What makes a good lead? Understanding the what, why, and how of lead qualification can save so much time for real estate sales associates, allowing you to focus your energy on leads that are more likely to convert while setting aside dead-end leads. In order to effectively qualify leads, you need to have a reliable process in place to identify promising leads with speed and efficiency.

In short, a good lead is someone who is ready to buy or sell a home. They've likely already put significant thought into the process, have an idea of what they want to accomplish, and are looking for a real estate agent they can trust to get the job done. These are the leads that you want to prioritize over other, less qualified leads who are further from taking real action.

How to Qualify a Lead

In order to identify which leads are good ones and which can be put on the back burner or discarded, you need to ask the right questions. Ideally, you want this to happen as soon as possible when a lead enters your pipeline. That's why it's so important to have a system in place for qualifying leads and to use it consistently.

• Is the Lead Buying or Selling a Home in Your Markets?
  Start simple, and make sure that the lead is interested in buying or selling a home in one of the markets where you do business. Naturally, a lead shopping for a home in a city or neighborhood that doesn't fall under your umbrella can usually be easily disqualified.
  
  
• What Is Their Motivation for Buying or Selling a Home?
  Figuring out the motivations of the buyer or seller is one of the most important steps that you can take when qualifying a lead. What is their motivation, and just how motivated are they to take the next steps? A buyer or seller who's moving for work, financial reasons, family reasons, or another strong motivating factor is more likely to take action than a lead that lacks a strong motivation to move forward quickly.
  
  
• Have They Been Pre-Approved for a Mortgage?
  One way to gauge the motivation and engagement of a lead is to find out whether they've already been pre-approved for a mortgage. A buyer who has already made an effort to get pre-approved is more likely to be ready to take the next steps. Lacking pre-approval isn't necessarily a factor that disqualifies a lead outright, but it's certainly a positive when a buyer has been pre-approved.
  
  
• What Type of Budget Are They Shopping With?
  Is the buyer searching for a home that fits the price range of the homes that you have to offer, and the listings in your cities/neighborhoods? If it's a seller, are they interested in listing a home in a price range that fits your market, and your target demographic of buyers? Answering these questions can help you determine whether the lead is a good fit for your real estate services.
  
  
• Are They Looking for a Specific Type of Home?
  For buyers, are they looking for specific features from a home? Not only will the answer to this question help you determine how far along the buyer is in the process, it can also tell you whether you might already have listings that match their preferences.
  
  
• How Long Have They Been Searching?
  Has the lead been working on buying or selling a home for a long time? Have they already worked with a different agent in the past? These questions help determine motivation, and knowing if they've already worked with an agent can help you plan how to move forward.
  
  
• How Soon Are They Hoping to Close the Deal?
  A highly motivated buyer or seller is also more likely to be a highly qualified lead. If they're interested in closing the deal quickly, that's a good sign.
  
  
• Are They Ready to Set an Appointment?
  Is the lead ready to take concrete action and plan next steps? If they're willing to set an appointment, then one of the most critical questions is already answered.

Use the Right Tools to Turn Qualified Leads into Satisfied Clients

Of course, qualifying leads is just the first, important step in the process, and the right real estate tech can make the next steps in that process so much more efficient. The right real estate all-in-one solution, like DeltaNET®6, offers so many valuable tools for converting leads. Whether you're sending AI-driven newsletters, reaching out with convenient SMS text messaging, helping people tour homes from afar with virtual open houses & showings, taking advantage of integrations with all of the top real estate platforms, or using one of many other tools, DeltaNET®6 provides everything you need to get the job done in one convenient package.

We don't know if you heard, but Coldwell Banker Bain recently "unleashed" a full organizational change to support its agents with new technology, marketing, and branding.

Coldwell Banker Bain, the nation's largest Coldwell Banker affiliate with over 1,100 brokers in the Pacific Northwest, was the center of a feature story by Inman writer, Patrick Kearns, entitled, Coldwell Banker Bain 'unleashes' brand and tech refresh. Inman's story concentrated on the real estate giant's operational shift to communicate its focus on innovation, attention to concierge services, and competitiveness in the real estate industry.

Delta Media Group and Coldwell Banker Bain

Coldwell Banker Bain's new way of thinking comes powered by Delta Media Group's digital platform--the DeltaNet. During their transitional process, Delta Media Group® provided Coldwell Banker Bain with a new public-facing website, global luxury website, and broker websites.

The DeltaNet platform also supplies team members with their customer relationship management (CRM) system complete with marketing and automated social media tools.

Click Here to Read More...

There's no getting around that building your real estate client base takes time; however, there's plenty you can do to speed up the process. Whether you're a new agent looking to build your initial client base or an experienced agent aiming to add more names to your list, following the right strategies can save time and boost results. Building a client base requires reaching out to new prospects, but taking care of your current clients is also one of the best ways to grow your client base long-term.

