Lead generation is just a means to connecting consumers with trained professions that are ready and able to assist them in finding the best values.

Let’s remember that Real Estate Agents do a lot more than match buyers to sellers. There is a lot in between that only real estate agents can provide.

If you treat your customers like leads you don’t deserve them!

Then, I thought about it. The fact is that, if email drip campaigns are so bad and consumers don’t want them, then why do they respond to them?

1. Gooder Group’s Rainmaker Central provides content that keeps buyers informed, updated, and on top of things. They sign up for the lists and receive it via opt in.

2. My email newsletter, TexasRealEstateUpdate.com, rarely has opt outs.

3. My Top Producer Market Snapshot has been implemented since October and hasn’t had one opt out.

I think the difference is in how targeted the communication is to the “lead/contact/person”. Brian Buffini’s coaching system teaches us to send “items of interest” to the lead to deepen our relationship.

I’d be out of business if I didn’t stay in contact with leads who only wanted pricing on a home. I try to send relevant, targeted, specific news that I think they’d want to have.

That’s the difference. You provide resources and tools that people want and that they ASK FOR. Then, you deepen trust and the relationship by staying on top of it. True lead generation is actually “lead cultivation”, like tilling a field to grow crops.

I defy anyone to stand up and say that being lead generated, funneled into a drip marketing campaign and incubated is the way they themselves would like to be treated. We all hang up on telemarketers, delete anything that remotely looks like spam from our email and are reluctant to provide private information about ourselves to others under most circumstances.

As consumers we are more demanding than ever. We seek superior everything, from product quality to customer service. This is a shift that has lead to a trading up phenomenon that continues to reward businesses who build great ladders of benefits for its customers.

The video is meant to be a gentle reminder that some of what real estate does and thinks about regarding customers could use a make over. It’s a nudge to real estate that it’s customers want something better from their experience. Therein lies the great value proposition often elusive in our industry.

Greg’s canine instinct to scratch and claw at anything he didn’t think of himself should not get in the way of what this message is about. Each statement offers real estate an opportunity to seek a new path to toward customer acquisition and relationship building.

Expectations are being set by other entities outside real estate who have found new ways to talk to and treat consumers. As a result, their business flourishes.

It would be a shame if all anyone gets out of this was that we created an advertisement for ourselves.

Every agent and every market are different, so individual efforts to capture leads will have different results, but buying leads for people who never intended to be sold is a waste of money.

The video reiterated some very basic needs that todays consumer feel. Respond to those needs in a professional manner and you will be successful.