Your Lead Follow-Up Is Either a Machine or a Mess

This Client Attraction Clinic focuses on one major point: the money is not just in generating more leads — it is in what happens after the lead arrives. Many agents think they need more leads, but the real issue is often that they do not have a consistent follow-up system. Without structure, leads get forgotten, marketing dollars are wasted, and appointments happen randomly. 

The Main Problem

Most agents do not have a true follow-up machine. They have good intentions, random habits, reminders in their head, or basic CRM drip emails. They may call once, send a text, leave a voicemail, or check in when they remember, but that is not a system.

The speaker explains that inconsistent follow-up creates common problems:

• Good leads slip through the cracks.
• Agents feel busy but not productive.
• Marketing campaigns fail quietly inside the CRM.
• Too much depends on memory, mood, and timing.
• Some leads are overworked while stronger leads are underworked.

Why Follow-Up Must Be Designed

A serious follow-up process should be built intentionally. When someone raises their hand, the business should know exactly what happens next. There should be a clear process for the first response, nurturing, sorting, and knowing when the agent personally steps in.

The speaker recommends sorting leads by:

• Fit
• Intent
• Timing
• Responsiveness
• Level of opportunity

He suggests a simple ABCD system, where A leads are the hottest and most immediate opportunities, while D leads may be low-quality or ready to discard.

Stop “Just Checking In”

The speaker warns that “just checking in” is weak follow-up. It sounds generic and gives the prospect no real value. Strong follow-up should create familiarity, trust, relevance, visibility, and a reason for the prospect to respond.

The goal is not maximum activity. The goal is relevant activity.

What a Follow-Up Machine Includes

A strong follow-up machine includes:

• A fast initial response
• A nurture cadence
• Useful text and email touches
• Visibility content such as newsletters, videos, social media, and market updates
• Physical touches such as postcards, seller guides, and neighborhood reports
• A clear handoff point where the agent steps in for a real conversation

Automation should handle repetitive work, but it should not replace the human conversations where trust is built.

Seller Lead Example

The speaker explains a seller lead process using direct mail postcards and QR codes. When a homeowner scans the code and requests a home value, report, guide, or seller resource, the agent receives an immediate notification.

Instead of calling and asking, “Did you get the home value?” the speaker recommends asking:

“Did that number look high, low, or about right to you?”

This opens a real conversation and gives insight into the seller’s mindset. The next step is not to force a listing appointment, but to offer a more detailed report and continue building the relationship.

Final Takeaway

The core message is simple: your follow-up is either a machine or a mess. Before spending more money on lead generation, agents should fix the process that turns leads into relationships, appointments, and closings. Better follow-up makes marketing more profitable, keeps leads from dying, and helps prospects raise their hand when they are ready.

