Seal the deal with Instagram leads to generate 10% more business

Intuition is a “gut feeling,” that “I feel it in my bones” feeling. Have you ever felt those?

Your ability to convert business off Instagram is just one of those “feelings” away.

Picture this: Your day-to-day prospecting involves calling and talking to people, sending reminder texts and maintaining relationships with potential clients in your pipeline. How do you do that? You take a mental inventory of the timeline for the person and when you should follow up.

You even learn the right way to “ask” for business through sales training. You remember things about them and tie that into how you work with them professionally.

So how can you translate your ability to do this off social media and do it on it through DMs?

Most real estate professionals post content consistently, but the issue remains that they are not actively prospecting with their accounts and in their DMs. Instead, they are passively prospecting, waiting for messages to come to them.

They are waiting to see what others do and are not active in their responses. If the goal is always to have a full pipeline, then seeing your Instagram as a viable lead source is necessary.

How can you be active? Will the strategy you choose help you work through the four to six touchpoints it typically takes to convert a lead? What is the No. 1 sign that someone is ready for you to “move the meeting,” and what does that look like?

Passive prospecting on Instagram

Why are so many people still saying, “I have not gotten any business from my Instagram?”

Because the passive approach results are challenging to measure, as you must wait for the people to respond or for business to come to you. The decision is entirely up to others.

You can post unique content with high-value information and be good at sharing authentic content people can connect with, but you are still relying on the consumer of your content to reach out.

Therefore, the 45/20 rule is such a powerful tool. While the passive prospecting approach will certainly add credibility to you, when you combine it with the active approach, you initiate and can get through the four to six touchpoints it takes to convert a client significantly faster, and you are in control of your opportunities.

Active prospecting on Instagram

“Are you waking up to many messages in your inbox of conversations that need to be continued?”

Ask yourself that question. Is the answer no?

Then, that means you are a passive prospector. You are not going out and creating the conversations that create opportunity. A full pipeline means you can get as many at-bats as possible.

Active prospecting is always time-intensive, but, if done correctly, the setup can alleviate a lot of the heavy lifting. Building out your engagement tracker ensures you’re strategic, efficient and always actively looking for new leads that fit your ideal client. We do not want a bunch of time-wasters.

Refer to the 45/20 rule to build out what your engagement on the platform should look like.

So, what should your number one goal be when it is time to move the meeting?

Connection. It is as simple as that.

Working through the four to six touchpoints with someone in your DMs is imperative to building a relationship. The value of the small talk is underrated. This goes back to that “picture this” scenario painted above.

As agents, you get so good at creating connections with your clients. You remember things about them and tie them into how you work with them. This is the same way you should treat engagement in your DMs. 

Now that it is time to move the meeting, meaning the person is ready based on key signals they are giving, your focus should be on one thing and one thing only: Using the connection you have established in your ask.

If through your small talk, you have established a mutual love for something, or that you both go to the same coffee bar every week, or that your mindset is the same and you have synergy about something you are doing in your business, then leverage that in how you ask.

Here’s an example of what the “move the meeting” message might sound like.

Example 1:

Example 2:

In both above examples, the key ingredient to a successful “moving of the meeting” was listening and leveraging the connection you have made with the individual.

Finally, when it comes to moving the meeting, some conversations will be easier than others to do so with. In the second example, the person was quite simply swinging the door wide open for the other person to ask.

Intuition will get you very far when coupled with active prospecting rooted in connection first.

The flywheel effect occurs when small wins accumulate over time, creating momentum that keeps your business going.

Instagram is a flywheel on its own. It serves as a pivotal catalyst for propelling your business forward, and keeping the flywheel going can be done by executing the strategies laid out in all five articles of this series.

Close the flywheel

How do we close the loop? The answer lies in our ability to understand the value that both sides offer — the passive, the active and, more importantly, how the dynamic puts the gasoline on the fire.

So, what are the two tricks that will help you solidify the effectiveness of your active prospecting strategy so that you can close the flywheel? Sending video messages to those you are trying to set an appointment with.

Do you have several people in your DMs that you are ready to go for the ask with? Do you want to know how to get more “asks” into actual appointments? One simple and easy solution is to send a personal video message with your ask out of the gate.

The message you would send stays the same, but you couple it with a video of you saying the same thing you said in the message. Secondly, have you ever gone for the ask with someone you have been having a good conversation with in your DMs, and they leave it on “seen?”

This happens. But do not give up on these conversations. If you’ve asked, but they have not said no, send the video message. Depending on the response to that, then likely the best answer is to begin to re-engage.

Re-engage, re-engage, re-engage

Who are the 50 most important people for you to stay top of mind with? Insert your favorites list on Instagram.

Having your warm/hot leads in an organized list lets you quickly see if any of your leads have a new post or active story to engage with. Anyone you put on this list on Instagram will show you more of them more often. This allows you to stay consistent with your engagement.

These people make up your “re-engage” list. When you make your engagement tracker, you will have one re-engage day each week. On this day, you will go through this list of 50 people and re-engage them. Check and see if they have a new story up or a new piece of content posted, and engage with them like you would a fresh engagement.

A good chunk of the people on your re-engage list will end up being people you may have gone for the ask with, and they didn’t say yes or even respond at all. Therefore, a fresh engagement will hopefully push that conversation back to the forefront of their minds.

Both will help you leverage your active prospecting approach to the fullest. In doing so, you strategically identify and engage potential clients daily.

Once you engage with them, turning the conversation into an appointment is your final step. Like anything, your Instagram is a sales funnel. You will have more conversations than you will have appointments simply because the initial conversations are at the top of the funnel, and the ones who make it to the appointments will be a smaller number while you work through the touchpoints.

This is a good thing as those who get to this point are not only ideal clients but are more likely to convert, less likely to shop around, and are people you genuinely want to work with.

Combining passive and active prospecting creates a well-rounded approach to your efforts on Instagram. Specifically, it leverages the strengths of each. This approach maximizes the chances of reaching a specific, targeted audience while building brand awareness. The end goal is to convert more conversations into clients.

Passive prospecting lays the foundation for relationship building by providing valuable content, but active prospecting provides opportunities for more direct and personalized interactions. Your passive prospecting approach is the fire, but your active approach is the gasoline.

Michelle Berman Mikel is a nationally sought-after Instagram Content Development coach, speaker, owner of Berman Media PD and creator of the Instagram Power Method Program. You can connect with her on Instagram and LinkedIn.