Maximize Your Real Estate Conversion Rate With Seller Leads

This blog devotes a lot of content to finding and working with Motivated Home Seller Leads. Quality real estate leads are the lifeblood of a successful real estate business. But no matter how good your leads might be, they will not serve you unless you learn how to maximize your real estate lead conversion rate.

In this blog post, we will focus on real estate lead conversion. We’ll break down what some of the top real estate professionals do to convert a prospect from a lead to a commission-paying client. These agents know that nurturing leads through the buying process takes practice, patience, and focus.

WHAT IS A DECENT CONVERSION RATE IN REAL ESTATE?

Lead Conversion Rate Defined

Lead conversion rate real estate means you have nurtured a lead prospect through the various sales funnel stages and secured a listing contract.

But what is a real estate lead conversion rate?  Simply, it’s the rate at which you “convert” an average real estate lead into a listing or paying client.

According to the National Association of Realtors, the average conversion rate in real estate ranges from 0.4% to 1.2%. This means that for every 1,000 lead sources, only 4 to 12 of them will convert to a listing contract.

QUALITY DATA DRIVES YOUR REAL ESTATE LEAD CONVERSION RATE

It’s All About Seller Listings

For the purpose of this post, we’re going to focus on seller listings. Nearly all top-producing real estate agents agree that the best path to success and significant income is working with sellers. These agents have learned through experience that “buyers take time, listings take skill.”

Another thing these top real estate professionals have in common is they are willing to invest in a platform like ESPRESSO AGENT as the foundation for their business. Espresso Agent provides a proven, industry-leading real estate lead conversion system that includes:

• Proven leads, delivered to their desktop every morning, including new expireds, FSBOs, FRBOs, and even Pre-Foreclosure leads. As we’ve often discussed in this blog, top-producing agents don’t wait for leads or clients to come to them. Instead, they begin to drive a HIGHER CONVERSION RATE by proactively prospecting for listings, relying on the accurate contact information provided through Espresso Agent.
• A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and dialer platform that is invaluable for helping agents manage their leads and lead follow-up.
• Espresso Agent is home to a robust community of like-minded agents from around the country who rely on training programs like LAUNCH or TODAY’S BREW to discuss tips on HOW TO CONVERT LEADS IN REAL ESTATE.

OK, let’s assume you’ve invested in the best real estate leads. Congratulations… you’re off to a good start. The next and bigger question is: 

HOW DO YOU IMPROVE YOUR LEAD CONVERSION RATE?

The remainder of this post discusses important strategies real estate agents of all experience levels can employ to guide a lead prospect through the sales journey to listing… and hopefully a large commission check.

Commit to Prospecting

The first and most important step to improve your real estate lead conversion rate is connecting with and engaging your potential clients. And connecting with leads means active prospecting or working the phones. Here are a few tips to consider regarding real estate prospecting:

• Commit: You must embrace phone prospecting as the foundation for your future success. It often helps to have something that serves as your motivation or inspiration. This motivation can include something short-term, like being able to purchase that car you’ve always dreamed of. The motivation can be something longer term, such as ensuring that your kids have a great education. Always know “the why” in your efforts.
• Stick to a schedule: You can’t treat prospecting like an occurrence that happens some days and not others or when you feel up to it. Have a block of time each day where you are focused on nothing but calling your leads, even if it’s only an hour to begin.
• Fight call reluctance: Many real estate agents shy away from phone prospecting because they fear rejection and/or confrontation. Overcoming call reluctance takes time and effort, but it is necessary to achieve your goals. Check out our two-part series on CALL RELUCTANCE for some excellent tips.

Here’s the thing: prospecting is not easy. If it were, all agents would do it. But only a fraction of licensed agents work the phones. Therein lies a tremendous opportunity for any agent who is willing to step outside their comfort zone in working toward a higher conversion rate in real estate

Work With Scripts

Improving your real estate lead conversion rate starts with building rapport and projecting confidence, especially in the initial prospecting phase of the sales journey.

As we discuss in detail in our blog post MASTERING YOUR REAL ESTATE SCRIPTS, many agents avoid scripts for fear of sounding too robotic or inauthentic. These are valid concerns that can be easily remedied by embracing and internalizing scripts.

By constantly practicing your scripts, either alone or with a role-playing partner you’ll become more fluid and conversational. You’ll be able to control the flow of every conversation, and project an air of confidence which will not be lost on your prospect.

Of all the benefits you can realize by working with scripts, two stand out above all the others:

1. Scripts help you to ask effective questions. Learning how to ask solid, open-ended questions is critical in building rapport, and getting your prospect to do most of the talking.
2. Scripts help you to handle objections. You’re going to face objections, many objections, especially “reflexive no’s.” Your scripts can guide you to handle any objection with easy, which again gives your prospect confidence that you know your stuff.