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Transcript

 📍 All right, welcome to this week's Client Attraction Clinic. It's the place where we challenge conventional thinking, we cut through the noise, and we have real conversations about business, money, marketing, and what it actually takes to build a business with impact. Now, if you're tired of surface level advice, recycled talking points, and the same worn-out scripts everybody else is repeating, you're in the right place. My goal here is simple. It's to help you think more clearly, make better decisions, and see opportunities that other people miss so that you can begin to attract clients instead of chase them. So whether you're here to grow your business, strengthen your financial future, or just start asking better questions, I'm glad that you're here. So with that, let's get into it for this week. The topic for today is your lead follow-up because it's either a machine or it's a mess. So I kinda like that title. It's either a machine or a mess, and folks, the difference is costing most agents more money than they realize. Now, the money is not in generating more leads. We've had that discussion already, right? The money is in what happens to the leads after they arrive. This is where trust gets built. This is where response happens. That's where timing gets uncovered. It's where appointments get set. It's where the relationship begins, and that's where a marketing campaign either becomes profitable or quietly dies inside of a CRM. And the reason this is so darn important is because most agents don't actually have a follow-up machine. I define it more as, I, I guess think of it like they have a follow-up intention, right? I have the intention to do it. I have a follow-up habit, like I like to think, "Oh, Tuesdays I do my follow-up." Or they have a follow re- follow-up reminder system, but it's it's in their head. Worse, they don't even have a follow-up, which means they have a mess. They call whenever they remember to do it, or they text when they think about it. They check in randomly. They send whatever message comes to mind, and then they wonder why so many leads disappear. So today, I wanna walk you through how serious agents should think about follow-up before they spend another dollar on lead generation. So it's pretty cool. This morning I had breakfast. I'm in New Orleans, and I had breakfast with a team from Detroit. They do about 800 transactions a year. They get about 800 to 1,000 leads a month. Folks, let me ask you this. Do you think they have a follow-up system in place? Do you think they manage all those leads and all those transactions without having a follow-up system in place? They have meetings. They have CRMs. They have every step of the way, they have systems set up, and they monitor those systems, and they manage their team to it. So if that's what the most successful people in our industry are doing, to me, this is a pretty simple concept. Why don't we model what the s- the really big producers are doing? Because today's call is about building your machine- Because it's the follow-up machine, if it's weak, then more leads are not fixing your problem. They expose it. And so let's just start with the hard truth. Most agents are just improvising follow-up. The truth is, I'm not even sure that's 100% valid. So many agents don't even do the follow-up. Maybe at best they put them into a CRM and they get a bunch of drip emails like once a month with, lemon cookie recipes. That's not follow-up. Now, they may think it's follow-up, but it's exactly what's happening. See, a lead comes in, they look at it, they decide whether it seems good. The truth is, I have no idea what criteria makes it good or not. Now, it could be that it's a two million dollar neighborhood versus a two hundred thousand neighbor- two hundred thousand dollar neighborhood, but that's it. Then they make one call, and then maybe they send a text or an email. Maybe even they live on the wild side and send an e- a, a voi- or leave a voicemail. Maybe they even set a reminder. And after that, the whole thing just becomes inconsistent. So at the very best, that's what agents do. I would tell you in speaking at live events and things like that, more than 75% of the agents when I ask them "What's their CRM look like? How often are you sending something out? How often are you reaching out?" And the answer is I have a CRM, but I know I need to do a better job." Folks, that's not running a business. That's just asking for trouble, right? See, one lead gets three touches, another one gets one. One gets a detailed reply, another gets forgotten. One gets nurtured, another one gets buried. See, that's not a follow-up system. That's reaction. Make sense? You're just reacting based on how you feel that day or if you've seen the name or whatever it is. The problem is reaction is not scalable. So the more leads that you have, the more dangerous that system that you think you have becomes. Because when follow-up is improvised, you get all the usual symptoms. Good leads are slipping through the cracks. Agents feel busy, but not productive. And marketing dollars are getting spent without enough return on it. Appointments happen cons- inconsistently. Too much dependence on memory, mood, or