How To Turn Your Email Inquiries Into Sales Part 1

June 19, 2009

Prior to the internet, a real estate professional normally had first contact with prospects via telephone.  Prospects called them regarding their print ads to find out more details on the listing.  These sales professionals of old naturally took well to this because they were using speech to interact and persuade these people, a skill they’d be using and developing nearly all their lives.  But once the internet became pervasive and email a part of every day life, real estate professionals found themselves answering more and more prospects via email and fewer prospects via phone.  They were now using a very different means of communicating: writing instead of speech.  This shift caught many a sales professional off guard because many didn’t have strong writing skills.  The result: many real estate professionals have found dealing with email prospects very difficult because of their under developed writing skills.

One of my students once told me she though all the email inquiries she received on listings were useless.  She said she’d gotten over 2000 email inquiries on her listings, but not one of these people had bought a single property.  The problem here wasn’t email inquiries, it was she didn’t understand how to deal with and convert prospects in writing.

So here are some ways of using writing effectively for converting these prospects via email:

Question Your Prospects: real estate professionals frequently make the mistake of trying to qualify their email prospects right away.  Initially, your response should be helpful, not probing whether this person is a suitable prospect or not.  The latter will be answered soon enough anyway.  The reason is the internet has shifted a lot of power away from the real estate professional to the consumer.  The consumer now controls the engagement because the real estate professional no longer is the gatekeeper to real estate information as they once were.   So consumers won’t tolerate someone sizing them up right away or selling to them.  They’re only looking for the information they want so they can make their minds up on what to do.

So the goal of every email message should be getting the sender to reply to you and keep the conversation going.  The longer the conversation goes, the more rapport is built, and the more apt they’ll be to deal with you.  The best way of keeping the conversation going is by asking questions.  End each of your emails with a question.  It’ll demonstrate you’re interested in helping them find what they want, not just trying to sell them something so you can make a commission.

Learn much more about how to convert email prospects in my course The Awesome Power Of Email.  This course has been approved by the Registrar, REBBA 2002 to qualify for 4 credits.

Filed under: Attracting Buyers/Sellers With Email

Tags: email inquiries, email prospects, email subject line, email training tips, prospecting, qualifying, real estate education, real estate educators, real estate seminar, real estate seminars, real estate training, realtor email newlsetter