What is Top of Funnel Conversion?
Top of Funnel conversion is the percentage of leads you CONNECT with out of ALL the leads that you generate. Basically, how many of the people you generate do you talk with?
In contrast, The Bottom of the funnel conversion is where most agents mistakenly focus all their attention and what the industry lead providers want us to focus on. That is the percentage of people who buy or sell out of the number of people they connect or talk with.
Here is the problem with that. The industry average connect rate on leads is 15-20%. The average bottom of the funnel conversion is 1-2%. The industry has us believing that these numbers are okay. The industry is telling us that you should generate or pay to generate 100 leads, talk to 15-20 of them and end up with 1 to 2 sales. That is 1-2% of the total leads generated or I look at it as 6% – 13.4% of the people you talk with. Well what about the 80-85 people that you generated? What about them. Also with bottom of conversion being only 1-2%, the margin for error is so small that if your skills are not average or better, you can be stuck spending a lot of money to see very little return.
Who wins here?
The lead companies. They get to sell leads over and over to multiple agents because very few are being converted into sales. With the right process and actions that I am about to share, I can show you how you will turn more leads into sales without improving your skills.
What I am proposing is that agents focus on the Top of funnel, meaning they focus on how many of the 100 they are talking with and letting very few go to waste. With a few simple steps you can connect with 60-85% of new leads at the top and then you can see how that trickles down to a lot more sales. Even if If you do not improve your skills, the number of sales will grow exponentially.
How do you connect with more people at the Top of the Funnel?
Simple answer? Make more attempts to reach them. Call, text, email, message and video message them more often and with more frequency. Long answer is this. People nowadays are simple too distracted. Every form of communication has become noise to them. Static. Between email, robo-calls, social media, texting, alerts from apps and all the other rings and dings they get, they have become numb to it. Everyone is vying for their attention. And I mean everyone. Friends, family members, phone providers, Facebook, Instagram, phone apps and every billion dollar corporation out there is fighting for their mind share.
What do you do? You get a lead and call it one time. If you are semi aggressive, you follow up with a text and an email. Not even a blip on their radar. They don’t even notice you, let alone acknowledge you. You have to change your mindset and your process for reaching out to leads. You have to admit to yourself that you are fighting for the attention along with the Big Boys. You also have to realize that them not picking up is no reflection on whether they are interested or not. Whether they like you or not. Nor whether you are bothering them or not.
It is very simple. It is a game of getting their attention and if you want to succeed at it, you have to dial up the heat.
Dialing up the Heat
Research show that it takes somewhere between 5 and 11 attempts to get someone to respond. Top agents around the country know that and they also know that just as important, if not more important than number of attempts is the frequency of attempts.
What I mean is this. Making 5 calls, one a day over 5 days does not have the same impact as making 5 calls in one day. Or if we take it to the extreme, making 5 phone call attempts in a row. Back to back. Obviously the latter will get almost everyone to answer, but may not lead to an answer you want to hear. So that may be a bit much. But I think you get the point. The number of attempts an the frequency of attempts has to; I really mean has to increase and you have to get comfortable with that. Let that sink in. You have to really change your thinking and know that not only is it ok but it is the new rules of the game if you want to convert more leads.
So, now what is ideal? You will have to determine that based on the lead source. Some will require dialing the heat more than others but here is a very effective rule of thumb to follow.
Your New Process for Contacting New Leads
- When a new lead comes in to you, you call it. If they don’t pick up; which on average only 10% or so will, then you hang up and dial that number again. Some people will be intrigued by the double dial. At the very least you will get their attention. About another 10% will pick up now. So now you’ve increased your top of funnel conversion to 20%.
- If they don’t pick up after the 2nd call, then leave a message and follow it up with a text. And additional 10-15% will reply. Now you are up near 35% Conversion.
- Then take a break. Wait 2 hours and call again. Another 5-10% will pick up. That gets you up near 45%.
- If no reply, then wait another 2 hours and text. Again another 5-10% will respond, getting you to Now you have called 3 times and texted twice. Now you are up to near 55%.
- Wait another hour and call again and you are at 65%+. Finally one more text an hour later and you are 75%+.
That is what you do with every single new lead. 7 attempts on the first day the lead comes in. You do that and now you are talking to 75 out of 100 new leads which will mean 6 to 14 deals and that is if your skills don’t improve. Work on your skills and watch your business soar.
I know what you’re thinking. You and what army is going to make 7+ attempts to every lead?
This excuse would have worked a few years back, but not any more. Ever heard of automation? Almost every CRM now has automated campaigns, sequences or workflows. Depending no what you use, they can all deliver sms and email messages. Some powerful ones like Contact Junkie will also deliver voice messages.
So you can manually make the double dial attempts. You can choose whether to send the first text yourself or not. After that you can use automation for the rest and move on to other leads or go to listing appointments or go show property. You can even go to the beach if you want to. It doesn’t matter at that point because you did your job in today’s world in reaching out to a new lead and you will be rewarded from it when you start seeing responses and you connect with triple or quadruple the amount of people you used to connect with.
Now go get em!
