The 10 Best Real Estate Prospecting Tips and Strategies

INTRODUCTION TO REAL ESTATE PROSPECTING

According to Indeed, real estate prospecting is:

“The act of finding someone who is interested in buying or selling property. Real estate agents conduct prospecting through conversations, emails, and other forms of marketing to find new clients and generate business for their company.”

Frequent readers of this blog know that Vulcan7 promotes daily, active prospecting as the key to earning significant income as a real estate agent. But here’s what’s interesting: real estate income data suggests that a tiny percentage of agents are actively prospecting. Consider the data from the National Association of Realtors:

• There are an estimated 1.6 million licensed real estate agents in the U.S.
• As of January 2024, the average real estate agent salary is $46,014, but the range falls between $44,951 and $58,528.
• In a 2022 study, 42 percent of members with 16+ years of experience made more than $100,000. By contrast, 52 percent of members with two or less years of experience made less than $10,000.
• The same 2022 study revealed that the top 1% of agents earned an average of $916,000 in gross commissions.

SOURCE: https://www.nar.realtor/agent-income

It’s safe to say that the bulk of this 1% of top-earning agents can be characterized by two things:

1. They focus on listings as opposed to being buyers’ agents.
2. They are committed to daily phone prospecting as the cornerstone to their earnings success.

Prospecting works! However, for many agents, especially those newer to our industry, the idea of prospecting can be daunting. Because they fear rejection, most agents prefer passive marketing and brand building to find prospects. In other words, they wait for prospects to come to them.

If you’ve taken a passive approach to building your real estate business and are struggling to drive the kind of revenue you hoped for, take the time to read this post. We’ll provide you with real estate prospecting ideas to help you recalibrate your career and business. Every real estate agent has the potential to earn significant income. It won’t be easy and will take a shift in your mindset. But you can do it.

TIP 1: FOCUS ON LISTINGS

Work less and earn more.

Perhaps you’ve seen this adage about real estate:

“Buyers take time, listings take skill.”

As we suggested in the previous section, most of the country’s top-producing real estate agents are listing agents. These agents have come to realize that working as the seller’s agent takes significantly less time to arrive at closing (and a commission check). Buyers agents, on the other hand, can spend weeks (and weekends) driving buyers from home to home without any guarantees.

As discussed below, myriad resources are available to help you prospect and close listing clients.

TIP 2: SET GOALS

Goal-setting matters.

According to a survey by TD Bank, visualizing and imagining your goals can make you twice as confident in achieving them. Only 31 percent of those who don’t visualize feel confident about achieving their goals, as opposed to 59 percent of those who visualize.

Here a few noteworthy benefits of setting goals:

• Goals Address What You’d like to Achieve in Your Life. The great thing about goal-setting is that it helps you zero in on what you want to accomplish, not only in real estate but in your life in general. Once you know what you want to achieve, you can establish priorities for your journey. You can start with long-term goals (i.e., I want to retire at 40!) as a starting point. Then, you work on the short-term goals that lead toward your ultimate, long-term goals.
• Goal Setting Gives You Focus. When you operate without goals, it’s easy to lose focus, get sidetracked, and get frustrated. Goals help you stay motivated, and motivation is essential to achieving the most important, long-term goals that will define your life.

For more tips on goal setting, check out our post HOW TO SET REALISTIC REAL ESTATE GOALS.

TIP 3: WRITE A BUSINESS PLAN

Know your numbers.

According to the NAR, 87% of all new agents fail within five years. While there are myriad reasons to account for the success of the remaining 13%, a common thread is a focus on business planning.

A written business plan does not ensure success, but it can be a good predictor of success. Consider: it’s estimated that having a business plan results in more than 30% faster growth, compared to businesses that simply wing it.

The most important thing about having a business plan is that it forces you to focus on the details of your business. More accurately, a business plan helps hold you accountable, not only to you or your team but also, in a broader sense, to your family.

Our post on HOLDING YOURSELF ACCOUNTABLE WITH A BUSINESS PLAN provides a number of tips on creating your business plan.

TIP 4: PROSPECT EXPIREDS AND FSBOS

Expireds: Low-hanging fruit.

Here are two of the many benefits of prospecting expired leads:

1. Typically, a homeowner who did not sell the first time has an increased urgency to sell the second time around. That gives you a good chance to convert the lead to a listing if you stick to your expired listing scripts.
2. Working with expired listings allows you to make significant GCI over a shorter period of time, especially when compared to working as an agent for a buyer.

It’s easy to be attracted to the allure of new expired listings. Indeed, if someone’s house came off the MLS yesterday, it’s possible they are frustrated or discouraged by the experience they just had. That’s why it’s so important to try and be the first agent to connect with these homeowners.

FSBOs require patience.

Regardless of your experience level, here are a few tips that might improve your chances of being the agent of choice when a FSBO homeowner concludes that selling on their own is too much work:

• Understand an FSBO’s mindset: A 2013 study conducted by Choice Home Warranty and reported in the LA Times suggested that more than 2/3 of Americans distrust real estate agents. This means, in essence, that any conversation with an FSBO starts from a position of weakness and suspicion. You need to work hard to earn their trust and confidence.

