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Dear Friend,

This week we’re going to start our first in a three-week series about optimizing your results with your website.

You might have noticed last week that our survey question was about what would you find most valuable? Whether it’s getting more leads from your website, getting more visitors to your website, or getting more leads converted into clients.

By far, the number one request was converting leads into clients. That is where all the money happens. That’s exactly where you need to be focusing.

It doesn’t matter, you could be generating as many leads as you want, but if you’re not able to convert them from a lead into a client, you’re doing it in vain. And whenever you’re looking at improving your marketing or improving your website marketing specifically you definitely want to focus on the end. You want to focus on converting those leads into prospects.

So, this week I’m going to talk about converting those leads, next week we’re going to talk about generating more leads from your website, and I had a lot of people submit their website for our web clinic.  What I’m going to do is take some screenshots from those websites; I’m going to give some coaching. I’m going to talk about how to turn an average website into a lead generation machine. That’ll be next week, when we talk about generating more leads from your website.

In our third week, we’re going to talk about how to get more visitors to your website. Once you’ve got your through-put to your website, once you’re able to generate leads from your website, once you’re able to convert those leads into clients, then it’s time to turn on the switch and get a flood of people, as many people to your website as you can, so you can optimize the number of leads that you’re getting.

So this week we’re going to talk and focus on generating conversions. We’re going to talk about getting more people who ask for something to turn into actual clients. So, I’ve got four tips that I want to share here with you; they’re really mindsets that can take your conversion process to the next level.

Mindset #1: Realize That The Glass Is Half Full.

A lot of times people complain that “these leads are no good,” or “these leads are not qualified.” They ask, “How can I generate quality leads?” Now the real answer to how can I generate more quality leads, is to generate MORE leads.

The leads ARE or ARE NOT going to buy. That’s the only option.

It depends on your attitude about it. A lot of research has gone into studying leads. A lot of research has gone into seeing what actually happens when people ask for something on your website. And if you look at those studies at a minimum, they show that at least half of the people who inquire about something, if they inquire on your website about buying a home, will buy a home in the next 12-18 months. Now I’ve done a lot of research on this and found that that is absolutely true. And I’ve seen some surveys that show that number is actually higher.

You’ve got to think about how people get to that point. Nobody just out-of-the-blue, all-of-a-sudden decides to go to a website and just happens to stumble on your lead page, wherever you’re generating your leads, and fill out a form, and press submit on it, just out of curiosity. It just doesn’t happen. Most of the time when people are doing that, it’s that they have an intention of actually doing something.

You know they ARE going to buy a home in the next 12-18 months. If you really want to test this, if you really want to almost cry sometimes, what you might want to do is go back and look at all the leads that you generated one year ago, in the same month that it is right now. Go back, look over the year, pull out your files, and just start calling up those people.

Call 10 or 20 of them. See what happens. Just call them up and say, “Hey, it’s Dean Jackson, about a year ago you came to my website and I was just following up to see, did you ever buy a home in Winter Haven?”

And you’ll be amazed at what happens. You will cry.  First of all, you’re going to find that at least half of them will have bought a home in Winter Haven. Now hopefully, some of them would’ve become your clients. Hopefully, you were able to convert some of those. So hopefully you were able to be the one that helped them find a house. A lot of it depends on your attitude.

See, if we know that half of them are going to buy and half of them aren’t, that means that half of them are surely qualified. Or half of them have no intention of buying. Or half of them will buy in another area, or not buy from you. It doesn’t matter that half of them are not going to buy, half of them will. That’s the half we want to focus on. And it all depends on whether your mindset is the glass is half-full or the glass if half-empty.

You know there’s a great book I read last year, and you might want to look at it. It’s a book called The Luck Factor. The book is about the science of luck. This is kind of funny, because what he did was take a study of people regarding how they feel about luck.  What he found was, lucky people consider themselves lucky. Now isn’t that interesting? People who consider themselves lucky often put themselves in situations where luck would pay off. They enter contests, they buy lottery tickets, and they’re doing those things.

People who don’t consider themselves lucky, or consider themselves unlucky, don’t put themselves in the position where luck would pay off. So it’s kind of interesting that in a lot of ways it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think that same mindset applies to lead conversion. If you’re looking at it, we know scientifically that half the people who inquire at your website will buy a home in the next 12 months, and half of them will not. So whatever half you’re focused on, if you’re focused on the fact that half of them are going to buy, that they’re in there, that’s where you’re going to have the best results. It’s by keeping your focus on the fact that half of these people are going to buy.

Mindset #2: Connect With As Many Leads As You Possibly Can, As Quickly Can.

That’s the mindset that you want to have here. I want you to think that whenever you have a lead, that this is your opportunity to connect with them to find out whether they are the person that’s going to buy a home. Whether they’re in that group, the half that are going to buy, or whether they’re in the half of people that are not going to buy. Knowing that is a big advantage for you and the way that you find it is by connecting with them, quickly; and connecting with more of them.

You know, often what happens, is people will make one attempt to try and connect with somebody. They’ll send them an email, or they’ll try them on the phone number that they left, and if they don’t return their call, or if they weren’t able to reach them, they give up on them, and put them in their mind in that pile of people who are not going to buy. But you know if you shifted your mindset on this. You’re going to treat everybody like they are going to buy, until they prove that they aren’t, versus treating people like they aren’t going to buy until they prove that they are.

You know that is the biggest mindset shift that you can make. You can treat people like they’re 5 star prospects. That’s what we’re really looking for here, are 5-star prospects.

