If you can count your next twelve months of potential clients on your fingers, it’s time to pause and assess your lead generation strategy. What are you doing to generate leads? How are you doing it? And most importantly—what (or who) needs to change?
How Many Is Enough?
Your pipeline is the engine that drives your business. A healthy one should yield, at minimum, one transaction per month. But “healthy” is relative—your ideal yield depends on your market, your network, and your skill set. Let’s meet Jane.Jane’s been licensed for under three years. By May, she feels confident: her pipeline holds 20 names collected from open houses and internet leads passed on by her broker. She’s working in a strong, balanced market. She feels ready.
Fast forward to August—she hasn’t written a single contract or taken a listing.
Frustrated, she tells her broker that her leads aren’t calling her back. Some have dragged her all over town, only to ghost or buy directly from a listing agent. Worse still, while chasing those original 20, she stopped feeding her pipeline. It’s now down to three lukewarm prospects. No transactions in sight.
Sound familiar?
Jane is a classic example of what happens when an agent lacks strong qualifying skills and a defined process. She doesn’t yet know how to assess a lead’s readiness, willingness, or ability—and she’s not steering the process, she’s being tossed around by it.
At her stage, she needed 100 names to close 4 or 5 transactions—not 20.
So… How Many Is Enough for You?
The key to success in real estate—or any entrepreneurial field—is brutal honesty about your own capabilities. Your ideal pipeline size depends on your effort, your skill level, your systems, and your market.
After 3–5 years in the business, you should have a good grasp of your conversion ratios and referral volume. You should also have processes in place to keep your pipeline full of ready, willing, and able prospects.
The best way to calculate your “magic number” is to look backward. Where did your deals come from last year? Cold calls? Referrals? Open houses? For every 50 conversations, how many resulted in a closing?
The question you’re really answering is this: “How many meaningful real estate conversations do I need to have to close a deal?” Once you know that, the rest is just math.
Are Your Processes in Place?
Pipeline size is only part of the equation. The more important question is: Do you have a process to generate leads—and is that process consistent?
If yes, great. You’re in control. All you may need to do is increase the frequency depending on the market. If 1,000 monthly postcards generate 4 leads in a strong market, how many do you need to send when the market softens?
If no—then it’s time to fix that. Now.
The best-performing pipelines are built on:
- Referral systems
- Farming strategies
- Expired listings
- FSBO campaigns
- Open houses & floor time (And yes—networking is baked into all of the above.)
Ask yourself:
- How do I systematically generate referrals?
- How consistent is my farming—really?
- Does my assistant know his daily role in attracting expireds?
The Mindset That Fuels It All
Your mindset is the ultimate driver of your lead generation success. Lead generation and database nurturing should be your non-negotiable priority—every single day.
Block the time. Defend the time. Protect the time.
If your schedule forces you to choose between tasks, lead generation wins. Every time. It’s the difference between activity and productivity.
And if you find yourself making excuses, hit pause and redirect. The inspector will come later. The buyer can tour at 3:00. Your vendors can work around your calendar.
This isn’t about hustle—it’s about discipline. Intention + attention = traction.
Stop negotiating with your calendar. Just do the work.
So What’s Next?That part’s up to you.
If you’re serious about building a sustainable business, then start now:- Create a schedule that prioritizes people and lead flow.
- Plan conversations that deepen relationships and generate referrals.
- Develop systems for expireds and FSBOs, if relevant to your market.
- Partner with listing agents for open house opportunities.
- Ask your broker for floor time.
- Calendar every lead-gen activity—and stick to it.
Because there is nothing—absolutely nothing—better you can do for your business than feeding your pipeline with purpose and consistency.
Happy Selling! ∞
