What to do with all those trademe enquiries

How much time do you spend answering email enquiries that lead nowhere?

The buyer sends an email asking, "Do you have a price guide?"

You answer back the best way you can, and then it's a ghost town. Most of the time, you'll never hear from that buyer again.

Time wasters, you say?

One could take that position. Or you could view each of these interactions as an opportunity. Wouldn't it be great if you could capture their information, keep in touch without using up any more of your valuable time, and be top of their shortlist when they inevitably need a real estate salesperson in the future?

While 95% of these "what do they want for the place?" email interactions with buyers won't lead to a sale (and rarely a second email), we know that the majority of these buyers will end up buying a home at some point, which means they will need to sell that home one day, too.

It might take 5, 10, 15+ years. But every single buyer becomes a seller at some stage. And they can refer you to friends and family even sooner!

Think of all the trademe enquiries you've received over the past 12 months. How many of them do you think would have bought a home during that time?

How many of them have a home to sell already? Or will end up selling the home they buy within a short period of time, because that's just what often happens? People break up, jobs change, families get bigger.

Could it be possible that 10% of those enquiries end up becoming a seller within 3 years?

Those people are near-term potential vendors. With a decent relationship, they could damn-near have a place in your pipeline.

When we view each email enquiry through this lens, rather than taking a view that they are un-serious buyers wasting our time, then we start to understand the value of these interactions.

Think about it this way...

We work incredibly hard to secure each of our listings. And those listings give us a golden opportunity to meet buyers and sellers in our marketplace. And yet, most salespeople completely ignore the potential long-term value of online email enquiries.

Imagine you sold 20 houses last year. On average, those 20 houses each received 40 email enquiries of some sort. That's 800 interactions. If 10% of those enquiries turn out to be from current or future sellers who end up going on the market in the next 3 years, then that's 80 potential listing leads that have been introduced to your business.

Enough to double your income.

That number of listing opportunities could be sitting in your email archive right now, just begging to receive some attention.

We are all pretty adept at being nice to the open home visitor who mentions they have a home to sell. And we put massive value on those budding relationships, even if the owners are 1-2 years away from selling. But how many of us are ignoring a potential goldmine in the form of online email enquiries because we:

A: View them as time wasters?

B: Don't have a plan to nurture these contacts and turn them into clients?

The vast majority of salespeople answer online email enquiries promptly, and that's the last contact they'll have.

From now on, I want to encourage you to embrace a different approach.

Keep reading for lead-generating follow-up scripts you can use to turn these simple email enquiries into database contacts and future listings.

Step 1. The initial response.

Goal: Capture their attention. Offer something of value. Obtain permission to keep in touch.

Here are some call-to-action ideas to try. Add one of these sentences directly after your response to their initial email enquiry: