Online lead generation companies are a great source of real estate leads for real estate agents and a great resource to help grow the agent business. However, many lead generation companies are constantly criticized by agents who have used the service and had little to no success with the provided real estate leads. In my experience, this dissatisfaction is often due to the agent having unrealistic expectations of the service and little or no knowledge of how to develop a good follow-up campaign with your potential real estate clients.
The first thing to keep in mind as an agent is that lead generation services are not magic list trees. Generally, you shouldn’t expect to get list after list from a service. Most of the services work as follows: They provide online marketing in the specific area of the agents, the natural result of which is that the owners need information to fill out the contact forms of potential clients. This contact form is sent to the agent in the area, and that is your “potential customer”.
So what exactly does this mean? Well, it means that the real estate leads provided will be people with different types of real estate needs and at different stages of the process. If an agent signs up for a service for a 3-month contract and expects a quote within the first month, he is likely to be disappointed. Immediate listings with potential real estate clients DO occur, but they are not the norm. The Realty Times analyzed more than a million real estate leads captured and cultivated online and then compared them to public records of home sales from across the country. They found that only about 7.3% of consumers sold their home within 3 months of completing a lead form, but the my4walls percentage increased to 22% after 12 months and more than 40% after 28 months. This means that buying real estate sales opportunities online is a LONG-TERM investment, not an immediate source of money. Online generated real estate leads MUST be followed aggressively to convert to customers!
Therefore, as a real estate agent, you should view lead generation services in the same way as other marketing efforts. When you implement direct mail campaigns and send information multiple times a year to 5,000 households, do you expect to get 5,000 listings within the year? No. Direct mailings are more likely to result in the accumulation of real estate sales opportunities over the next year or two, which you should then nurture in clients looking to buy or sell.
Typically, there are four types of real estate leads that online lead generation companies receive: buyers, sellers, refinancers, and counterfeiters. Buyers can be in different stages of the process, just like sellers, so you may need to follow up for 2 years before you get your business, or you can have a list within 3 months. It depends on where the consumers themselves are in the process. Obviously, buyers have great potential – you may be able to sell one of your listings to them, and if they need someone to list your current home, you have a double advantage. The same goes for a seller looking for a listing – maybe you’re interested in buying one of the homes you’ve already listed, and if not, you might still consider a buyer’s agent to represent you when they buy a new home. . Again, a double blow of advantage.
The fact that the seller is not going to sell for 2.5 years does not mean that he should leave it; on the contrary, he now has 2.5 years to stay ahead of the competition by working closely and sending the potential client any information to carry out their real estate process. easier. It all comes down to the sales ability of the agents – Lead generation services may get your foot in the door, but it’s up to you to sell yourself to your real estate leads.
Real estate agents often complain the most that people looking to refinance or obtain a home equity loan are getting clues about real estate. “These are not real estate leads, I’m not a broker, what am I supposed to do with this lead? It has no value,” they say. That is absolutely FALSE and the wrong way to view these tracks. First of all, any real estate agent worth its salt should have a close working relationship with one or more mortgage brokers to whom to refer these types of potential clients. In a spirit of reciprocity, the mortgage broker should recommend buyers and sellers to you.