Listing inventory, while down, is still hotter than a sidewalk in downtown Phoenix in the summer.

And, as always, a well-priced home will still sell quickly.

In markets like this, it’s not a matter of being able to convert sellers at the kitchen table, it’s more a matter of being able to get in front of enough of seller prospects to build your listing inventory and build your business at the same time.

The challenge is that with so many agents in the marketplace still hungry for listings, it’s hard to build a pipeline of any sort simply going after now business like expireds, withdrawns and FSBOs.

If you’re going to have any shot at generating consistent listing business, you need to do this one thing and do it well: generate nurtures.

For the purposes of of this post, a nurture is a seller lead that meets the following 5 criteria:

1. Selling in the next year
2. Not committed to working with another agent
3. Open to working with you in the future sale of their home
4. Correct contact information including phone, email and physical address
5. Clear contact time frame for follow up calls prior to selling

If you want to get more listings and get them regularly, you need to stop just chasing business and start getting in front of it, too.

And the only way to do that is by building an ongoing list of hot, juicy nurtures that will turn into listing sales on a month-over-month basis.

Here are the 5 reasons your team needs to nurture leads and why lead nurturing needs to be a powerful pillar of lead generation in your business.

#1: Average homeseller is more than one year away from listing their home

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few years, you know that most of the seller leads you generate are people looking to sell their homes in the next two months.

More specifically, the average homeseller is 14-17 months away from making the decision to put their home on the market and waits at least three days after seeing your listing presentation to make a final decision on the right agent.

This means a whole lot of prospects need some ongoing “love” from you in the form of phone calls, voicemails, emails, texts, etc. so they can be nurtured until they are ready to put their home on the market.

As an aside, it’s important to note here that you do not - and I repeat, DO NOT - need to run out and do a listing appointment to get the nurture process started.

By doing a great job identifying timing and motivation on your initial call with your prospect and then staying in touch with a handwritten note or two, a regular market update and some well-timed calls and texts, you should be in great shape to be the agent of choice when the time comes to sell.

#2: Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads

In addition to selling more homes and increasing your average commission, driving up your average sales price is one of the few ways you can make more money in real estate.

By nurturing seller leads, you can build the relationships that are necessary to capture higher-priced homes.

People who have higher-priced and even luxury homes are even more concerned about the relationships they have with the people with whom they do business than your average seller.

In the time it takes to properly nurture a seller lead, you can build authority, credibility and trust to a high enough level to where the seller prospect should be willing to give you the opportunity to sell their home.

As well, if you add nurturing to your circle prospecting efforts, you’ll be able to target higher-priced neighborhoods and develop relationships that can lead to sales in increased price points in your marketplace.

#3: Nurtured leads generate more sales for less money

Any salesperson in any industry will tell you that they would much rather do business with someone that knows, likes and trusts them.

That explains why as much as 61% of buyer business in the real estate industry happens through some sort of referral/repeat-business arrangement.

And who could blame anyone for wanting to do business that way?

It costs way less money to generate that lead and again, it’s a much easier and more frequent manner of doing business.

Nurtures fit nicely into the “more sales for less money” box because;

• They can be derived from any source: expireds, withdrawns, FSBOs, circle prospecting, home value leads and even your sphere and past clients
• Many of the sources of these leads are low-cost, lead generation strategies
• They are all available in an abundance from a variety of lead providers
• Most agents aren’t going to be following up with these prospects after more than 1 or 2 phone call attempts

A solid nurturing strategy is easily the most cost effective and ample lead sources that can lead to a larger number of sales.

#4: Automated lead nurturing leads to a greater increase in revenue

Proper lead nurturing must have a component of automation to them.

Pre-programmed and delivered email drip, text campaigns and “sly-dial” voicemails provide the backbone for an effective nurturing strategy.

The reason this works is because your leads need more touches than you could possibly make in between the time you discover they are wanting to sell and the time they are actually ready to sell.

In fact, Companies that automate lead nurturing and management can experience at least a 10% or improvement in revenue in 6-9 months.

If you brought in $100k in revenue last year, that’s another $10k coming in between now and Thanksgiving that you could use to generate more leads or put away to have enough to hire an Inside Sales Agent ( ISA ) who could start making calls for you and really accelerate you listing efforts.

In the event that you don’t have a CRM in place to help automate your lead-nurturing efforts, you are definitely not maximizing your results.

#5: Nurtured leads produce an increase in sales opportunities

At the end of the day, it’s about your ability to convert the lead from a suspect to a prospect, a prospect to a client and a client to a home sold.

The better the relationship you have with your prospects and clients the more likely it is that 1) they’ll do what you tell them to do in order to get their home sold and 2) their home will sell and do so for the price and in the time frame that you planned on from day one.

In the cold-calling study done by Baylor a few years back, it was determined that 60 contacts would convert to a listing taken.

That’s a 1.6% conversion rate.

To get a sold listing, it takes 120 contacts.

That’s a .83% conversion rate.

Conversely, nurtured leads convert to a sale at a rate of approximately 8%.

That’s an 896% increase in conversion...a HUGE difference.

Because you have a higher level of trust from having a stronger relationship, you will create more seller more seller opportunities that convert at a much higher rate than virtually every other lead source.

Lead nurturing is not something that takes a lot of money or even a tremendous amount of skill.

If you can establish a seller’s timing and motivation, plant the seeds of a good relationship and then strengthen that relationship phone calls, voice messages, emails and texts...you can nurture leads.

And once you have a nurturing strategy in place, your business will reach new heights of success and enjoy consistency you have likely never experienced before.