If you are a real estate agent, it is essential for you to continuously find clients in order to build your business and thrive. Leads are prospective clients who may be interested in selling their property, and they may need a real estate agent to help them with the sale in the future.
With the power of the Internet today, there are countless ways for you to generate and gather leads. One way to gather leads as an agent to is to gather them for yourself. This can require a fair amount of hustle and relying on strategies to connect with people who are thinking about selling their property.
Another popular way is to buy real estate leads from a source. When you buy leads, you purchase a list of people who are likely going to be selling and need and agent.
There are both benefits and drawbacks to both strategies, and it can help to understand both in order for you to determine the best way for you to grow, run, and maintain your business. Read on to understand more about the difference between buying real estate leads and finding them on your own, and which route can benefit you more.
What does it mean to buy real estate leads?
If you are an agent looking for leads, one possible option for you is to purchase a list of leads from a resource that has compiled or collected them. There are many, many sources available that has compiled lists of qualified or verified leads, which agents can then connect with and offer to represent.
When you buy real estate leads, you are purchasing a list of prospective clients that have in some way indicated that they are likely going to need to sell. This list can have a wide range of clients that are in a variety of situations. Some of these can include:
- Owners who are divorcing
- Owners in pre-forecluse
- Property owners who have announced relocation
- Homeowners who are about to become empty nesters
- Homeowners who just had a child
- Homeowners who just got married
- Probate leads (people who just inherited property that are like to turn that property around via a a sale)
- People who have applied for or looked into home loans
- People who have clicked on Pay-per-Click ads regarding selling property
- Internet users who have searched for the value of their home or property
- People who search for home listing on search engines (and are then targeted with PPC advertising campaigns
- Homeowners or commercial property owners that have responded to surveys about selling their home or property
- Homeowners of a certain age, who are likely to have equity or are in positions to sell or invest
- And more.
You can choose the type of qualified lead that makes the most sense for your market and your business, then purchase from a source that provides that types of lead list.
The Benefits of Buying Real Estate Leads
There are many benefits to buying real estate leads in order to find potential customers. Some of the best benefits include the following.
Save Yourself Time and Energy
Being a real estate agent is hard work. You have to constantly work for your clients and work to gain new clients. You can reduce some of your workload and save yourself time by buying qualified leads. Instead of having to work to build your customer base, you can be handed a list of potential clients that you know are in some way interested in selling. That way you can devote your time and energy to working hard for your clients and making them happy with your service, and not to hustling to drum up people who may or may not want to work with you to sell.
Make Contact First
When you buy a list of leads, it is likely that you are going to be the first agent to make contact with them. This is especially true if you are purchasing a list of leads that has simply expressed some interest in selling their home, but hasn’t necessarily made any decision about doing it. When you are the first agent to reach out to a potential seller, you are likely to nab them as a client, since you have made the process easy and convenient for them, and you have displayed your enthusiasm and eagerness to work with them.
Long List of Clients
When you generate your own leads, you constantly have to work to keep feeing up your list of potential clients. When you purchase a list, you have a long steady stream of people to check in with about possibly represeting them during a sale.
Get Established and Build Your Reputation
When you buy a list of leads, you may be able to make sales quickly, since you’ll likely be working with people ready and motivated to sell. When you make these customers happy, you can help generate a great reputation and positive word-of-mouth marketing for yourself, which will help you naturally grow your business. This can be especially helpful if you are new to an area or a market and need help getting established.
What Does it Mean to Find Your Own Real Estate Leads?
If you choose not to buy a list of real estate leads from any resource, it is up to you as an agent to compile your own list of potential sellers. This can take some hustling on your part, but there are a wide variety of methods for finding good clients. Here are some of the most popular ways that seller agents find their own leads.
- Referrals: Referrals can be a great source of leads. Ask happy and satisfied customers and clients to recommend you to other sellers.
- Partnerships: Partner with relevant organizations or businesses in your area to help bring you people that are looking to sell property. Some business that make sense are cleaning services, home staging companies, moving companies, and more. When people inquire with a relevant company about moving or selling their home, you can have them recommend you as a seller’s agent. In exchange you can also recommend these businesses to your clients.
