Early in your career, it might feel like most of what you do in a day is "chase business." Just as the words suggest, this can be exhausting! One of the big reasons why Homesale Realty is a great place to build a real estate career is our approach to creating a reliable and predictable business pipeline.

A real estate pipeline is the sequence of stages your real estate business goes through as you lead your clients into and through transactions. In many ways, your pipeline will map onto the traditional sales funnel, which looks like this:

• Prospect: Someone who may be in the market for your services but hasn't expressed interest
• Lead: Someone who has met you and expressed both a need for and interest in your services
• Customer: Someone who is actively buying or selling a property with your help
• Retention: Any former customer who you remain in contact with for business and referrals

When they meet you for the first time, most people won't be ready to go right into buying or selling a home. Marketing can inspire action, but it usually won't change the timeline in people's heads by much. A robust business pipeline helps attract and keep track of contacts as they get ready to make a move.

Let's look at some of today's leading best practices for a better pipeline of business:

• Attract Leads with a Mix of Marketing Strategies
  Prospects become leads when they "raise their hand" and identify themselves in a way that allows you to develop an ongoing relationship. That doesn't happen by chance: You need to incentivize it with helpful, informative content they get in exchange for joining your email list.
• Organize Leads by Interest and Timeline
  Every interaction with a lead is a new opportunity to get more details from them. Before you get them on the phone or in your office, you should understand their main goal and when they wish to achieve it. This helps you prioritize, rank, and score your leads.
• Reach Out and Follow Up
  Outreach with your leads can take many different forms. Email and social media are the most common, but text messaging is becoming more and more popular. It is not out of the ordinary to follow up with a lead multiple times per month to ensure you remain "top of mind" until decision time.
• Develop the Relationship
  On its own, following up isn't enough—you also want to be adding value at every step. If you have a blog, then it is the perfect platform to publish helpful, informative content on a regular basis. When you've created something that will be perfect for a specific lead, send it their way personally.
• Close the Agreement
  Once your leads know, like, and trust you, they are ready to close an agreement. The timing is theirs to decide, but you can motivate them by giving them insights into the local market that lets them know the time to act is now. Remember, getting an agreement usually requires a face-to-face meeting.
• Use Customer Relationship Management
  How can you maintain awareness of all your prospects, leads, customers, and past customers? Customer Relationship Management makes it easier. This software connects with your website, listings, and other digital properties, centralizing all the information others provide to you across different interactions.

With a sound business pipeline underlying your day-to-day efforts, you won't have to rely on luck. Persistence still matters, but it gets a big boost from talking to the right person at the right time. Contact BHHS Homesale Realty to learn more today.