People who are
1. Willing to engage in a dialogue
2. Friendly and cooperative when we talk to them
3. They know what they want and they’ve got a plan and are willing to share it
4. They’re going to be doing something in the next 6-12 months, and
5. They would like us to help them.

If that’s our goal, that’s what we’re looking for – 5 star prospects, then if we treat people like they are 5-star prospects. If we focus our attention, our minds, our attitudes on we’re looking for those 5-star prospects, it makes the thought of dealing with the people who are not 5-star prospects just an inconvenience, just something to get to the people who are 5-star prospects.

And the way we find 5-star prospects is that we connect with as many of these leads as we can.

Don’t just give up after one try. You know we want to look at this and say, I’m going to try in the morning, I’m going to try in the afternoon, I’m going to try over several days, I’m going to try in the evening, I’m going to try and connect with them by email, if I have to, I’ll mail them something.

Whatever it is, your number one job when you get a new lead is to connect with them and just decide whether they’re a 5-star prospect or not, because if you are focusing all of your attention in your follow-up efforts on the 5-star prospects, you’re going to have a higher propensity for those people to actually become clients of yours.

You’re not just going to lump everybody in and have one follow-up system fits all, we want to identify the people who have the highest probability of becoming our clients, so that we have the ability to go all out with those people.

Mindset #3: Shift From A 6-12 Day Horizon To A 6-12 Month Horizon.

We often look at it that people say, “These leads are no good,” or that “These leads aren’t quality.” What that means and what they’re looking for is people who are buying a home in the next 6-12 days. That, to them, is a good quality lead. Now if that’s your definition, of a good quality lead, you’re going to be in trouble on lead conversion.

Remember when we talked about how half of the people will buy a home in the next 12 months? Well guess what? Only 15% of them will buy a home in the first 90 days. That means that 85% of the people who inquire about something, about a home, or about a mortgage, will not do anything until at least 90 days from now. 90 days out is where 85% of them are going to actually make a purchase or get a mortgage.

If you’re just focused on looking for the right now prospects, that’s your only ability, working with the people who are ready to buy right now, in the next couple of weeks, you’re going to have a long, hard row to hoe. You’re not going to be able to get the most that you can from the lead generation efforts that you’re doing.

If you have a way to bond with people, if you’ve got a way to continue in a relationship with people, giving them information about homes that have come on the market, helping them in their quest for the perfect home.  If you’re able to be the one who’s doing that for them, you are the one who is most likely to be the one who can help them.

If you can look at it like that, if you look at it like your mindset is that you’re really going to invest in serving these people for 6-12 months, you’re going to be rewarded for that effort. You really are.

You know, when you look at it, people who are 5-star prospects, often have a hard time getting realtors to return their calls, and getting realtors help them when they need information. And if you’re the one who is able to do that for them, if you’re the one who is giving them the information before they can even find it, (and that’s a valuable point right there — giving them the information before they can find it), that is going to put you in a high regard in their mind.

Start thinking about what they want. They are enthusiasts about buying a new home. They are scouring the classified, they’re driving through the neighborhoods, they’re going to open houses, and they’re looking on Realtor.com. They’re probably getting email updates as soon as new listings come on the market. You know, of course, those are delayed usually, but they’re probably getting all of that information about the marketplace.

What they’re not getting, is any kind of filtering information on that. They’re not getting somebody’s opinion about the properties; they’re not getting the scoop about a property before it comes through on the MLS.

If you have the ability to choose a group of prospects like that and give them information that is going to be valuable to them. To act like they act, to give them that information with some personality behind it, not just sending them automated updates, then you are going to bond with them.

NAR shows again and again and again that more than 60 -70% of the time, people only ever talk to one real estate agent. So, if you’re the one that they talk to, there’s a good chance that you’re the one who’s going to be able to help them. So, shift your mindset from 6-12 days to 6-12 months, and go all out on providing valuable information to that group of prospects, 5-star prospects who are going to buy, and that way you will have a constant stream of prospects that you can work with.

Mindset #4: Generate A More Focused Lead By Choosing A Single Target Market.

Often people want to generate as many leads as they possibly can. They want to generate leads from all over the county, or the tri-county area and where the problem comes is that you end up having a very difficult time logistically providing any kind of valuable follow-up service.

You have one person over here who’s looking in Lake Alfred, you’ve got one person who’s  looking for a lakefront home in Winter Haven, you’ve got one person who’s looking for orange groves in Lake Wales. You know, if you’ve got all kinds of things that you’re trying to keep on top of, you’re generating all kinds of just general leads; you’re casting a very wide net, it’s much more difficult for you to provide any kind of valuable follow-up information.

Now, contrast that with, if you were only focused on lakefront properties in Winter Haven, for instance.  You’re focused on that, that’s your number one goal, you’re generating all your leads, and you’re trying to generate leads for people who are looking for lakefront homes in Winter Haven.

Now it’s very easy for you to provide a very valuable, high-quality follow-up procedure for people who are looking for lakefront homes. Now, you can just send them information on the homes that are on the lake. You can send them information as soon as that property comes on the market, and you know that everybody who is on your list, everybody in that follow-up group is looking for a lakefront home.

And that’s going to be a big advantage for you, because now, instead of going broad, you can go deep. And if you’ve got a great big pool of people who are looking for lakefront properties to buy, you’ve got a big opportunity now to go and find lakefront listings.

You know, that’s exactly what we talk about in GettingListings.com. We talk about getting listings in an area where you already have buyers. That’s the most valuable thing that you can do. So, you triangulate it.

Those are 4 big mindsets that will greatly improve the response that you get in your lead conversion efforts. Now, next week, tune back in again, and we will talk about how to generate more leads from your website.

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