What is LPMAMA in Real Estate?

Do you wish to establish a personal connection with your online leads as soon as they show up in the system? Read this post on how you can employ the LPMAMA framework to achieve that.

Internet and digital leads have started to dominate the real estate market. Ask any agent, chances, they are generating online leads will be very high. The growth of companies such as Zillow in recent times backs this fact. These companies have been in this space for a long time and will probably dominate it in the future. 

In other words, online leads are here to stay and probably set to contribute to a larger share of the total lead generation pie against offline leads in the future. 

In the face of this inevitable change, calibrating lead qualification tactics has become important for agents. 

This is because, unlike offline leads that receive a personal touch from the beginning, internet leads are mostly strangers to real estate agents making them clueless and unfaithful towards the agent. 

Agents cannot afford to let go of these leads as each Zillow lead comes for at least $50. They need a framework that helps them gauge the buyer’s intention and create a personal touch as soon as possible. This is where LPMAMA comes in. 

What is LPMAMA?

As visible, LPMAMA is a 6 letter acronym that expands to Location, Price, Motivation, Agent, Mortgage, and Appointment. This 6-factor framework allows agents to understand how qualified a buyer is and gauge their true intentions about buying the property using a set of questions. 

However, remember that LPMAMA is not a set of scrutiny questions. Instead, they help you get into the mind of the buyer and help them understand the buying process which essentially revolves around these 6 factors. 

Once an agent does that effectively, not only they understand the seriousness of the buyer but also develop trust that wins them the opportunity to work for that buyer. 

The image below briefly explains what each factor in LPMAMA strives to find out and what questions to pose to the buyer to gauge that. 

Now, that we have a wholesome idea about the framework let’s take a look in detail at the 6 factors. 

Location

When it comes to qualifying an online real estate lead the first thing to pin down is the location. 

Is the lead interested in this location alone? Or, are they open to other locations as well? 

This is important for a real estate agent because one agent may only cover a set of zipcodes and nothing outside of that. It is simply pointless to follow up on leads who are still apprehensive about the choice of location or neighborhood. 

If the lead has singled out the neighborhood they want to live in, it says that the buyer is sure about the location. 

Price

Price is the second factor in the LPMAMA framework that helps you ascertain how much of home can the buyer afford. The keyword here is “affordability” which helps you narrow down to a list of properties suitable for showing. Try your best to ascertain the bracket.

If the buyer is apprehensive about affordability, they are probably conflicted between their aspired lifestyle and the price that it is coming for. The best thing here is to leave them with a few property options in a similar price range. 

Motivation

Motivation is an important factor that can really help you develop foresight to plan your moves accordingly. Buyers often exhibit 2 types of motivation while buying a home. 

The first one is the desire based motivation in which the lead is in a dreaming stage or aspires to a certain lifestyle and property. The second one is the urgency based motivation where the lead might have an upcoming event such as a relocation, transfer, or even divorce.

Urgency based leads often have a timeline that makes it easier for you to plan your marketing efforts and convert them. On the other hand, provide desire based leads with property options within their budget to help them make up their mind.

You can use open ended questions to ascertain the buyer motivation. This makes the lead give you more details to work with and pin point their motivation. 

Agent

This is the most important factor for you to dig through since all the work you are putting in is to convince them to hire you as their agent. 

In most cases though, as soon as you inquire about another agents, the buyer tends to lie and says yes they are working with another agent.

The reason behind this is the fact that you are a total stranger to an internet lead and there is no way they are going to trust you over the first conversation happening over the phone. 

This is why it is always best to first ask them if they understand how the process works and then cut to the question in an indirect manner. You can ask if they have been to any open homes recently? If yes, why they did not go ahead with the purchase?

The key is to find out if they have an agent or not, and how satisfied they are with their service. If there is another agent in the mix give them an offer to meet in person to demonstrate how your services are better. 

Mortgage

This question better is kept discreet due to the fact that, unlike the agent question, queries about a mortgage do not indicate that you could be asking for a commitment from the buyer's side. You can simply ask the lead if they are pre approved or not and do they have a lender to help them out. 

If they don’t have a lender, you can always suggest one and get the process started. Often, buyers are unaware of details pertaining to mortgages. Giving them a brief overview of mortgages will help you gain their trust and hire you as their agent.

Appointment

An appointment is a final factor in the LPMAMA framework that allows you to establish familiarity with the lead through an appointment. A lot of agents try really hard to trick the lead into an appointment but that should be avoided. 

Only book an appointment when the lead shows a certain level of commitment towards the transaction. This is why the 5 factors precede the last part to give you enough signals about their level of commitment. 

If the lead looks committed, offer them a market analysis for the area they are interested in. You can also set a timeline and propose tentative dates for showings to further boost their involvement.