AlterLabs guides
Before you buy more property leads, check your follow-up process
More enquiries create more work. If ownership and follow-up are unclear, increasing advertising can enlarge the backlog. Review a recent group of leads first, then decide whether the next investment belongs in demand generation, sales capacity or the process connecting them.
Choose a small, consistent review period
Start with one project and a recent seven-day period. Count unique enquiries and keep test entries and duplicates separate. Record the source, received time, assigned owner, first contact attempt and current next action. This is an operating review, not a reason to export customer data into an uncontrolled spreadsheet.
Check ownership before judging lead quality
An enquiry with no owner has not had a fair sales follow-up. Count unassigned enquiries and ask why assignment failed. Then check whether the named owner is actually available and knows the lead is theirs. A software assignment and an accepted responsibility are different things.
Separate an attempt from a conversation
Record first-attempt delay, but do not treat a dialled number as a connected conversation. Keep attempted, connected, qualified and not relevant as separate outcomes. Compare like-for-like sources and periods. A low connection rate may need investigation into contact timing, details or audience fit; it does not by itself prove that all the leads are poor.
Look for the missing next action
For active opportunities, check whether an owner, a concrete next step and a due date exist. “Interested” is a status, not an action. “Send the agreed floor plan and call on Tuesday” is actionable. Respect the prospect’s contact preferences and stop further outreach when requested.
Close the loop after a site visit
A visit booking should have a date, meeting point, responsible person and confirmation. Afterward, record attended, rescheduled or did not attend, followed by the agreed next conversation. Otherwise a busy visits calendar can conceal a stalled pipeline.
Illustrative example: decide what to fix first
Suppose a review contains 40 unique enquiries: eight have no owner, twelve assigned enquiries have no recorded attempt, and six connected prospects have no next action. These are fictional figures, not AlterLabs customer results. The immediate work is to allocate ownership, clarify contact capacity and agree next steps before using this group to judge advertising quality.
Choose the smallest useful change
If the team can maintain the routine in its current system, begin there. If shared spreadsheets make ownership and due actions hard to manage, compare an LMS against the actual workflow. Review the same measures after a consistent period. No single tool or checklist guarantees bookings; use the evidence to choose the next change.
Download the lead follow-up checklist