Plain and simple, the more leads an agent generates, the more likely they are to hit their transaction and commission income goals. Most agents know this.

However, what surprisingly few agents know is exactly how many leads they need to generate in order to hit those goals. For example, the average agent needs to generate at least 400 to 600 leads every year to earn six figures in commission income if the local median home price is around $300,000 and they have an average lead close rate of two to three percent.

Use our Lead Calculator tool to find out how many leads you need to generate every month.

Ask any real estate trainer and they’ll tell you the same thing: consistent lead generation is required if you want to avoid boom-and-bust cycles involving going a significant period of time between finding new clients. Devoting some time to lead generation every day is recommended, and doing so once or twice a week is absolutely essential.

Of course, “lead generation” doesn’t always entail time-intensive tasks like manually create direct mail campaigns for your farm area. It can be something as simple as managing your social media advertising campaigns or quickly emailing your prospects about new listings they might be interested in.

Real estate trainers highly recommend that agents develop and closely follow lead generation plans that specify lead volume goals, lead sources, and lead generation frequency. Having and sticking to such a plan helps agents consistently generate the volume of leads they need to be successful.

Need help developing a lead generation plan? Download our Real Estate Business Plan to get easy-to-use worksheets and calculators that will help you identify and hit your lead generation goals.

The more lead sources real estate agents have, the less risk of falling victim to a lengthy lead generation dry spell they’re exposed to. Even the best lead sources have off months (or several off months in a row) every so often, so being able to get leads from a diverse and numerous selection of sources helps agents find new clients consistently throughout the year.

A beautiful real estate website that provides valuable information to consumers will offer little value to the agent who owns it if the website doesn’t have a way to capture leads. The more methods your website has for capturing leads, the better it will be at helping you to find new clients. Ideally, every page on your website should have some kind of lead-capturing element on it, even if it’s just a prominently-displayed phone number.

With all types of marketing in every industry, targeting specific segments of potential customers with messaging tailored to their interests and needs helps to maximize marketing budget ROI. In real estate, consumers’ interests and needs are mostly dictated by geography and demographics. For example, a direct mail piece tailored and sent to Baby Boomer home sellers living in Ballard, Seattle that addresses home value appreciation in that neighborhood will have a much higher response rate than a generic seller-oriented piece.

Demographically, the best ways to divide potential clients into segments is to use income and age. Family unit type (e.g., empty nesters, young families, and single yuppies) is also a commonly-used demographic.

Geographically speaking, consumers can be sorted by the cities and neighborhoods they live or are interested in, as well as the personalities of those places. For example, consumers looking to buy in sleepy commuter towns could be lumped into one advertising audience.