Addressing the Industry’s Big Nurture Problem

This is Part 3 of our blog series around our most recent webinar "Plugging the Leaks in Your Lead Funnel." Click here for Parts 1 and Part 2.

Gabe didn't mince words: "Nurture is a big dumping ground where everything goes to die. Use time frames."

Most CRMs have a nurture stage. For a lot of teams though, it's basically where leads go to disappear.

You move someone there thinking "I'll circle back in a few months" and then you don't. Next time you hear from them, they're canceling or they've already closed with someone else.

The issue isn't that agents don't care about following up. They do.

But when you've got hundreds or thousands of people sitting in nurture, where do you even begin? It's paralyzing.

You open the CRM, see that massive number, and close it again.

The time frame solution

That paralysis is exactly what time frames fix. Follow-Up Boss has this time frame feature that makes nurture workable.

Instead of one giant pile of "someday" leads, you break them into segments based on when they're planning to move.

Gabe's time frame structure:

Short-Term Nurture:

1. 0-3 months: Hot nurture (these people are close)

2. 3-6 months: Warm nurture (actively planning)

Long-Term Nurture:

1. 6-12 months: Future buyers/sellers

2. 12+ months: Long-term planning

3. No Plans: People who said they're not sure when

"For us, we work funnel backwards," Gabe explained. "I don't want to reach out to new people if I've got people with their hand in the air. I want to talk to my high-priority people that are talking. But when I get through all my priority alerts in certain stages, I get to my nurturers."

You're not ignoring anyone, but you're also not wasting time on people who won't transact for two years when you've got someone ready to look at houses this weekend. It's just logical.

Building smart lists for nurture follow-up

Time frames help, but they don't solve the execution problem. You can't manually remember to call hundreds of people every 14 or 30 days.

Your brain doesn't work like that. Nobody's does.

Smart lists solve this. The CRM surfaces who needs attention, so you're not constantly wondering if you've forgotten someone important.

Short-term nurture smart list

Criteria:

1. Stage = Nurture

2. Time Frame = 0-3 months OR 3-6 months

3. No outbound call OR text in last 14 days

4. Exclude ponds (if applicable)

This gives you your hottest nurture leads who haven't been touched in two weeks. These should be getting called or texted every 14 days at minimum.

Gabe pulled this up during a live demo and winced. "We've got 0 to three or three to six months that have not got an outbound text or an outbound call in the last 14 days. Way too many."

Several hundred leads just sitting there. Which honestly happens to everyone, but at least with the smart list you can see the problem clearly.

Long-term nurture smart list

Criteria:

1. Stage = Nurture

2. Time Frame = 6-12 months OR 12+ months OR No Plans

3. No outbound call OR text in last 28-30 days

4. Exclude ponds (if applicable)

"That's every 30 days for us. I put 28 days on here because I like to give the agents a couple days cushion before we start nudging," Gabe explained.

Long-term nurture needs less frequency but consistency still matters. A touch every 30 days keeps you in their head without being annoying.

You're not calling them weekly about houses when they told you they're moving next year. That's how you get blocked.

The nudging system

Having the smart lists is one thing. Getting agents to actually use them is another.

Gabe showed two approaches depending on your team size.

Manual nudging (Built into Follow-Up Boss)

You can mention agents directly in lead records by typing "@" and their name, adding a note, and they get a notification in Follow-Up Boss.

This works fine when you're dealing with a few nudges. But if you have 40+ agents and hundreds of overdue follow-ups?

It becomes a full-time job.

Automated nudging (Via MaverickRE)

That's where automation makes sense. Gabe demonstrated MaverickRE's rules system:

"If I see that people are in my long-term nurture that are overdue, I can literally expand this and I can see that. And again, we've got a lot of agents and a lot of leads, but I can see we got 1,000 people overdue."

With one click, all 78 agents with overdue leads get notified. Each notification includes only their leads and automatically posts in Follow-Up Boss.

The scale difference is pretty dramatic. Manual nudging for 78 agents across thousands of leads?

You'd need someone whose entire job is just that.

The missed call rule: low-hanging fruit

While you're building out nudging systems for nurture, there's another type of follow-up that needs even more attention. Missed calls matter more than people think.

When a lead calls and you miss it, they're probably calling other agents too. Speed actually matters here.

In Follow-Up Boss, you navigate to Reporting, then Calls, filter by "Missed Call." You'll see who missed calls, but then you have to click on each person individually to check if they've followed up.

"A lot of these missed calls, I can click on it, then I can come into it...I have to click every single one of them," Gabe demonstrated. It's tedious.

With MaverickRE Rules:

Missed Call Follow-Up Rule:

1. Lead called the assigned agent

2. Agent missed the call

3. No return call OR text within 2 hours

This rule gets nudged multiple times per day. Not once. Multiple times.

"We nudge on this multiple times a day because I don't want days to go by on this," Gabe emphasized. "If you're making a lot of outbound phone calls, this is low-hanging fruit. Do not miss this."

The math is simple. Someone calls you, they're in buying or selling mode today.

If you wait 24+ hours to call back, they've probably already connected with another agent. You're too late.

Hidden Opportunities in integration partner tags

Missed calls are obvious signals. Someone literally picked up the phone to reach you.

