Delta Media Group News:

Part II: Converting more leads; Suffering a slow real estate business death? How to implement a turn-around

Part 2: More leads are great, but how many are you converting?

Monday, July 31, 2006

By Sean Cutright
Delta Media Group

The real estate industry, now more than ever, can be greatly assisted by advanced technology developed to increase quality leads and your ability to respond to them as quick as possible, search engine optimization, and customer relations.

Last week?s article focused on improving organic search engine optimization by the way your Web site is built. Improved search engine optimization from a design and programming standpoint will save you the hassle of constantly customizing your Web site trying to understand how it is best found on search engines, and paying for pay-per-click ads to increase exposure if what you?re exposing is not a quality system to begin with. Purchasing a well-built system is like buying a $45,000 BMW instead of spending the same amount on a 1986 Cavalier trying to make it a BMW.

Search engine optimization may get you found online. That may lead to an interested customer submitting a lead on your Web site. Now you?re feeling a breath of life in your formerly slow real estate business death?until you don?t respond to your lead quick enough and find out the customer went back to the search engine, found another agent, and submitted a lead to him?and he responded quicker.

If you don?t understand that a quicker response to leads captures more customers, you probably should not be in the real estate business to begin with. But now that you understand that, how can you respond to leads quicker? You already call back as soon as you receive the lead, but maybe you find every now and then that the customer who submitted the lead is already working with a competing agent by the time you respond.

Your problem is not that you didn?t respond quick enough, it?s that you didn?t get the lead quick enough to respond to it. Customers are more technology savvy now than ever before. Some may not even know what an MLS is, but most understand that they can view any local listing on nearly any real estate company?s Web site. If that customer doesn?t have a response from you as quick as they?d like (some statistics are now showing a timeframe to respond as small as one to two hours!) they will submit a lead on the same house with your competitor. If your competitor?s Web-based lead management system gets the lead in their hands quicker than yours, your only hope is that the other agent won?t call the customer back immediately.

Some statistics show around 95 percent of customers will buy or sell a house with the first agent that responds to them. If your system works well enough for you to get the first response out, you have a huge opportunity of capturing business. And you never know, you may be the agent the customer comes to because the last one they submitted a lead to did not respond quickly enough. Be certain you have the right technology to be the hero instead of the agent or agency that customer will tell their friends not to use.

You should make sure in going with a Web site and Lead Management system that the site not only encourages customers to submit leads, but gets those leads to you instantly. However, a major problem with this is even if you receive a lead instantly by E-mail it means nothing if you?re out of your office at a showing. You won?t get the lead until you return to your office and check your E-mail. To best optimize your capabilities, make sure your system not only notifies you instantly by E-mail, but also through another avenue that will contact you immediately, regardless of where you are and what you?re doing. The best avenue to use is lead notification by cell phone. Text messaged leads are the best cell phone route because it allows you as an agent to see your leads and maybe even process those while participating in another commitment, like a showing or closing. You simply read the text and push a few buttons to process your lead. If the lead comes through by phone call or voicemail you may be defeating much of the purpose of receiving leads via cell phone. It might work great while you?re driving, but you?re not doing your customer a service if you walk away at a showing or closing to take a call or check your voicemail because another customer may be coming in.

Marketing your Web site is the first step of capturing customers through technology. Next is responding to their leads as quickly as possible. See next week?s article for the third and final piece of implementing a turn-around of your real estate business?making sure your Web systems are set up to maximize customer relations, manage their pipeline, and customer marketing.

Sean Cutright is a professional newspaper journalist and graduated from Kent State University?s esteemed School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He currently serves as the Public Relations director and the Midwest account representative for Delta Media Group, the nation?s leading real estate Web site and Lead Management systems provider.