Our FSBO REFRESHER blog post has more real estate prospecting tips for working with FSBOs.

Bonus tip: Vulcan7’s Expired and FSBO Listing Leads are considered the best in the industry.

TIP 5: USE YOUR SCRIPTS

Scripts help you to control the conversation.

As discussed in our post, THE VALUE OF SCRIPTS, phone prospecting scripts (like those you’ll have at your fingertips as a Vulcan7 client), provide many benefits, including:

• Consistent delivery: The more you work with real estate prospecting scrips, the more focused and consistent you’ll become with your delivery. Consistency will help you become comfortable when making your prospecting calls.
• Confidence: The more comfortable you become using real estate scripts, the more confidence you’ll exude to the prospect on the other end of the call.

TIP 6: LEAD FOLLOW-UP OBSESSIVELY

Effective follow-up leads to more business.

One of the most critical real estate prospecting tips we can offer is to be dogged in lead follow-up. Here’s why:

• It helps maintain communication and trust, allowing you to understand their needs and preferences better.
• Keeps you top-of-mind with prospective sellers.
• It allows you to address seller concerns, another way to build rapport.
• Demonstrates your commitment to helping your client through their most important financial decision.

TIP 7: DEVELOP YOUR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE

Effective networking can yield results.

Building an SOI as a real estate agent involves strategic networking, relationship-building, and consistent communication. Here are practical steps to help you build and expand your Sphere of Influence:

• Identify your current network: Start by creating a list of your existing contacts, including friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances.
• Utilize social media: Leverage social media platforms to connect with community members. Join local groups, participate in discussions, and share valuable content related to real estate.
• Attend community events: Actively participate in community events, neighborhood meetings, and local gatherings. This provides opportunities to meet new people and establish connections.
• Ask for referrals: Don’t be afraid to ask for referrals from satisfied clients and members of your network. Let them know you appreciate their support and are ready to assist anyone they refer.

TIP 8: ADD CIRCLE PROSPECTING TO YOUR PORTFOLIO

This long-term strategy can pay dividends.

Most real estate agents need help understanding the actual purpose of circle prospecting. Yes, the goal of prospecting, in general, is to get a listing that will generate revenue in the near term. But circle prospecting is a long-term strategy unlike prospecting expired listings, for which there is typically an urgency to sell NOW.

The two most common forms of circle prospecting are:

• Prospecting around a property that you have “Just Listed.” In this case, you are reaching out to nearby homeowners to determine if they know someone who might be interested in moving to their neighborhood. This type of prospecting can be particularly effective if the neighborhood is within a highly desirable school district, for example.
• Prospecting around a property that is “Just Sold.” In this scenario, you are calling nearby homeowners to let them know that you had numerous, interested buyers for that property; an indication that the area is in high demand. If your timing is right, the prospect may be ready to jump into the market if it was something they had been contemplating previously.

Our post entitled CIRCLE PROSPECTING SUCCESS REQUIRES THE RIGHT TOOLS  does a deep dive into strategies for circle prospecting success.

TIP 9: BUILD AN ACCOUNTABILITY TEAM

You don’t need to go it alone!

Top-producing real estate agents do not work in isolation. They understand the importance of having other professionals share insights and hold them accountable.  As such, it is not unusual for these top performers to build an accountability team that can include all, or a combination of the following:

• Real estate coach: A professional who helps you build a business strategy and hold you accountable to that strategy.
• Accountability partner: A fellow agent who offers feedback and, like a coach, holds your feet to the fire.
• Role-playing partner (s): Most top performers start the morning with one or more partners in role-playing exercises, a great way to get your head into the game

TIP 10: JOIN THE VULCAN7 COMMUNITY

Technology redefines real estate prospecting.

Since its launch in 2011, Vulcan7 has helped countless agents build six-figure (plus) businesses. Here are three reasons why:

1. Vulcan7 delivers the BEST REAL ESTATE LEADS in the business to your desktop every morning. To define solid real estate goals for new agents, start with accurate, proven data, such as those that Vulcan7 provides: expireds, FSBOs, FRBOs and pre-foreclosure leads.
2. Vulcan7’s best-in-class CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software makes it easy to stay on task during lead follow-up.
3. We know how challenging it can be for a new agent to make their mark in our highly competitive industry. That’s why Vulcan7 is heavily invested in building community, so you are never alone as you march toward achieving your goals. Long-running weekly webinars like Roadmap provide real-world advice from the industry’s top earners.

If you’d like to learn more about Vulcan7, CONTACT US HERE.

Doug Spak

Doug Spak has over four decades of experience as an advertising copywriter, agency creative director, blogger, and content creator. He joined Vulcan7 as a Content Specialist in 2016. In addition to ongoing website copy refreshes, Doug has produced over 300 blog posts while developing content for Vulcan7’s social media platforms.