If you knew exactly how a sales and lead generation funnel actually works, how would you change your approach as a real estate agent? Pretty compelling question, isn’t it? As important as it is, why do so many real estate professionals, brokers and developers that hire massive volumes of sales agents in the Philippines choose to completely ignore it?

If you don’t believe this question is being ignored, just go into any mall, drive past any major subdivision or visit any Real Estate Facebook page. What will you see? A real estate agent staring right at you pushing a flier/brochure on you as pass by and try to ignore eye contact or ignore engaging in their Facebook post. Try engaging in a test conversation with one of them and you’ll find them jumping straight into their sales pitch, “blah…blah…blah…bili ka na, sir/ma’am”!

If you were on the receiving end of that conversation as a potential buyer, how would you feel?

You might not say this but I bet you’d be thinking, “uh dude, sorry but I don’t know you. Even if I did, why would I give you a commitment for the single largest purchase that I’ll make in my entire life”?

Today, let’s explore the answers to this multi-billion peso question.

And, if you’re really open, honest and willing to do whatever it takes to succeed as a real estate professional, this could be a HUGE game-changer for you!

Here’s the bottom-line, in order to understand how a real estate buyer thinks and how to improve your real estate lead generation for the Philippines, you need to understand the definition and concepts of what we like to call the “marketing funnel”, “customer funnel” or “sales funnel”. They all mean the same thing.

So, what is a marketing funnel?

Wikipedia says it best, “…a consumer focused marketing model which illustrates the theoretical customer journey towards the purchase of a product or service.”

In case you didn’t understand it, read it again, word for word.

If you, as a real estate sales professional don’t acknowledge that there’s a framework and a mental thought process that a buyer goes through which is a specific and repeatable progression of research that ultimately culminates to a final decision of either to purchase or not, then you’re in for a long journey of guessing and flying in the dark towards hitting your goals.

Why do you need to understand your marketing funnel?

Funnels are important so that you can identify and measure what part of your sales and marketing activities are working and not working. On the macro level, it will help you understand what you need to do for each prospect to either move them to the next step of the funnel or move them out as an unqualified lead.

How does understanding the marketing funnel affect all of your real estate lead generation for the Philippines?

Funnels help define who the best leads are in the Philippine real estate and where they are in the lead generation process.

What does a marketing funnel look like?

For most real estate individuals and companies, your marketing and sales funnel stages can consist of the following at very basic level:

• Top of the Funnel (TOFU): This is defined as the awareness stage.
• Middle of the Funnel (MOFU): The point and stage where potential buyers come back to visit your website or call or message you about potential interest. If you set up a meeting or call as “first appointment”, your potential buyer moves to the next stage that we call a “conversion”.
• Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU): Once you’ve completed your “first appointment”, you should be able to begin qualifying your potential buyer as they go through the “product consideration” stage to “how and if I should complete a purchase” stages.

Here’s an image to help illustrate the progression from each stage.

Now that we’ve broken down the stages and the structure of the marketing funnel, and if you think back to what we see most real estate professionals doing out there (remember what I said about what happens at the mall, on the street in front of a real estate development or on a FB page), most agents start their sales process at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU) when the buyer hasn’t even gone through the first stage of the awareness process of their buyer journey. If you’re lucky, you might start a conversation with someone at the MOFU or BOFU but even still, you haven’t established your credibility so why would they buy from you. All they see you as is the “blah…blah…blah…bili ka na, sir/ma’am,” sales person that everyone tries to avoid.

In contrast, what would happen if you started every potential buyer with the actual buyer’s journey and thought process that they go through?

Would you have a better chance to get their attention and awareness?

Would you have a better chance to talk to only more qualified leads versus people who will waste your time?

Would you have a better opportunity to build your credibility as a “trusted advisor”?

Look, I get it, this stuff isn’t easy and for now, my goal was to layout the concept and stages of the marketing funnel so you get a better idea of how real estate buyers think.

I realize there’s a lot more to this and a ton more detail on how to move a buyer through each stage but don’t worry, just stay tuned and in one of our next posts, we’ll discuss each stage in full detail.

If you found this article interesting, compelling or if you wanna give us your opinion, we’d love to hear it…just leave us your comments below.

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