Print Article 
If you were an agent who received 33 of the same kind of quality leads from your personal website, all with real names, phone numbers, email addresses and most with specific comments and requests for specific information in just a few months, would you be tickled pink? More importantly, how many of those leads do you think you could sell?
Now, consider this: The broker has yet to sell one of those leads; the agent has yet to sell one of her leads. Yet, another broker client also received about 300 leads and has made 80 sales, and dozens of agents who receive 30+ leads make 5 or more sales to those leads.
How can this be? How can results vary so widely when different parties are presented with the same material with which to prosper? These are not bogus leads, they are real requests from real people who have visited the site, seen something they want more information about, and who have included full contact information.
Where most brokers go wrong at handling Internet leads
Often a broker will set up a policy for handling Internet leads and assume that all is well and that all these leads are getting the tender loving attention that the broker knows they need. After all, no less an authority than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has documented that leads left unanswered for more than an hour degrade faster than road kill on a hot summer day. Here’s how one broker was handling his company’s leads:
• First, the team assigned different agents to the task of intake: when every lead was received, chances were good that no one person consistently took it in. Thus, every individual handled these new leads in what they thought was the best way, but they lacked any training in how to handle them. There was no set procedure.
• The team was spending more time inputting leads into their “lead management system” than they spent calling the leads.
• Worse, they weren’t even assigning the leads to a contact person until they were entered in the lead management system—often days after they were received.
• Even if they managed to respond in a non-embarrassing time frame, they had no plan how to engage the client when they did call.
• Because the leads took so long to be assigned to an agent, by the time that agent got the lead, they believed it was already stale, and it pretty much was; so the agent rarely called them, either.
What about the hapless agent? She came to my attention when she posted on an online forum that she was very unhappy with the service she had subscribed to from us. I researched her account and found that 1) she had been found on the first pages of search engines 1,058 times; 2) She had received 33 of that same quality of lead as recited above within a few months. She had not sold a single one of them. She was right to be unhappy, but was it right for her to blame anyone but herself?
Perplexed, I then reviewed her customer log and practically fainted dead away when I saw her comment as follows: “I don’t want leads, I want appointments!” She wasn’t calling these people because she wanted them to set an appointment with her!
Both our broker and our agent had one thing in common: they didn’t call people back in 5 to 30 minutes.
What happens when you botch an Internet lead
Internet shoppers are conditioned to expect instant gratification. After all, what happens when they “click here?” What happens is they “go there,” instantly.
Thus, when they go to your site and give you their name and contact information, they are parting with their greatest treasure—their personal information. When you don’t respond with alacrity (alac·ri·ty: promptness in response : cheerful readiness, ‘accepted the invitation with alacrity’), they find it insulting on a personal level. They expect that you—as a person marketing online—are familiar with proper online protocol towards inquiries. If you act like the 50% of agents who never call Internet leads (according to NAR’s statistics), they go online the next day and go to a site where someone gets back to them immediately. You have lost them forever, at that point, because they have already seen for themselves that your definition of “service” is vastly different than what they expect. Your competition gets the business—not you.
Helping agents who ignore the lead resource
I was so upset that the broker was not making conversions to sales from these good leads that it bothered me all day. That evening, over pre-dinner conversation, I posed the question—more rhetorically than if expecting a factual answer. “Well, what do you expect?” I was told. “Has anyone ever explained how to best follow up Internet leads?”
It was an excellent point. Without delay, we contacted the broker the very next day and set up a training session for the staff people who were the keepers and distributors of the leads to the agents. About a week later, the brokerage has implemented an entirely new and effective method of dealing with these leads.
• They now have someone assigned to initial lead follow-up at all times (it is extremely important that you do not use auto responders with email leads: that is NOT contact. Phone calls are the way, then emails.)
• The initial responder is trained on “intelligent response” and how to properly respond to the inquiry. They call the lead immediately, verify what the lead would like information about and then they hand them off to a sales agent on a round-robin basis.
• After that initial contact, the lead is inputted to the “lead management system.”
• The broker can then monitor the progress of the lead with the assigned agent.
Additionally, we have scheduled each agent’s attendance at the free customer-only webinar we offer weekly on “How to follow up Internet leads.” Thus, the entire organization is going to receive the same training on how to handle these valuable leads—not only the agents, but the administrative staff.
Real leads versus junk leads
Any purported “lead” without a name or a way to get hold of them is junk. Do you ever get one with a fake phone number? Junk it. Do you ever get one from “Gianni Versace” or some other gag name (like I did this morning)? Junk it. Do you get another corporate lead that is older than dirt and more stale than last week’s biscuits? Junk it. It’s too late! While old leads are an excellent source of prospects, new leads not responded to are precisely the reverse: a poor use of your time and effort. You’ve got to get these things while they are fresh and the people remember signing on.
What is a real lead? A real lead is one that was generated by a real person viewing materials about what you sell who desires more information about something they saw on your website. A real lead leaves their true name and contact information (phone, email address or both) because they really do want to speak with you or to gain more information about something you sell.
Clearly, to succeed at online marketing it is necessary to obtain real leads. Most agents would love to have the problem the broker in this article has of what to do with all those leads, but most agents never see over 300 real leads on their website in their lifetimes—their websites are like billboards on the Moon; sure, they’re up there, but no one ever sees them and no real leads are ever generated by them.
What agents and brokers must do to succeed in their online marketing
Obtaining real leads is not rocket science. It is a process that can be mastered by most agents, technical or not. There are four basic steps to attracting Internet buyers to your business:
• Maintain a good marketing platform with information available to the consumer upon request; get them to tell you what they want and give it to them;
• Make certain that people searching the web for homes can find your site;
• Build traffic and convert 5-15% of visitors to your site into registrations;
• Learn the proper way to follow up these leads; the timing, the methods and the follow-up techniques.
What about that agent with the 33 leads who wants appointments?
Nothing can help someone who won’t call a real lead. Take this simple test to see if you can sell houses to Internet buyers. Ask yourself this: if you received an inquiry from a real person, with their phone number and email and the comment: “looking for 2-3 bedroom condo 350,000 max” would you (a) call them or (b) would you wait for an appointment?
If you answered (a), you can succeed at selling homes to Internet buyers. If you answered (b), good luck, because you have forgotten what being a Realtor is all about: it’s about service. No one hands anyone anything on a silver platter anymore. This isn’t 2005, when you could be a bumbler and succeed. Today, you actually must act like a professional, and when an agent doesn’t want to contact leads, in my opinion, it is time for them to leave the business, because not contacting leads is sure to lead to complete failure in selling, not just online marketing.
Mike Parker (www.theblackwatercg.com) advises thousands of agents and brokers on the subject of online marketing services for realtors. If you’d like to investigate having professional help with online marketing or to find out if your website is set up to deliver buyers to you, click here and fill out the form. We’ll tell you confidentially and for free. (C) 2009 Mike Parker
RISMedia welcomes your comments and questions. Email realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com.
For more top headlines on RISMedia.com, be sure to see:
Home Sellers: Top 5 Home Improvement Projects Based on Cost and Return on Investment
Understanding Home Owners Association Fees
No comments:
Post a Comment