7 Ways to Generate Seller Leads
The going joke is that seller agents don’t have to do much to collect commission.
Though it’s not 100% true, the joke exists for a reason. If you’re an agent who wants to make the most money per hour, working with sellers is extremely attractive.
Many agents struggle with getting a mix of clients that is seller-dominant. This is often because they don’t have control over the type of leads they receive.
Continue reading to learn strategies you can use to generate seller leads, so you can make more commission without running yourself ragged.
Keep in Touch with Former Clients
At Forge, we believe in a holistic approach to marketing which means we care about all steps in the marketing and sales process -- not just lead gen.
This strategy demonstrates what we’re talking about because it emphasizes post-sale follow-up.
After completing a transaction, many agents send their clients a closing gift, then never follow up with them.
However, there is so much value in keeping in touch with clients long after you help them with a transaction.
Periodically contacting former clients via direct mail, emails, and even calls will ensure that they reach out to you when they or people they know are ready to sell.
After all, they probably won’t live in that house forever!
Add Lead Magnets to Your Website
Lead magnets are free items or services that are given away for the sake of collecting contact details (generating leads).
In this digital age, lead magnets are often information packaged in a guide, eBook, or checklist.
By adding lead magnets that appeal to sellers throughout your website, you’re likely to collect contact information for more seller leads.
It’s important to note that you need to be driving traffic to your website using a mix of channels like social media and emails for this to work.
This is because a website with zero visitors won’t collect any leads even if it’s offering irresistible lead magnets.
Some examples of seller-targeted lead magnets include:
Home valuation or comp
Seller Checklist
Guide to Selling Quickly
Essential Tips for Selling in [Insert Year]
Essential Tips for Selling in [Insert City]
If you need help creating lead magnets sellers will want to see, contact us to learn how we can lend a hand!
Provide Market Stats
Speaking of lead magnets, market statistics can make perfect lead magnets as well as general content for your various marketing channels.
Market stats are great because they appeal to sellers, and they position you as the agent that will get them the best price for their home.
Housing market stats come in several formats with comp charts, YTD housing sales, and average sale prices being some of the most popular.
Providing insight into what it all means or the cause of certain trends will win you brownie points with your potential sellers.
If you’re wondering how you should distribute market stats, here are a few ideas:
Send Market Updates via Direct Mail
Add Market Information to Door Hangers
Post Market Stats to Social Media Pages
Run Facebook Ads that Share Market Data
Offer Market Stats in Your Email Newsletters
Sharing market stats frequently, and breaking them down for people to understand is a sure-fire way to attract seller leads.
If you need help formatting market stats into eye-catching and digestible content, our team is happy to help!
Nurture Your Sphere of Influence (SOI)
This should be a given, but there are still too many real estate agents who are losing friends and even family members to other agents.
Let be clear that nurturing is not the same as lead generation. Nurturing involves a process that warms current leads, or in this case, people in your network into clients.
Nurturing your SOI should look a lot like nurturing leads you’ve created by other means, but you can add a personal touch or use more intimate methods of communicating since you know them.
For example, you can text your friends and family links to your blogs or market updates instead of sending them a newsletter like you would with a stranger.
You can also leverage social media posts and direct messages to nurture your SOI.
And since you are focusing on generating seller leads, the content you use to nurture your SOI should involve more information targeted that appeals to sellers.
Nurture Your Database with Seller Information
Please use your database! It’s the most important asset you have as a real estate agent.
If you’re not contacting people in your database at least once a week, you’re depriving yourself of potential business!
That said, we’re not telling you to send your database information that they don’t care about. Target your information to meet their interests.
Send them information about the specific communities in which they live or about the selling process (if you know they’re likely to move).
Because you want to generate seller leads, provide more information that is appealing to sellers such as market statistics or ways to improve home value.
If you’re afraid you’ll bore people who aren’t interested in selling, provide information that you know will interest them, but tie it back to selling in some way. This might look like adding a selling call to action (CTA).
For example: “Here is a list of 10 local parks to visit this summer. Did you know that by living by a park, your property value is likely to rise? If you’re interested in finding out your home value, contact me, and I can help you out!”
Bias Your Social Media Page to Sellers
Treat your social media page like your website. It should provide all the information that prospective clients look for when evaluating a real estate agent.
This includes general “about information” such as your contact information, years of experience, communities you serve, your philosophy, and of course pictures of you.
Your social media page should also include content that positions you as a real estate and community expert. This might include market stats, educational information about buying/selling processes, community news, local events, and etc.
If you want to attract more seller leads, the content you post should be biased towards sellers, or at the very least, have more content that caters to the needs of sellers.
The CTAs for all your content should also target sellers (e.g. “learn how this might affect selling”).
Farm a Subdivision
Farming is underrated because it doesn’t give agents immediate results.
With all these companies offering immediate lead gen and other shiny objects, it’s no wonder agents have abandoned this strategy.
Though farming isn’t an immediate solution to a dry pipeline, it is an extremely effective strategy if done correctly.
If you persistently farm a neighborhood and become its presiding real estate agent, all the seller leads in that neighborhood will come to you!
Your Challenge
If you want to create more seller leads for your business, try one or more of these strategies for at least 5 months, and document your results.
Find out what strategy works best for you, and when you figure it out, continue to use that strategy, AND invest more in it!
The Forge Philosophy
At Forge Marketing Group, we care about providing our clients with sustainable, holistic, and client-owned marketing solutions to help them grow their real estate businesses.
We’ve worked with too many real estate agents who have been burned by “lead generation” companies, so we make it our priority to offer everything those businesses can’t.
Interested in working with Forge? Click here to request pricing and more information.