- Building strong relationships: Keep up relationships with old customers. Send regular holiday cards or check-in emails. By keeping strong ties with people you work with, they may become repeat customers down the line or refer you on when people they know need a seller’s agent.
- Advertisements: Place ads for your services or business with local newspapers, radio stations, television stations, and more. Consider advertising in other relevant publications like local real estate listings or magazines. Also, social media is a powerful and popular place to market today. So don’t overlook the power of social media ads
- Social media channels: Social media in general is an effective technique for establishing your business, thanks to the popularity of social channels today. Create your own social media pages and post relevant, interesting content. You should have a Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter (and more, if you’d like). If you use relevant hashtags, you can bring in the business of people who were looking on social media for an agent like you.
- Place sold signs on properties you sold: When you successfully sell a property for a client, make sure to put a sold sign on that property, in addition to your name and contact. People thinking about selling will see that you’ve been sucessful there and consider getting in contact with you.
- Nurture, nurture, nurture: Don’t give up on old leads. Even if a person didn’t get in back in touch with you about selling or dropped out of contact, it can’t help to keep in touch with anyone who once indicated that they may need your help with a sale. Gently and politely nurture your leads by checking in with them and providing them with helpful, relevant information. This can keep you at the forefront of their mind in case they change their mind again and decide that they do want to sell their property.
- Get in touch with people with properties that are currently “For Sale By Owner”: Some people choose to go their own route of representing and selling their own property. This can be a tough route, and many people, if they don’t succeed, will turn to a seller’s agent to help. Get in touch with FSBO property owners with your contact information, and let them know that you are there to assist them should they need it. They’ll know that they can turn to you if they decide they need some support or guidacne in the sales process.
- Search for foreclosures and vacant properties yourself: Pay attention around town and in the newspaper for foreclosed and vacant properties. Get in touch with the owners yourself. You can nab the client by offering to help them sellf the property and get into a better financial situation. They will appreciate the initiative you took and the help you are offering to handle a challenging situation.
- Have a great website: Build a website as a seller’s agent and optimize it for search. Make sure you’ve used the right keywors so you come up high in Google search results. That way, people can find you and your services when they are looking for an agent like you to help them
The Benefits of Finding Your Own Real Estate Leads
As you can see above, there are many, many routes to finding your own real estate leads. Going this route has benefits including the following.
It can be cheaper.
Some methods of finding your own real estate leads is free. It can be expensive to buy leads. So, if you are looking for cost effective lead generation, this can be a good option.
Connecting with the community.
Real estate is all about who you know in your market. By doing the work to generate your own leads and get yourself and your name out there, you can get to know more people and establish yourself as a more well-known name in your area.
Be sure your leads are interested.
Buying qualified leads is a smart way to connect with interested sellers. But not everyone on your lead list is actually interested in selling. If you do the work yourself, you can have a good gauge of where potential customers are and whether they’re actaully worth investing time and energy into nurturing.
At the end of the day, there are benefits to finding your own real estate leads—but it takes a ton of work. If you don’t have extra energy or time to expend, solely focusing on your own lead generation can be risky and lead to burn out (or a lack of clients and income).
Buying or Finding Leads: Building the Business that’s Right For You
As an agent, it’s important to regularly take steps to bring leads into your business. Take some time to learn what it means to buy leads, and what it means to find your own leads. Then, consider the nature of your business, the time you have to spend, and which avenue makes the most sense for you as an agnet. Once you’ve determined which method will help bring your more potential clients, devote your time to pursuing that avenue. When you bring in more potential clients to your business, you can help more and more people sell their residential or commercial property. Not only will you help more people reach their real estate goals, you’ll also develop a reputation for being a reliable and effective agent. This is another way to help build your busines via word-of-mouth, and to become an even more trusted, relied upon agent if your market.
If you want to rely on a tool that can provide you with qualified leads to help your business grow, check out ProspectNow. ProspectNow is a tool that connects residential real estate agents with people who are likely to be selling their homes. It also has a database of commercial leads, so that commercial agents can build their base of potential sellers. This database also helps other people who have a hand in the commercial sales process, including commercial mortgage lenders, building management service companies, real estate investors, tax professionals, insurance agents, and roofing companies (and more).