In my last post I wrote that 70% of web leads are non-responsive to sales calls (and emails) within the first 90 to 120 days. To better spread the word, I dropped a leader post over at ActiveRain and found out that some of my readers over there took what I said to mean that it was pointless to contact leads during the non-response period. This is absolutely not the case, it was my intention to convey quite the opposite. In my opinion the non-response period presents the greatest amount of opportunity for agents that are clever enough to make contact and begin building rapport.
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.
Your graph is on the money! I’ve experienced the same with my leads.
Thanks for the feedback. The graph is a rough estimate based on the data collected from just a few web properties. It is surely different based on market, sales skill and overall usability of the website, but I think it is pretty close to what is going on across the net.
Keep coming back.
Lou,
Thanks for this wonderful post. I am having my entire team it, and learn from it.
Best wishes,
Jennifer
Lou this was a great post. How the mortgage thing coming along
Mortgages.com is coming along great. A little slower than planned, but chugging right along. We originally had planned to have a development team together at this point in the game, but with the economy the way it is, we have held off on hiring any new people. So the development is slow going. We are trying like hell to get our mortgage widget done (calculators and such), so I can get them out to all you guys. We’ll get there.
Thanks for the comment.
Thanks Lou! Great analysis.
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By the way, nice implementation of CommentLuv, I think the other commenters need to know to put their blog address in the website address to get a bit of juice!
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As always Lou, you speak the truth. I find that in the beginning, people are just kicking the tires and want to see what you have to offer…kinda like a courtship. When there is a level of trust established, they will give you what you need to better help them in their home search and eventually, their home purchase!
Good job man!
Yes indeed . . . gain trust and rapport and you will be the one they call. Working hard on getting my next post out there. I think I am going to write it on implementing a full-time lead coordinator. We’ll see.
Thanks for stopping in.
With how agents in the past have treated web contacts as nothing more than a lead I think it is difficult to expect them to be warm and responsive from the begining. I believe that those intial 90 days is the time that most of us would have pass before someone could earn our respect. In the end it is always about respect. If either party is missing this element the transaction process is just waiting for a roadway stuffed with potholes.
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@James
Good point James. While reading through my blog you will often hear the term rapport. Rapport (or respect as you put it) is the most important milestone in the lead conversion process. Once you have achieved rapport with the potential customer, your chances of doing business with them spike dramatically. I also agree that it (rapport) should be maintained throughout the sales process and not merely achieved just for conversion purposes. Remember, we want repeat customers
. In addition, rapport or respect is one of the things we as professionals OWE the people we work with.
Thank for the comment.
Follow-up is the key, I recently sold a home to a client that I 1st contacted 6 months ago. He told me that I was the only one who kept in touch…
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So how do you approach people who have ramped up their activity on your site? Some are very uncomfortable when they find out that you can see what they are doing online.
@ Sam – Great question, I get this a lot from agents during training sessions.
I do my best to feel the customer out a little. There are some that naturally assume you have been tracking their activity, there are others who are (like you said), uncomfortable with the idea that someone may be “spying on them”
Before I get into my approach on high activity customers, I would first like to say that full disclosure is always the best policy. Your real estate website should have a terms of service agreement that fully outlines what type of tracking you are doing with each registered and unregistered users.
With that said, I am very careful with my approach when contacting customers that have been registered for a while and have recently picked up their activity/website usage. The increased activity is a sure sign of what I call buyer behavior and warrants a call in almost all circumstances. So how do you do it?
I start by introducing myself and asking if this is a good time to speak or if their is a better time we could talk. Next, I tell the customer that I saw that they had registered quite some time ago and wanted to see if they were still looking. I don’t make mention as to how many times they have logged in or that I saw that they were looking in a certain price range until after I have made certain they are comfortable with me having the information. A lot of times they will volunteer making it a non-issue. To directly answer your question, I find it is best to develop rapport with the customer before giving away all your secrets. Of course if the topic comes up or am asked questions about the type of tracking I do I am 100% honest and will refer them to my terms of service agreement.
Lou I am going to have to do more research on this topic. You have got me rethinking my approach.
I have been finding that leads I thought were dead in the water, have started to come to life again. Your observations are right on here, and I have all my leads on drip campaigns to keep in contact with them over long periods of times. When they start to show activity again, I jump on the horn and try to get them into my car. Very good post.
Your right, I see a better conversion rate 120 – 150 days after their initial visit to my site. Some leads will be ready to buy a house right away but most are 6 months or so out. Thanks for the post.