timing. That's why s- that's why follow-up just, it simply can't be something you kinda do. It has to be something that you design, and that's the shift. Serious agents are not improvising follow-up. They build it. They structure it. They know exactly what happens next, right? When I talked with these ladies today it's, they got their stuff dialed in. They know when they're reaching out, how fast it's supposed to happen. They follow up the next day with the agent, et cetera. It's not an accident. Because when somebody raises their hand, the business needs to know how to respond, not guess, not scramble, not hope I'm gonna do it. They need to know your machine has to start here. Not every lead deserves the same attention. I know that sounds terrible to say, but it's true. It's one of the biggest mistakes agents make. They treat all leads the same, and that's a fast way for you to lose time lose focus, waste time, and drain energy. Because quite honestly, folks, not every lead deserves the same urgency, the same intensity, or the same sequence of touches. And I'll talk about our lead system and follow-up for listings, but think of it this way. If I have a listing lead and it's a $30,000 manufactured home and I got a $3 million home, and I b- know both of them are thinking of selling, should I treat both of those leads with the same intensity, the same urgency, and everything happens the same? Can't work that way, folks. Some leads are hot, some are curious. Some are early stage, some are six months away. Some are tomorrow. Some want information, some want options. Some are serious, but they're just cautious. Some are just testing the waters. So if you don't have a way to sort leads by the, let's say the fit, the intent, their timing, their responsiveness, their level of opportunity, if you're not sorting your leads that way, you're gonna let a lot of things slip through the crack, right? If somebody says, "Hey, I'm gonna be ready to buy in 30 days," and somebody says, "I'm gonna be ready to buy in three months," and somebody says, "I'm gonna be ready to buy in three years," should all of those leads get handled the same way? And the answer is, of course not. Now, I recommend, I just call it the ABCD method. I certainly didn't create it. A is your hottest leads, B is your, whatever, semi-hot leads and so on, right? D are, like discard. Like you should assign your leads an A, B, C, or D, and then in your CRM you should be able to sep- filter by that, right? So today I wanna take and hit my A leads, 'cause those are people doing something in the next 30 to 60 days. I can go into my CRM and I can take and do th- different things with them. Does that make sense? So we've gotta take and have a flexible system, if you will, that's based on the fit, the intent, the timing, the responsiveness, and your level of opportunity. What's a level of opportunity? I thought I should probably explain that one. It's the $30,000 mobile home or the $3 million listing. Which one do you want? That's the level of opportunity. See, and if you don't sort that stuff, you end up making two mistakes. One is you overwork weak leads, or two, you underwork the strong ones. Both mistakes are ridiculously expensive. A real follow-up machine doesn't just touch leads, it sorts them. It helps you prioritize. So it starts to help you decide who needs a fast personal call, or who should go into a nurture campaign, or who needs education. Like we do some things with FSBOs where we educate them. Yeah, we do that education and we know at the end of the day if we do it right, they come back to us. But we teach. Who needs a market update? Who's likely to raise their hand later? Who needs direct mail or a physical touch? Who needs some space? You have to be able to determine that and prioritize those leads. That's how follow-up becomes more effec- more effective because it's more intelligent. It's just a smarter way to do business, right? The goal is not maximum activity, the goal is relevant activity. Might wanna write that one down. Goal is not maximum activity. "Oh, I spent eight hours today doing it." No, the goal is relevant activity. "I spent an hour today following up on people that are going to do something in the next 30 to 60 days." Now, this is a big one 'cause I see it all the time. Good follow-up does more than check in. Y'all know that call. "Hey, I'm just checking in." See, it's another important point because most agent thinks f- a fo- most agents are thinking that follow-up means checking in, right? It's hey, checking in though, folks, is just weak. It sounds generic, it sounds lazy. It sounds "I didn't have anything worth saying." See, real follow-up doesn't just check in. You need to eliminate that phrase from your vocabulary. "Hey, just checking in." Real follow-up creates familiarity, trust, relevance, visibility, timing, and most importantly, eventually the goal is to have them raise their hand, right? That's the basis of client attraction. I want you to raise your hand instead of me chasing you down. So that's the real job of your follow-up system, and I'm gonna talk about how we do it. I'm gonna actually give you the scripts that we use to follow up on the listing leads that we have, and I'll... it'll be able to demonstrate that for you what's that sound like? ' Cause I want you to think about how people are actually making decisions, right? Most sellers and buyers don't respond because you contacted them once. That's my favorite. I was coaching an agent many years ago, and he's "Hey, I gotta ramp up my lead generation." I said, "Why is that?" And he's 'cause my agents are complaining. They need more leads." And I said, "Okay, cool. Here's the thing. We're not ramping up your leads. You're gonna start going to them and saying, 'Okay, here are the leads that you have. Show me how many times you've talked to them. Show me what time of the day you talked to them, what weekends you tried to get ahold of them, what text message you've seen, you sent to them.'" 