Build Your Client Base: Earn Referrals & Grow Your Business

1. Keep in Touch with Current Clients
   Referrals are solid gold when it comes to growing your real estate client base, and earning them starts with taking care of your current clients. Always do your best to meet the needs of your clients, and don't be afraid to ask for testimonials/referrals when the job is done. Email marketing is a great way to stay top-of-mind with current clients so that they'll think of you first when it's time to recommend a real estate agent.
   
   
2. Don't Be Shy
   Being a "secret agent" may sound cool in the movies, but it's definitely not what you want to be when growing your client base. In fact, you want to be just the opposite. Always carry business cards, and when you meet someone new, make it a point to mention what you do for a living. Same goes for the people you already know, but who may not know what you do for a living. Spread the word about what you do, and you may be surprised by how many referrals you earn in the process.
   
   
3. Set Aside Time for Prospecting
   Remember when we said there was no getting around the fact that building a client base takes time? This is a big part of what we were talking about because you can't earn new business if you don't set aside time for the task. Block out time each day for your prospecting activities, and make sure to eliminate any distractions ahead of time so you can focus on the task at hand.
   
   
4. Build Your Real Estate Website Whether you're handing out business cards, or connecting with potential clients online, you want to be able to direct them to an attractive, information-rich real estate website. If you don't have a website, now is the time to change that. If you do, make sure you're putting in the work necessary to maintain your website and producing great content consistently in order to attract more clients.
   
   
5. Build Your Social Media Presence
   In addition to your website, it's important to maintain an active, engaging social media presence. Share content, interact with your audiences, add new clients, and stay in touch with current clients through your social media pages. Just as with all prospecting activities, it really helps to set aside time to work on your social media pages each day as you grow your client base.

Are you searching for a real estate marketing team who knows what it takes to earn new clients for your business? We can help! Contact Delta Media Group to learn more about all of our real estate marketing services.

The Delta Media Group just started rolling out an absolutely amazing Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) email platform that's so much more!

Let me explain...

18 months ago we had a crazy idea for a new system. After a few months of programming and coordination between the operations team, design team, and digital marketing team at Delta a new A.I. platform was born. Today we are announcing the new platform, called My Customer For Life, to all customers!

Click Here to Read More...

Delta Media Group recently joined Zillow® Tech Connect with the goal of enhancing our clients' direct integration process with Zillow.

Michael Minard, President and CEO of Delta Media Group said, "Delta Media Group is thrilled to partner with Zillow® Tech Connect to offer a greater level of service for our clients." 

"The lifeblood of our clients' businesses is lead generation.  They depend upon us to create engaging, public-facing websites for home buyers and sellers as well as provide a CRM system to manage leads.  Although Delta Media Group has long provided our brokers and sales associates with the ability to integrate with Zillow, by joining Zillow® Tech Connect, we are taking additional steps to ensure continued efficiency, productivity and success for them," said Minard.

For more information about the services Delta Media Group provides to our clients, contact support@deltagroup.com.

RE/MAX Platinum Services Scores 99 out of 100 in All Three Google Categories

Real estate—in fact, the world—has gone mobile. Today, more people use mobile devices over desktop computers to search online. The average user spends about 177 minutes per day on their mobile phones. 

This week RE/MAX Platinum Services (www.platinumservicesinc.com) launched their new mobile responsive website with Delta Media Group. We worked with RE/MAX Platinum Services to concentrate our website design efforts on the mobile user experience.

Google has made a shift rewarding companies with mobile websites--done the right way--with priority indexing and potentially better rankings.  When Google reviews a website, they score it for Mobile Friendliness, Mobile Speed and Desktop Speed. Google gives each website a score from 0 – 100 in each category. Google considers websites scores at 90 or above as performing well.

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We've received many requests from administrators and sales associates to add the ability to easily create squeeze pages. Squeeze pages are landing pages designed to capture opt-in email addresses from potential clients. We recommend a combination of custom content, along with a contact form to be used on these pages. 

For more information on this update please watch this video...

So many companies, admittedly ours included, try and sell real estate brokerages on search engine optimization (SEO). We focus on the increase in traffic, return on investment, so on, and so forth.

What I sometimes fail to communicate is the importance SEO plays in the overall profitability of the real estate brokerage.

For too long real estate brokerages would struggle for profitability. They would yield to the idea of hoping to just break even in their brokerage business and would look for ancillary services for the profitability they needed.

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Are Your Leads Going to the Competition?

Our world has become a digitally driven society.  In fact, the Web has revolutionized almost everything we do--including searching for a home.  The National Association of REALTORS®' Digital House Hunt study says nine in 10 home buyers use the Internet as a primary resource to house hunt.  

That means 90 percent of house hunters are using the Web to find homes for sale in a specific location.   That leads me to the question:  "How can you make sure customers are finding your website over your competition's website at a local level?"  One answer is local SEO.  

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