I have been with Homegain for many years now and always question my buyers or sellers as to why they chose me over other responding agents. Every single answer confirmed that I gave a personalized proposal which made the consumer feel as if they had actually been listened to. I know in this business things can get hectic, but I cannot stress enough the importance of a personal response to the consumer. It can be difficult to personalize if the buyer or seller hasn’t give you much to work with, however, I try to address the location they are interested in or some other interesting fact about my city which seems to have served me well. In Real Estate it is location, location, location—with Homegain it should be personalize, personalize, personalize… Best of luck to you all.

Posted on Mar 25, 2008 by Debra Wostmann

I feel it is a little unfair to use a comment from a Seller that felt using his name as of great importance and not identifying him by his street name, when in fact we are given impersonal annonymous Sellers, and the only way to personalize it is to mention the only information given us, is their street name from Homegain.
I also must say, that I recieve many many homegain leads and 8 out of 10 are generic and canned as given them by choice from Homegain, as if I suspect is true, as so many have the same canned criteria they are looking for in an agent.
How personalized can we be when 8 out of 10 Buyers all they want is “an honest hard working” agent. Sellers all we know is the street name, town and price range…with some added canned Seller criteria in most cases.
I suggest we would all benefit, including Homegain, if we listen closley to the survey results, and open it up with real names, addresses and real contact info. Imagine giving a Homegain lead excatly what they want, a full CMA report, or actual listings of homes for sale and how to view them. Why not? It is an open source online world right now, and web 2.0 is king….and we cannot even reach out personally and take care of Homegain leads, as they desire and deserve. Homegain is the best lead generation company in the world. We are the best real estate professionals in the world. Homegain does there job well. Our hands are tied with annonymous and very limited information to be the best that we are.
In my opinion, this is where the bottle neck is. Canned buyer and seller requests, that receive canned agent proposals. How Web 1.0 is this?
I suspect what was also a concern from those surveyed and not mentioned, was the shear number of responses they did get, and how overwhelmed they were in sorting through them, and I suspect many were turned off by this, as I certainly would be. I suspect there is no shut off valve for how many agents will respond, other than how many agents claim that zip as the limit. I also suspect that they get no less than 1 or 2 emails a day from Homegain following up….for who knows for how many days or months. Did the survey reveal about how they felt about the shear number of responses and Homegain followup emails? I suspect this would be a huge turn off if they receive more than 3-5 proposals, and more than 1 email a week follow up.
Again, this can all be a huge homerun if Homegain opens up the lead contact information to 3-5 top agents only per lead. I guarantee the closing ratio would increase, as they would get immediate personal and professional help, and they would not be inundated with canned responses from agents and Homegain.
Ask any home buyer or seller if they would prefer 3-5 top agents contacting them personally, or up to 100 canned responses they cannot begin to sort through with any kind of helpful results.
I for one would be happy to rotate as being one of the 3, rather than be canned and lost in the crowd and simply upset potential clients…forever.
Oh well, just my opinion. But if it is a closed and canned system now…how in the world can we personalize it any more than what it is…a canned closed system.
All my best to my friends at Homegain.
Jeffrey Bastress
Startpoint Realty
jeffrey@startpoint.com

Posted on Mar 25, 2008 by Jeffrey Bastress

1) Is there a way to know the name of the Seller to avoid what is indicated in the second bulleted comment? They think we know their name and addresss since they entered it into the system but we don’t…al least my system does not show this to me.

2) Do you think my proposal being perceived as “canned” because respond very quickly? We don’t have the ability to “automate” a response as the consumer in the 1st bullet indicate right?

Posted on Mar 25, 2008 by Dwayne F. Brown

While this information confirms what I practice HomeGain could improve this service to help us create more personal responses. Most Sellers’ do not realize that we can not see their name such as when we receive a Buyer request. It should be vital that HomeGain release the names of Sellers so we can address our proposals directly to them. Also consumers need to realize that the good Agents are working and not waiting for leads. While I can understand sending leads in a timely manner consumers should recognize that we are not slacking but are prioritizing our current clients. This is the same treatment that they would expect once they have established a working relationship with us.

Posted on Mar 25, 2008 by Candace Larson

Regarding sending Sellers our proposal, I think Homegain needs to put the first name of the Seller. I notice that this was complaints regarding your survey.

Posted on Mar 26, 2008 by regina ambrose

Jeffrey,

You make good points about the generic nature of HomeGain leads. There are indeed challenges to responding to those requests with a personalized message that will elicit a response from the consumer, allow you to connect with one another, and start to build rapport with an eventual close as the end goal. In fact, one of our guest bloggers, Mike Farmer, eloquently writes about that very issue in yesterday’s blog post “Why Personalization Works”, so we think we’re “barking up the right tree” in espousing that approach.

Lack of personalization is a problem that’s bigger than HomeGain, and something all busy professionals in the service industries would be well served to take the time to focus on by really listening to our clients’ needs and responding accordingly.

To comment a little further on the survey itself, we asked consumers for their feedback on the number of proposals they received. We surveyed two groups, those that closed a sale with one of our member agents, and those who, unfortunately, for whatever reason went elsewhere. Surprisingly, even to us, only 10% (the group who closed with a HG agent) to 13% (did not use a HG agent) said they felt they received “too many” proposals. On the other hand, a whopping 39% of those who did not use a HG agent said they received “not enough” proposals, which was also a surprise. That number is certainly reflective of their overall satisfaction level with the process to Find a Realtor through HomeGain. Of those consumers who closed with one of our agents, 9% said they received “not enough” proposals.

