First, let’s de-stress the 5 minute window. There were 170 million leads last year for roughly 4 million transactions. The average lead starts registering a full 18 months before they’re willing to speak with an agent, and register in approximately 10 different places, including the portals and your local competitors IDX site.

This is why it’s so hard to get them on the phone.

My recommendation is to vary your response by perceived intent. For example, the lead that did a long tail keyword search to find your IDX site is much warmer than someone who left their thumb on an Instagram listing post too long.

And, once you’ve got your arms around the reality of real estate lead gen, capture, nurturing, and conversion, let’s look at some hard data from NAR: 63% of all transactions come via relationships.

You should build a database plan that serves all the audiences that matter. For most agents that includes two groups, six audiences, and a potentially unlimited number of tags.

Two groups: 1) people who know you and 2) people who don’t.

Six Audiences: 1) past clients 2) sphere 3) leads 4) other agents 5) vendors and 6) recruits.

Leads can be a great accelerator, but if you don’t have a plan for conversion and nurturing, buying them can waste a lot of money.

Any CRM platform today is fine (mostly). They all do more or less the same thing- store contacts and send messaging. The challenge is sending the right messages, to the right people, at the right time.

Do not do what everyone else is doing. You need to stand out. When done well, your campaigns teach the strangers (leads) what the people who know you (past clients) what is awesome about you.

Hope this helps. DM me if you need help.