Prospect vs Lead

I wanted to do an article here that I think may shed some light on the difference between a prospect and a lead from my personal perspective, and more specifically how it pertains to Listing Booster.

I'm doing this because I'm having conversations with various users of our Listing Booster product and I wanted to kind of lay out how I see the Listing Booster product working for the loan originator and the real estate agent.

First lets set the stage to have an understanding of how I define both a prospect and a lead within the Listing Booster product. For me, a prospect is someone who has shown some sort of interest in a home. This is someone that has opted in to see a dedicated property website that was posted to Facebook, or someone who has used a text code either from a sign rider or from Craigslist to get the property information sent to their smart phone. So let's be clear here. A prospect has not asked to move forward on the property they're interested in. They simply wanted to see the property in more detail. To assume these prospects are "leads" is in error. With that in mind, let's define a lead as it pertains to the Listing Booster product.

A lead is someone who has responded to any communication you've sent them and has agreed to go further with you. This is a person who's motivated to actually see if they can get a loan or buy a home. They've responded to your email, phone call or text and said yes to you. That's a lead.

So when it comes to "conversion" we have a couple before we get to a lead. First we post something to attract a prospect. When you post a dedicated property website with lead-capture "on" to a Facebook community group, you've started the process. Or, when you post the property to Craigslist or hang a sign rider on the property, same thing, you've started the process, you've set the bait, and now you're waiting for the first conversion. I'll call this the "Bait to Prospect" conversion. The first thing we have to do is get someone to bite. When they do, we've converted our bait to a prospect.

Now comes the grind. Converting a prospect to a lead is the work. Getting someone to bite the bait is extremely easy, but getting a new prospect to convert to a lead is much tougher. This is where many users of Listing Booster get frustrated. They don't have the proper understanding of who they're dealing with, they don't get what a prospect is. Again, a prospect is simply someone who took the bait. They haven't been vetted or qualified in any way shape or form. They might not be in the market to buy a home at all, they were just curious enough to click a button or send a text. So it's important to keep that in mind. So how do we filter through these prospects to find the leads in them?

First, you have to reach out to the new prospect right away. Either a phone call or a text or an email or all of the above. You also should do this a few times to see what happens. At best, you'll be in the right place at the right time and actually get one of your prospects to convert over to a lead by them responding to you in a positive way. This literally may be one out of a hundred. There simply isn't any way to find out though unless you make your first attempts. So let's say your prospect doesn't respond to you at all or tells you they're just looking and they're not actually in the market to buy a home. What now?

Well, now is the time to put them into a "machine". What's a machine? Just what I said, a machine that is designed to "drip" on prospects until they either "opt-out" of your marketing or convert. Some refer to it as "mining" a database. The good news here is that, Listing Booster already connects to several other products that are specifically designed for this purpose. What's more is that we can create API's that will allow Listing Booster to connect to virtually any other product, even your proprietary systems.

The way to achieve success with "funnels" though is by filling the funnel with prospects. I mean literally hundreds or thousands of prospects need to get into the funnel or it's just not very effective. This is where Listing Booster shines. The originators and real estate agents that follow our coaching are generating thousands of leads per month into their funnels. Our top Listing Booster user (who's name I can't mention as I don't have is permission to do so), generated 16,300 prospects between October 2016 and October 2017. That's a lot of prospects. Even an average originator connected to a handful of real estate agents can generate several hundred to a thousand prospects a month by using the system in accordance with our coaching. So using Listing Booster for what's it's designed for is pretty darn effective.

The ratio between "bait and prospect" and "prospect and lead" and "lead and deal" is all relative to you and your partners ability and consistency in setting the bait and mining the prospects either through your own efforts or through other "prospect mining" products that Listing Booster connects to. Either way, at the end of the day, it all starts with getting as many prospects as you can, cause some of those people are indeed going to buy a house from someone. Hopefully that someone is you. When used correctly Listing Booster will get you started quickly and easily.

If you'd like to get a demo, it's easy, just click the link below. We're looking for individual users and corporate accounts as well. Hope this article helps.