How to Find Seller Leads Before They’re Ready, Using Data, Timing, and Predictive Analytics
Finding seller leads before they raise their hand is the holy grail of real estate marketing. Zillow waits for consumers to request to tour a home, and most agents wait for referrals to materialize or say they’re ready to sell. But by then, for you, it’s too late.
In Too Nice for Sales, Barry Jenkins reveals how data, automation, and timing can uncover motivated sellers months in advance. By understanding how to find seller leads before they’re ready, you can build authentic relationships early, nurture trust naturally, and win the listing when the moment is right.
Barry Jenkins on Converting Leads with Revaluate
Part Two (of two) Reprinted with Permission from the book “Too Nice For Sales” by Barry Jenkins (Part 1 Here)
Thus far in this write, we’ve really been focused on new seller leads, or seller leads that are considering selling right now. There is another element to your seller lead long-term nurture process that involves a longer-term nurture process that doesn’t depend on you being persistent (read: annoying) and in front of the person on your own for years.
As I’ve mentioned before, everyone who owns a home is interested in what the value is. Checking your home value doesn’t make you a seller lead. It makes you a homeowner who is interested in their value. While real estate agents want seller leads that have a sense of urgency, the real money is in the people who aren’t quite ready yet. If you can keep your brand in front of the homeowner via some kind of social media or email strategy that isn’t annoying, you can be memorable. Further, if you can send valuable content such as in-depth automated reports and/or informative blogs or articles, you can send the info and sit back and observe the consumer’s behavior to respond accordingly.
My role at Ylopo has had me obsessing over seller leads and seller nurture for over a year. Being able to partner with one of the great marketing minds of our generation, Jeufeng Ge, has been an eye-opening experience for the power and relevance digital marketing has in the real estate space. As Ge—as the Ylopo team calls him—and I have dug deep on this topic of seller lead nurture, I’ve found three specific things that homeowners want to know more about:
- How much equity they have
- How the local market is doing and what that means for them
- If there are buyers looking for a home like theirs
Notice that none of the preceding three things have anything to do with how long you’ve been an agent, that your dog Pookie is really fun, or how many platinum awards your broker gave you for selling more than the other agents in your office. The homeowner who doesn’t know you personally could care less about who you are. It’s all about their home and how it’s likely the largest financial investment of their lives. When your marketing ads, emails, drip campaigns, and content creation are focused on the seller’s interests, it’s instantly more effective.
When your technology setup allows you to automatically monitor the homeowners in your database (to see activity), you’re able to talk to the right person, at the right time, with the right message. When I wrote the messaging for Ylopo’s Raiya system, I went deep on this for seller lead nurture. Raiya doesn’t text the homeowner one hundred different ways of saying, “Do you want to sell?” Raiya comes from value and makes sure the data requested landed in the person’s inbox; she offers reports, lists of buyers, local market data, and many other helpful tips. Eventually, Raiya stops talking about the homeowner’s home and their desire to sell. She shifts to discussing the buying journey. This is because discussing what home the homeowner will buy next is typically something they would enjoy talking about. The lead engagement of the scripts I’ve worked on with Ylopo for Raiya has had higher engagement than anything else the artificial intelligence team has ever seen. I strongly believe it’s due to Raiya’s ability to be relevant.
I cannot overstate the value of having a technology setup of a CRM, digital marketing system integrated, and remarketing technology to bring leads back to your website. I was just in a meeting with several members of the Ylopo team discussing what I would do if I needed to find good seller leads in my CRM. I’m sharing this here because I believe it is a great example of why these things matter:
Search Criteria in My CRM Follow-Up Boss:
- Home address is not an empty field (aka I have their home address)
- Last site visit in the last thirty days (recently active)
- Any of the following Tags: YPRIORITY, HANDRAISER, AI ENGAGED (Tags added by Ylopo signifying the lead did something important)
- Stage: Lead or Contact (unconverted leads)
- Revaluate score of over 80 (likely to move score)
The result of the preceding criteria showed me 463 people who owned their home and were recently searching on my site. They’ve never been converted or spoken to by an agent and are likely to move in the next twelve months. As you can see, by having a system that keeps homeowners’ attention, I am able to drill down my database to find people who are deserving of my time who might be looking to sell in the next year. If you combine this type of process with my scripting and mindset in the beginning of this chapter, you will be sure to find a high volume of listings to sell!
AVM-powered homeowner marketing
Barry Jenkins nails the philosophy — Revaluate makes it actionable. Discover which homeowners in your CRM are most likely to move in the next 12 months.
