Why do we always see the same channels of lead generation surface in coaching and sales planning conversations? Open houses, expired listings, for sale by owner. For decades, we've been instructed to move our sales efforts towards those prospects who we think are ‘high-intent.’ When we spend our time with higher intent customers, we realize closings and commissions faster!
The downside of these high-intent channels is they’re often overly saturated. Yes, there are invaluable services like ListingLeads.com to help you out-sell your competing agent on expired listing leads, but every sales playbook in every brokerage across the country instructs agents to target these customers, minimizing your success rate along the way.
But what if you could target high-intent customers that are NOT overly saturated with other agent outreach? This is the beauty of the relocation playbook! When you target high-intent home buyers and sellers that are not being inundated by competing agents, your voice stands-out, your success rate increases, and your business grows!
Can this same logic of finding high-intent prospects apply for building a referral base for relocation services? If so, how would we know which companies are more prone to need relocation services? Simply put, yes! Finding companies to offer your relocation services that have a higher intent of producing referrals is a formula we’ll lay-out in this post.
But before we progress, lets quickly recap the 5 topics from our September 22 article where we argue now is the time to build your own relocation services strategy:
Characteristics of High-Intent Prospects for Relocating Employees
First of all, let’s make clear that we strongly discourage efforts to contact Fortune 500 companies, or any employer with >5,000 employees. Yes, these are the ‘whales’ of relocating employees, but since you’re just getting started with building a referral base for relocating employees, you’re better off targeting small-to-midsize companies that are experiencing rapid growth. While the Microsoft’s, Amazon’s, Tesla’s of the world produce hundreds of millions in relocating real estate commissions each year, these companies have established relationships with relocation service companies like Leading Real Estate of the Companies of the World, Anywhere Lead Network, etc. and the probability of you penetrating and disrupting this relationship is very small. Instead, move your efforts to prospects that have a lower barrier to entry.
Now, not every small-to-mid-sized company is necessarily needing real estate and relocation services. How do you wade through the thousands of companies in your community to find the one’s that may need relocating employees and hence, more transactions for you? Simple. Where there’s momentum, there’s hiring.
Companies that will have a higher probability of needing relocation services will include companies with highly coveted, technical skill positions that may need to relocate into your community to be near an office. Software companies are a great example of highly skilled labor that compensates well and may need to be recruited from outside your employment zone, and thus needing real estate services. Additionally, companies that have recently raised capital are often hiring more employees within, or outside of your employment zone, and could need real estate services to support the needs of employers.
Finding these types of companies with high-growth potential or specified labor needs can be done with a few resources. Lets unpack a few:
Top 4 Sources to Find High-Intent Relocating Prospects
This seems obvious, right? Most of us only used LinkedIn to promote our own professional services and not for prospecting clients. As highlighted in the image below, use the ‘Search’ functionality to browse for Companies that operate in industries with highly technical roles, in your community, and at a company size (<5,000 employees) where there is a smaller chance the company is already working with a relocation service provider.
There is no better resource to find start-up companies that are raising capital in your community than Crunchbase. Crunchbase is most commonly used by tech start-up founders as a reference point for the investment community to learn more about their business, founding employees, early stage investors, etc. Similar to LinkedIn, Crunchbase has basic and paid membership options. While you’ll certainly gain more insight on the funding rounds for the paid membership plan, you can still use the free membership to search for tech companies in your area that may be in growth mode due to recent funding.
Built-In is not only a fantastic networking platform for tech start-up founders to raise awareness for their companies, but they receive monumental notoriety each year for their city-wide ‘Built-In’ Awards. A quick Google Search for your city name + the term ‘Built-In’ will generate search results where you can quickly find the top 1,000 small-to-mid sized tech start-ups in your community to target for possible relocation services.
Similar to Built-In, nearly every major metropolitan city in the United States has a Business Journal that publishes annual award winners of top companies, whether they are small, medium or large. This is another great reference point for companies that have momentum and are often achieving outsized growth for their vertical in your community. Finding these award winners can be simple, using a quick Google search with your city name + the term ‘Business Journal award winners.’
Finding high-intent customers is the key to accelerating your sales. Start building your target prospect list today with these sources and stay tuned for our next post where we discuss the keys to crafting your sales pitch for relocation services!
