Your ultimate goal when it comes to prospects is, naturally, to move them through the sales funnel.
Whether you’re actively searching for potential real estate clients via social media, community events, etc. or reviewing potential customers as they trickle in through established lead gen programs or via email enquiry, knowing how to address them is key.
Here’s a crucial difference to keep in mind when it comes to prospecting terminology:
- Leads: These are potential customers that have expressed interest in your company through online engagements with content. They could be qualified as such through website visits, email newsletter subscriptions, ebook downloads, form submissions, and so on.
- Prospects: Leads become prospects once they align with qualities that distinguish your target market. While leads are individuals that have interacted with your company in some way before, prospects do not necessarily need to be defined by a particular action in order to classify as such.
Conducting the proper research around incoming leads will allow for you to properly determine whether they’re worth additional follow-up. And having an established client profile in tow beforehand will help you in making the most accurate, informed sales decisions.
Why is the purpose of a prospect profile?
When the real estate leads and prospects first begin to trickle in, you might think that tracking and maintaining can be easily done via the ol’ pen and paper system. First off, no. Second, imagine the potential client volume you want to be pulling in and equip your business accordingly.
In order to most effectively gauge the value of a lead as a prospect, you’ll want to develop client profiles. Not only will these profiles aid you in organising your sales strategy, they’ll provide a sense of guidance for your digital marketing efforts in determining the types of content you should be producing.
To create well-rounded prospect profiles, make a list of some of your best, most profitable clients to date. Organise them based on commonalities such as household income, family type, profession, locations of interest, reasons for buying and/or selling, etc.
Should you feel really ambitious, consider surveying homeowners and potential buyers in the area through an email campaign or focus group. You can even offer gift cards to nearby restaurants, coffee shops, or Amazon to further incentivize participation. The more quantitative and qualitative research you have on hand with regards to your community, the better you can tailor messaging to them when the time comes for them to hire a real estate agent.
5 Noteworthy Real Estate Prospect Profiling Tools
Whether you’re a team of one or a large-scale operation, there are a variety of digital prospecting tools to suit your business’ needs.
Here are 5 online tools to help improve your conversion.
Sales Navigator for Gmail
An easy-to-use Gmail plugin, Sales Navigator allows you to view relevant LinkedIn profile details in conjunction with prospect contact information in your inbox. There is a Lite Chrome extension version offered to free LinkedIn users and a more Premium offering for LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscribers. A paid subscription allows you to save contacts as leads and utilize their TeamLink feature to narrow in on mutual connections.
CrystalKnows
Profiling a prospect successfully ultimately comes down to understanding how to best communicate with them. Using natural language processing technology, CrystalKnows does just that. The tool analyzes the writing style of any prospect to determine personality and tone. It can then suggest how to best communicate with them through keywords and phrases.
Detective by Charlie
Spend more than 5 minutes figuring out how to prospect in real estate based on each individual and you’re most likely spending too much time. Cut down on those searches with the use of your own personal, online super sleuth. Detective by Charlie is an intelligence platform that filters through thousands of online sources to extract relevant insights about prospects and/or contacts.
FullContact
Find all of the detail you need on a prospect without ever leaving your inbox. FullContact offers Gmail integration, which allows you to collect relevant prospect profile information in one central location. From demographics to someone’s profession, interests to brands an individual might follow, the tool provides a 360-degree view of potential clients for more personalized connection at every stage of the funnel.
Streak
If you’d rather build out your efforts currently being managed through Gmail, Streak is a free app for tracking leads and transactions within your inbox. Give contextual history to each contact with customizable notes and tagging capabilities. Calculate individual commissions and put data to work for your business with pre-established formulas and familiar spreadsheet-like layouts.
What else has worked for you?
Know of any other cool online tools? Leave a comment below!
———-