Be Fanatical About Follow-Up

Any high-producing real estate professional is dogged about lead follow-up as an essential element to improving their real estate lead conversion rate.

It’s staggering to consider how much business is left on the table due to poor (or no) lead follow-up. More than half of all real estate agents don’t even follow up with prospects after an initial call. That might explain why top-producing agents derive as much as 80% of their listings opportunities (conversions) from persistent lead follow-up.

If you think you’ve been a little lax in your follow-up, now is the time to refocus your efforts. To that end:

• Schedule follow-up time every day. Just as you block time for phone prospecting, devote an hour or so to following up on promising leads or reaching out to your sphere of influence.
• Be patient with FSBOs: The majority of FSBOs will turn to a pro after a relatively short amount of time going it alone. Patient, persistent follow-up will keep your name top of mind with the FSBO decides they need your expertise.

Get in the Door

If you want to have a higher conversion rate your lead nurturing efforts must end with an invitation to preview the prospect’s home.

No matter how good you are at connecting during a prospecting call, true and lasting relationships begin when you are with the homeowner, face-to-face, on their turf.

Given the importance of the preview to real estate lead conversion, here are a few tips to consider:

• Always show up on time and look your professional best.
• Make sure you tour the property with the homeowner so you have a chance to build rapport.
• Use open-ended questions to guide the conversation, allowing the homeowner to do most of the talking.
• Compliment the specific things you genuinely like about the house instead of being general (“Love your house.”).
• Be authentic.

Our two-part series on NAILING THE PREVIEW offers detailed suggestions on how to make the best out of your first face-to-face interaction with the homeowner.

Create an Awesome Listing Presentation

With a successful preview under your belt, the next step in your lead conversion system is a solid listing presentation.

Up until this point, you’ve done an excellent job of nurturing your real estate leads. You’re sitting across from the homeowner, walking them through your nicely designed, informative listing presentation. But something’s not quite right. The prospect seems disengaged, maybe even bored.

Regardless of how long you’ve been in this business, there are going to be days when things don’t seem to be in sync. In our post on COMMON MISTAKES MADE IN LISTING PRESENTATIONS, we cover some reasons why the presentation may fall short.  Here are a few:

• You might be droning on about yourself instead of focusing on the most important details to the homeowner.
• You might be trying too hard to be their friend. Remember, you’re building rapport with a prospective client, not looking for a new pal. Stick to the matters at hand.
• You’re not asking solid questions, which means you are likely doing most of the talking.

Remember, the goal of every listing presentation is to find alignment with the seller in order to move the dialogue one step closer to conversion.

Real Estate Lead Conversion is About the Close

If you’ve done a good job of nurturing your leads, as outlined above, you should be in good shape to get the listing. You’ve built rapport and established your credentials. The lead prospect is confident that you’re the person best to represent them in the sale of their home.

There’s just one thing left to do:

Ask For the Business

Anytime you are with the prospect, either during the preview or in the listing presentation, you must be ready to take the listing. You’ll know when it’s time, but you still need to be prepared with the paperwork and a plan for selling their home. You still need to ASK FOR THE BUSINESS, to let them know you’re ready to make their dreams come true.

If you’d like to learn more about Espresso Agent, contact us; someone will get back to you quickly.

Good luck!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT REAL ESTATE LEAD CONVERSION RATE

What is the conversion rate in real estate?

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the average conversion rate in the U.S. real estate industry ranges from 0.4% to 1.2%. This means that for every 1,000 “lead sources,” between 4 and 12 will sign a listing contract with a real estate professional. Of course, that is an industry-wide average. Myriad variables could impact your conversion rate, such as where you live and the kind of homes you are interested in selling. 

What is a good conversion rate in real estate?

Considering that the real estate conversion rate ranges from 0.4% to 1.4%, if an agent is anywhere near a conversion rate of 1%, they would likely be a top-producing agent in their MLS. 

What is a lead source in real estate?

A lead source in real estate is any homeowner interested in selling their home immediately or in the near future. The two most common lead sources are homeowners with a recently expired listing or those who are selling on their own, for sale by Owner. There are many ways for real estate agents to secure leads, such as mass mailing postcards or door-knocking in a particular neighborhood. But the most successful agents take a proactive approach to prospecting leads by using a proven lead generation system like Espresso Agent. 

Doug Spak

Doug Spak joined Espresso Agent as a Content Marketing Specialist in 2016. Doug brings nearly four decades of experience as a copywriter, blogger, and screenwriter to his role with Espresso. Since joining our team, Doug has actively updated website content, published more than 300 blogs, and created countless social media posts.