'Cause the average agent goes, "Hey, I called them. They didn't answer. They didn't call me back." Duh, they're not gonna call you back. So what's that follow-up gonna look like? See, they respond to us over time because they begin to know or begin to feel they know you. Or they've seen you. You seem credible, which is important, right? You sound informed. You better sto- you know, you better sound smart. Here's probably the most important one, folks. You're showing up consistently. You're not pushy. You're there to help. You're there to teach. You're a resource, right? So I always tell agents, be a resource, not a realtor." And once those things happen when the timing is right, that's when they reach out. That's why consistent follow-up matters so much. And here's the thing, folks, I'm gonna tell you right now, right out of the box. Don't tell me you're just emailing. "Yeah, I put them in my database. I got an email going out every three days." They don't read your emails very often. What else are you doing? So follow-up is not about nagging them, 'cause so often I hear, it's like I feel like I'm nagging them." If you feel like that, you probably are. What value do you provide, right? See, what follow-up is supposed to do for you it's supposed to close the gap between something like, "Hey, I saw this guy once," versus, "Hey, I think this is the person I should probably talk to." See the difference? I've seen him around," versus, "Hey, I think this is the person I should talk to." That's huge. See, good follow-up keeps you visible. It keeps you familiar. It makes you familiar, right? Because they start seeing your name and face. Folks, I don't care if they delete your email and don't read it, I'd rather they did, but if they didn't, at least they're seeing your face. Then when you create a campaign where they're seeing you multiple different ways, that's the best way to do it. Now, a lot of the money in this business really just sits right there. I promise you, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions in your database right now. But it is ... I won't say it's never. It's too big of a statement. It's never the first contact, but I promise you folks, it's about 98% of the time it's never the first contact. It's how consistent you are. See, in what ha- it's all about what happens after you get the lead and after the first contact. That's why cold calling now I don't find it particularly useful 'cause nobody answers their phone anymore. But if they're responding to something and then I'm just calling and leaving them a voicemail that's building some familiarity. And then the, what I say in the voicemail is also important 'cause I don't wanna be doing those things like pestering and nagging and, "Hey, I was just checking in." Bad way to handle it. What's important, folks, the standard that I want you to think about adapting, the machine must handle the repetitive work. Your follow-up machine. It should handle conversations. It should handle appointments. It should diagnose problems. It should be advising. Should be answering their objections and closing. The other thing I say should I take and use AI to, to call people and have a conversation?" My answer to that is no. Now, if you're never gonna have a call and have the conversation, then okay, do that. But I'm sorry, we're in the conversation business. But at the end of the day, people can tell if it's AI or not. But having a conversation with people, right? I'll give you an example. You go in your database, "Hey Bob, it's been a year since we did, and I was just calling to check in. How's everything going?" Week. " Hey Bob, just calling to see if there's anything I can do for you. Any kind of referrals that you need, anything to fix the house, about money or taxes, anything. Anything I can help you with?" That's it. I, "What can I help you with?" See, that's where the human matters the most. So you can't AI some of that stuff. Can you man- or can you use AI to set appointments and things of that? Absolutely. But too many agents are doing the repetitive follow-up manually when they should be spending more time in real conversations. Again, I can't tell you how many agents I talk to, they hold up a legal pad and they go, "Yeah, this is my CRM, and I make notes of when I should call people back." I guess that's better than nothing. But wouldn't it be better to wake up today and say, "Here's what I have to do"? So I think y- I think you've heard me mention that I created an AI prompt that actually will schedule my agent's