13 real estate prospecting tips to generate leads

There’s a lot of money to be made in real estate. But only if you have enough leads in your pipeline.

Many people rely on realtors to buy or sell their home. In fact, according to the 2019 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers from the National Association of Realtors, 89% of all home purchases last year were completed through a broker or realtor.

Even more impressive, 68% of buyers only interviewed a single real estate agent before signing them up to help with their search. And 90% of them would use the same realtor again for future real estate endeavors.

If you can capture new leads and convert them into clients, there’s a good chance they will become a long-term customer for your agency.

Real estate prospecting takes a great deal of creative effort and discipline. Besides standard operating procedures, like networking and door knocking, you must also get inventive when generating leads into your funnel.

Creative social media campaigns, getting involved in your community and content marketing are a few ways you can improve your real estate prospecting game for better results. We’ll discuss those in more detail later on.

But first, to get real estate leads for new agents and seasoned experts, you have to have a solid prospecting plan.

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Game plan: Make prospecting part of your realtor routine

The only way a realtor can be successful at prospecting is to be methodical with it. Neglecting it can lead to an empty pipeline and an empty bottom line, which isn’t doing your business any good.

In fact, the 2018 Real Estate Marketing Strategy Survey Report by Placester found real estate agents’ biggest pain point when it came to marketing was actually following through with their strategies and ideas:

real estate pain point

That’s why being organized and having a prospecting plan is crucial to survival. Prioritize it on your daily and weekly calendar—your commission will thank you for it.

How your prospecting calendar looks will depend on what type of prospecting you plan on doing. It’s best to build out your calendar by creating custom tasks that fit your specific needs. Here are a few prospecting tips and samples:

Step 1: Create

Create a calendar and fill it with real estate tasks related to your preferred prospecting efforts. For example, prospecting activities can include phone calls, emails, blog posts and maintaining your Facebook ad campaigns.

This way, you’ll know exactly which tasks you need to complete without getting sidetracked.

Step 2: Be consistent

Next, make sure that your prospecting effort is continuous. A good rule of thumb is to make sure you’re setting aside time every day, or at least every week, to prospect.

This could be allocating a block of time to it during your day, or making sure you reach a threshold of time (for example, 20 hours per month) that you’ve dedicated solely to prospecting.

During this time, just prospect. Don’t distract yourself with paper pushing or administration tasks.

Step 3: Stick to the plan

Finally, stick to your plan. Prospecting is one of the most long-term but profitable tasks you can do. A consistent and constant approach to prospecting will eventually land results in your funnel.

As it becomes part of your routine, you’ll be able to complete tasks quicker and setting time aside for prospecting will begin to feel second nature.

Now that you know how to build a prospecting schedule, let’s dive into what you can do to up your prospecting game and get more leads.