My Two Journeys
August 23, 2017
Zillow To Sell Their First House… Now What?
June 5, 2018The 8 Steps to Closing Deals Online
Always be closing, right? Yes, but how? How do I get from lead to close?
In this quick training, I’m going to share 8 steps you can take to get more leads, close more deals, and scale your business.
Step 1: Lead Generation
We all want more leads. We need more leads. Our business depends on leads, but how do we get them?
Many agents will go to third-party sources like Zillow or Trulia for new leads. I don’t do that. Instead of starting with a third-party, I start with myself. I make myself my own lead generation engine. I do this by implementing 3 strategies:
- I engage with my community. If an opportunity presents itself within my community, I always offer my services. “I’m never too busy to help.” This implies that I’m busy and busy because I’m successful. I am working with a number of clients but they are all important to me and I will make time for their needs.
- I created myself as a community expert within a particular demographic. We all have a person that we prefer to work with whether it’d be a first time home buyer, a single mom, a divorcee, a military family, a healthcare professional, someone in your church. We have a demographic that we can relate to best and that we can move and work with best. By defining what that demographic is for you and making a point to be considered a community expert in that group of people will lead to large amounts of business and ultimately referrals.
- I mastered social media marketing through our Modern Agent Mastery program. The cost is extremely low compared to other types of marketing advertisement. it allows me to support my other two ways that I generate business. It creates me as a community expert.
Step 2: Give Them A Place to Interact With You
Now that you are generating more leads than ever before, it’s critical that you respond to them in a timely manner. I did not, however, focus on “time.” I focused on “place.” I focused on engaging in groups and pages on social media like LinkedIn and Facebook. These spaces allowed me to build camaraderie with the people that I’m working with. By going social and taking my success stories online, I’m offering social proof that I am doing right by my buyers. By providing a space for interaction, I’m demonstrating my value and, all of a sudden, buyers are coming to me. They see my value. They are calling me instead of the other way around.
Step 3: Set Up A Virtual Buyers Consultation
Forty-five minute long, in-person conversations are not the ways to begin business. We want to do it a better way for them too. They have limited time outside of work, during the weekends and we don’t want to infringe on that time. There is a better way to do it.
Instead, I take a brief phone call with a buyer so I can vet them a little bit and see what their situation is. Then I set up an online meeting with them so I can share information about my team how we work and how we will support them throughout their entire home buying experience.
Step 4: Process to Buying A Home
My next step is to tell my story. I show them that I understand first-hand how difficult the buying process can be unless you have the right person by their side. I’m trying to create personal connections with my client. I gain their trust. One strategy I use to gain their trust and confidence is to share the four point process to buying a home.
- Get signed up for a custom search on the MLS portal.
- Get connected with a preferred lender.
- The fun part: start the house hunt.
- Open and close escrow.
Here is one of the most important parts of this step. I create three to four minute videos outlining this exact four step process. One video is about search criteria to help them with navigating the MLS. The second describes the importance of working with a preferred lender. The next video explains the house hunting process and how my team fits into this process. The fourth video is about opening and closing escrow.
At the end of our virtual buyer’s consultation, I send them these videos. Now you’ve set yourself apart. You’re giving the buyer educational resources they can review at any time of day, from anywhere, however many times they need to. You’ve given them information. You’ve them their time back. You’ve given them freedom.
Step 5: Connect Them With A Preferred Lender
How do you transition from you and your team to your preferred lender? How does that conversation happen and how does that handoff take place successfully?
You buyer needs to know if it’s even possible for them to buy a house. We don’t want to continue conversations with someone who maybe has some credit history issues or price point issues that aren’t going to be able to successfully close on a home. In order to do that, they need to speak with a lender. They have thousands of options when doing this, but you know that your preferred lender is best because you work as a team.
The faster that you can connect them with a preferred lender and ultimately get them pre-approved with that lender, the more likely they are to continue to work with you and ultimately close on their new home with you.
Step 6: Context Is Everything
Once your buyer has met with a preferred lender and been pre-approved it’s time to start searching for a home. It’s time-consuming, sometimes grueling process that depends on so many different factors. Your job at this point is to make this experience as pleasant as possible for your buyer.
Talk to your buyer again about what they actually want because what they think they want and what they actually want may be two very different things. The faster I can get them to understand what they’re actually looking for, the more likely I’ll be able to find their home quickly.
PROTIPS: Let them know that your timeline does not dictate theirs. You are there to work with them for as long as it takes. Communicate when someone is being unrealistic. They did not hire you to be a “yes” agent. They hired you for your expertise. They hired you to help them make intelligent and informed decisions.
Also, and maybe the most important part of this stage, make sure that all decision makers are there. If someone’s getting money from their parents and their parents have a say in the house that they’re purchasing, their parents need to be in on the house-hunting. It is not possible for you to communicate, argue, support, relieve people that you can’t communicate with. The house-hunting process will not be a smooth one and it will drag out if some of the controlling stake-holders are not in on the process.
Step 7: It’s Not What You Open. It’s What You Close.
Buyers are going to remember the process of escrow. They are going to remember how documents were explained to them, how the process was explained to them, and exactly what they are getting themselves into. We all know it can be extremely overwhelming if the buyer isn’t prepared properly.
One of the best things I ever did in my business was create a standardized language folder that outlines every step in the process and how I explain it to my clients.
If you break down escrow into a set of very specific topics like opening escrow, introducing them to your team, setting up their inspection, ordering their appraisal, contingency removal, signing loan docs, handing over keys and clothes, you’ll save yourself an incredible amount of time and ensure that the process is explained the same way for every client. Not only will this show your buyer how professional and prepared you really are, but also help them understand the amount of time and energy it takes you to manage your escrow.
Step 8: Solving Problems with Savvy Portal
By now it should be clear that you can get more leads, secure more clients, make the buying experience smoother and more beneficial for all parties involved, and close more deals if you follow the preceding 7 steps. Despite their differences, these 7 steps all work together to do one thing: solve problems. This is what you should be working towards as a real estate agent and as a business owner: solving problems. You should be working towards creating permanent solutions to recurring problems.
It’s imperative to your business’s survival that you understand this right now. You need a solid business foundation. You need to be able to scale. You need to be able to implement systems and processes. You need to be organized. You need to put the right people in place. You need to understand all of the different forms of communication.
I just said it, but it’s worth repeating: You need permanent solutions to recurring problems. You need them right now; and I have them in a single place.
It’s called “Savvy Portal.” Savvy Portal is a streamlined, easy-to-use, custom software platform that I created. It facilitates house hunting and house selling via virtual reality. Buyers can preview homes on their time, at their leisure, and from anywhere. Sellers have a 24-hour virtual reality open house and the home gets featured to thousands of interested parties. Savvy Portal saves agents and buyers time by reducing the number of showings needed to sell the home. It also adds vendors to the mix so that documents are kept in a space where they are accessible to everyone on the team.
With Savvy Portal you can:
- Host video and 360 Virtual Reality tours
- Streamline communication with prerecorded content
- Upload photos and documents
- Send messages
- Include your vendors in the conversation
- Build stronger relationships
- Close more deals
- Add unlimited users
The Portal is my permanent solution to recurring problems and it allowed me to scale my business, build my client base, step out of my business, and take back my time. Now I’m offering it to you. I’m offering you a chance to become a virtual agent like me. Free up your weekend. Scale your business. Build your client base. Streamline the house hunting process for your clients. Save them time and money.
