5 Ways You Can Save Time and Close More Deals Using Automated Follow Up

Lead generation is the bread and butter of real estate agents. Whether you focus on the buying side or the selling side, you need leads to close deals. While most real estate agents are good, even great, at lead generation, there’s an area where most fall short. This is follow up. You see if you generate a ton of leads but never follow up to see whether any of them are warm, you’ll never close any deals.

On the flip side, if you bombard all your leads with endless follow up messages, they will likely label you spam. The middle ground is the hallowed ground for closing deals. You can achieve this is through automated follow up, a deliberately designed system that leads each lead down their own unique conversion path. To help you get started, here are 5 things to look out for.

Be Automated

Let’s assume you already have a follow up workflow. Which steps can you automate? When you capture leads on your website, can you automate how those leads get processed? Can you connect a CRM, so all leads get automatically added to your leads list? Once the leads are in your CRM, can you create an automated welcome email to be sent to all new leads? Ask this sort of questions every step of the conversion process so you reduce manual follow up to a minimum.

Be Targeted

Ever seen follow up that goes something like, “If you are buying a home…, but if you are selling a home…?” The real estate agent seems like they are not sure what the customer wants. Through automated filtering, you can know whether your lead is a prospective buyer or seller. This way you can tailor your follow up to their specific needs. Filtering can also include neighborhoods the customer is interested in, types of houses they are in the market for, etc. The more targeted your follow up, the higher your chances of closing more deals.

Be Connected

Lead generation is a 24/7/365 affair. You are generating leads at work, on the golf course, at the spa, even in church. As such, your follow up system needs to be connected. Whether a lead comes through your website, phone messages, Facebook page or any other channel, they all need to end up in the same database. This will help you stay on top of all your leads and follow up with each of them in the same way. Having leads on your phone, notebook, laptop, and ten other places will only make it harder to effectively follow up each of them.

Be Flexible

Flexibility is all about adapting your automated follow up system to the changing times. For instance, if you switch your focus from town houses to condos, you need to modify your system to accommodate this. If your email system is geared towards home buyers alone, consider modifying this to accommodate any sellers who may fall into your funnel. Also keep an eye on market trends. If you see people are responding more to social media marketing, bake this into your automated follow up system.

Be Personable

Lastly, automation does not mean you become a robot. People buy homes from other people. As you build out your automated follow up system, let your personality shine through. Include a short video in your welcome email, share light moments with your leads, make someone’s day. After all, automation is only supposed to augment your efforts, not replace them altogether. Keep your personality shining and let your leads know you are a real person they can connect with.

Hopefully with these few pointers you will be ready to automate your follow up. Do keep in mind, however, that you can never fully automate your follow up efforts, and that’s okay. Keeping some parts manual such as calling up leads will still work towards saving you time and closing more deals when combined with automated follow up.