Choose two or three lead sources
HousingWire identifies several places agents obtain leads: their sphere of influence, referrals, open houses, community events, personal networks, social media, websites, and paid lead services. Use this table to narrow those options according to the work each one requires from you.
| Lead source | Choose it when | Work you must maintain | Capture route |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sphere and referrals | You have people you can contact personally and are comfortable asking for introductions | Conversations, check-ins, and replies to introductions | Direct every introduction to your main lead list |
| Open houses or community events | You can host in the area you serve and follow up with attendees | Promotion, registration or sign-in, hosting, and follow-up | Use one sign-in form that feeds your lead list |
| Social media | You can publish useful local content and monitor comments, forms, and direct messages | Content creation, comment review, and individual replies | Send comments, messages, and form submissions to the same lead list |
| Website | Your site gives visitors a clear reason to contact you | Form checks, page updates, and responses | Connect every inquiry form to your lead list and notifications |
| Paid lead service | You have a defined market, a test budget, and time to nurture both active and early-stage prospects | Vendor review, lead response, continued follow-up, and expense tracking | Send vendor deliveries directly to your lead list |
- Remove any source that regularly reaches people outside your service area or specialty.
- Remove any source whose routine work does not fit your available prospecting and follow-up time.
- Choose one relationship-based source, such as referrals or your sphere.
- Choose one activity-based source, such as events, social media, or a website.
- Add a paid or experimental third source only when the first two have reliable capture and ownership.
Give every source one capture path
A lead should become a record instead of remaining in a sign-in sheet, direct-message inbox, voicemail, or email thread. You can use a CRM, a spreadsheet, or another shared list. The specific tool matters less than using the same required fields for every source.
- Date and time received
- Name
- Phone number, email address, or the contact channel provided
- Lead source
- Property, area, or topic that prompted the inquiry
- What the person asked for
- Assigned owner
- Current status
- Last response or attempted response
- Next action and its scheduled date
Map each source before you launch it: identify where the inquiry first appears, how it enters the lead list, who receives the alert, and who checks that the record is complete. Submit a test inquiry through every form and delivery path so you can see the process from the lead's side.
If social media is one of your sources, Reddy can connect with an existing comment-to-DM tool such as ManyChat, InstantDM, Inrō, or Zapier. Each lead collected by that tool becomes a Client in the agent's pipeline, and Reddy alerts the agent in chat. The connected tool sends the direct message; Reddy does not message the lead without the agent's approval.
Assign the response before leads arrive
Write a response rule for each source. Name the primary owner, the backup person, where alerts appear, and how the owner marks an inquiry as handled. A solo agent still needs a backup plan for appointments, driving, showings, and time away from the phone.
- Primary owner: the person responsible for the first reply
- Backup: the person or process used when the owner is unavailable
- Alert channel: the one place the owner is expected to watch
- Response standard: the schedule you can realistically maintain
- Completion signal: the status or note that shows a reply was attempted
- Escalation rule: what happens when a lead remains unassigned or unanswered
For phone inquiries, Reddy can answer calls made to the agent's Reddy line and keep a record of what was said for the agent to read later. If you use any backup system, test what the caller experiences and confirm who owns the next step.
Use a first reply that opens a conversation
Prepare one short message that you can adjust to the inquiry. Acknowledge what prompted the contact, ask one or two useful questions, and offer a clear next step.
Hi [first name], this is [your name] with [brokerage]. Thanks for reaching out about [property or topic]. Are you looking to buy, sell, or rent, and what area are you focused on? I can call at [option one] or [option two], or we can keep talking here. What works better for you?
Personalize the bracketed details before sending. Record the reply or attempted contact in the lead record, then set the next action instead of leaving the conversation in your inbox. Before adding anyone to an automated message sequence, check the permissions you collected and your brokerage's policies.
Review the sources before adding another one
Choose a review date when you select the sources. On that date, examine the records rather than relying on memory. HousingWire notes that results from paid lead generation are unpredictable and can be affected by local conditions, timing, and response speed, so raw lead count alone does not tell you whether a source fits your business.
| Measure | What to record | Decision it supports |
|---|---|---|
| Leads received | The number of complete lead records from each source | Whether the capture path is working and how much volume it creates |
| Leads answered | Records with a logged reply or attempted reply | Whether your response process can handle the source |
| Relevant inquiries | People whose location and needs fit the market you serve | Whether the source is reaching the intended audience |
| Conversations and appointments | The next steps produced by each source | Whether to keep, adjust, or pause the source |
| Money spent | Vendor fees and other direct campaign expenses | Whether a paid source still fits your budget |
- Keep a source when it reaches the people you serve and you can maintain its follow-up work.
- Fix the capture path when inquiries appear in scattered inboxes or arrive without enough contact information.
- Change ownership when leads are recorded but repeatedly wait for a response.
- Pause a source when its workload exceeds the time you assigned to it.
- Add another source only after you can show who captures, owns, answers, and reviews its leads.
Your lead-source setup checklist
- Choose two primary lead sources and, if you have capacity, one experimental source.
- Write the audience, service area, routine work, and budget for each source.
- Create one lead list with the required contact, source, owner, status, and next-action fields.
- Connect every form, inbox, event sign-in, vendor delivery, and phone route to that list.
- Assign a primary owner and backup for each source.
- Save and personalize the first-response message.
- Test every capture path with a sample inquiry.
- Choose a review date and record the measures you will compare.
- Do not launch another source until the current ones have a working capture and response process.
