You already know how important your database is as a resource for expanding your business. Inside your database you have lists of buyers, potential sellers, market appraisals, existing clients, past clients, key referrers, landlords and tenants. All of those lists would be far more useful if you learn to use lead scoring to target certain clients within those groups and create primary “hit lists” for working them – specifically, active buyers and potential sellers.
Most agents have a “fat database” that contains hundreds or even thousands of buyers, but most of those buyers are not active in the marketplace. With lead scoring, which is a method of evaluating and categorizing clients, you can identify which of those buyers are most likely to be buying property in the near future and place them on your buyer hit list to contact. These will be high-quality prospects who have registered to bid at a recent auction, placed a bid, have come back for a second appointment or attended open-for-inspections for several weekends in a row, and may even have requested legal documentation on a property and sent it in to a conveyancer for review – these are all indicators that they are currently active in the marketplace. The more of these indicators a prospect fulfills, the higher on your buyer hit list they should be placed.
You can also divide those prospects further into price ranges and time to buy ranges. By reviewing individual property files you can identify potential buyers who are requesting contracts, returning for second appointments, etc. and put them in your buyer hit list for concentrated phone and email contact. With lead scoring you can put your valuable time and effort into your most likely prospects instead of contacting everybody in the database.
Lead scoring also works for evaluating and quantifying potential sellers, and creating a seller hit list. Using the same relative criteria, you can focus your attention on contacting and meeting with the prospects most likely to be signing agency agreements for upcoming sales and auctions.
The point is to refine your entire database into smaller target segments of potential buyers and sellers who are most likely to complete transactions. You want to build and maintain momentum by consistently working ahead of the market by six to twelve weeks, and you also want your efforts to be targeted for your best results.
I hope you enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip. I look forward to seeing you here again next week.