Over the last several years Ive attended numerous
trade shows and have spoken with countless builders at the seminars Ive taken part in. One of the biggest concerns raised is how do I effectively manage my leads?
That's a good question and the answer is one that is fairly easy to comprehend and easy to implement.
In
to days high volume high interest industry, it is common place for builders to have several thousand leads available to them at any given time. The problem with this is that due to the massive size of the contact list, individual leads become more and more difficult to maintain. The key to effectively managing your leads is through categorization and lead strategies for each category that is defined.
Categorization of contacts allows you to easily determine serious buyers from those that are just casually interested. Serious buyers are where your sales team should be spending the bulk of their time. Begin by asking your contacts a set of specific questions geared towards their new home purchase. Questions such as, what is the
time frame for your new purchase? what price range are you looking at? and others. Define the importance of each question that you add and assign a value from 1-10 for each, 1 being the least important and 10 being the most. Once the contact has answered all of the questions, take the score for each question answered, multiply it by the weight assigned to the question and then add up all of the questions to obtain a total score. The higher a person scores on the test the more likely they are to purchase.
Once you have defined your contacts, you can then proceed to group them into defined categories. Categories might be defined as , A prospect, B lead, C Purchaser and combinations of all three. Whatever you decide to name the groups is up to you, as long as they are descriptive and clearly define the group and their status in the home buying cycle.
In order to utilize the grouping to its fullest ensure that strategies are put into place to address each groups buying needs. For example, top prospects may require a followup call as well as a consultation visit while low prospects may only
receive an email or letter in the mail. No matter what your strategy entails it should always contain the necessary components to address each purchasers needs with the end goal of creating a purchase.
Starting this week be on the look out for Housing Starts a weekly informative newsletter covering the latest in new technology based sales and marketing products in the real estate market.
Join me next week when I cover tips and techniques for acquiring information on potential leads.
Frank Guido
President and CEO
Virtual Design CenterLabels: How to effectively manage leads and prospects
# posted by Admin @ 8:30 AM