I have a secret delight.
I love finding the leads someone else has given up on.
Here’s what happens…
A realtor starts running our ads offering the “Sell Your House for Top Dollar Fast” book.
The leads start coming in for $5, $7, maybe $10 each.
They call the people who requested the book, hoping to get a listing right now.
But some don’t answer.
Some say they’re only thinking about selling.
Some aren’t planning to do anything for six months or a year.
And, inevitably, a few of the people requesting the book are other realtors. :)
After 60 or 90 days, the realtor starts getting antsy.
“These leads are no good.”
They stop running the ads and abandon the whole group.
That’s when my secret delight begins.
I take the addresses of the people who requested the book and look them up on Zillow.
Real estate is wonderful for this because everything eventually becomes visible. You can see when someone lists their house and when it sells.
I’m thinking about one realtor in Texas who generated 130-something leads before deciding the leads were no good.
It hasn’t even been two years since they stopped.
But when I checked at the 18-month mark, more than 30% of the people they abandoned had listed their homes, sold them, or currently had them on the market.
These were the same people they had declared were “no good.”
The leads didn’t fail.
The realtor simply stopped watching before the ending.
That’s the difficult part about generating future business.
We judge the quality of a lead by how emotionally exciting it feels right now.
Someone who wants to list their house this afternoon feels like a great lead.
Someone who will list it 11 months from now feels like a bad lead.
But if you could travel 11 months into the future and see their house listed with someone else, how would you feel about that lead then?
Profit Activator 3 is about staying with the people who have raised their hands.
Educating them.
Motivating them.
Building a relationship with them while they’re getting ready.
You don’t need every person to be ready today.
You just need to still be there on the day they are.
A surprising amount of money is hiding in the leads your competitors have already stopped paying attention to.