Real Estate Buyer Conversion Tips (and Mistakes to Avoid!)

Mistakes can be a beautiful thing.

Realizing you’re doing something wrong is the first step toward growth and improvement.

My brother Patrick Ferry has been selling real estate in San Diego for about four years, and he admits at one time, he was “clueless” about how to handle buyers.

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But then he realized he was making some big real estate agent mistakes:

• He says he was “obsessed” with getting people to sign in at Open Houses
• He jumped into pre-qualification questions way too early with some prospects
• He tried too hard to make an automated, one-size-fits-all follow-up program work
• And he was treating all prospective buyers the same rather than separating them into those in the “research” phase vs. the “transactional” phase.

Thankfully, he not only realized his mistakes, but he discovered solutions for these or decided they weren’t as important as he once thought.

Moving beyond his initial mistakes, he implemented four critical KPIs to improve upon…

• Increasing Conversion of Conversations to Appointments
• Increase In-Office Buyer Consultations
• Reduce the Number of Showings to an Offer
• Reduce the Number of Offers to Acceptance

And I’m pretty sure you’ll want to see how he did it because it’s darn good stuff!

Improve Conversations to Appointments Ratio

We all agree that anything you can do with lead follow up is convert conversations into appointments more efficiently, right?

Well, Patrick started by identifying three traits consumers are looking for and used them to his advantage to improve his conversion rate. 

Tips to Increase Real Estate Buyer Conversion Rate

Become the hyper-local expert

Patrick recognized how important it is for people to consider him not just another generic real estate agent, but truly a hyper-local expert.

He achieves that goal by feeling out their knowledge of a given market and then sharing his own personal experience to position himself as the local expert. He says doing this gets people to lean into him and form stronger bonds right from the start.

A key script he discovered to help gauge their knowledge level and tailor his response is “How familiar are you with this community?”

Show his resourcefulness

When you can provide solutions to potential roadblocks for a real estate buyer and demonstrate your resourcefulness, you’re going to win. Patrick draws on his own experience from flipping/renovating homes to help buyers see the possibilities in a property. That consultative approach makes a huge difference over a standard “sales pitch” that some agents jump into when meeting a prospect.

Illustrate your competitive advantage

Meeting a prospect is an opportunity to reveal how you’ve strategically been able to help others, and how you have a proven strategy for helping them as well. Don’t make it seem like you’re just freewheeling with each client. Show them that you have a plan and a strategy to help them find and purchase their dream home.

Doing these three things will position you positively in a prospect’s eye, and give you a much better opportunity to convert them into a buyer consultation appointment.

5 Little Words That Make a Huge Difference

Patrick says some of the most effective questions he asks prospective buyers begin with these five words:

“Has anyone reviewed with you __________________?”

• The pros and cons of various communities
• Your purchasing power, to determine what kind of property you can get in different communities
• Your lifestyle priorities and your deal-breakers

Here’s another hot script to use:

“Has anyone taken the time to do a buyer consultation with you yet?”

And here’s one more for the “transactional” phase buyer:

“Has anyone taken the time to review all of the off-market properties to see if any of those would be a good fit for you?”

Buyer KPI No. 2: Increase Office Buyer Consultations

Once you’ve asked these questions above, inviting the buyer to your office to conduct a deep dive consultation comes naturally.

Patrick says he’ll say something like, “Let’s get together in my office because I want to walk you through the process and show you the various communities, market stats, Google Maps, etc.”

During that meeting, Patrick will input these prospects in his CRM so he can show them what they’ll be receiving by email and include their preferences.

He then establishes a team dynamic with the prospect by saying something to the effect of, “I want to be able to do the research for that perfect property, so if you see a property before me, text me about it right away.”

That “homework assignment” will forge a strong bond with your prospects and further the “teamwork” aspect.

Want Patrick’s solutions to the next two KPIs – reduce the number of showings to offer and reduce the number of offers to be accepted? Then be sure to listen to the entire, uncut interview with Patrick on this episode of the Tom Ferry Podcast Experience!

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