time for them and tell them what they're supposed to do today, right? So the agent tells the AI, "Here's what I do on Mondays, here's what I do on Tuesdays," and whatever. But every morning at 6:00, they get an e- an email from the AI, and it says, "Hey Bob, this is what's on your schedule to do. Is there anything you wanna add that you have to get done today? And I'll check in after hours and see how you did," basically is what it does. And then at 6:00, right? So if I said I gotta call Joe and Tom and Pete and Susie, I do that. And at 6:00 PM, I get an email, it says, "Hey, checking in. This is what you said you had to do today. How'd you do?" And if I didn't get this stuff done, then tomorrow it'll move it, so tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM it'll be a list and it'll say, "Hey, you didn't follow up with Susie. This needs to be your first thing today." That's a system. That's not allowing myself to forget. That's a system that I built. Because there pa- there come parts of it where, again, I could have an AI call that person, but that's where I'm saying don't automate everything. I think that, that could be a mistake. So if you said, "Hey, I need to call Susie," and you had your AI system call, 'cause they're there, I think that would be a mistake. But if every time you get a lead, it requires you to invent, right? I gotta reinvent the wheel. I'm starting from scratch. Folks, you don't have a system, you have a burden. A real follow-up machine should help you with immediate ack- immediate acknowledgment. Say that fast five times. Early touchers, early touches. No, I haven't been drinking here in New Orleans. The cadence that you nurture with, right? It should automate reminders or market updates or newsletter touches or email sequences, right? We have a deal of the week that we go out. We, same thing. We set AI up to take and gather the data for us, put it into the email format, and all my agents have to do is copy and paste it into their Bold Trail and send it out on Tuesday morning. The work's already done, and the truth is, if I spent more than an hour, I could probably figure out how I could take and move it from ChatGPT into GoHighLevel and just send it out every Tuesday. But there's a certain amount of touch and feel that I want an agent to have. Is it a really good deal? Things like that, right? What kind of text messages are you sending out? What kind of direct mail do they get? What kind of reactivation are you trying to do? See, that's what creates consistency, and it reduces your waste. And what it does is it gives the agent more energy for the moments where their skill actually matters the most, when people raise their hand. That's the leverage. It's be- it's why it's better to follow up almost always makes every marketing dollar work harder because fewer leads die from neg- fewer leads are gonna die from neglect. So what's a follow-up machine actually include, right? So let me break it down for you. So you might wanna take notes of these. First, it's a fast initial response. Speed matters. Not because the fastest person always wins automatically, but because speed creates advantage. When someone raises their hand, something should happen quickly. Could be a call, a text, a voicemail, an email, conver- whatever. All your automation's set up, right? But something has to happen. And I'm gonna talk, I'll give you the script that we use, and I'll talk a little bit about it and what I think is too fast. I think there can be too fast of a response. Because fast response communicates professionalism. It's gonna capture them while their interest is alive, and it's gonna create momentum for you. A slow first response forces you to recover lost ground. "Oh, I'm sorry I meant to reach out to you yesterday." Folks, if you're saying that or you're thinking you have to say that, you already lost. The first response gives you leverage. Number two, you need a nurture cadence. What does that mean? Not every lead is now. That's normal. So what happens to the not now leads? That's where the nurture comes in. Do you have a nurture cadence? One of the things our deal of the week does for us, it's a nurturing cadence. Goes out every Tuesday, and we simply ask them, "Hey, if you want any information on this home, hit me back." There's language that we have. We have the exact verbiage written out. We don't vary from that whatsoever because it's simply designed for somebody to reply to the email and say, "Yeah, could you send me information?" They raise their hand. See, a nurture cadence means you have a rhythm to your follow-up. Not random, not emotional, not whenever you remember, "Oh, yeah, I didn't send out my deal of the week this week." Nope. A rhythm. Maybe it's immediate touch, maybe it's 24-hour follow-up, maybe it's three days or a week. Monthly value touch, right? We send out a newsletter every week about what's happening in our area. Again, folks, we have AI do it and write it, and it gets copy and pasted into the CRM, and it goes out. It's like a maybe a five-minute task every week. Why do I want the agent to copy and paste it? 'Cause I could automate it. 