Is there anything worse than working a new lead, only to have them straight up ignore your calls and emails? After all, you’re getting leads, so your lead gen strategy seems to work just fine. They just don’t seem to want to talk to you. What are you doing wrong?
1. You Waited Too Long to Follow Up
This is the biggest reason your leads aren’t calling you back. You’re waiting too long to reach out to them. In fact, an MIT study found that your odds of reaching a lead decrease more than 100 times after half an hour.
How to Get Them to Call You Back
Get back to your leads as soon as humanly possible. You may even want to tell your buyer clients that you may have to pick up your phone occasionally while you’re on a showing. If you’ve established a rapport, most of them won’t mind at all. In fact, they’ll be rooting for your to get that new client.
2. You Didn’t Sound Confident Enough
Everybody has off days, you’re not always going to be “on” every time you call a lead. For competitive or expired listings, you may never recover from that first nervous impression.
How to Get Them to Call You Back
Beyond a really, really, good follow-up email and a prayer, you’re probably out of luck here. Better to try and avoid this in the first place. Here are a few tips to sounding confident on the phone.
Call your important leads after warming up first on a few others
Stand up when you make your calls & pace if you have to
Recite your script out loud a few times in the mirror before calling
Try a ‘power pose’ before making your calls
Be good at your job
Memorise common objection handlers
3. You Didn’t Make a Personal Connection
The idea that real estate is a relationship business is such a well-worn cliche at this point that it hardly bears repeating. Sadly, many newer agents still don’t get the message. They work hard at “selling” and never try to build an actual relationship built on reciprocity and selfless work.
How to Get Them to Call You Back
If your first call or email was detail-heavy, a more personal message might work to get them on the phone. I’ve had luck with follow-up voicemails that acknowledge just how busy they are and offer a specific call-back time.
4. You Pronounced Their Name Wrong
People with more common names that you still manage to butcher are not as likely to be as forgiving. After all, you can find out how to pronounce most names with a quick Google search. If you can’t find a good pronunciation or are a bit unsure, then skip their name entirely. The point is that you need to make an effort here, so winging it is not an option.
How to Get Them to Call You Back
Well, there’s no easy way to say this, but if you butchered their name on a voicemail, there’s not much you can do here beyond normal follow up. You just have to hope they didn’t take offence or hear from an agent who took the time to learn how to pronounce their name properly.
5. You Called Too Late at Night
Playing phone tag with your leads is hard enough, but trying to figure out when they’re going to be most receptive to your call is even trickier. A lot of newer agents make the mistake of reaching out in the late evening, with the idea that the lead will have some free time away from work.
How to Get Them to Call You Back
While some people might get offended that you would call so late at night, most people won’t. All you really need to do here to get them on the phone is reach out again during a more sociable hour.
Of course, you won’t have to deal with this problem if you address it with your leads on your first contact. Make it a point to talk about the best times for calls, emails, or texts during your first meeting to ensure never reaching out when they’re not receptive to calls.
6. They Didn’t Get Enough Social Proof to Take You Seriously
Anyone who gets a ton of calls, which your leads WILL BE if they’re any good, is going to take a minute or two to Google you before calling back. What are they going to find? Does your personal website or Rate My Agent page show up under searches for your name? Can they even spell your name?
Don’t have a good personal website? Now is the time to start building one and getting it to rank for your name. Check out our guide on the best real estate website builders here to get started.
How to Get Them to Call You Back
If you don’t have much of a social footprint yet, either tell them exactly where to look on your voicemail or skip leaving messages entirely and focus on emails or texts where you can link out to the social proof you want them to see most.
7. They’re Tire Kickers, or Time Wasters
OK, let’s pour one out for the tire kickers, dreamers, and time-wasters out there. Even though the odds of them pulling the trigger this year are close to zero, they’re great for practicing your pitches. Of course, just because they might never buy doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and knock it out of the park.
How to Get Them to Call You Back
Why would you want them to call you back? Instead, put them on a drip campaign, and try to nurture them. The goal here is to get them to stay in reality, but they might have friends who don’t live their lives in the clouds. But at the end of the day, maybe you don’t really need these jokers to call you back.
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