Ylopo Professor and Resident Realtor Barry Jenkins explains the principle, process, and practicality of lead follow up.
[00:12] Lead Follow Up
When you are looking at lead follow up at a high level, obviously, you wanna make money. If you find yourself consistently avoiding the topic of lead follow up and lead nurture, you need to get to the bottom of it.
Call reluctance is probably one of the biggest enemies of agents realizing their income goals. And some of you don’t do it because you’re scared; some of you don’t do it because you’re lazy. And I’m not judging anybody, but you need to have a degree of self-awareness and find out why is it that you’re not doing what you need to do to make the money that you wanna make.
So many times, people get so focused on the tree that they don’t see the forest. They get so caught up in that one lead that had a bad number, or the 10 leads that said they’re not interested.
I tell my team on our daily huddles all the time that they have to connect with five out of 100 leads. That’s a success for my agents. If I get five opportunities for $700 or $800 and my average sales price in my market is $200,000, and I end up closing those five, that’s a million dollars in volume at 3 percent, that’s $30,000 in commission. You got to recognize that this is not the old-school way of doing things.
When a new lead comes in, you do connect with them a lot. But there’s a point that you don’t focus on that person until they become important again. And you do that through the alerts. And so you’ve got to find the five percent, which is our margin and what we focus on.
[03:10] Mindset: Your Perspective Matters!
98 percent of the time, a person does not want to speak with an agent: they’re not ready, they’re busy, they’re not focused on it. Which is why we’re building systems to stay in front of them 100 percent of the time. Because the 2 percent of the time, they’re actually panicked to speak to somebody. And when that other agent who’s not on your team just happens to get in front of them at that 2 percent juncture, they get the deal.
Change your psychology; teach your team to change their psychology that 98 percent of the time, they’re just not ready to speak to you. You’re always trying and you’re gonna catch people on that 2 percent of their time when they want to speak to you.
Your mindset actually matters a ton. Your mindset is everything with leads, and you’ve got to change it, otherwise, you’ll never be successful.
[06:56] My Experience with 3 Teams with Ylopo
For the first two teams, the exact same thing happened. I did not beg them to work Ylopo leads. What I decided to do was to leverage social proof. And so what happened was I took a handful of agents that were naive enough to just do what I said—to use the scripts, to try to have a mindset that there’s potential here—and very quickly, they started to crush it. They were able to do it because they were able to be teachable, they were abe to learn how to have a new type of conversation, learn to listen for different types of signals because there’s a difference between knowing what I want as a home buyer and not knowing what I want.
[08:57] Follow Up Approach
The approach that you should have all comes down to whether or not the person knows what they want.
As your mindset shifts to finding the five out of 100 and looking for the gold in these conversations, and helping people who don’t know what they want, that really is the dividing line.
I think Zillow and Realtor.com taught us in this industry to only have one kind of conversation, and that is when the person knows what they want. And now, they are changing their business models; they’re becoming competitors of ours.
When you’re talking to a lead, if they don’t know what they want yet, they don’t think they need you. When you are dealing with someone who knows what they want—a certain neighborhood, price range—the environment and the characteristics of your conversation are really more of a waiter or waitress. The problem is you can’t control whether a lead knows what they want or don’t. That’s why I’ve relegated my entire business model to something out of my control.
That’s why so many agents go from platform to platform, and they keep thinking that they’ve got good leads or they’ve got bad leads, and they don’t understand that they’re being duped. They’re being sold on a new platform after new platform, thinking that something’s gonna change when in reality, they’re just looking for the wrong type of leads.
We call a good lead that knows what they want “unicorn.” We are thrilled when we get one of them. We’ve gotten more Ylopo leads in the last six months that are unicorns than ever in a three-year period, so the leads continue to develop.
Follow this concept: when you are calling a lead, which is a person, if they don’t know what they want, they don’t think they need us right now. They’re probably not going to say that. So then when these people answer the phone, we go into realtor speak mode—our voices go super high, we are excited, and we try to connect with them. We are applying for a job that they’re not hiring for. The sale to be made to someone that doesn’t know what they want is that I’m relevant right now.
