THE ROOM

I followed up twice.
Then I let the lead go cold.

You never decided to stop following up.

There was never a moment when you decided anything.

Two Messages

She came in from the portal on a Tuesday, and she was real.

You called within the hour, and she picked up. Good conversation, about six minutes. Selling in the spring, maybe, depending on whether her husband's job situation settled. She asked what houses on her street had sold for. You knew, and she said that was helpful.

You sent the comps that afternoon with a short note.

She didn't reply. You didn't think anything of it. Nobody replies to comps.

Nine days later you sent her a new listing three doors down. It was interesting, and it gave you a reason to write.

No reply either time.

The Third Message You Didn't Send

There was no third message.

You were busy, but that wasn't the reason. You opened her name in the CRM twice in the next few weeks and closed it again.

You couldn't think of a reason to write. And underneath that, in a place you don't usually look, you already decided what her silence meant. She talked to somebody else. Or she changed her mind. Or she didn't like you as much as you thought.

Anything you sent now would be the third message from an agent she wasn't answering. You didn't want to be that agent.

So she went into the general sequence with everyone else, and got the market update with your photo on it every quarter. She listed in the spring with somebody else. You didn't find out for months, and when you did, it didn't surprise you.

If you scroll back through your CRM, you'll find dozens like her. Two messages, then the sequence, then a name you don't recognize anymore.

What the Industry Tells You to Do

The industry's answer is a follow-up system. And that's good. Build the sequence. Set the tasks so the CRM tells you when to reach out. Get the timing right. Bring something useful every time instead of just checking in. Never let a lead go untouched.

You have a CRM, and you've built the follow-up schedule more than once.

What happens is that the system reminds you and you don't act. The task comes up, you look at the name, and you push it out a week. Software can't fix that part.

Why You Stop at Two

Stopping at two isn't about how many messages is enough. It's about how you feel when the second one goes unanswered.

The first message is easy. The call just happened, and you have something to send. The second one is fine. Nine days is a reasonable gap, and you had a real reason.

The third one is the first time you'd be reaching out into silence with nothing new to say. That's where it stops, every time, for every agent with this habit.

You stop at two since two is as far as you can go before the silence starts to feel like it's about you.

Look at your own closings. Take the last ten and write down how many times you reached out to that person before the conversation that turned into a deal. Count it. You may find that your own business came from the fifth, sixth, or eighth contact, not the second. You may also see that the leads you gave up on after two looked a lot like the ones that closed.

That count is yours, so it's the only number that matters here.

What the Silence Meant to You

Somebody not answering doesn't tell you anything about you. For most people it's a busy week, a job that hasn't settled, a spring move pushed to fall, or an email that sat unread until it felt too late to answer.

You took it as a judgment about you. You never put it into words, but it happened about nine days after you sent the comps.

Once you believe that, a third message doesn't feel like follow-up. It feels like asking somebody to give you another chance, and nobody wants to do that twice. So the CRM entry stays closed, the sequence takes over, and the sequence never once says anything about her street or her husband's job.

That's the real loss, more than the lead. You had a six-minute conversation with a real person about a real situation, and the only thing that ever followed it was a newsletter.

Why It Keeps Happening

For you, not getting an answer feels the same as being turned down.

That didn't start in this business. It was there long before she was. You feel a small, uncomfortable pull when a name sits there unanswered, and the quickest way to make that feeling go away is to stop looking at the name.

Nobody at your office knows you do this, and most days you don't either. Two messages look like follow-up from the outside. They even show up in the CRM as follow-up.

Your broker's report can't see it either. It counts the two messages you sent and has no way to count the one you didn't.

It's the same thing behind the buyer who went quiet after nine showings, where the quiet gets read as a deal slipping away. It's also part of why the pipeline still feels empty no matter how many leads you buy. Buying a new name is easier than writing again to one that didn't answer.

Two Things to Do This Week

The first one takes ten minutes.

Count it. Your last ten closings, and next to each one, how many times you reached out before the conversation that became a deal. Write the numbers down where you'll see them. They're your own answer to the habit of stopping at two.

Then pick five names from the CRM where you stopped at two. Send each one a third message with no question in it.

"Saw this and thought of your street." Then a link to a recent sale, or the tax reassessment notice, or the new restaurant going into the old bank building.

No question, so they don't owe you a reply. No ask, so there's nothing for them to decide about you. Then do it again in three weeks with something else.

Five messages, ten minutes. You're not chasing anybody. You're still there, and that's often the difference between the leads who call you in the spring and the ones who don't.

Put the five names on a task for three weeks out, and when it comes up, send another one. You're practicing something new: reaching out when nothing is coming back, and being fine with that.

The Name for This Pattern

This pattern has a name. It's the first of the Six Mind Shifts™, Needs, and the shift is from desperation to protection.

It can look like the opposite of desperation, since you stopped instead of chasing. It comes from the same place. You needed an answer, so the silence meant something to you, and needing that answer is what made you quit at two.

I wrote about it in The Unforgettable Agent. The third message costs almost nothing to send. For most agents, it's still the hardest one to send.

Every agent loses deals

Most never put a number to it.

Takes about 2 to 3 minutes to find yours.

The Mindset Tax Calculator →

Larry Heathcote is an identity coach for real estate agents, creator of the Six Mind Shifts™ and the Six Decision Drivers™, and author of The Unforgettable Agent. He works on the one thing in every room an agent can actually control: who you are when you sit across from a client.