6 ways to nurture every contact in your real estate database

As a real estate agent or team leader, your client database is everything. It acts as a central command center for helping you organize and engage with new leads and existing clients.

And in order to keep the deals flowing, you need to know it like the back of your hand.

“That's the biggest problem with almost any veteran agent,” explains Ryan Rodenbeck Founder, Broker, and CEO of Austin-based Spyglass Realty in a recent episode of Real Estate Team OS. “If they have a lapse in sales, they're not in the database. And it's such a cliché thing to say, like get in your database, get in your database. But it's also the truth.”

Top-producing leaders like Ryan empower their agents with dynamic lead touch plans and engagement tools to nurture every relationship in their database. 

Today, we’re driving into those strategies to help you identify your hand-raisers faster and make the right follow up at the right time.

{{cta-white}}

1. Segment your leads using a simple A- to D-List framework

Taylor Hack is the leader of the high-performance wolf pack at Edmonton-based Hack&Co.

He uses a simple A- to D-List framework to make it easy for agents to prioritize contacts based on a contact’s relationship to the team and timeline.

Here’s how he organizes the database:

• A-list: These are the team’s top referrers (a.k.a. “Hack&Co. Heroes”). Taylor and his agents create an exclusive touchpoint system just for these contacts.
• B-list: These are existing clients. As people who have already contributed to the success of the team, they want to be sure to maintain a strong relationship with this list.
• C-list group: Clients in this group are active buyers and active sellers in the process of finding or listing a home and are a high priority for the team.
• D-list group: These are the hot prospects who are looking to make a move and need a consistent value-led follow up every three days. A high-performing agent on Taylor’s team typically has 10 hot seats at any given time.
• 30 to 90 Days Out: From here, contacts are categorized based on timeline. Those who are 30 to 90 days out from actively buying or selling are contacted once a week.
• 90 to 180 Days Out: Individuals who are 90 to 180 days are contacted once a month.

“A lead is an opportunity that has yet to be sorted,” Taylor explains. Though straightforward, his approach to the A-List, B-List, C-List and D-List categorization is different than your standard A is for hot leads, B-is warm, etc. And that’s kind of the point.

Over the years, Taylor’s coached plenty of agents who were afraid to pick up the phone and call their sphere of influence (SOI). For them, SOI leads would score lower in their database compared to an open house lead, even in cases where they had the same buying timeline.

By segmenting their database according to the strength of the relationship first, buying timeline second, Taylor uses his database to reframe the way agents view their relationships.

From there, he simply applies these categories as Smart Lists in Follow Up Boss to help agents stay on top of the right relationships at the right time.

A smarter way to manage your leads: Watch how to master "Smart List Zero"

2. Use the 11-7-4 formula to engage leads consistently

In 2023, Preston Guyton generated 35,000 leads for his team using a largely organic strategy.

But for him, it’s not about where a lead comes from. “It’s about what happens after the lead comes in. That's what really matters,” he says.

In a recent Real Estate Team OS episode, Preston shared one of his go-to database nurture approaches: the 7-11-4 formula.

This approach comes from one of Preston’s favorite books, Oversubscribed by Daniel Priestley.

Here’s how it works:

• 11 interactions: Increasing a prospect’s sense of trust with each touch
• 7 hours of consumption: By sending relevant information and drip content
• 4 different locations: Text, email, phone, face-to-face
  

The beauty is in its simplicity. Yet, Preston still sees agents taking a copy/paste approach to nurturing their database.

“A lot of people are lazy around this. They'll grab an action plan that a hundred different people used. They won't change it and they'll send it out and attach it to a lead,” explains Preston. As you might imagine, it’s not an approach he endorses.

“People want to read stuff. They want to engage with you. They want to get to know you. Sometimes you just need to take a step back and be like, would I even read this? Is it adding value?”

As a big believer in the simple power of a consistent real estate newsletter, Preston is always asking himself these questions. He’s also constantly tweaking subject lines, testing content, and experimenting to find the best assets for clients and prospects.

His goal is to send content that is so valuable, it could never be marked spam. Do that, and the right conversations will emerge.

Delivering the right content at the right cadence: Hear Preston break down the 11-7-4 formula

3. Create an annual SOI touch plan

If you know Renee Funk, Co-founder of Orlando-based Funk Collection, you already know she’s a big fan of loving the ones you’re with.

“Why do we choose to pay all of this money for leads when we have people that love us, know us, like us, trust us?” she asked in a recent Bosses In Action episode. The answer, of course, is simple: “It’s fear.”

To take the pressure off her team and make it easy for agents to show up for their community, Renee has created the Ultimate Past Client Action Plan inside Follow Up Boss.

Here’s an example of an annual touch plan based on Renee’s proven formula.

Sample annual sphere of influence touch plan

• 3-4 phone calls per year
• 4 handwritten cards per year - 2 random surprise notes, 1 birthday card, 1 holiday card
• 12 emails - neighborhood monthly update, with active, pending and sold listings
• 12+ mailings / postcards - neighborhood events, just listed / sold, sports calendars / local schools, colleges info/schedule, events, etc.
• 2-3 pop by's - hand delivered
• 2 customer appreciation events
• Social media - make sure you’re connected on all  social platforms
  

For the agents on Renee’s team, an SOI contact must include all four contact points: name, phone, email, and mailing address prior to being added to the database.

Once the team is armed with the required information to launch the touch plan, they segment SOI contacts into two categories:

• SOI Top Advocate
• SOI Postcard
  

Contacts with the ‘Top Advocates’ tag receive postcards, event invites, and pop by's. Those tagged ‘SOI Postcards’ receive postcards.

