Don’t let Leads Go Cold Part 1 – Being Responsive

As an experienced real estate broker, you’ve spent your time in the trenches as an agent doing whatever you had to do to create buying and selling opportunities for yourself.  How do you help your agents approach their business with the same level of excellence?  You can probably think of instances where  buyers or sellers slipped away because follow up was a little late, or even non-existent.  Perhaps some competitor was just a bit quicker on the draw or had the right message at the right time and so a nice opportunity quietly disappeared because there wasn’t a safety net to ensure that it didn’t.

At Weichert we are razor-focused on the nurturing of leads and we can confidently say that ability to keep leads warm until they are ready to act comes down to exactly two things: responsiveness, and follow up.

The Definition of “Responsive” In An Online Age

If a client has taken the time to make contact by phone or through the internet, that’s a big step toward opportunity. What they want is to speak to someone, and generally the first person to do that will have the best opportunity to work with them.  While online leads now bring most new business opportunities, studies have shown that online leads go cold incredibly fast. A study by Harvard Business Review shows that companies that contacted leads within an hour of receiving them were nearly 7 times as likely to engage with the lead vs. companies that took just a ½ hour longer—and more than 60 times more likely to engage with the lead than companies that waited 24 hours or longer!

When you look at how leads are handled by your office and agent team, there are a few questions to ask:

1. How often does an initial phone inquiry go to voicemail?
2. How long does it take to follow up on these leads?
3. How many calls are unanswered and then no voicemail is left at all?
4. How long does it take for your team to respond to form inquiries from internet or website sources?
5. How quickly are after hours contacts handled?
6. Do you have a process for assigning leads that come into your brokerage?

If you don’t have a good real estate lead-handling system in place for your brokerage or know how well your agent team is keeping up with incoming leads, you could be letting good opportunities slip away.  This is an area you may want to look at bolstering within your brokerage.

Large real estate brands often centralize their contact handling to ensure all of these scenarios are addressed and handled in a timely and efficient manner. Weichert for instance, has a national call center which responds to internet and phone leads typically within minutes of receiving them. The leads are pre-qualified by our trained representatives and then immediately forwarded to qualified agents across the country for follow up. This occurs 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. By having this contact occur promptly, and screening for only the serious inquiries, our system creates the right first impression, and does not waste agents’ time with unqualified buyers or sellers.  It is an invaluable resource to our affiliate brokerages.

In Part 2 of this topic, we’ll talk more about what happens after you make that first contact with a prospect who perhaps isn’t ready to move forward.  How do you insure that you are the one that is there when they are ready, and how do you maximize the value of that contact in the meantime?
Stay tuned!

If you are a growth-minded broker looking for other ways to make your brokerage more productive and get to the next level of results, talk to the Weichert^® franchise team today.

For more information visit https://www.weichertfranchise.com

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/dont-let-leads-go-cold-part-1-responsive/