Today’s blog focuses on internet leads. These are the leads that promise the world to agents. I know of many agents that have tried internet leads, get frustrated with the lack of success and say that they don’t work. Additionally, the costs of these leads have also gone through the roof so it gives an added reason to not use them. Well I am here to cover these type of leads and hopefully help you tackle this dilemma.
The first thing you need to understand is the definition of leads vs prospects. Leads are those contacts that have shown interest for your product or service and you are actively qualifying them. A prospect is one that fits your potential customer type but have not yet fully shown interest in your product or service. Unfortunately many sites promise leads but instead only offer prospects. Therefore when you sign up for leads from the big players like Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia and others, the information you get are about people that looked on their site for whatever reason and clicked on a house or wanted to know their home value. Now you may think, “That’s great!” Well it is if you know that many of them will not buy or sell for 12-24 months! What!
I know many of you might be thinking I thought these leads would be buying or selling now, that’s what the site and/or sales person said. Well Dorothy you are not in Kansas anymore. The real truth is that many of them will not buy a house for 12 -24 months. So why have these leads?
The main reason is because these leads are one part of your overall lead generation strategy. They should not be the only lead generation tool. I will cover all the other tools in another blog.
The other reason is that you will find a diamond in the mud of leads but my estimate is that it will be about 1-2% of the leads will convert into business over the course of 6 months. If you do the math, that is a lot of wasted prospects…or is it? Think about it. If 1-2% creates 2-3 deals, has it not paid for the prospects you received over the same period? The main challenge is how to manage these prospects and target the true leads.
Handling leads is important because if you don't know how to handle them, they won’t amount to anything or worse, it will cost you time and we all know time is money. If you're buying internet prospects every month, one of the main problems is that you're getting 100 or 500 or even 1,000 prospects per month. That is 3000-30,000 contacts per month. That is a lot to follow up with! Especially when most of them don’t want to talk to you because they were just looking.
The issue
Now we get to the crux of the problem with these type of prospects. Many try to call all of the leads and follow up with them with the same strategy. This is a mistake! So what is the right approach? This is a good question. I have a four step answer to this. The steps are sorting, prioritizing, process and automation.
Sorting
The first thing you need to do, if at all possible, is to sign up for seller leads only. This is where the gold is because with one seller lead you will get all the buyer leads you need. However most places don’t let you choose so you will get a mix of buyers and sellers. You need to sort them out into buyers and sellers. The reason for sorting out these two groups is because they should be handled differently. For example, buyers take longer to close than sellers. Think about it. A seller contract is for 90 days. This is because most sales happen before that. With buyers, there are more challenges and they usually take longer than 90 days. Ok so now we have them sorted; what’s next?
Priority
In a perfect world you would have all the time in the world to contact these prospects. However, we live in the real world. Therefore we must set a priority for our prospects. If the contact information indicates when they plan to purchase or sell, use this info. If it doesn’t then you will need to use a default strategy. For example: sellers first, buyers second. I am not advocating go sequentially through the list. You should go parallel but with different tools. Use your high power tools for the immediate prospects and low power for the others. Set a priority schedule so you can address each of these groups with the right attention. Now you might be thinking, doing this is a lot of work, well I never said the real estate business is easy. You need to work for your money. However now we get to the third part of solution to these internet prospects. Process, Process Process.
Process
You must have defined processes to handle the volume. My process is outlined below but it is not the whole process. You are going to have to create the process that works best for you. However you need to have these basics: Initial contact, follow up, qualification, and drip campaign. Each of these steps must have what to do if they bite or what to do if they are not interested. During the qualification don’t use rose colored glasses, be truthful because remember, it’s your time you are spending and it should be treated as gold. Additionally, for all in the process you must build credibility so your process must include credibility creation tools such as links to articles or events that highlight your expertise.
Automation
The last part of the puzzle is automation. I am a firm believer in automation. As a real estate professional you must invest in a solid CRM with certain communication abilities. I personally require one with automated texting, emailing and scheduling. The system should handle the long term prospects by providing scheduled contact attempts based on the category of prospect they are. More advanced systems will notify you immediately when a prospect replies to a process campaign. This type of automation is critical for growth and success. But don’t think only large groups or brokers are reserved for automation. Automation can be accomplished by an individual. The only thing is that you will have to take smaller steps with a lower number of prospects. As your ability improves you can add more and more to your plate. Once you grow, then you will be ready for takeoff with larger automation system.
As you can see, to handle the amount of prospects you get from the internet requires multiple steps. With these steps we can still address each new prospect but with different processes and priority. This will allow you to focus where you need to and let the system handle the others until they are ready for your full attention. So don't get frustrated, these leads work. You just have to understand what they really are and how to handle them.
Now I would like you to tell us your experience with these leads and share with our community how you made them work for you. As always good luck out there and may you always be closing.
Comments