If they need to dive in deeper to any specific part of their database, they now know.

“There were like 800 seller leads in our pond so we had our VA go through and see if they listed and sold the property? Then we whittled the list down again based on who has a name, phone number, email, and mailing address. And finally, who's receiving our postcards on a regular basis and has that affinity for our brand in some way?” she explains.

With a clear and structured approach to their database, Renee and her team could focus their efforts on 125 engaged leads, versus 800 leads with unknown intent.

{{cta-yellow}}

4. Focus on just your priority leads, use relevant automations for everyone else

Barry Jenkins is another all-star team leader known for his ability to bring a human touch to the world of real estate automation.

As the Team Leader of Virginia Beach based Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate, he knows better than anyone that personalization isn’t just about using the prospect’s name in the subject line. It’s a multi-layered experience that should become progressively higher-touch as a prospect advances through your sales funnel.

Barry’s golden rule? “When you find out that something has occurred that you know is important, be relevant to the person.”

Barry uses Automations to deliver a value-driven experience for prospects at all stages of the real estate journey. Here are some of his favorites:

• Hot Leads to Lender: Add your lender to leads the second a buyer lets you know they’re ready
• Stage to Contact: Remove leads from your focus that have negative activity like bad numbers
• Bad Number: Automatically trigger a bad number drip
• Past Client Saved Home: Discover when your past client is active again
• Pond to Call Action or Callingly: Call your team when a lead in the pond does something important
• Warm/Cold to LCA + Ylopo Drip: Put nurture stage prospects on an email drip designed for longer-term touches
• Old Ypriority Leads Trigger ISA Support: When leads re-engage with your website, send them to your ISA and use a Call Action drip with voicemails and video MMS texts

It’s important to note that, while these automations have served Barry well for a long period of time, he has recently adapted his process to meet the needs of his local market.

For him, the ability to adjust your database workflows as needed isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a must.

In addition to some key automations, Barry also uses customized Smart Lists to help agents focus on deals over $200K, actively target leads likely to move, and connect prospects with credit issues to a specialist partner

“The way that Follow Up Boss integrates with third-party IDX websites really provides the business owner running the building the team or the agent running his business the ability to provide the right message at the right time with the right people. And that's why these lists are so important,” says Barry.

Embrace a simple processes that works

5. Know exactly what to say

What you say to prospects is just as important as how and when you say it. 

One of the best ways to keep a high-performing, well-organized real estate database is to have a beautifully structured call script. 

According to Dale Archdekin, Founder of Smart Inside Sales: 

“The best scripts are mostly composed of questions, with very little telling on the agent’s part. Agents should understand WHY they are asking questions, and which questions are the best to ask.”

His biggest tip? “My favorite technique is asking really great questions, and keeping the prospect doing the talking. The more the prospect talks, the more they like you, and the more likely it is they will do business with you. The more the agent does the talking, the less a prospect likes you and the less likely they will do business with you,” he explains.

Here’s how Dale approaches each call:  

• What the lead wants
• What the lead doesn’t want
• What they will do
• What they won’t do
• What that action will gain or avoid for them

Remember, you need to make sure they stay with you the entire time so do yourself a favor and relax. Speak like a real person and always be prepared to leave the jargon at the door.

Lead more conversions with better conversations

6. Use your numbers to coach your agents

In a changing market, your database is your #1 key to consistency.

“Real estate is ever-changing. This industry is ever-changing. Our lead sources are ever-changing,” says Lauren Bowen, Chief Operating Officer at Robert Slack Real Estate in a recent Real Estate Team OS episode.

And she would know. In her current role, Lauren coaches the leaders of the team leaders to drive performance at every level of the business. For her, it’s all about consistency.

“My team leaders have to be consistent because when they are leading a team, their team has to know that through all these changes, they have a constant. They have someone who is gonna be consistently there for them,” she explains.

At Robert Slack Real Estate, there is no such thing as a “bad” lead. So how does Lauren help her nearly 1,000 agents stay actively nurturing their database?

It starts by knowing her numbers at every stage of the lead management process.

Here’s a quick snapshot of her approach:

• Centralize your leads: Leads from the company’s 16 lead sources (over 1.4 million leads) are sent straight into the team’s CRM.
• Know your conversion rate: Agents can access up to 10 lead sources per month as long as they’re converting at 15%.
• Work backwards to find what works: If someone's producing or not producing, team leaders can drill into each part of the process to identify the bottlenecks.

“I break it down and I continue to break it down until we're all the way at the beginning,” Lauren explains. “But I've kind of taken that a step further and continue to work backwards off of almost everything we do from lead spend to lead cost to agent ROI to the number of leads they're getting and the number of calls it took to get there.”

As a self-professed spreadsheet junkie, Lauren loves that she can use this process to identify exactly where the process fell apart and how to do better. “It has made us better as a company because we've been able to identify what we need to change? What is the process and how do we change that?” 

Of course, you don’t have to be a mega team with a presence in five different states to know your numbers. With the right reporting tools and features, you can make sure you and every agent on your team are maintaining your momentum.

Letting your numbers be your guide

Make your database work for you

Your real estate database is the heartbeat of your business. By taking time to lean in and tighten the screws, you can create a system that helps you close deals faster and without feeling like you’re bothering anyone.

The right real estate CRM makes it easy to collect leads from any source, respond quickly, and keep contacts organized as you nurture them from lead to close. And with an open system like Follow Up Boss, you’ll have full control over how and when you nurture your leads.

{{cta-white}}