'Cause I want them to read what the AI came up with and make sure it's relevant and valuable. Is it direct mail every couple of weeks or maybe a just a strategic reactivation? What's that look like? I could be into a database, "Haven't heard from you in a while. Haven't responded to anything. Hey, just let me know if you want me to take you off my database and stop getting these deal of the week emails." And if they yes, then you get an answer back that says, "Yes, stop." Stop. You just sort it, right? You took them to a D lead at that point. See the exact timing's gonna have to vary, but the point is this: a lead shouldn't disappear just because they didn't move immediately. Timing changes, life changes, motivation changes. You guys all have... We've all had this, right? Where it's man, this person, I haven't heard from him in six months or, like Kara we were talking beforehand. She's been working with this woman for five years to make an offer. She finally wrote an offer. Timing changes. Motivation changes. It's the follow-up machine that exists to stay relevant until the timing catches up to when it's right. The next thing, you have to have text and email. You've gotta reach out and touch that way. They don't answer the phone anymore, so it's not even an option. That's part of a really a 21st century, really, we're into the second decade of it. It's just part of the modern follow-up now. But they do need to be useful. Not robotic, not spammy, not desperate. The best touches feel simple. Their relevance is specific. Maybe it's something like, "Hey, a quick confirmation. Hey, just wanted to see if you could make our class this week on how to sell your home for the highest market value without hiring an agent." Maybe it's a monthly value update. Maybe it's a link to something useful. For us, we use that, what's happening in our neighborhood or what's happening in our community newsletter, right? But it's a question that opens up the conversation, a follow-up tied to what they requested. See, not every touch needs to close. I would tell you stop trying to close on leads and start trying to be a resource. A lot of touches just need to keep the relationship alive Next is visibility content. It's not just direct, it's about visibility. How often do they see you? It could be your newsletter, could be your market updates, it could be your videos, it could be your social media, your direct mail. How many get ... How many of you guys get leads and try and find them on Facebook or LinkedIn and connect with them? Your direct mail, your neighborhood content, your deals, the educational things that you do, all that counts, right? For us, we educate in, on the whole Equity Max system. "Hey, we're teaching a class on how you can get your 30-year mortgage paid off in 10 years or less. You wanna come?" That's a casual piece. Because by the time you actually speak, the call no longer feels cold. They feel like, "Hey, I've seen this person." Hey, if they're on a 45-minute webinar with you about how to pay their house off or how to sell their home, guys, the selling is done for you. It lowers the resistance, it builds familiarity, it builds trust, builds expertise, and familiarity matters. Then there's physical touches. That's number five. It's way underused now, right? We keep hearing it's "Oh nobody looks at the mail anymore." Yes, they do. See a real follow-up machine is gonna include things like direct mail or a note card or neighborhood reports, seller guides, things like that. Emails get buried. Texts get ignored. Physical touches stand out differently. That's how we do it for listing leads. And then the handoff. See, this is critical. The machine is not the end of the goal. The machine seems to exist to reveal the moments where you need to step in. That might be when somebody replies to a text, opens an multiple emails, clicks a seller resource, clicks scans a QR code, requests an updated value, stuff like that. See, that's when the agent takes over and does what only an agent can do, have a real conversation. Because on the conversation, here's what you need to do. You need to diagnose where they're at, you need to advise, and you move it forward. That's the balance. That's your machine for consistency. So let me give you a real-world example of how we generate and convert seller leads, right? So we have s- hi- high-intent seller leads. We know these people are online looking to sell their house. But I wanna make this real for you because sometimes people hear all this and think, "Yeah, okay, cool. Sounds good in theory. Yeah, I've heard that before." But what does it look like in the real world? How often do you actually think through these things? So let me show you exactly how this works with a listing lead, right? So one of the ways we generate those opportunities through direct mail postcards. We obtain the leads from our system, our platform, where we know a 60 to 80% likelihood that these people are looking to sell a home. They're online researching it. We send them a direct mail postcard Not an email, not a cold call. Direct mail postcard. But they're not generic cards sent out hopefully that, somebody notices our name and maybe thinks of us someday. That is not the game. These postcards are built to get a homeowner to raise their hand. They have a clear message, a clear offer, and a clear next step. Now that next step is almost always tied