How Technology is Revolutionizing Lead Management in Real Estate
The rate at which technology has evolved has allowed leaps in every form of business, real estate included. This has brought about new ways of approaching the different parts of the sales funnel for real estate agents, and new ways to optimize each section.
If real estate agents do not utilize the new techniques, they will most likely fall behind the competition considering how fast-paced real estate already was. Technology has just created more opportunities to be efficient.
This article will delve into the different ways technology has revolutionized lead management in the real estate industry, creating many more opportunities for real estate agents.
What is Lead Management?
Leads are any conversions from the various types of marketing that a real estate agent or their business has done. Lead management deals with identifying the different types of leads that come into the business, categorizing them, and understanding which to approach first.
For example, there are different kinds of leads and each of them requires different amounts of time and nurturing in order to become clients.
Types of Leads
- Hot Leads: These are leads that are ready to jump into a real estate deal once they come in. They have thought about what they want, and if communicated well by the agent, will be ready to engage.
- Warm Leads: These leads include people who have given it some thought and have a vague idea of what their real estate needs are. However, they require some coaxing and trust from real estate agents in order to fully invest in a deal.
- Cold Leads: These are leads that are just browsing and very unsure about what they want to do moving forward. A real estate agent’s best option would be to send them material that can inform them better about their problems and help them come to a decision. However, this will take some time.
Managing Real Estate Leads Utilizing Technology
Managing leads often became a tedious task before technology made things easier. For example, having to log in everything on pen and paper and keeping track of all the important notes for every lead could lead to flaws in deals in various situations.
However, technology now helps bring everything together for real estate agents to use some of the best real estate CRMs on the market to manage leads.
Capturing Leads from Multiple Sources
Real estate leads are collected from traditional lead generation methods without the use of modern technology, which involves keeping information using pen and paper. However, with the utilization of modern-day real estate CRM systems, it is possible
Many CRMs have the ability to connect all of the methods of lead generation and transfer them into the platform. For example, if a real estate agent is trying to generate leads from website lead forms, social media profiles, and emails, any conversion will be transported into the platform and categorized by where they were generated.
This is especially handy for new-age real estate advertisement and promotion, as so many methods can be hard to keep track of, but with a system that can bring it all into one place for all employees within a business to see, helps the business streamline operations and sales.
Identifying Lead Quality
It is safe to say that not all leads’ interests are genuine. Some people are just browsing for properties, whereas others might just not gel with the agent. However, understanding the difference between leads with genuine interest vs leads who have no interest in buying or selling is important.
There is a quick and easy to understand if the leads generated fit your business’ ideal customer avatar:
- Assess their behavior and understand what kind of interest they showed. For example, if the lead from your real estate website mentioned something vague or asked a question about something specific in real estate home selling.
- Talk to the leads and ask the right questions – find out about their finances, if they have specific needs, and what their expectations are from agents.
- Classify the leads into the three categories mentioned previously: hot lead, warm lead, or cold lead. Based on the quality of the lead, give them the correct amount of nurturing to help them engage.
Have a Tagging System
People often think utilizing technology in your business refers to real estate CRM vs traditional methods, but it is actually about utilizing both of them together. Traditional methods still play a massive role in garnering leads and bringing in business, however, technology helps in managing the leads far better than was ever possible.
For example, if you utilize a CRM system, it is possible to tag leads into different categories so that you can save time when revisiting them every time. You know exactly how far along a lead is and whether or not there is a chance of them turning into clients.
A lead tagging system could look like this:
- Buying/Selling Soon (Follow-up regularly)
- Considering Buying/Selling (Follow-up Once a Week)
- Passive about Buying/Selling (Follow-up Once every 2 Weeks)
- Undecided about Buying/Selling (Follow-up Once a Month)
- Cold Lead (Follow-up every 3 months)
Conclusion
Lead management is a key trait for any real estate business to have in the current day and age, considering the industry moves at such a high pace. If real estate agents are not fast with the decisions they make and do not have their information sorted out, they will lose leads and have them fall through the cracks.
However, with real estate CRM in place, there are ample opportunities created due to the automated lead management system that requires a one-time setup. With these systems, agents can find leads to be sorted with a few clicks, accessed from multiple devices, and always updated to know how close which lead is.