Everyone is looking for something you can’t scale your business off of. You can’t scale your business off of the readiness of the consumer because you can’t control it. You want your business to be based off of daily actionable activities that you know if you do x amount of time, x amount of days, x amount of months, you’ll get x amount of results. That’s a controllable business model.
To be relevant to the lead, we take on the role of a guide; of a counselor. And instead of making suggestions, we prescribe activity. To use a car analogy, when the consumer know what they want, their need is driving the car. Their need is driving everything about my relationship with them. So when they don’t know what they want yet, they need to be a passenger. The agent needs to be driving the car; telling them what they should be doing. If you’re not careful, you’re going to sound like an arrogant jerk.
[16:15] Ask Questions and Give Guidance
Lead them by using phrases like:
“In my professional opinion, this is what you need to be doing…”
“In my experience, the best thing to do should be…”
“Part of my training really helps me to see that one thing you need to be doing is…”
You need to change the way the consumer is thinking about your role right now. And rather than telling them you’re awesome, just come from a place of value.
What we set out to do is to figure out how to teach people how to think.
Socrates, who was a great teacher, used the Socratic method of teaching.
Some of these questions we have leveraged over the years and really do work. When you talk to the person and you’re trying to help them to see your value, the way you’re going to do that is give them direction. The way you’re going to give direction is by provoking their thoughts.
Ask questions like:
Is there anything you would change about where you live right now?
Whenever they tell you, make them feel heard; make them feel validated. Act like you care.
Do you happen to have a friend or a family member in the mortgage business to give you direction?
We ask this question because most of the people we deal with in our market are very worried about the financial aspect of buying a home. People don’t wake up in the morning and say they’re ready to buy a home. What you need to do is figure out a way to trust you and also help them to see that them guessing over the next 8 months on what they should buy is a horrible plan, because it’s no plan at all. If it is in fact the largest purchase of their life, you need to sell the idea of responsibility and wise planning.
By helping them change they way they’re thinking and thinking them through asking really well-crafted questions, we accelerate the sales funnel.
What did you dislike or like about the homes that you saw on my website?
This is a great way to ask what kind of home do they want or what would they like to buy without asking it that way.
If you could wave a magic wand, what would be perfect?
Now you’re gonna help them dream; you’re going to help them plan; see opportunities to give advice.
These questions really get the person opening about themselves. At the end of the call, do you know who this person is? If you don’t, you’re not doing your job.
In the future, when other realtors are trying to get their business, they are going to work with who they feel comfortable with; who they feel they actually know.
“You can’t motivate somebody unless you know what motivates them.” Learn their story; find out where they’re at.
If you’re going to talk to people that don’t know what they want yet, you have to sell yourself. And the way that you’re going to do that is by connecting with them, make them feel heard, and asking really good questions. And so I have found that question-based selling is a much more effective way for a team to get the job done.
Figuring out how to teach them how to think with questions like these is magical because what end up happening is you grow your own pipeline instead of waiting for other services to grow the pipeline for you and then charge you.
1) Ask these questions—get them talking about themselves. 2) Listen—because you’ve got to know them. 3) Then you need to identify with them. You can maybe even tie it to your own personal experience. It shows the consumer that you’re listening, and you’re building this relationship and trust. 4) From there, brainstorm a plan with them: what are the next steps? Then, make sure there’s a concrete agreement on whatever that next steps is going to be.
[33:30] Lead Follow Up Categories – 4 Large Categories
Regardless of your CRM, you should have these categories.
Ylopo adds a new dynamic that you really should leverage: they’re bringing the consumer back to you, to use your tools to find a home.
Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, and all those third party websites, they are spending billions of dollars to have the consumer use their tools because they know if they do it, they’re going to get the business. What Ylopo is doing is empowering you to stay in front of the consumers.
Phase 1: New leads not converted - This is one that is labelled within your CRM. You have to call them a lot; Ylopo AI (formerly rAIya) should be texting them; and your CRM should be emailing. It should feel “old school” list because you should be doing it at a rhythm.
