could even get the words out of your mouth they hung up. Rude. 

Or maybe your lead didn’t even answer the phone when you called?!

Why are you continuing to spend your hard-earned money on these crap real estate leads? It feels like you’re throwing money in the trash can.

There has to be a better source out there…

I mean if Kyle, your arch-nemesis, down the hall is closing more deals than you are, surely it has to be his lead source…

If only you knew where he was getting his leads from… then there would be no stopping you. 

Look, paying for bad leads is frustrating. You work hard for your clients. But what if the problem isn’t your leads? 

At Smart Alto, we handle thousands of leads for real estate agents just like you. We’ve been in this business a long time and because we have the benefit of scale, we have learned what truly makes an online real estate lead a bad lead and how to avoid them. 

Let’s dive in, shall we?

‍What Is A Bad Lead?

We don’t define a lead as a bad lead if they don’t answer the phone. Truthfully, most people in today’s fast-paced world don’t answer their phones. 

So that begs the question… What is a bad lead? Or, what makes a lead a bad lead?

Well, you need two things:

1. A name, and
2. A way to reach them, ideally a phone number. 

Some people will put in bogus information in online forms, they will give you the wrong name, a fake email, or a fake phone number. 

If you have no way of reaching the person, that is a bad lead. 

If you have a name and a valid phone number then that lead is a good lead.

Now you may be thinking, “but, nah. I have plenty of leads that have given me a name and phone number but they’re still crap…”‍

That, my friend, is not a lead problem. That is a follow-up problem.

Just because a lead doesn’t want to do business with you right now doesnt’ make them a bad lead. You can follow up with them in the future to determine their intent to transact. 

(Remember that word, “Intent”, it’s the key to successful follow up).

‍Stop Calling Your Leads

Listen, I know you read that heading, “Stop Calling Your Leads” and think that we’re nuts. Real estate is an in-person and on the phone business. And to that we say, you’re right. 

But if you’re trying to call your new real estate leads as your first point of contact, you are wasting your time. 

As we said before, people don’t answer their phones. Especially for numbers they don’t recognize because companies like Apple and Google make it incredibly easy for users to silence unknown numbers. 

You need to text new leads. THEN once you get a response you can set up a phone call. But you should never call a new online real estate lead first. 

Think about this like a set of stairs… Each component of your marketing and follow-up is a step in a staircase. In order to step on the next step, you have to step on the step below. You can’t skip steps. 

If your online marketing is the first step, texting is the second step you have to climb before you can get to the third step which is a phone call. 

Think about it. Texting is a way more user friendly form of communicating. I will ignore someone’s call and then immediately turn around and send them a text message. 

I understand there is a perceived ease to ‘just getting someone on the phone’, but most people don’t want to get on the phone. It’s too much of a time suck. Whereas you can have a casual texting conversation with someone over the course of a day and get to the same result. 

The other key to avoiding bad leads is…

Follow-Up Enough

How many times are you trying to make contact with a lead before you label them as dead? 

Once, twice, three times? 

If your answer isn’t five or more times then you’re simply not following up enough times to truly label a lead as dead or bad.

Again, think about your own life… You have closings, showings, inspections, contracts to write, deals to negotiate, and so much more! And those are only your work obligations. 

The point is, people lead busy lives. 

They may see a text message come through from you and have the best intention to respond, but they get caught up in another task and two days go by before they remember. 

You need to consistently follow-up a minimum of five times. Data shows that over 50% of real estate leads are never follow-up with. But, if you follow-up five or more times you have an 80% or more chance of making contact with the lead. 

That’s huge! 

What if you made contact with 80% of your monthly leads? What would that do for your business? Of course not all of those leads would become clients, but some would. 

If you could improve your conversion rate from 0.25% with your bad follow-up to 4%with killer follow-up, you could 10x your take home pay. 

To Wrap It Up

When you start out in real estate and on the entrepreneur track it’s easy to point to the lead or the customer and say they are the problem. ‍

“If I had better [insert whatever it is] I know I could dominate my niche…”

But the truth is that your role is to serve your leads and your customers. If you’re having trouble with bad leads and you really want to make it as an agent then you need to be willing to examine where you could improve in the process. 

Unless you have bad information, a bad name or method of contacting the lead then the lead is an opportunity. It’s up to you to try and do something with it. 

We hope you found this idea helpful. If you’re still not sure if your follow-up is the reason for your bad leads then Take Our Quiz To Find Out Why Your Real Estate Leads Aren’t Responding To You.