But there are other signals most teams aren't paying attention to at all. When you integrate tools like Zillow, BoldTrail, Real Scout, or Ylopo, they send signals into your CRM via tags.

"A lot of us probably don't even know that a lot of these tags exist or they're getting pushed," Gabe admitted.

What the tags mean:

1. "High Intent" = Viewed 10+ listings in 24 hours

2. "Listing Alert Clicked" = Opened email and clicked on property

3. "Property Detail View" = Looked at a specific property

4. "Saved Search Updated" = Changed their search criteria

5. "Favorited Property" = Bookmarked a listing

These tags should trigger action. When someone gets tagged "High Intent," they need to be in a smart list that generates a priority alert.

You've got data telling you this person is actively looking right now, and a lot of teams just ignore it.

Building a high-priority buyer smart list

Using integration tags, you can create a smart list for buyers showing the strongest signals:

Example criteria:

1. Stage = Any active stage

2. Has ANY of these tags: "High Intent", "Favorited Property", "Viewed Listing 5+ Times", "Listing Alert Clicked" (last 7 days), "Connected on Zillow"

3. Exclude contracts/pending

This surfaces people actively looking right now, even if they haven't directly reached out. They're browsing at 11 PM, clicking on properties, updating search parameters.

That's buying behavior. Someone should probably call them.

The AI texting and Betty/Ylopo integration

Integration tags track behavior. AI tools track conversations.

Gabe emphasized monitoring AI communication tools like Betty, Ylopo, and Call Action.

When AI has conversations with leads, it logs questions asked, objections raised, when the lead wants to talk to an agent. All of that should create priority alerts for agents.

If your AI says "This lead wants to talk to an agent" and nobody calls? You've wasted the AI's work and money on that subscription.

There's something frustrating about paying for technology and then not using the data it gives you. Though I guess that describes a lot of tech stacks.

The monthly audit routine

That pattern (paying for tools and then not using what they give you) is common enough that it's worth checking regularly. Gabe recommended making database audits part of your regular routine.

Not because it's fun, but because it prevents bigger problems from building up.

Monthly tasks:

1. Pull last 30 days of new leads

2. Check for empty last communication

3. Review leads still in "New" stage

4. Verify integration tags are firing

"Why not once a month you do a quick audit? Hey, we're going to jump into the database as the team lead. Look at everything. How many new leads come in the last 30 days? No touch. Do we have any misses here?"

This becomes content for team meetings too. Instead of scrambling for what to talk about in your weekly huddle, you have real data showing real issues.

The office meeting content strategy

A lot of team leads struggle with what to cover week to week.

This provides:

1. Week 1: Review 30-day new lead audit findings

2. Week 2: Appointment outcome accountability

3. Week 3: Nurture follow-up cadence review

4. Week 4: Integration partner tag education

Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is just show people what's happening in their pipeline. Data doesn't lie.

If someone's got 47 leads in short-term nurture with no contact in three weeks, that's a clear action item.

Understanding your tech stack

All this talk about audits and integration tags raises a bigger question about what's even in your tech stack to begin with. A lot of teams have five or six integrations running and they're not sure what each one does.

Common integration partners:

1. Lead Generation: Ylopo, Zillow, Realtor.com, BoldTrail

2. Listing Alerts: Follow-Up Boss AI, Real Scout

3. AI Communication: Betty, Ylopo, Call Action

4. Showing Management: ShowingTime

5. Transaction Management: Dotloop, SkySlope

Each of these sends data into your CRM. Are you using it?

There's probably a bigger conversation to be had about tech stack bloat. But if you're paying for them anyway, you might as well extract value from them.

The ISA perspective on nurture

Tech stack aside, there's a practical application for all these smart lists if you're running an ISA team. When agents are in appointments or showings, ISAs should be working short-term nurture lists, following up on integration partner tags, re-engaging long-term nurture who've shown recent activity.

The smart lists make this possible. Without them, ISAs waste time deciding who to call instead of actually calling.

Though I guess that applies to agents too. Give someone a list of 20 people to call, and they'll call them.

Ask them to figure out which 20 people to call from a database of 2,000, and they'll find something else to do instead.

Key takeaways from Part 3:

1. Time frames prevent nurture from being a black hole

2. Build smart lists for each nurture segment (short-term is 14 days, long-term is 30 days)

3. Automate nudging when possible (manual works for small teams, automation scales)

4. Obsess over missed calls (these are inbound, warm leads calling YOU)

5. Use integration partner tags

6. Monitor AI conversations (when AI says "talk to an agent," somebody better call)

7. Monthly audits provide meeting content

What's next?

In Part 4, the final installment of this series, we'll dive into accountability automations, the power of automation 2.0, and how to create systems that don't rely on agents remembering to do the right things.

Gabe and FUB’s Will Gray will share specific automation workflows that can dramatically reduce leaks, including the game-changing no-show appointment automation.

"One of the objections or not objections but one of the things that came up was, 'Hey, you know, what if a lead comes in the middle of the night?'" Will previewed. "We'll show you how to handle that."

Stay tuned for Part 4: Accountability Automations and Putting It All Together.

👉 Stop Chasing. Start Converting.