Set Up a Database and Feed It

At the heart of your lead-generation program will be a large, powerful contact management database. Think of the names of the people in your database and the relationship you have with them as “your business.” When you hear of anyone in the personal services industry selling their business, what do you think they mean? What is it that a doctor or an attorney really sells? Since they don’t have a product per se, what they’re selling usually boils down to a few things: their staff, their systems, and their customer base. Many years ago, I went in for my annual allergy checkup. Imagine my surprise when a doctor I had never heard of or seen before stepped into the room and introduced himself as my new allergist. Turns out he had bought my former allergist’s “business” when my former allergist retired. Now, of all the things he might have bought from my former doctor, what did he buy that was the most important? Me! My name in a database and my relationship with the former doctor is why he bought the business! If you grasp the simplicity of this concept, then you’ve understood one of the most important concepts in this book, albeit a simple one.

Your database is your business. Building up the number of names in it and a relationship with those names is really at the very core of what building a real estate business is all about. Think of it this way: The size of your real estate sales business will be in direct proportion to the size and quality of your database. The best approach to lead generation is to set up a model that you systematically execute. Once you’ve got the model, your entire focus becomes implementing the model. A series of systems you can follow will make this quite simple for you to do. You just need to do it!

To operate your database model, you first need to realize that you’ll be trying to generate leads from two groups:
(1) people you have met and
(2) a targeted group of people whom you haven’t met. We refer to these groups in our lead-generation database strategy as Met and Haven’t Met. Marketing and prospecting to your Met and Haven’t Met databases will yield three types of business: new (from Haven’t Met), repeat (from Met), and referral (most likely from Met). While prospecting and making direct contact with these two groups is a very powerful approach, it is not very leveraged. Simply put, if you rely on pure prospecting, you probably will never generate enough leads to reach your highest potential. To become highly successful you will need to make sure your lead generation is marketing-based, which is highly leveraged.

Now, a pure marketing approach to the Haven’t Met might work, but our research suggests that you probably still need a prospecting program to drive leads to your business and protect against market shifts. Peak performance in sales requires you to have a systematic marketing-based Lead-Generation Model, which is then enhanced by personal prospecting. That way you can enjoy the benefits created by both activities. So even if you have intellectually accepted the idea that you have two professions—lead generation and real estate sales—it can still be hard to maintain your focus on a complete lead-generation program. This is especially true when the business cycle in your market is up and there just seems to be an endless stream of leads. The danger of slacking off and not following a systematic marketing-based, prospecting-enhanced lead-generation system at all times is that each time the market shifts (and it always does) you’ll have to reinvent your lead-generation approach.

The best in the industry never allow their lead-generation systems to fall prey to the ebb and flow of enthusiasm or the market. They systematize such that little energy or enthusiasm is required to keep the machine running at all times. Their plan is ongoing, with monthly and even weekly installments. Their lead-generation planning and review meetings go on their calendars and are faithfully kept. To be extremely successful in the long term, your approach to lead generation needs to be purposeful and consistent. Enthusiastic entrepreneurial “get go” just isn’t enough for the long haul. There is simply too much chance in that approach. Remember, success in the lead-generation game is in the numbers, so you simply can’t overdo it. Again, let me reiterate that you can never have too many leads