Mentor Mondays – Prioritizing Your Leads

So in today’s episode I want to talk about how to organize your client base from the standpoint of buyers and sellers, and what their intentions are moving forward in the real estate buying and selling process.

Now what do I mean by that? How many of you right now have a list of names, a list of phone numbers, list of email addresses or whatever, and they’re just names, phone numbers, emails, and addresses, and you don’t really have them organized in a way based on their intentions. Raise your hand if that is you. And you kind of feel a little bit overwhelmed with regards to how to market to the different types of people that you’re working with. I’ve got a very simple (and maybe many of you have already seen something like this, maybe some of you haven’t , this will be your first time), but I’ve got a very simple way for you to organize that prospect list, if you will, in a way that will get you to gear your marketing to them more effectively. So here’s what I’m going to show you. First, I want you to look at your A+ list of clients, your A+ list of buyers and sellers who are looking to buy or sell within 0-30 days. That’s your A+ list, that’s the list that you really want to hone in on, really want to focus on, making contact with them on a weekly basis, maybe even more, depending on your relationship and your communication with them. But you’re looking at a 0-30 day time limit, I’m sorry, time line based on the prospects that you’ve spoken to, based on your consultation with them, whether it’s a seller or a buyer. 0-30 days. That’s your A+ list. I want you to take those names and I want you to put them on an A+ list, I want you to categorize them.

Your A buyers are going to be anybody that’s going to be, sorry, 0-90 days out. So your A buyers are anyone on that list that say they’re going to want to buy or sell within the next 90 days or 3 months. I want you to categorize that list of names, because you’re going to be focusing on them a little differently from a marketing standpoint.

Your B client list is going to be 90-180 days. Write days on here for you. And you’re going to have your list of clients or prospects in your B category. Again, these are people who are buyers or sellers looking to buy within 90-180 days.

And then, of course, your C list is 180 days out, or 6 months, and, of course, you’re going to have your list. So you’ve taken this larger list of names, and you’re going to break them down based on your conversations with them, and their intentions on buying or selling, and I want you to use these guys. Now if you want to tweak it a little bit, you can. I know that some agents use the A list, 0-60, the B list is 60-90, or 60-100. You can modify it any way you want. This is just personally my opinion. My A+ buyers are going to be people that are looking now, 0-30 days, to get them under contract on a listing or buy. And then my A list clients are going to be 0-90, 90-180 B list, and then my C list.

Now the reason I want to categorize these individuals this way is because my marketing to them is going to be different over the course of this period of time. My A list clients are going to get hit by me a lot more frequently. There’s going to be more phone call frequency. There’s going to be maybe more email notifications. I’m going to be actively looking at properties that are active on the market today, versus a client that tells me they’re looking six months out. Well, inventory today is not going to be around in six months. So looking, if I have a client that says yeah, I’m looking to buy in six months, or I’m looking to list in six months, what do you think we should do now? I’m not even going to be looking at properties. I’m not even going to have a consultation with them with regard to selling in today’s market, six months projections. So you get the idea. So my marketing to these individuals is going to be significantly different from that standpoint.

My A+ buyers, more frequency. My 0-90, more frequency than my 90 and 180 days. I may hit these individuals four times a month, maybe three times a month, whatever you can do, whatever your budget looks like in terms of your marketing, and so on and so forth. Ok? So I want you to take this big list that you have, cuz everybody’s got a prospect list out there, and I want you to get more organized with that list. I want you to break it into categories so that your focus and attention is going to be on the now buyers or sellers, and then that three month window buyer or seller. Now think about this. We’re going into September in only a couple of more weeks. Anything you do with an A list client now, and getting them into escrow say October and November is probably going to be income for you starting in 2014. A lot of agents make this mistake. They start to think about, or they forget that there’s escrow time period, 30, 45 days, maybe quicker if it’s a cash buyer. So business that you’re looking at today is going to close end of year fourth quarter, and if you get into business, say, in October, November, you get things into escrow, you might squeak one in December, but a lot of that’s going to be your 2014, catapult you into 2014, as far as your income levels. So, just keep that in mind when you’re looking at these particular, at this particular list and how you’re categorizing them, because a lot of your marketing’s going to be based on their intent on when they’re going to buy or sell.

Ok. I hope you found this tip helpful, and remember, it’s your business, and what you do with it is totally up to you. Until next time.