Lofty Smart Plans: The Complete Guide to Follow Up That Runs Itself (2026)

What are Lofty Smart Plans, exactly?

A Lofty Smart Plan is a pre-built sequence of follow up steps that Lofty runs for you. Plain English: you write the follow up once, and Lofty delivers it on schedule, for every lead, every time. The steps can be text messages, emails, call tasks that land on your to-do list, and reminders, and the plan keeps running until the lead replies, books something, or you pull them out of it.

Every plan starts with a trigger. Plain English again: a trigger is the event that says go. A new lead registers on your website or comes in from Zillow. A lead moves to a new stage in your pipeline. A lead goes quiet for a set number of days. You pick the trigger, you pick the steps, and from that moment the plan is working your database while you are out showing houses. That is the whole idea. Follow up that does not depend on you remembering to follow up.

Why does follow up decide who gets the deal?

Here is the truth about internet leads, guys. The lead does not go to the best agent. It goes to the agent who followed up. Industry study after industry study says the same thing: the odds of a real conversation with a new internet lead collapse the longer you wait, and that window is measured in minutes, not hours. And it does not end with the first touch. Most leads are not ready the day they click. They convert weeks and months later, after steady, useful contact that almost nobody delivers by hand. The agents who win those deals are the ones whose system never forgets.

That is why my signature line is not just a line. The money is made in the follow up, and automation is key to getting your time back. A Smart Plan is that sentence, built. The full follow up system it plugs into, AI sales agent, rewritten language, guardrails and all, is in my AI lead follow-up guide.

What does a good Lofty Smart Plan actually look like?

Every plan I build, and every plan I teach inside Apex Elite AI, has the same four parts. Miss one and the plan underperforms. Guaranteed.

1. The trigger. One clear event starts the plan. New lead, new pipeline stage, missed appointment, quiet for ten days. If you cannot say the trigger in one sentence, the plan is too complicated.

2. The cadence. Cadence is just how often the touches land. Hot new leads get touched early and often in the first days, then the spacing stretches out. Cold leads get a slower, steadier rhythm. A plan that texts a cold lead every single day is not follow up. It is a fast way to get blocked.

3. The channel mix. Texts get read, emails get saved, calls build trust. A good plan mixes all three instead of betting everything on one channel. A text that asks, want me to send you the new listings like the one you saved, will beat a fourth email nobody opened, every time.

4. The human takeover. The most important part, and the one most plans skip. The moment a lead replies, asks a real question, or books a showing, the automation stops and you step in. The plan's job is to start conversations. Your job is to have them.

Which Smart Plans does every agent need?

You do not need fifty plans. You need these five, built well, before you build anything else.

1. The new internet lead plan (speed to lead). A lead registers on your site at 9:40 at night while you are at your kid's game. This plan fires immediately: a text inside the first minutes, an email with something actually useful, a call task waiting for you first thing in the morning, then a tight sequence over the first week or two while their intent is hot. Speed wins the first conversation. This plan is your speed.

2. The long term nurture plan. Most internet leads are months away from a move, and most agents abandon them by week three. This plan stays in touch for the long haul: a market update here, new listings that match what they were looking at there, a check-in that sounds like a person wrote it. Slow, steady, useful. When their timeline changes, you are the agent who never left.

3. The past client and sphere plan. Your cheapest future listings are already sitting in your database. Past clients and your sphere do not need a sales pitch. They need to remember you exist before their neighbor lists with somebody else. Home anniversary touches, a market snapshot, a genuine check-in a couple of times a year. Low volume, high trust, and it protects the business you already earned.

4. The open house follow up plan. Somebody walked your open house, signed in, said just looking, and left. This plan follows up while the house is still fresh in their head: a thank you text the same day, the details of the home, similar listings, and an easy open door to a private showing. Open house leads are warm and local. Letting them go cold is leaving money on the table.

5. The listing appointment no-show recovery plan. A seller books a listing appointment and ghosts. Happens to everybody, and most agents just let it die. This plan treats it like what it is, a hot lead with cold feet: a same-day text that makes rescheduling take ten seconds, something valuable the next day, and a couple of respectful touches after that. Recover even a few of these a year and the plan has paid for the whole system.

Want to watch it instead?

