Online Lead Sources

In my previous post I discussed the importance of developing a list of lead sources. In this post I would like to explain the first lead source that I recommend to our realtors.

First on our simple list from the previous post was online leads, and if you haven’t seen the post proceeding this one, that’s probably a better place to start so that you can make sure that you do have all your lead sources identified. Returning to our list, again, the first lead source mentioned was online leads. Everybody’s heard of these, and they come from sources like Zillow and Realtor.com. You get them from Facebook and other social media channels. Google is also an area where you can get those leads, so their sources are ever developing.

So how do you start getting leads from these sources?

What we’ve tried to do here internally with my firm is not make this a barrier for entry where somebody has to figure out how to buy leads from someone else, or how to engage Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, or any one of these companies. We want to make sure that this is something that everybody has. We know it’s a crucial part of the business, so our realtors actually partner with us on that. My Maison pays for the majority of the cost of the leads. We want to feed our agents with new business that’s coming in and focus on teaching them how to develop those leads.

Once the leads are coming in, there are methods that I have found to help realtors convert leads into sales. Set the appointment as soon as you possibly can. Get out of your own way. This person has been online, they’ve identified a home, they’ve got something that they want to see. It’s simple. Show them that property, your time to shine is not necessarily on this initial phone call. This is not the time to ask them a million questions. This is to find out one simple thing: what do they want? Then figure out how you can provide it. In 99% of the cases what they want is to see a home. That is your opportunity to meet with them face-to-face while showing them that home and to work with them as a client and figure out if it’s a good relationship, if it’s one that you want, if it’s one that they want, and figure out how you can work together in order to do some business in the future.

So you’ve done all the right things. We’ve set this appointment with the prospect. We’ve met with them. Hopefully we’ve given a great education on everything that we know as a realtor. And let’s say that we’re working with a buyer in this case. There is one last step that I recommend taking to improve conversion. Don’t meet with a buyer, open up the house, tell them everything that you know, close the door, get back in your car, and go back to the office. What should happen at the end of this meeting is setting up our next meeting. Will our next meeting be going to go look at another house? Maybe that’s the case. You’ve listened to everything that they want, you’ve identified three more properties that they want to see, and next Tuesday at 2:00 PM you’ll meet at these properties. You want to leave the meeting that way. If in the course of that meeting they’ve decided this is exactly the right house for them, what’s your next meeting? You need to sit down and write a contract. So the meeting should always lead to a next meeting which leads to a close.

Now that we have discussed online leads, in the next post we will discuss direct mail leads. In that post I’m going to go into detail on how you can leverage direct mail in order to promote yourself in the real estate business.

My Maison is a skilled group of Residential Real Estate Professionals, serving the Charlotte, NC housing market. The realtors at My Maison are highly trained experts in listing and marketing single family homes for sale. Please contact our agents with any questions about buying or selling homes in Charlotte NC.

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