Isaiah Colton, CEO of RAP Success Systems, and Chris Walker, a leading real estate agent in Alabama, continue their education series on lead conversion. This series covers the best practices of generating and, more importantly, converting on various types of real estate leads.

This discussion has a specific focus on For Sale by Owners and expired leads as they are the low hanging fruit among lead sources.

Isaiah points out that, “you can have all the leads in the world,  the best websites, and the best database but if you don’t have a good sales and marketing plan to make sure the leads convert, then none of that matters at the end of the day.”

A huge part of that sales and marketing plan is making sure we understand the psychology of the niche that we’re working on.

FSBO and expired homeowners have raised their hands to say, “I’m ready to sell.” And if they can’t do it themselves, they will look for a real estate agent. A lot of times FSBOs and expireds are open to other options because they may have had a bad experience with their first attempt.

So, it becomes a matter of getting in front of them to showcase why you’re different than every other agent that’s out there. It sounds simple but differentiating yourself from the competition is one of the biggest obstacles when dealing with an expired or FSBOs.

What makes it a bit more difficult is trying to call a listing that just expired yesterday. Guess what, 60 other agents are calling as well, so good luck.

It’s more beneficial to wait at least 30 days to give the homeowner time to breathe. That way, they’re not being bombarded by 40 agents in one day.  If you’re the 40th call they’ve had, they’re probably over it; they’re not going to talk to you.  That’s why you should avoid calling an expired listing that just came off the market.  Giving it some time raises your chances for less competition.

Now we can circle back to a topic we raised in a previous episode of this three-part series, rapport building. Rapport building is the most important skill that comes into play when you get to the prospect’s front door for that appointment. One strong way to help build rapport is knowing how to handle the objections that prospectors raise properly.

The most common objections from Expireds and For Sale by Owners

There are only a handful of objections that we get when dealing with almost any kind of home seller. Once we know how to deal with those objections, we can then build our marketing and sales plan and our presentation around handling them. Then when we’re having a conversation with the prospect, we have good, solid responses and we’re very confident in our answers.

The objection handling stage is where most deals get lost. You’ve just barely gotten started when you find yourself out of the running.

To learn the rest of the strategies for building rapport and handling objections with FSBOs and Expireds, watch the Lead Conversion Series Episode 3 in its entirety here.