I filmed the full walkthrough: ▶ Lofty Smart Plans Are Finally Copy/Paste, But Don't Import Yet. In it I show how Lofty's shareable plans work, why copying a plan is the easy part, and why the import button is exactly where agents get themselves in trouble. Watch that, then read the mistakes section below, and you will be ahead of nearly everybody running imported plans right now. More Lofty builds live on my channel, Adam Gillespie - AI & CRM Training for Realtors.

What are the most common Smart Plan mistakes?

Set it and forget it, then blast forever. A plan you never review will eventually send the wrong message at the wrong moment, a cheerful just checking in to somebody who closed two months ago, or a drip that never noticed the lead already booked a showing. Plans need a review rhythm, same as your business does. I re-read mine the way a client would read them.

No personalization. Hey there, just checking in, sent ten times, is not follow up. It is noise. Use what Lofty already knows: their name, the home they saved, the neighborhood they searched. If a message could go to anybody, it lands with nobody.

No handoff to a human. A plan that keeps automating after a lead replies is a plan that talks over your own conversation. And a plan with zero call tasks in it never makes you pick up the phone. Automation starts conversations. Humans close them.

Importing plans blindly. Lofty makes plans copyable now, and that is genuinely useful. It is also how you end up sending another agent's voice, another market's assumptions, and steps pointed at pipeline stages you do not even use. Import the structure if you want. Then read every single step out loud before it touches a lead. If you would not say it, do not automate it. This is why Smart Plans sit where they sit in my full Lofty CRM training guide: plans built on top of a messy setup just automate the mess faster.

Where does AI fit into Smart Plans, and where does it not?

AI is genuinely useful here, inside guardrails. Lofty's AI can help draft your follow up messages and suggest your next touch, so your plans stop sounding like a robot wrote them at 2 AM. Use it as a drafting partner and a timing assistant. A first draft machine. Then you read it, you fix it, and it goes out under your name, because your name is what is on it.

Now the line I do not cross, and I teach every agent I coach the same line. Client personal information never gets fed into outside AI agents. Not a name with a story attached, not financial details, not the situation behind somebody's move. Your clients trust you with their lives in data form, and that trust is your license, your brokerage, and your reputation. If you read my breakdown of the FTC coming after OpenAI and Anthropic over agents that went rogue in testing, you know this is not theory anymore. AI helps me write the plan. The human stays the sender of record on anything sensitive, and the plan hands off to a human the moment a real person answers. That is the doctrine, and it is not negotiable.

How do Smart Plans connect to the rest of your Lofty system?

A Smart Plan does not live alone. Your Lofty website captures the lead. Your pipeline stages trigger the plan. Your lead routing puts the lead in front of the right agent on a team. The plan runs until a human takes over. And your reporting tells you which plans are producing conversations and which ones are just producing sends. One system, with Smart Plans as the engine in the middle. That whole system, setup, routing, website, AI, and reporting, is what my Lofty CRM training guide walks through in order, and it is what we build together, account by account, inside Apex Elite AI.

Questions agents ask about Lofty Smart Plans

What is a Lofty Smart Plan?

A Lofty Smart Plan is an automated follow up sequence inside Lofty, built from texts, emails, call tasks, and reminders. You set a trigger, like a new lead or a pipeline stage change, and Lofty runs the steps on schedule until the lead responds or you stop the plan.

How many Smart Plans do I need?

Start with the five on this page: new lead speed to lead, long term nurture, past client and sphere, open house follow up, and no-show recovery. Five plans you built and actually read will beat fifty imported plans you have never opened. Add more only when those five are producing conversations.

Can I copy or import somebody else's Smart Plans?

Yes, Lofty lets agents share and import plans now, and a good structure can save you real time. But read every step before you run it. Another agent's words, timing, and pipeline stages are not yours, and your name is on every message that goes out.

Do Smart Plans replace calling my leads?

No, and a well-built plan proves it, because Smart Plans include call tasks on purpose. Automation's job is to start conversations and keep them alive between yours. The plan keeps you consistent. You still have to pick up the phone.

How much does Lofty cost, and are Smart Plans included?

Smart Plans are a core Lofty feature, not a paid add-on. Lofty itself is quote based and depends on your plan and your seats, which is why I built a full Lofty CRM pricing guide that walks through the reported retail ranges and the partner door. Bottom line: your follow up is either a system or a hope. Smart Plans are how Lofty turns it into a system.

The money is made in the follow up, and automation is key to getting your time back. Let's go get it.

Adam Gillespie, Apex Elite AI