Most sales pipelines skip the early part of the sales process. This means leads that aren't particularly hot tend to slip through the cracks. Fortunately, these stages are simple and give great visibility into your real estate sales pipeline.

1. New Lead

Any person in this stage of the sales pipeline is fresh and untouched. The only thing that has happened is someone has been identified for the sales process. Perhaps you get a referral lead to call. Or maybe someone fills out the “Contact Us” form on your website. The point is we need to reach out and push ahead the conversation.

2. Contacting

This one is a little more subtle and critical to track in any real estate sales process. When a lead is in the contacting stage, it's only one step up from being a New Lead. We have been "contacting" them to try and push ahead the sale. The faster you can start reaching out to a new lead, the better.

3. Engaging

Leads in this stage are "engaging" with us. Meaning, not only have we reached out to them, we have also gotten back a response and are following up. This is distinctly different from a lead that is sitting in the contacting stage (whom we have not heard back from yet).

4. Qualified

Qualified leads means we have spoken to them, we can help them, AND (most importantly) we WANT to work with them. In other words, a qualified lead is ready to work with you and move into the next major phase of the sales cycle: the contracting and listing.

5. Under Contract

Leads in this stage were qualified and given the standard realtor agreement to sign, which they did. Their listing is now under contract for you to sell. Of course, a listing has a little bit of prep work before it can be viewed, so this stage is for tracking all that activity.

6. Listed In MLS

I'll make this stage abundantly clear: leads in this sales stage have their property listed in the MLS so potential buyers can find it. This is when you are hitting the pavement doing showings and finding the right buyer.

7. Offer Made

This one is also a little obvious too. Not only is the listing live, someone has actually put in a bid to buy it! Possibly even a few different potential buyers. This stage is critical because you need to keep a close eye on those hot listings.

8. Offer Accepted

Just because an offer was made, doesn't mean the seller will accept it. That is why there is a distinct sales pipeline stage to track this critical milestone.

9. Active Closing

Leads in this stage are actively in the process of making the deal happen. This is where any final details before the signing get ironed out like permits, paperwork, etc. The goal is to get everything ready to close and ink the deal.

10. Closing Scheduled

Once all the paperwork and other odds and ends are tied up, the final closing/signing gets scheduled. These leads are in the final steps of the sale and are counting down to the closing date.

11. Closing Complete (Won)

This is it. We made it to the top of the sales stairs! The closing happened and everyone is now a happy client. In most cases this is the end of the journey for the lead. The sales journey anyway.

Two Special Pipeline Sales Stages for Real Estate Agents

There are two more stages any real estate pipeline needs to complete itself.

12. Long-Term Nurture

This is a holding stage for leads that aren't quite ready for one reason or another. These leads don't need to be checked in on as often and they still need to be taken care of. This is the stage you put someone who is taking a vacation for a few months or when they will be ready to sell next year for various reasons.

These leads are an easy close if you simply don't forget about them.

13. Lost

This is a hard one for some agents. They translate lost leads into failure. Judgement aside, not every lead becomes a sale. And those leads need to be put into this lost stage so we do not continue to try and waste time following up. This is distinct from the long-term nurture stage because we do NOT follow up with people in the lost stage. Not manually anyway.

Final Thoughts

These are all straightforward automation ideas most real estate agents can use to enhance their sales processes. The more you are familiar with your process, the more advanced your automation can be. Start small and build from there over time.