Lead gen: your first 90 days

This is the opening lesson of the lead-gen track. It gives you the sequence; the lessons that follow go deep on each engine. The premise is blunt: lead generation is not a tactic you try, it is a system you assemble in a deliberate order, and most agents assemble it backwards — ads first, follow-up never. Ninety days is enough to do it right.

Days 1–30: foundation

Do these four things before anything promotional:

1. Get your website live and connected to your board. Pick a template, load your brand kit, and start the MLS paperwork the same week — board approval has a lead time you cannot compress at the end. If you are still weighing whether a site matters, read do agents need a website first.
2. Import your sphere. Every phone contact, past colleague, and family friend goes into the CRM with honest consent notes. The next lesson is the step-by-step.
3. Claim your Google Business Profile. Fifteen minutes now, a compounding review asset forever.
4. Tell fifty people what you do. Personally — calls and coffees, not a mass announcement.

Done looks like: site serving listings, sphere in the CRM with tags, profile verified, fifty real conversations logged.

Days 31–60: capture engines

Now switch on the machinery that turns anonymous traffic into named people. Enable VOW registration so sold data works as your sign-up engine, prompt every visitor to save a search, and publish a home valuation page for the seller side. Host open houses — yours or borrowed from busier agents in your office — and run the capture flow this track teaches. Each engine gets its own lesson; the job this month is simply to have all four live rather than one perfected.

Done looks like: registrations arriving weekly, a growing saved-search count, at least one valuation request, and two open houses worked end-to-end.

Days 61–90: rhythm

The third month is about response, not reach. Set a speed-to-lead SLA and hold yourself to it. Review your nurture plans and turn on the ones that fit your voice. Ask your first past clients and advocates for referrals deliberately. Then sit down with the numbers: leads by source, contact rate, appointments booked. Kill nothing yet — thirty days is too short a read — but know the numbers cold.

Done looks like: every new lead gets a human response inside your SLA, nurture is running with your approval, and you can state your contact rate without opening the dashboard.

How to work this track

One lesson at a time, in order, each one implemented before the next is opened. The sequence is deliberate: foundation makes capture possible, capture makes retention worth building, and rhythm makes the whole thing compound. Reading all eleven lessons in a weekend feels productive and changes nothing; shipping one step a week changes your year.

The mistake that costs the most

Skipping the boring middle. Agents love day-1 setup and day-90 dashboards; the compounding happens in the unglamorous weeks of importing contacts properly and answering fast. A deeper treatment of the new-agent channel choices lives at lead generation for new agents — use it as the companion reference while you work this track lesson by lesson.