The Greatest Area of Opportunity

Because many agents won’t work with leads that are initially non-responsive, the ones that do have less competition for the attention of the lead.  The trick is to develop rapport and get the lead to interact with you before they are ready to go out and see homes.  The timing here is very important, because once the lead turns the corner and decides to make an appointment, he/she will go with the first agent they get on the phone and it then becomes a free-for-all.  I have found that it is at this very stage in the sales cycle that the lead starts jumping website to website and will sometimes be in contact with several agents at once, shrinking your window of opportunity.  If steps have been taken by you to develop rapport, this is less likely to happen.

How to know when they are ready

The reason I keep referring to the 90 to 120 period is because the greatest amount of leads become responsive soon after.  This doesn’t mean all leads will automatically become ready on day 121 as the non-response period can sometimes be up to a year or more (see graph above).  So how do you know when they are ready?  The short answer is, until they are in the car, you don’t.  With that said, there are some things that begin to surface in the lead profile that will help you make the best guess.

In the same way I analyze lead data at time of registration, I analyze my returning leads for readiness (buyer behavior).  The only real difference is that now the lead has some accumulated history I can look at.

• The first thing I consider is log in history.  If the lead initially has a login history of once or twice a month then jumps to several times a week or daily, it is time to step up the heat and apply a high-touch level of follow up (more about high-touch vs. low-touch in a later post).
• Secondly, I look at the “Saved Favorites” of the lead.  If the lead has recently begun to save home listings to their favorites, implement high-touch.  If the lead has been saving favorites all along, try to look at the types of homes the lead has been saving to see if a trend is developing.  Usually as a lead becomes more serious (demonstrating buyer behavior), he or she will go from saving all types homes (all areas and price ranges) to saving homes that are more specific to a set of criteria (tighter price ranges and areas within a certain vicinity).

There are lots of other little things that will start to throw up ‘buyer behavior’ flags as you become more familar with analyzing lead data.  I didn’t want to get into them because most of them are completely obvious (lead makes a call into the office, lead asks about taxes on a property, lead submits a mortgage requal form, etc.).  The key is to get to them before the more obvious indicators surface, because if it is painfully obvious to you, it is equally as obvious to the 5 other realtors who’s site they have been on.  Get to them fast and develop the rapport before your competitor does.

Hybrid Registration

There are a few versions of registration that I have seen to be effective. The most effective hybrid registration strategy (IMHO) allows the user to do unlimited searches without ever having to register. The searches of the unregistered user return the complete amount of listings making the results the same as if the user was registered. What makes unregistered search different is that each listing returned has a limited amount of detail. The limited amount of detail usually includes a single picture, price, bedrooms, bathrooms and acreage. Once the user registers, the full detail of the listing is revealed, displaying several pictures, virtual tours, school district, taxes, etc.

Why is this effective?

It is effective for a couple of reason. First off, it is good to develop trust and rapport with your users. A relationship of give and take is always the most effective (I give you something, you give me something). Giving the user nothing prior to registration usually ends up with the user hitting the back button and going to a different website. Secondly, allowing the user to do unlimited searches before asking them to register creates an investment made by the user. The user will sometimes search 3 and 4 times before getting the desired results. Once the user finds the perfect set of results (and looks to research the details of the listings), it is then when asking the user to register becomes most effective. The user is less likely to abandon the website at this point because he or she has dialed in the perfect search and would have to recreate the search at another website (it is easier to simply register at this point).

What to require in the registration form.

I found it to work best when the email address is the only thing that is required. The registration form should have other fields giving the user the opportunity to provide more but the email address is all I need. Any information given beyond the email address further qualifies the user as a lead but most of the information I need to know about the user is gathered by documenting the activity of the user. Knowing the detailed activity of your website users is the best way to learn about your prospective customer and increases the chance of converting the user to a lead. I will talk about user activity and tracking in a later blog.

It would be great if we as real estate agents didn’t have to require registration at all, unfortunately, we can’t afford to do that. The best thing we can do is treat our users with respect, protect their privacy and provide the best customer service we can.