Phase 2: Old leads not converted but active - These are leads that are older than 10 days and have not been converted. They have a status (in Firepoint) that says “Unknown”. We leave them alone after 10 days until they become relevant to us. And the way we do that is through what Ylopo is doing for us: YPriority, Handraiser, AI_Needs_Follow_UP.
Phase 3: Converted (spoken to) that are active (hot, warm, cold) - These are the people that you feel you’ve converted. They’re anyone in those three categories that has been on your website in the last seven days, and you haven’t spoken to them.
Phase 4: Past clients/Sphere that are active - Ylopo is bringing them back to you, giving you a workflow that makes sense; that’s manageable.
Can you use Ylopo AI campaign and/or automated tools for past clients and Sphere follow up? Just realize that this is the area where, from a texting perspective, you have the biggest exposure to TCPA consent losses. Because these are people that, for the most part, did not come to your website, give you permission to text and email them. And so if you use an automated mechanism to text and email those people, everyone of those is not legal. Chances are, if they’re past clients or Sphere, they’re not going to sue you, but how do you know that? It is highly recommended that, if you’re talking to someone about using an automated texting tool to reach out to past clients and Sphere, be very wary.
If you text someone without permission of them signing up on your website saying, “I agree to be texted,” you are in violation of a law called TCPA, which basically says that you can’t text people with an automated system without them providing consent.
[43:20] Open House Tool
If you don’t have a lot going on in your business, the Open House tool should be the most transformative tool that you use. What this tool does is have people who visit your open house register with the tool. When someone registers at an open house with this tool, they’re automatically added to your CRM (Follow Up Boss, LionDesk, Firepoint, Sierra, CINC, or Coming Soon), to the assigned agent who hold the open house.
Ylopo take that property that you held the open house at, and we email them listings that are similar to the home you just held the open house at. We are pushing the homes in their news feed that match their interests.
To use the tool, just go to your Branded Site, add /open-house after .com of your site, and it will load the tool.
The most effective thing you can do on the Ylopo site to get people to the open houses is to run a DyVA open house ad. This is what we’ve specifically built out for open houses. A DyVA open house ad that you spent $65 on is going to reach 7500 local people in the market who may be interested in buying homes.
You can edit the fields in your Open House form very easily. We can do all kinds of customization for you, just email support@ylopo.com and we can set it up.
What separates success on Ylopo and non-success on Ylopo? 1) You’re here, you’re learning; 2) then apply it.
[53:40] Push Listings
A great way to add value to your leads is with push listings.
When someone becomes important to you, either their activity is significant, or you’ve spoken to them, you need to be using the Push Listing tool inside your Stars under the Agent Toolkit.
You click that and you basically just do a search, like you would a new listing search. There’s a whole Zendesk article about it where you’ll be able to research and learn how to send a push listing. The idea is you’re gonna pick out houses that you think match their search, and then get to the end where you have two options: send an email or generate a textable link. It is highly recommended to generate the textable link, go to your CRM, and text them the link. The reason why this is significant is, 99 percent of agents are sending their buyers screenshots from Zillow and Redfin, or other third party websites, of listings that might match, or addresses. You will be the only agent in your market sending listings with a link. When they clicked that link, they’ll log in with that link. When they’re looking at those homes on your website, it’s going to show their name at the top. They automatically get logged in. And when they see the homes and they’re not really that interested, when they change their search all the ads, all the listing alerts, dynamically adjust to what they’re looking for.
Push links sent via text messages are probably like 3x more effective than emails. You can send out the push notification text via Ylopo AI in the text Lead Message Inbox, or send it out in FUB. But if you’re going to choose between email and texting, do texting.
They’re looking for houses, they’re not shopping for realtors—not yet. So send them what they’re looking for.
[57:51] Sending a link to get a person converted on your website
Step 1: Go into private viewing or incognito mode.
Step 2: Go to your search site and find some homes/listings that you think somebody wants. Or find some homes that you’re running as part of a drip campaign. Then search for all the listings in your area that have an open house. The super long URL is a deep link. Take that really long URL and include that in drip campaigns, drip text messages, and it will always load. Shorten the long link when you send it in text messages. You can use third party services like Bit.ly to give you a shortened link you can text to people.