to a QR code. So what happens is the homeowner scans Q- the QR code, and they request something specific like a home value, a report, a guide, a cash offer. We have all those things built. Or maybe another seller re-related resource. "Hey, I want to attend your webinar." That matters because now we're not chasing a cold homeowner, are we? They've raised their hand. They're responding to something. We now know we have a high intense seller lead who's already raised their hand. They've shown an interest in something specific. And then the moment they respond, we're notified immediately. We get an email and a text message, "Hey, so and so did this." Now, that's important. Not later, not when somebody eventually checks the system, not after the lead cools off. Immediately. Here's what that call sounds like. Now, this is where I wanna talk to you. Speed is important, but if you request a like a home valuation, that's the first postcard in our system, and it gets delivered right away, and 30 seconds later you're calling them. Do you think that's what's the word? Maybe not creepy, stalky, whatever you wanna call it. I do. I think that's too quick. 15 to 30 minutes, quick. So let's see what this sounds like for most agents. If I told you to call them, tell me if this is what it would sound like. "Hey, this is Bob with eXp Realty. Hey, you recently requested the online value for your home, and I wanted to follow up to make sure you received it." You only have a yes or a no. So if they say yes, typically the typical agents go, "Great. Any questions on it?" What's the answer that everybody says? "No." Or they say I didn't get it," and you go, "Check your spam. I'll call you back in a couple days to follow up on it." "No, if I have any questions I'll call." That's typically what it would sound like, right? Here's what we would say. And we have their name, right? So I would go, hey, Joe. This is Bob. Hey, listen, a little while ago, I sent over the online value for your home that you requested, and I was just calling for two quick reasons. We'll be done in 30 seconds. First, make sure you received the darn thing." Now, I know they got it, so usually they're gonna say, "Yeah, I got it." "Cool. So my second question is, did that number look high, low, or about right to you?" I didn't ask him a yes or no question because I typically know the answer's gonna be no, I don't have any questions." " Did that number look high, low, or about right to you?" Which of those two scenarios do you think does a better job of drawing out a conversation? That's the difference between a lead machine. We've thought this through. We've tested this. Because now the machine's already done part of the work. It generated the hand raise, and it got the raise so that I can respond quick, and now the next stage begins, right? This is where a lot of agents run perf- ruin perfectly good leads because they get the lead and they go straight into the sales mode. You're pitching or you're pressing, or they start acting like a homeowner requested a listing appointment, when in reality they just requested information. That's a huge mistake. See, what we do is different. We follow up with a proven script, but the point of the script is not to force an appointment. Because whatever they say, high, low, or indifferent, "Hey, that's awesome. Now remember, this is just an online valuation tool. It's just computer algorithms. If it's okay with you, I can do a much more detailed report for you. It'll take me about twenty-four hours, and I can shoot that over to you in a me- email. Can I do that for you?" People don't wanna be rude, so they go yeah." That's the next step in the phase, and then when we send them a home valuation, again, it's something we built with AI that's takes you thirty seconds to do, but it totally separates you from everybody else. See, that's the difference. The point's to begin building that relationship because if somebody requests a home value, for example, we just don't call them and go, "So when are you planning to sell?" I know there are agents who do that. A, it's wrong. Two, it's just too aggressive. It's too early. It's too tone-deaf for where they're at in the process. Instead, make the call sound more natural. It's easy. It's for... It, it's normal. It's not a harassing phone call, if you will, right? So our goal is to just simply get them talking. It gives us their opinion. Also gives us insight into their mindset or their timeframe, and it opens the conversation without pressure. So that's how we handle those leads. We're not hard selling. We're not forcing. We have a system in place to do that. We're giving them something useful. We build trust. We're showing competence. We're just moving the relationship forward one step at a time. The, and the reality of it is, folks, in two weeks, they're gonna get another postcard from us, and two weeks after that, they're gonna get another postcard for eight weeks. And if at any point they scan any of the things that we ske- send them, it automatically sends them into a monthly postcard with a neighborhood update and a new valuation of their home. They're not gonna forget about us. And then we have a series of other things that we do, right? Because we're not trying to win the business on