How do you follow up sales leads as a home builder?

This has to be one of the most common discussion points for me with all of my clients. This is especially true when a builder hasn’t had a lot of sales experience before or perhaps he is managing a team of sales people and isn’t sure if they’re following best sales practises.

The answer is fairly simple and obvious.

As many times as it takes to get them on the phone.

Because we all like to set rules, I suggest you follow up 15 times before giving up on a lead.

That means if they don’t answer your phone calls, don’t respond to your emails and just seem to go missing in action – CALL THEM AGAIN.

Inside Sales says that between 2008 and 2012, sales reps made on average only 1.3 call attempts to a new lead before giving up.

Ken Krogue from Inside Sales recommends 8-12 calls in order to dramatically improve contact rates.

Look. We live at a time when people are bombarded with advertising, cold calls and more and we’re busier than ever. So missing a call is very easy to do. Returning a call to a stranger is rarely done because we’ve been trained that if it’s important, they will call back.

So persist.

Create a system to follow up with your leads.

My recommendation is a 2 to 1 ratio of calls to emails.

Two calls. One email. Two more calls. One email.

Get those prospects on the phone and keep following up till you do.

Most sales people stop after 1 or 2 calls. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re lazy or if they have never been told to keep calling. But the worst thing you can do is give up too early.

Each lead is potential value. If you’re not calling a real, genuine lead and your competitor is, you’ll miss out on the business.

So get calling.

Use a decent CRM and track contact numbers. Keep your sales team in check so they follow up diligently on the leads you spent money to create for them and implement a strategy for them so they have a good reason to call each time.