What is a real estate pipeline?

We need to understand what a real estate pipeline really is. The first part of a pipeline is knowing when your potential clients are looking to come to the market, and communicating to them on a regular and consistent basis.

Most people when you ask ‘When are you planning on coming to the market?’ will tell you in 3, 6 or 12 months, and you will generally call them at that time and they have already listed or sold their property with another agent.

It is time to start to be sceptical about what your client says and ask them what they are planning to achieve with putting the home on the market down the track. Ask them the questions:

• What’s going to be different by the time we get to that point?
• If I had to buyer today, could I mention your place or should I sell them something else?

Have real conversations with your customers, via the phone, or even better, face to face. When you are working with a customer, you need to learn how to get a deep understanding of the reason why the client is moving. Most people move because of only a few reasons:

• Birth
• Death
• Marriage
• Divorce
• Relocation
• Financial gain
• Financial loss
• Lifestyle.

When you’re working with that potential seller, you should be asking more questions around:

• What’s the reason for the move?
• When did you want to be there?
• If you could do it faster, would you do it?
• What are kind of the road blockages?

Start to identify more of the objections around what the client is actually doing.  And if you can take those objections on board, then you start to work the relationship.

Moving the client into a market appraisal meeting is where they will work out the price of their property. What most agents don’t understand is when we deliver on price; it’s a red, orange or green light for the customer. At this point, we should be asking:

• Is there is a particular price you need to get here?
• If you didn’t get that price, would you be able to move?
• What do you need me to do to help you to get to the next stages? Eg. Do you have a mortgage broker, solicitor, etc.

What I want you to do is have a look at all of your past market appraisals and all of the people that you know are thinking of selling. Get back on the phone and see – not if they’re ready to sell – but if you’re good enough to be able to get a face-to-face meeting with the client.  The more clients you can get face-to-face with; the more likely you’ll convert.