In this coaching session led by Chris Prefontaine, participants discuss how to sharpen real‑estate prospecting KPIs to generate more closed deals. The core argument is that tracking appointments—not raw call volume—is the most meaningful metric. Jeremiah raises the problem that the community does not systematically record follow‑up activity, leading agents to chase new leads at the expense of higher‑quality follow‑ups. Chris and Rusty reinforce the need to prioritize money‑producing actions (follow‑ups) and to create a simple 60‑day tracking hack: log each follow‑up call, note whether it produced an appointment, and review the moving average after two months. They also propose a lead‑purge system: after a set number of touches (e.g., three) without a response, the lead is deleted to keep the pipeline clean and maintain motivation. Practical workflow tips are shared, such as using a virtual assistant (VA) for initial calls while the agent handles follow‑ups, tagging appointments by source (first‑dial vs. follow‑up), and setting weekly appointment goals (e.g., 1–2 appointments per week). The conversation emphasizes celebrating appointment wins even when call‑count KPIs look low, and suggests bringing any successful tracking experiments back to the community for broader adoption. The session ends with a call to action to use the smartrealestatecoach.com resources and to implement the discussed tracking habits.
Chapters
Track all those. How many did I do? Did I book 3 appointments, 2, 1, none? Then after that 60 days, now you're clean. Your attitude's a little different. You're going to delete more often. You're going to be more aggressive because you're getting better with scripts. Okay, now track the follow-up calls for the next 60. I guarantee you, your moving average is going to get better.
Just a quick question, like about metrics and system. So like, you know, generally speaking, what gets measured gets done. I could be wrong, but I'm curious, do we have anywhere where we're actually measuring our follow-ups or tracking them like as the community, as a community?
No, not that I know.
I ask that because sometimes I'm faced with I can do follow-ups or I can go for the thing that's going to get tracked, which is new leads, and I tend to I'm going to do the thing that I know that's going to get tracked. And so I'll go for that.
So I must— do you want to comment on that? Because I see you a couple of like rusty head shakes. And then because there's a couple comments here, I think, and it's a good question. Good.
Yeah.
You always want to do money-producing activities first. So you want to do the follow-ups first. Absolutely. Even though it's not being tracked and then you're not going to be, you know, having accountability with your coach.
Yeah.
Because what is tracked is when you get that taken from the follow-up that is supposed to be higher quality, right?
Right.
Appointment. And see, this is huge, the way Rusty said it too, because there's one sentence, right? Jeremiah, um, you're— all of our goal is to wake up in the morning and book appointment. I actually— all our goals is wake up in the morning, get it taken. But that's not as easy said and done on the phone. So all of our goals should be, I'm going to get up and I'm going to make my appointment goal today. Is it one a week? Is it 2 a week? If you can make— I always say this— if you can make 2 calls and get that done, who gives a shit about your other tracking? You just nailed your highest level tracking. Appointments, appointments, appointments. That's what you should be thinking.
Yeah.
Jeremiah, how I do it is my VA does all the first calls and then I do follow-up calls, whether it's from her leads that I'm looking at the night before, and then, or my leads that I'm working backwards and stuff, or they come up in REI. So I keep— I do keep track of my calls, but she's getting enough to, you know, like get the numbers and things like that. So now I'm just trying to work those and all follow up and do the money-producing activities.
That's why I always— when, when we do our KPIs sometimes on these calls and someone says, oh, I just did 50 dials and I only talked to, you know, you can hear my language, right? But I was able to, you know, book 2 appointments. So they were, they were disappointed in the KPI aspect, but they weren't like excited about the 2 appointments I made.
Yeah.
You got to be excited about everything. Like, yeah, I was able to make 50 dials and I was able to, you know, so you got to be excited about both. Even though you probably didn't hit your matrix, you did the, the best part, which is you got them 2 appointments, which is the next step to take.
Okay. So I understand kind of conceptually, and I think I can manage it. I'm just saying, like, let's say I've been doing this for 8 months. Every week I've gotten, you know, an average between 10 to 15, sometimes 20 leads. Right. And so I've got a lot of leads. Right. So now, now I'm sitting at a place where I've got, you know, 300 follow-ups that are sitting on my calendar at some point in the next year. And then like every week, like 30 of them are popping up at least. To call, and it's like okay. Like I have a really busy week. It's like oh, I got to get fifteen more new leads. Or like specifically, yeah, it's like the the the the community says, or you know the the general mindset is make sure you follow up with those. And and sometimes the quality follow up might take a little bit of time. Like and you get back in the mindset. Okay. Oh, maybe I need to do a tailored email to them. I need to do something that's very specific to that seller. Um, or I could just do a nice like 1-hour call session and not like take all of the churn and time and the mental power to try to get in that mindset of wanting to do that for that seller specifically.
