Organizing Your Database
If you already have our Advanced Drip Email program, Prospect Connector, it is very easy to set up and organize your own groups directly in the website's Lead Database. If you do not have Prospect Connector, you might want to look into adding it, but you can still apply the tips below with other database programs, or even just an excel file on your computer. The goal here is to organize your leads in a way that will make it easy for you to designate who is who for quick and consistent followup.
Hot, Warm, Cool, and Cold Leads
The first step to organizing your database is to sort your leads into four groups: Hot, Warm, Cool, and Cold. Follow up with each of these groups is going to be a little bit different to match the leads' needs and interests.
Hot Leads
Your Hot Leads are the ones you are currently in communication with and you already have a pretty positive professional relationship. These leads should be actively looking for properties and about ready to move within the next 90 days or so.
Warm Leads
Your Warm Leads are ones that you are in at least some communication with, by phone or email. These people are looking for properties but may not be ready to move for another 3-6 months.
Cool Leads
Your Cool Leads are ones that you have talked to at least once, or gotten some kind of email response. Most of your "I'm Just Looking" leads will probably fall into this group. They should be 6-12 months out from moving.
Cold Leads
These are the leads that you have not actually talked to or received an email response from, or are more than a year out from moving. These leads will probably make up the majority of your database given the nature of internet leads. Many realtors make the mistake of believing that these are bad leads because you do not get much of a response from them. If you understand how to follow up with internet leads, however, you will know that so long as you have a valid email address, there is no such thing as a "bad" lead.
Other Groups
You'll want to create some additional groups for the other people you will want in your database. You may have some people that fit into more than one group- that's fine, go ahead and put them in both. You may want to make a note to yourself of which groups they are in so you can keep track to make sure they aren't bombarded by too many communications
Sphere of Influence - Warm
These are people in your sphere of influence whom you already know or are in communication with. Preferably, these are people who would be interested in buying or selling real estate sometime in the near future (within the next 6 months or so- use your best judgement).
Sphere of Influence - Cold
These are people in your sphere of influence that maybe you don't know very well or are not particulary interested in anything to do with real estate at this time. Since these are potential future clients and referals, we still want to keep in touch with them.
Past Clients
Your Past Clients should be special. A fairly recent NAR survey revealed that 40% of people do NOT work with the same agent again simply because they can't remember the agent's name! It definitely goes to show how important it is to keep in touch with your past clients if you want to maximize your repeat and referral business.
Others
Create a new group whenever there are multiple leads with specific but similar needs that differ from your other existing groups. You want to create a group so you can send out one email (or one series of emails) that will apply to every one within that group. This is in place of sending out individual emails to a ton of different people. Examples might be "Buyers", "Sellers", "Investors", "Agents", "Coastal San Diego Buyers" vs "Inland San Diego Buyers" etc.
