Written by Adam Horth 

Many salespeople are currently experiencing what we at Smartre Training refer to as a hollow pipeline. When assessing potential listings for the coming weeks, months and quarters - they realise there simply aren’t enough prospects to create sufficient listings.

If this is you - or your salespeople - what should be done?

The first questions.

What can you do to fix it now? What can you do to ensure this doesn’t happen again?

Although this article is focused on answering the first of these two questions, take some time to consider what put you in this position in the first place.

Sales in many ways is governed by the 90/30 rule. The listings you achieve across the next 30 days are a result of your prospecting efforts over the previous 90.

As such, a hollow pipeline is a by-product of insufficient prospecting throughout the previous months. As you know, prospects take energy to find and then time to create relationships and trust.

Great salespeople possess the characteristic of foresight. Knowing that the actions they do today will ensure success for their future selves.

To ensure consistent opportunities for listings exist, you must first ensure consistent prospecting is undertaken every week.

Begin Prospecting – Now!

The first thing to do is to get to work. Jump on the phone, get out on the doors and find new opportunities.

Because you’re seeking future and immediate opportunities, focus on the prospecting sources likely to produce both.

One of the biggest mistakes we see salespeople make when in a slump is they go ‘looking for listings’. Change this mindset. You can’t look; you must find. Agents can busy themselves for hours and days simply looking. The best get themselves focused on finding.

Put as much time aside as possible for prospecting. Until you have sufficient listing opportunities, you must prioritise prospecting.

Flip your thinking.

Here is another common yet critical mistake. Slumping salespeople think about everything they have to do that day and work out when they can squeeze in an hour or two of prospecting.

To create listings, flip this thinking.

Allow one or two hours in your day for everything else. Spend the rest of your day prospecting. Rather than attempting to speak to 20 or 30 property owners, aim for 80 to 100. 

By doing this, you can take your week’s prospecting from 100 conversations to 500.

Does 500 sound like a lot? Fantastic. It should. Do you know what speaking to 500 owners will result in? Listings.

You can jag a listing with 100 conversations, yet you’re guaranteed 2 listings (if not 3) when you speak to 500 owners.

Go where the sellers are.

Continuing from a previous point, in order to find sellers, you must go where the sellers are.

Some simple planning you can do with your prospecting is by looking at the properties that have most recently come to the market. What patterns are there to be found?

Often markets will possess small patterns – a particular style of property, properties in specific suburbs or estates – or the owners themselves may be where the patterns lie. At times, more investors will be listing due to market forecasts or legislative changes.

It is common early in the year for elderly owners to consider selling and downsizing. The Christmas holiday season is a time when families come together, conversations take place, and plans are put in motion. Give this consideration when planning your prospecting.

Aside from the patterns of listings – there are always specific prospecting sources that generate immediate sellers.

In our sales training, Winning Ways, 28 individual prospecting sources are listed. Two of these (referred to as Success Sources) are Just Listed and Just Sold calls.

These are great sources to activate. 

A culture of prospecting.

Throughout Smartre Training’s System of real estate, we discuss a culture of prospecting.

In our sales seminars, we discuss the benefits to our salespeople, and how it can empower them with an internal locus of control. In our leadership seminar being held at the end of March, we’ll discuss the five steps you can take to create a culture of prospecting within your agency.

Finally, at our Sales Management seminars, we explain the financial benefit of rewarding your salespeople when listings they create are generated from their prospecting actions, rather than the agency’s marketing.

When the agency is responsible for the marketing and the salespeople for the prospecting – a symbiotic relationship is created where everyone benefits.

The solution to a hollow pipeline.

To solve the issue of a hollow pipeline, you must first understand what led to its creation. That is a lack of recent prospecting.

To prevent yourself from having hollow pipelines next quarter or the remainder of this year, make prospecting a daily habit for yourself and your team.