It might just be a mix of both, Jeremiah.
I'm just saying there's, there's these challenges like that come forward like with your time and you're saying it's like, okay, well guess what? Like our metrics might not. So I don't, I, I'm, I'm saying again, back to that point, what gets tracked gets done. There's no tracking for that effort that goes forward. And so if I'm not— I don't have any way to track it, like mentally, I'm just going to be like, I need to get my 15 leads.
Okay, so let's, let's make a hack for you, right?
Okay.
2 things. What one is, and everybody else has wrestled with this, they just didn't say it yet, Jeremiah. So this is good. One is when I— I'll go back a little bit further. When I first started, no one with me, I would do my buyer calls in the morning because that was money. And then I would shut that door. I don't give a shit how many people call me back for buyers, but then I would do follow-ups. What I'm hearing in the community and definitely with what you just said, and Russell, you can comment on the REI. This is why I don't keep leads forever. This is precisely what you just said. When I see my list of 6 or 8 or 10, I think this week's higher because I was on vacation last week. I want to know that I'm excited to call them. And if I'm not excited to call them and I don't get them live after 3 times, they're getting deleted. They've heard from me. They maybe got a form letter. They know who I am. They're getting killed totally. So you don't have 3— Rick had 3,000, 4,000 leads. He told me recently he had to have his VA go through and clean all that up. I think it's nonsense. It's too much. Delete the damn lead if they haven't communicated with you and you pick it. To Rusty's point earlier, it could be 5 for you. Oh, I don't want to let go at 3. So whatever you— I do 3. But if whatever it is for you, it's certainly not 14 or 8 in my opinion, or you're going to have more frustration if that doesn't work well mentally for you, which it doesn't. Then start killing these. And I would suggest you just get a, get a session coming up, pick an hour to block yourself off, screw the metrics for that 2 hours and rip through that list with one intention. You want them to tell you why they should be on your list, essentially indirectly, or you're deleting them because they've already heard from you. They got your number. Trust me.
Yeah.
If they run into trouble, they're calling Jeremiah. And if not, who cares? You'll catch them again on another format if they didn't sell yet, expired, FSBO, whatever. Does this make sense to you guys?
Yeah. Chris, you know what I do too with the realtor ones? They're mostly tied up for 6 months. That's a typical listing. So for 5 months out, I put the task for my VA to check to see if it's sold or if the listing is still active, then mark appropriate follow-up. And I told her what to do.
I do the same thing, all right? But I usually always— I always don't check status. Sometimes I will. I just go, just call.
Yeah. My, my black is, is I assigned it to MJ. So whenever you put it in the workflow, has a realtor, and then you're sending out the letter, I think it's like the next month MJ is supposed to call and say, hey, did you end up selling? So it's just— it's part of the trigger.
And not sure where to get started? Go to smartrealestatecoach.com/getgoing for free books, strategy calls, and a whole bunch more. We're going to help you get going the wicked smart way. We've been after this for over a decade doing exactly that. Yeah, this is good because you guys will waste time if we don't do this right, right? I mean, not right officially. There's no right or wrong. All our brains work differently.
I was going to go back to Jeremiah. You— why don't you track? Why don't you create your own tracking?
That's my next comment.
You know, every follow-up, you know, how many follow-ups, how many appointments are you getting with every follow-up? And then you just start tracking that yourself if that's something that you think is important to you, which it is. And maybe, and like Chris said earlier, track it for 60 days and, and see if you get a positive result. And then maybe we need to bring that to the community.
Right.
Here's another one. And I'll piggyback that. Go through this old list, Jeremiah, with that intent. Like I said, to purge.
I'm purging for my second half. Just have that mentality.
Track all those. How many did I do? Did I book 3 appointments? 2? 1? None? Then after that 60 days, now you're clean. Your attitude's a little different. You're going to delete more often. You're going to, you're going to be more aggressive because you're getting better with scripts. Okay, now track the follow-up calls for the next 60. I guarantee you your moving average is going to get better.
Yeah, I have been just documenting like follow-up dials and follow-up lives. But the thing I haven't been tracking is if the appointments that I get have been coming from a follow-up or they were coming from like sort of like an initial lead and just like Like the natural progression from the initial lead.
So perfect.
I'll just add the, hey, this appointment came from a follow-up, or this appointment was from like a first dial kind of thing.
Yeah. And when you do your nightlies with me, add it. I'd love to hear it because I can start tracking with that. My brain will be in your biz better.
