Prospecting Conversion Rates for Real Estate Agents

Learn the standard prospecting conversion rates for real estate agents making COI, FSBO, Expired & Just Listed/Sold telephone calls. Determine how long and how many contacts it takes to generate appointments and listing agreements depending on these different types of lead generation activities. Before we examine the conversion ratios for each of these business development methods, watch as Brian Icenhower and Jesse Garcia, founder of Pipeline Wizard, discuss how to track prospecting conversion rates in this video.

Prospecting Conversion Rates for REALTORS®

Standard Prospecting Conversion Rates

The table below provides anticipated prospecting conversion rates for real estate agents depending upon the amount of experience they have with conducting regular lead generation activities. Note how efficiency increases dramatically as an agent gains experience over time. Time on task is the key to establishing strong real estate prospecting conversion rates. The lack of efficiency and results that agents experience in the first few months after they initially start prospecting is the reason so many agents quit prospecting and ultimately dismiss the entire practice as ineffective. However, agents with strong accountability in place soon find that prospecting is the fastest way to generate new business in real estate.

Expired Listings

Prospecting conversion rates for agents that call expired listings are extremely high and very time effective. Owners of expired listings often still want to sell their homes and get them back on the market quickly, so the contact-to-appointment ratio for expired listings is often better than the standard prospecting conversion rates shown in the graphic above. Additionally, these are typically shorter phone calls than other prospecting methods, so expired listing prospectors can often make more contacts per hour than with other lead generation methods.

FSBO – For Sale By Owner

Since FSBO sellers clearly want to sell their homes, FSBO prospecting conversion rates have the highest contact-to-appointment ratio. However, this is because FSBO sellers often just want agents to come look at their homes rather than list them. As a result, the standard FSBO appointment-to-listing ratio is lower than the general prospecting conversion rates shown in the table above. So agents often must conduct regular lead follow up efforts before ultimately getting the FSBO homes under contract.

COI – Center of Influence

Although making COI contacts is the most essential lead generation activity, it results in lower prospecting conversion rates since members of a COI database often don’t refer or call back for real estate services until later on in time. However, if agents trace the sources of all of their transactions regularly they often find that the largest percentage came from COI contacts and referrals from their COI. COI calls often take a bit longer to make since agents have some polite catching up to do with people they already know. Therefore the contacts-per-hour ratio is often a bit lower than the standards shown in the table above. Thankfully, the ratio for COI appointments-to-listing agreements signed is typically higher since higher levels of trust and peer accountability reside with people already in relationships with agents.

Just Listed & Just Sold

Real estate geographic farmers know that the prospecting conversion rates for calling around listings with “just listed” and “just sold” telephone calls are much lower than other prospecting methods. These are true cold calls since agents don’t know the people on the other end of the phone like COI calls, and the call recipients don’t typically want to sell their house immediately as with expired and FSBO sellers. So strong real estate scripts are essential to success with this type of circle prospecting, and effective just listed/sold scripts should always come from contribution by advertising customer service on behalf of listings on the market or a buyers looking for homes.