The Power of Internet Leads and Why Knowing Your Numbers For Your Real Estate Business is Important

Welcome to the Major League success blog! My name is Jon Harp. I am a real estate agent and mentor to other real estate agents. Today’s blog post is about building your database with buyer internet leads. I wanted to follow up on the last blog titled Building Your Real Estate Database. Internet leads are any leads that you create from your website by SEO, AdWords or through social media. To get internet leads, you will need a website and most websites will automatically have a CRM, which stands for customer relationship management. The job of the CRM is to allow you to organize your leads and it will provide you with the leads name, email, phone number, etc. The CRM is going to allow you to manage your follow-ups with those leads, manage your email campaigns, some have blog features and many have features that will allow you to capture more leads. Your website and CRM will also allow you to set your leads up on home searches. Your CRM is the most important tool that you will need in your business.

Here are a couple of things that we need to talk about regarding internet leads. What kind of expectations do you need to have, what is the average cost for internet leads? By knowing and understanding these, it will help you get ahead. Buying and generating internet leads is going to be one of the fastest ways to increase your database. You can generate hundreds, if not thousands of leads consistently every single month. The key to internet leads, in my opinion, is understanding the time and the process of this lead type. You need to know that on average an internet lead, at least in my market, is going to take anywhere from six to eight months to close on a home. That timeframe is from the time they join my website to the time they close. Some leads will close before the average time and some will take longer to close. The important thing for you, as you’re building your database with internet leads is mentally knowing what you’re getting into and knowing what the sales cycle is for that type of lead. It’s going to take you, on average, between 8 to 12 contact attempts before you can convert that lead into a more serious lead or a potential buyer. Another key number that you need to know and understand for growing your database with internet leads, is on average the internet leads convert at 1 to 2%. If anyone tells you that they’re converting at a higher percentage than that than you need to pick their brain or join the team. Hell, I would pay them to show you how they are converting.

If you generate a hundred leads, you now know 1 or 2 of those are going to turn into buyers and will eventually close. For you, the key phrase here is “eventually will close”. That means you need to be and stay consistent in your follow-up process with these internet leads while understanding that it does take six to eight months and that it does take 8 to 12 contacts. This is very important for you to understand when you are making those phone calls. You also need to understand that when calling internet leads, you are going to have bad information, the wrong names, bad phone number, and even bad emails. Knowing that you’re going to be hung up on, you are going to be told no a lot and buyers are going to tell you that they’re not looking when they are. So you need to have the internet scripts for buyers in place and you need to have those memorized so that way you can cut through all the BS and find those more serious buyers that do want to work with you. The best part of being armed with this information, as an agent who’s working with buyer internet leads, is that I know I do not have to “sell” that prospect over the phone every single time that I talk with them. Buyers typically do not interview multiple agents, at least based on experience. What does happen though, is the buyer gets a hold of an agent when they are ready. Then they ask for that agent to show them houses and typically that agent becomes their agent for the home-buying process. What I tell our agents, all the time, it’s our job and our responsibility as the agent to make sure we are staying in contact and we are positioning ourselves to be the agent for that lead when they are ready to buy. Again I know that the numbers. I know what is going to take for that lead to turn into a buyer so I just need to stay patient. I need to stay in front of that lead and I need to follow up consistently.

Another thing that you need to know about this, is that you only have to sell the client when they’re giving you signs that they are serious and that they are ready to buy. Every other time that you are speaking with them, you are simply just gathering information on them and their home search. You don’t have to sell every single phone call. With this information, you can now do the math behind your business, based on how much money you would like to make in a given year. You will need to figure out how many leads you’re going to need per month for you to generate the amount of business that you want. For example, if you want to close 2 buyers every month, you will need to generate 100 leads a month consistently. Follow that up with having the proper systems in place to do the follow-up process.

Understanding the cost per lead will be important. With internet leads through SEO, you are going to be spending anywhere between $8 to $12 per lead, at least that is what we are paying here in central Ohio. Now, if you’re talking about Zillow leads, that’s a completely different animal. Those leads going to cost a lot more per lead because they tend to convert faster. If you want to generate more social media leads, then you know the cost per lead could be less. The most important thing here is understanding the numbers behind the internet leads. Understanding how they work, the time frame, the process and by knowing these, you are going to be able to scale your business based on what makes sense for you! Anytime you get the opportunity to know your numbers like the back of your hand, you can make your business predictable. You can project what your business is going to look like, as long as you stay with it consistently. Consistency plays a huge role in internet leads and being able to predict what your future business is going to look like in the next three to six months.

Remember your database should be your number one priority. You need to keep building it and if you follow up with the leads that are in your database, there is no way you can’t be successful in our business.

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