If I had one hour this week and nothing but an old lead list, here is exactly what I would do, in this order. Every step comes from something we changed in our own pipeline this summer.
Step one is the one most people skip, so we built a free tool that does it for you: grade your list here.
1. Find the unfinished ones (5 minutes). Sort by last touch. Anyone you reached once or twice and then dropped is not a dead lead. It is an unfinished one. In our own pipeline, nearly half of the sellers who eventually wrote back to talk needed five touches or more.
2. Sort by owner, not address (10 minutes). Some owners are on your list more than once. Merge them, so each person hears from you once, not once per house.
3. Take the stops out of your numbers (15 minutes). Put every reply in one of three piles: stop, wrong number, conversation. Honor every stop, at that number, right away. Then look only at the third pile. That is your real reply rate, and it is the only one worth tracking.
4. Write one light note to the unfinished ones (30 minutes). Make it about them, not the house. If they told you something last time, start there. The first thing you say should ask for the least.
That is the hour.
If you want step one done for you, the Pipeline Grader reads your actual list and shows you who is unreachable, who went stale, and who you never followed up with. It is free, and we never store or sell your list. Grade your list
And if you run the hour, hit reply and tell me what step one turned up. I read every one.
Talk soon,
Jason