Want to close more deals? Plug the holes in your lead pipeline

Too many flippers and real estate wholesalers focus on just throwing more money at marketing to prospects, while letting many of their existing leads slip through the cracks. It’s a recipe for wasting money and paying too much for each closed deal. 

Rather than spending more on marketing, start by shoring up your existing leads. Once you have a hyper-efficient sales process, you can then scale up your lead inflow.

Qualifying leads

Higher closing rates start with better lead qualification.

Why? Because some leads are worth steady and relentless follow-up to eventually close. Others are a waste of your precious time and resources. Qualifying leads well helps you avoid wasting time on bad leads, so you can focus on converting those good but difficult-to-close leads.  

When a lead comes in, categorize it in three ways:

• Interested vs. Not Interested
• Qualified vs. Unqualified
• Responsive vs. Unresponsive

If a seller has no equity whatsoever, they aren’t a qualified lead. Pass them on to a partner real estate agent in exchange for a referral fee. 

How motivated are they? The more motivated they are, the more aggressively you should follow up with them. Place less motivated sellers on long-term nurture campaigns with periodic check-ins. 

Remember, just because they’re not super interested in selling today doesn’t mean they’ll always feel that way. In a year or two from now, a seller may call or email you out of the blue to reopen the conversation — but only if you stay in touch with them. 

Use the SPIN technique to qualify leads and separate the wheat from the chaff. 

Automating tasks

You’re only human, and so is your team. If you try to rely on your memory and motivation, plenty of good leads will fall through the cracks. 

Use these automations to close more of your leads. 

Automated SMS reply

First and foremost, your real estate CRM (like, say, REsimpli) should automatically text leads back when you miss their call. The automated SMS message that I send out asks leads to text me with a few key details. That opens the conversation before anyone on my team even calls them back. 

Even so, an automated text message can’t replace a quick returned call. Motivated sellers call lots of investors who reached out to them. Often the first investor to get the seller on the phone wins the deal. 

Toward that end, our Speed to Lead feature can ring everyone on your acquisition team that a lead is calling. Hopefully someone on your team can answer on the fly — but if not, the first available team member can call them back shortly. 

Drip campaigns & task assignments

As leads come in, REsimpli can automatically start them on a live lead campaign. That starts with assigning the task of a call back, but it doesn’t end there. 

As you qualify the lead, you can put them on different drip campaigns, such as a long-term follow up campaign for unmotivated sellers. 

Likewise, as you change the status of a lead, it can automatically trigger other tasks. For example, when you change the status to “Under Contract,” it can trigger tasks like “Order Inspection” or “Verify Final Water Bill.” 

Those tasks automatically get assigned to the appropriate person on your team, for seamless handoff. 

Professionalize Your Real Estate Business

Professional athletes don’t duct tape together their shoes. So why are you trying to duct tape together your real estate business?

If you want to earn profits like a professional real estate investor, use the tools your pro competitors are using. That starts with marketing and accounting tools like REsimpli. 

Don’t take our word for it. Try it out for yourself with a 30-day free trial. 

We look forward to hearing your feedback and successes after your first month running with the big dogs. 

Better internal communication ⇒ more closed leads

The greatest point of weakness in any workflow is when a project changes hands from one team member to another. 

We built REsimpli to automate everything that can be automated — and minimize the friction when humans need to work together as a team. That starts with the ability to pin notes to lead files. 

The sales manager needs to know details like the seller’s motivation, the property condition, and more. And the more personal the connection between your team and the owner, the more likely they are to sell to you. 

I’ve seen deals close because we referred to the seller’s dog by name. These little personal details establish trust and rapport, which you need if you want someone to sell you their greatest asset. 

REsimpli also has an internal team inbox to let team members stay in touch, reference specific lead files, and more. 

Finally, REsimpli makes it simple to merge separate seller contacts into one combined file. That helps your team stay in sync, particularly when sellers contact you and other team members through different phone numbers, emails, and other methods. 

Daily meetings

As great as our online CRM is, it can’t replace daily team huddles. 

Meet with all sales and marketing people on your team every day to check the status of live leads. This helps you catch miscommunications and dropped lead files. 

It also helps you catch duplicate contact or lead files in REsimpli’s CRM so you can combine them. 

In each daily huddle, make sure you check that all team members closed out all pending tasks from the day before. 

Daily lead review

At the end of each day, confirm that the following three numbers are “0” at the end of each day:

• Open Tasks: Uncompleted tasks must be addressed or rescheduled.
• Open Leads: All inbound leads must receive a response.
• Unread Internal Messages: Team communication must be clear and up to date.

If you or any team member is leaving any of these unfinished at the end of each day, you’re leaving money on the table with a leaky lead pipeline. Hard stop. 

Make sure you communicate this clearly to your your acquisition team. These are key performance indicators, and if they aren’t zero at the end of each day, that team member is failing to do their job. 

Of course, that team member might be you. If you’re “too busy” to zero these out each day, then it’s time you hired a VA to help take some administrative tasks off your plate so you can focus on the most important part of your business: converting leads into sales. 

Changing market conditions can revitalize old leads

Buyers’ markets make it harder to sell but easier to buy. Vice versa for sellers’ markets. 

As a real estate wholesaler or flipper, you can make money in both markets. 

When the market shifts to more of a buyers’ market — as is happening in many areas of the US currently — many sellers become more flexible. They may become open to selling at a discounted price, when they weren’t before. 

This is why we put some disinterested leads on long-term drip campaigns. Just because they didn’t want to sell last year doesn’t mean they’re still closed to it today. 

Stay patient and play the long game. You’ll end up scoring deals from leads you (and your competitors) had thought were dead. 

Differentiate yourself to close more leads

Patience and long-term follow up are one way to beat competitors. But it’s not the only way. 

Explore creative financing options like subject-to and seller financing. The right financing can tip the balance and make a borderline deal profitable. 

Likewise, get creative with your exit strategies. If the owner doesn’t want to sell but is in financial distress, consider offering them a seller lease-back. 

If the owner won’t accept a low enough offer for the deal to pencil as a flip or wholesale, consider novation. 

For that matter, maybe the numbers don’t work well for a flip, but they’d work for a BRRRR rental property? Or perhaps they don’t work for a long-term rental, but they’d work for a short-term Airbnb? 

Finally, differentiate yourself with a personal touch. Always offer understanding and empathy to distressed sellers. Listen to their personal stories. Remember their children’s and pets’ names. Send a handwritten note after each promising appointment. 

Try to meet them where they are, and if you can’t help them, refer them to someone who can, such as a real estate agent or bankruptcy attorney. You can always collect a referral fee as a consolation prize, and you’ll help the seller do what’s best for them. 

Tying it together

The best flippers and wholesalers don’t necessarily send the most direct mail or run the most PPC ads. 

They close the highest percentage of the leads that enter their pipeline. 

That keeps their overhead costs low and their marketing ROI high. Focus on a more efficient business machine before trying to scale by just pumping more money into it. 

You can force more water into a leaky pipe. But you’ll lose that much more of it to wasted leakage. 

A real estate CRM can help you track every contact and lead. REsimpli can automate your tasks and put leads on drip campaigns. Most of all, it can help your team communicated better — both with inbound leads and with each other. 

Try a free 30-day trial of REsimpli today to close more of your existing leads, before you spend money forcing more leads into a leaky pipeline.