How to have a Successful Open House and Convert Visitors into Leads

Well you’re not holding that Open House all weekend because you’ve got nowhere else to be, right?

After all the pleasantries are exchanged and the cheese platter is picked over, there are only two things that matter when it comes to whether an Open House was successful:

1. Finding a buyer for the property you’re holding the Open House for
2. Getting contact info from active buyers that you can show other properties to

And we recognize there is some controversy among real estate agents on the 2nd point, but in an ideal world you can hold an Open House and accomplish both goals.

We’ve done hundreds of hours of research with top agents to put together a list of top Open House ideas and below we’re diving deep on tips to convert visitors to leads AND overcoming the hesitation that some home buyers have when signing-in at an Open House:

• Building rapport – we have the magic words you need
• Pick the right tool to capture visitor info. Hint: it doesn’t involve ink or trees
• How to engage afterwards…because the fortune truly is in the follow up

Bring the Right Energy to Open House Sales  

Sometimes visitors will play hard-to-get when you’re trying to get them to sign in. We have a separate resource on real estate open house scripts and objection handlers, but your success using any scripted approach depends a lot on your communication style.

There are two communication style types when it comes to getting your guests to sign-in with their info:

• If you are a natural schmoozer, wait until you’ve developed some rapport during the initial greeting and then ask the visitor to sign in.
• If you are more of a process person, ask them to sign-in right away but make it feel natural…as if this sign-in step is completely obvious. 

Regardless, bring extra energy to your greeting because the intro is the most important part and sets the tone for the rest of your interaction. Open House master, Andy Tse, talks about how to nail that greeting here:

Prospecting at Open Houses is a big topic, so check out this list of other Open House prospecting tips to increase the number of prospects AND improve the quality of follow-up for these prospects.

Pick a Digital Sign-in App (visitor sign in sheets are dead)

And since we make a digital Open House sign-in app (ahem it’s free for agents btw) we are pretty confident that ours is going to make capturing interested prospects’ info super easy.

The decision to use a sign-in app vs pen & paper should be a no brainer at this point. The main thing is that people’s handwriting is REALLY bad and you’ll waste a lot of time just trying to decipher it. With a digital Open House sign-in app like ours, not only will you save time BUT you’ll also capture more leads AND you’ll have a powerful brand showcase for prospective clients.

Still not ready to take the digital jump? We made this point by point comparison between a digital and traditional Open House sign-in sheet.

Open House Follow Up to Convert Leads

For some reason, the Open House follow up is the piece that SO many agents procrastinate on. Maybe it’s because most Open Houses are on the weekend (that may not be the best time to host an Open House btw) and following up with leads gets swept to the bottom of Monday’s priority list?

Regardless the follow-up step is critical…and shouldn’t be postponed. “Speed to lead” is really a thing here. Here’s what we mean: if the prospect visited multiple Open Houses on a given weekend, don’t you want to be the agent that got back to them first?

We have a foolproof way of doing that too…because the follow up actually starts when the visitor is still at the Open House.

You know those glossy real estate brochures that “luxury agents” brag about using at their Open Houses and showings? Well skip those and you’ll see your follow up measurably improve. How? Because not only do those glossies get tossed into the depths of prospect’s backseat as soon as they leave the property, but they are a wasted opportunity to provide a rich, interactive digital property website in exchange for the visitor’s contact info.

When you use an Open House app like Curb Hero, we provide those single property sites…for free btw. Oh and we have a text follow up feature so your visitors receive these stunning property sites as soon as they sign-in.

So that’s follow up #1 – DONE!

Let’s talk about the best Open House follow up for afterwards:

• Of course, in the next 1-2 days you or someone on your team should make personal phone calls especially to the prospects that seemed most interested – check out these Open House follow up scripts
• Text drip campaigns are also decent substitutes to the personal phone call especially if you had a super busy Open House and you’re pressed for time.
• Lastly, you should sync your Open House leads with your real estate CRM and make sure an email drip is going out. These emails could be a focused campaign for home-buyers OR it can be more general real estate content. The main point with these emails is that you want to stay top of mind even if they don’t bite during the first phone calls or texts. Real estate is a long sales cycle so email follow up like keeps you in the prospects consciousness without much effort OR annoyance…just don’t take it personally if you see some unsubscribe notifications come through.

Also while setting up real estate marketing automations is easier than ever, you don’t have to have all the bells and whistles dialed in on your follow up process right away. It can be iterative. Just keep making it better each time and before you know it, you’ll be one of those agents constantly proclaiming that “the fortune’s in the follow up”.

Remember who’s show this is (SPOILER: it’s yours)

The Real Estate Open House seems un-sexy to most agents…but it’s still a unique opportunity for agents to dis-intermediate technology. Yes, we mean turn the tables on the online portals.

Visitors may have found the Open House on Zillow or Google but when it’s you and them at the Open House, all bets are off. It’s your chance to show them what makes you a great agent and why great representation matters when buying a home. 

Hopefully this gives you lots of ideas on how to make the most of this opportunity.