How leads enter the CRM.

The next thing that's really important for a lead manager to know is where do the leads come from. If I'm lead managing in a business, I need to know where these people are coming from.

For us it is four primary sources. Direct mail, cold calling, our Carrot website, and pay-per-lead. If you click on any one of these, it gives more details.

Direct mail is postcards and letters to a targeted list, whether it be high equity, pre foreclosure, or probate. Sellers respond by calling or texting. These are warm inbounds, because they started the contact.

In our smartphone account, and in pretty much every dialer you would ever use, you can point a phone number at an inbox. So we have a direct mail inbox. Our team processes those calls first.

Cold calling is the outbound team. Callers dial through a targeted list and generate leads, so these are outbound generated. Quality varies here, so you need to verify motivation yourself.

The Carrot website is the other end of that. Sellers find us through Google and submit their property information, so these are high intent leads. Speed to contact matters. Calls route to our online inbounds inbox and ring your phone, and form submissions come through Zapier.

Say there was an inbound lead last night. I don't want to assume that Zapier worked. I don't want to assume that the webhooks worked.

So instead, we just go to the source. We go to carrot.com and we look, was there any new leads. If there is, we go to the Sift and we process the lead. If we had a phone call from the website, we call those back.

Some people say they only look in their CRM for these things. I believe in going to the source of truth as much as possible. Carrot is the source for inbounds, so I want my lead manager in there.

Zapier connects all the pay-per-lead providers. We use property leads when we are paying for pay-per-lead. There's a bunch of them out there, that is just the only one I have personally used.

So we open propertyleads.com and check, was there any new leads since last night. If there was, we copy the address, go to the CRM, paste the address, and work the records.

I also want my pay-per-lead inbounds. With property leads, if someone calls the number on the landing page, it redirects to you once you bought the lead. I get calls that look like property leads calling me, and it is a handoff from that landing page number.

That inbox may have missed phone calls on it. When we talk to leads, we mostly use the direct mail number, the pay-per-lead number, and our Carrot website number.

So put in whatever sources you are using. A lead manager is the line of defense between marketing and acquisitions. If they don't know how leads are generated, they can't give marketing feedback when something is wrong.

In any role, people need to understand the position before them and the position after them. At least the 15% before and after.

So if a lead manager is handing something off to acquisitions, they need to know what the opener of the sales conversation is. Not all the underwriting, just enough to know what happens next. The more we make sure there's good handoffs, the more successful our business can be.

Your job is to take every lead that enters the business and move it through a structured qualification process. It either becomes an appointment for the acquisition specialist, or it exits the pipeline. As a lead manager, I am continuing to nurture.

Be very careful on this one. It's okay to have a lead manager that does acquisition offers. It is not okay to have an acquisitions person that does lead management.

If you already have a lead manager in your business, you do not want your acquisitions person nurturing leads. They are a deal creator. They are acquisition specialists.

Think of it like buying a vehicle from a car dealership. Once the contract is signed, you go talk to the finance manager to do all the paperwork. That finance manager is your acquisitions person. They are supposed to be way more sophisticated about transactions and deals.

They are not supposed to be someone who just does 70% ARV and makes an offer. They need to understand all the options. They need to look at the seller and see what is going on in their life, and what equity they have.

That is why a lot of really great acquisitions people are lead managers who got really good at talking to sellers. If you are only marketing to a ton of high equity properties, sure, have a sales floor. What I highly recommend instead is having a specialist, because your business is so much less stressful.

I am not saying you never ring a bell or celebrate a contract. Ring the bell, you got a contract. But your lead manager is a relationships person.

They understand the psychology of pulling information and emotion from the seller. What is the driving force to make a decision today. What is going on in their life, and what do they truly care about.

The lead manager relays that information effectively so acquisitions can make the right initial offering. You steer the seller toward the best solution for them, and the one that is also the best solution for us. And if we cannot help, then we cannot help, and we just say that.

Novation is a great example. The property is in beautiful condition, it does not need probate, it could be listed right now and sell. The seller just wants their price, and they are tired of the property.

So we can do our white glove listing service. We list the property for around 250,000, we take responsibility for the fees, we pay the realtor, and the seller still gets their 200,000. The other option is we just list it for them for 250,000 and only make our commission.

A lot of acquisitions people and a lot of lead managers try to reprogram the way the seller is thinking. They have been thinking that way for fifty or sixty or seventy years. The only way to change that is with sales processes I would not consider very ethical.

There is no third option. There is always somewhere the lead belongs. That can be staying exactly where it is with a next task added, or moving to another phase.

If it has a status that belongs in our sales pipeline, there is always a task on it. It should never not have a task. This is how you lose deals.

You are not making offers or closing deals. You are gathering intelligence on the seller situation and keeping follow-up consistent. Marketing generates the leads and acquisitions makes the offers, and you sit in between.