Follow Up Process

My Follow Up Process

I use the bot (Lofty AI Assistant) to qualify new leads and follow up with website opportunities. They are automatically sorted into prospect pipelines as they are qualified. Smart plans nurture from there. It’s the same process I’ve been running for five years and it works great. Through the different conditions starting in late 2019, I have experienced between 8%-14% conversion to appointment using this process. If details bore you, just read that paragraph and again and figure it out on your own. If you like details, keep reading.

• Pipelines are simple: Hot, Warm, Cold, No AI Response. You could use the Attempting Contact as your “No AI Response”  and “Nurturing/Cold” as your Cold if you want the defaults.

• Triage (sorting or prioritizing) is based on the AI tags. I focus on the New Leads pipeline, but also triage from the No AI Response pipeline because sometimes people ignore the bot for a while, but respond later. I won’t map out the tag triage here, but figure out what you think should be prioritized how. Keep in mind, this is just an initial sorting, not the gospel being written. For example, AI: Needs Financing tag… is it a motivated or unmotivated tag? You need to decide for yourself and your market. 

• Let’s dive into pipelines a bit more. I like the temperatures (Hot, Warm, Cold) because they are simple and they can be interpreted different ways which is helpful for teams and brokerages. Hot, Warm, Cold (hereafter “HWC”) can be thought of as Ready, Getting Ready, Not Ready. It can also be thought of as timing. I use to do 1, 2, 3 months from taking action (setting appointment to meet in person). In the past 18-24 months I stretched it out. Currently I use it as HWC = 0-3, 4-6, 7-12 months away and I dump +12mo in the pond as a Reassignment Group via smart plan step. 
  • Ready is proof of pre-approval or cash on hand, actively on the website nearly every day, as soon as they see what they like, we are meeting in person. 
  • Getting ready is active on the site several times per month, getting proof of money together, and still consistently responding. Once the have everything in order, they will be ready.
  • Not Ready is maybe once or twice a month on the site and/or responding. Low motivation, but still at least staying in touch. 
  • Someone that is working with you in person isn’t a prospect, they are a client and should be in the client pipeline.
  • Agents on a team or in a brokerage account can use these variations as they see fit, which is the beauty of my process. It’s very flexible. 

• HWC are prospect pipelines. Leads are only New Leads, but sometimes the terms are used interchangeably. A prospect is “a potential customer who has been qualified as meeting specific criteria that indicate an ability and likelihood to buy within a reasonable commitment”. Someone signing up on your site isn’t that.

• This bullet point will make the previous pair make more sense. Your goal is to take the new leads and separate them into problems and prospects. Is the person going to be a problem that will make you lose money or a prospect you can mine for gold (profit)? The method doesn’t matter you still have to do it. Problems can be put in the lead pond or deleted. You may give them a chance via separate pipeline if they give goofy information for contact.

• So, lead comes in, bot qualifies as a prospect and it gets sorted into HWC. Then the nurturing plans take over. The automations built in cascade the lead to the next coldest pipeline when it ends which starts the next smart plan. HWC means three different types of conversations. 
  • Let’s talk about this “speed to lead” stuff. I don’t care about it. With online business your website is your retail shop/store selling your services to consumers who “walk in”. The principle is the same. Most of us in real estate lived to go to Best Buy in the 1990s. I call it my Blue Shirt Army concept. I’ve been teaching this for over 5 years. 
  • You walked into Best Buy and got rushed by the employees in blue shirts telling you they can help, they don’t work on commission, etc about their monthly sales. What did you tell them? “Nope, just looking” and you wanted to be left ALONE. Home buyers and sellers think the same way. And no Zillow didn’t influence them. They have been like that for decades. Zillow knew this, so why don’t most agents?
  • Greet, Give, Get. Greet them professionally and politely. Give valuable information they find relevant. Get out of their way. 
• My registration form explains the value of registering on my site and why it’s different than others. I introduce my AI bot, it even has a profile on my site. I let them know why and when they will be reaching out. I treat it like a human being. 
• Seven minutes after registration I send a text giving valuable information.
• Four minutes later, the bot kicks off the process. 
• Smart Plans are nurturing, not smothering. 
• The bot picks up on the website opportunities and capitalizes on them. Depending on tags and behaviors, the referral form is sent to the referral partner (I use Lofty to run my outbound referral business model) and it includes a buyer agreement per the recent NAR settlement via Zapier and Docusign. There are internal automations that take place as well regarding that, but for a different post. 
• Speed to lead is about the opportunities of a lead, not the opportunity of a lead. That is very important to understand the difference. 

I use this process to run my outbound lead referral business and have been hired to set this process up for other agents and brokers.