Nobody ever said real estate was easy, and nobody ever said every lead you ever get will be perfect and ready to use you. If you want to be truly successful and make a ton of money in real estate, you have to be as willing to go after the hard sale as you are the easy. Your purpose is to get as many people as possible in your area to use your service and because statistics show the average person moves every seven years, every single person in your area is a potential client, whether they fall in your lap or you you have to cultivate them over time. Sometimes that means doing the extra detective work it takes to get to the bottom of some of your leads.

“This lead is a junk lead, there’s no phone number.”

“When I talked to this lead they claimed they never submitted their information, these leads are fake!”

“This is a refi lead, I’m a real estate agent, this does me no good.”

“This lead doesn’t have a real estate need!”

We’ve heard all these and more and you’ve probably thought them at one time or another, whether with our service or another lead generator you use. To be perfectly blunt, more often than not, these are just excuses of agents who don’t want to have to put in the extra effort to see a lead to fruition, whether 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months down the line. Sometimes you just have to be a detective, and dig a bit to find a way to contact the lead. The more leads you have in your pipeline and you’re following up with, the less stress there is to get closings, b/c you’ve got some many leads, the listings and closings come almost naturally.

What to do with supposed “bad leads”:

If you’ve got a lead with a bad name, or fake phone number, don’t just trash it. Visit WhitePages.com and do a reverse address lookup (you won’t always find what you’re looking for, but you will more often than not). You can also double check the lead information by doing a reverse phone lookup (type in the lead’s phone number and see if the name and address match up) or do a name look up (type in the lead’s name and see if address and phone match up.) WhitepPages.com or another online directory is the type of tool your should be utilizing OFTEN!

If a you call the phone number a lead gave and it does not go to that lead, don’t get mad! Look at it as an opportunity to strike up a conversation with someone new. Explained what happened, apologize for any inconvenience and tell them you’d like to send them a $5 gift card to make up for it. As long as they agree, you just got a name and address to add to your pipeline!

To find out how to make the best use of any leads claiming to want to refinance, click here to read our piece on it. If your lead uses the old “I was just curious” or “I don’t have a real estate need” then so what! Just because they don’t have a real estate need now, doesn’t mean they won’t in 2 years. Add them to your drip campaign and follow up at least once a month to become the trusted expert they’ll use when they ARE ready to move. And if they’re just curious – why? Think about it – if you’ve got a nice Rolex on your wrist, you’re probably not too worried about the value – you just know it’s worth a lot! BUT, if you think about possibly selling it, or trading it in, you’re going to want to know an exact value. Even people that are curious will have a real estate need eventually. By following up with these leads, you’re planning for your future business.

So often sales people get an objection and simply roll over meekly and say “okay.” But that’s not sales at all. You’ve probably heard it before but the sale starts at no. You’re not having to “sell” anyone on a product or idea if they immediately say yes. The true test of a salesperson is overcoming objections to make the sale.

We’ll often say there’s no such thing as a bad lead, but we know that’s not true. There are such things as junk leads, but that is only if EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF INFORMATION is fictitious. If you’ve got even one piece of information in a lead that leads to a real person, that lead still has the potential to turn into something for you.

Example of a junk lead:

Name: John Doe
Phone #: 717-555-1212
Address: 1234 Noneya Bizness Lane
E-mail: asdf@asdf.com

Now THAT is a junk lead. Nothing to go on, no way to trace it back to the right person…if your lead looks like that, we’ll agree that it’s a junk lead. If it has any pertinent piece of information though, we’re just not buyin’ it!