the first touch. We're trying to open the relationship the right way, and it's a really critical mindship- mind shift you really need to make, right? A lot of the agents just think follow-up means, "Hey, get the appointment right now." But often the real win is, "How do I start the relationship right now?" Two very different things. And when you combine things like direct mail and QR code response and immediate notification and all that stuff- Our goal is to get the hand raised. The tech will create the speed, the script creates the trust, and the trust creates the next conversation. That's how you make high-intent seller leads more valuable, and that's, it's, that's exactly why I keep saying the money's not just in generating the lead. The money's gonna be in what happens next. Now, this is the part that I really wanna drive home. Better follow-up doesn't just make you sound more professional, it makes your marketing more profitable. We're in the business to make money, aren't we? Because the easiest way to lead the easiest way to waste a lead is the one that you've already paid for. Think about how much money gets lost simply because nobody responded fast enough, or nobody followed up long enough, or the lead wasn't sorted properly, or I don't know, the messaging was generic, the nurturing was weak. Nobody recognized the buy signal. See, those are expensive mistakes. So when an agent says, "Hey, I need more leads," sometimes what they really need is to stop losing the leads they already have, which is a much smarter first move. Because when you improve the follow-up, your conversion goes up, your ad dollars work harder and better. Direct mail works harder. Your database gets more valuable. Your pipeline becomes more stable, and probably the most important of all is your confidence goes up. And now when you do scale your lead flow, it scales into something that's structured, not chaos, right? Remember, raised hands are the goal. It's probably the heart of our philosophy. You wanna build a system that creates raised hands. Not just touches, not activity, not random follow-up, raised hands. And a raised hand is when somebody says, "Yes, send it over." "Yeah, I want that report." "Yes, I'd like to talk," or, "I don't know, can you help me with this?" Or, "I'm thinking about moving," or I need an updated value." That's what the machine is supposed to create, and the reason that matters is simple. Agents waste too much time trying to force conversations with uninterested people in low-probability ways. A better follow-up machine creates more moments where the prospect makes the move towards you. That's client attraction. That's when selling gets easier because now you're not manufacturing interest from scratch, you're responding to an interest that's already matured. It's efficient, it's profitable, and isn't that the kind of system most agents would wanna build? So what do you do next with all this? If you're listening to this and you're thinking, "All right, I need to fix this. Where do I start?" Ask yourself this: Do I have a clear first response process? Do I have a real nurture cadence? Do I have a useful email and text touch? Do I have visibility content? Do I have physical follow-up? Do I know when the machine hands off to me? Do I sort leads by timing, fit, and intent, or am I just improvising? See, that's your audit, and the answer is that things still, i- if things are still feeling scattered- You haven't fixed that. And that's okay. You now know what to work on. The point of it is to see it clearly, because once you fix the follow-up machine, everything else starts getting better. Your conversations improve, your stress drops, your marketing dollars work harder, and the whole business starts to feel more intentional, and most importantly, you're starting to cash closing checks. So here's the big takeaway. Your follow-up is either a machine or a mess. Really not much middle ground. And before you spend another dollar on lead generation, you need to know which one you have, because the money is not in getting more leads, the money's in what happens next. It's in the fast response. It's the sorting, the nurture, the visibility. That's where the money's at. It's what mar- makes your marketing more profitable. It's that simple, guys. It's what keep leads or keeps leads from dying. It's what turns more interest into appointments, and that's why serious agents build the follow-up machine first. Now, if you want the full framework where I wrote it out, it's an e-book that you can get, The 15-Hour Client Attraction Method. The reason we call it 15 hours, it's all the time we have to spend on lead generation, and the reality is we now have got it down to about six to eight hours a week. And if you'll download it and read it, it's gonna help you build a follow-up process that turns more interest into appointments without relying on improvisation and hope, and that's where smarter growth begins. Now, you can download it at www.15hourmethod.com. 15 is the number one and five. So www.15hourmethod.com. And with that, how long have I been on? Actually, this is a longer one. With that, I'll sign off for the week. And all I can do, folks, is hope you go out and start building your machine, and we'll talk to you next week.