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Five Great Lead Generation Tips

This article is more than 5 years old.

“I’m all about multiple lead sources so I’m never stuck or relying on just one,” says bestselling author and real estate investor Chris Prefontaine.

If you want to create a client attraction chain reaction like Prefontaine, you need to focus on multiple streams of income and multiple lead sources.

Prefontaine has over 26 years of experience in the field, including 18 years as a builder, realtor and broker owner. He has always been an active investor and since 2013 teaches others.

In 1991, Chris began building homes and built 100 homes before starting his own brokerage. He then become a broker/owner and was selling 100 homes a year with his small team.

A successful home builder once told me: “Everybody has got to live somewhere.” The trick is to find the somebodies that you can help make that happen. The somebody Prefontaine is looking for is the person who wants to sell a home. His tactics can translate to many service industries.

After meeting Prefontaine through a podcaster, I asked him to share his best lead generation tips. Even if your business is not real estate, I think there are lessons to be learned here for all service industries. Here are Prefontaine’s top five lead sources for finding home sellers as an active investor:

  1. Virtual Assistants. “There are many virtual assistant companies and individuals available to help you with your seller and buyer calls. I struggled through three of them and was ready to throw in the towel. Then I found an amazing company that trains well and is very well scripted and constantly improves. I hired them and have been with them almost six years with the same person. They will become an integral part of your team when utilized properly. They all charge differently. I personally spend between $125-$135 per week for six to eight hours of calling. This produces approximately 12-18 leads weekly for me so two to three per hour counting the sourcing time they have to do. They send me on a daily basis fully filled out property information sheets. This assures you that you’re only speaking with quality leads that want to speak with you.”
  2. For Sale by Owners. “These are always a good lead source. You can source them yourself online and call them yourself or you can hire virtual assistants and I prefer both. If you’re just starting and have a limited budget, you can start by sourcing them yourself and calling them yourself.  I started that way at a few hours a day three to four days a week. It will only take one deal to then have some funds to use for hiring your first virtual assistant. You can also get them via for sale by owner signs. I suggest you drive a different way to work or to where ever you’re going each time you’re out and just go through different, new neighborhoods and you’ll run into signs.”
  3. Expired Listings. “These are listings that realtors had on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and they didn’t sell. I personally love these because they tend to be more frustrated already, having not sold with a realtor. This will many times translate into immediate appointments opposed to the ‘for sale by owners’ that need some time typically. Where do you get expired listings? It used to be that you had to work with someone that was licensed to get them. Now there are services that offer them so it's super easy to get a constant feed of them.”
  4. Direct Mail. “Just like each of the above all on their own could be a standalone marketing campaign to feed your business enough leads forever, this could as well. You can generate these letters and target all kinds of lists, so you can get very specific and never ever run out of potential campaigns. I use melissadata.com for my lists, but there are many companies that can and will sell you lists. I then use a done-for-you service.  They create, print, stamp and send to us to drop in the mail. It cannot get any easier than that. These letters we use are in hand written font and made to look like you wrote it out on a yellow pad of paper. They're mailed in invitation- type envelopes so they get opened and not tossed in the waste basket.
  5. Print and Online Ads. “You or your staff should always be running free online ‘I Buy Houses’ ads. Why not? You can search on Google for free classified sites in the areas you work in and find plenty of them in addition to craigslist. I haven’t gotten slammed with calls from these, but it’s another lead source.

After years of coaching independently, he founded Smart Real Estate Coach in 2013. The company mentors and partners with investors throughout the U.S. and Canada on how to scale and automate their business.