Furthermore, 81% of the HG agent group of consumers said they received “enough” proposals, while 49% of the non-HG group said the same. It’s clear we have our work cut out for us, but this gives us much better insight into the direction we need to move.

We heard from our consumers that they would like to choose HOW MANY proposals to receive, or to be able to go back and get more proposals if they don’t like the ones they’ve seen. We continue to revisit the issue of how many proposals and the manner in which they are delivered, and will do so until we get it right.

To your point about follow up emails, we also heard they would like HomeGain to reduce the number of follow up emails, some they said “felt spammed”. Point made.

For the most part though, regardless as to whether or not they used a HomeGain agent, the majority of consumers were pleased with the process. Somewhat frequently, they tell us it is the response time and lack of follow up by our agents that cause the consumer to go elsewhere.

Posted on Mar 26, 2008 by Peggy Boehm

Peggy
I appreciate you sharing the information about the survey and how potential leads may indeed be turned off by being inundated with proposals and follow up from Homegain. As you know I do a tremendous business with Homegain clients and I have heard from many that this is how they feel as being ‘spammed’ even though they opted in.
Since we do not know who they are and really little on their ‘hot buttons’ it is very difficult to propose anything but who we are and what we do best. Granted that may come across as ‘canned’...but after all, they have signed up knowing their anonymous, knowing we will not have their address or contact info, and we have 15 seconds at best to capture their attention.
So as the consumers are telling us, we need to break down the communication barrier somehow so we can reach out to every single one of them and relate to them one on one. It is a win, win, win for Homegain, the consumer and us if we can make that happen.
I believe that most real sellers and buyers, as I have tested this on my own site, will be very happy to give us their contact information if they are assured that only 3 top agents will contact them. If not happy with the 3, then they can have another 3 if they still want to do so.
Put it to the test, and see if buyers and sellers want annonymous plethora of proposals, or sharing of full information with top 3 Homegain agents.
Take it step further and start tracking which ones experience higher closing ratios and over all satisfaction. I think you would be pleasantly surprised. After all, buyers and sellers are coming to Homegain for just one thing. Which is to be put in touch with a top agent to help them, as a Homegain agent referal is the best way they have decided to pick their agent to work with.
Has Homegain tested whether consumers would prefer sharing full contact info with 3 top agents verses pushing it out as you are now to the masses?
I would be happy to help put this to the test and work it out so all are happy and Homegain gets paid at the end of the day. After all….that is what this is all about.
All my best to my great friends at Homegain. Keep up the good work.
Jeffrey Bastress
jeffrey@startpoint.com

Posted on Mar 26, 2008 by Jeffrey Bastress

Jeffrey
Thanks for the ideas. We are tossing about a similar idea, that would allow the consumer to select how many proposals they wish to receive.
How would you select the “top” agents to show them-which criteria would you use?

Posted on Mar 26, 2008 by Louis Cammarosano

Candace wrote: “While I can understand sending leads in a timely manner consumers should recognize that we are not slacking but are prioritizing our current clients.”

Ah Candace this statement says a lot-its truthful, no doubt BUT think how that makes your potential prosepct feel.

If you are too busy to deal with them now, will you be available to help them when it matters?

I recently came close to firing a vendor. They told me the reason they did not return my calls was because we only spent X dollars with them.

While this may be truthful justification, they did indeed still want my business.

How did I know this? I told them if they did not return my calls, I would be spending ZERO dollars with them.

It seems to me if you want the business you can’t be too busy to work for it. If you don’t someone else will….

Posted on Mar 26, 2008 by Louis Cammarosano

Louis
To be honest, as Homegain gets paid on closed referrals, I would send the top 3 agents that will best serve Homegains objectives.
I suspect that many times a Homegain agent is selected and later during the process the agent drops the ball, or lack of good communication turns the consumer into a Homegain basher…and hurts us all in the long run.
Why Homegain does not care what agent is finally picked by the consumer is beyond me, as your bottom line is after all dependent on a happy and closed customer.
Some markets may require a rotation. Or how about a billboard of the proposal banners and the Homegain rating of the agents on the banners for the consumers to choose which 3 to send full contact info to.
But at the end of the day, I would try to make sure the 3 were top agents that will most likley make Homegain shine.
If I have a personal referral in another state, I call my Homegain manager and ask her to suggest 3 of the top Homegain agents in the area I need. Why do I do this….because I know Homegain has the names of the very best at their finger tips for me. So why should a consumer expect anything less. In fact, I think they are hoping for just this when they login to Homegain.
Personally, if I called my Homegain manager and she gave me anything other than the best for my personal referrals…I would not call for another.
But I sense your on to this, and working on a plan for us all.
Your friend….
Jeffrey Bastress
jeffrey@startpoint.com

Posted on Mar 26, 2008 by Jeffrey Bastress

Jeffery
You are certainly right! We should care what agent the consumer picks for two reasons
1. we want the deal to close and
2. we want consumers to feel that got a great agent through us so that they will refer their friends.
Some of the data I am looking at involves how many proposals an agent makes, how often they match and how often those matches result in closings.

The “best” agent perhaps is the one that has the highest match to close rate, not necessarily the most closes.

To use a baseball analogy, something like a blown save ratio might work.

Before instituting anything like that, however, it requires a lot more analysis and discussion with people like you.

Posted on Mar 26, 2008 by Louis Cammarosano

I am sure that being prompt and personal is very important. However, I think everyone would be more motivated if Homegain would have some type of follow-up to the reply agents if the client actually chose an agent to work with.

Posted on Mar 27, 2008 by Wayne Thoms

Wayne
Thanks for the feedback.
We have that concept under consideration.
Once a consumer has matched we should notify the agents that the match has taken place.
Although it may still make sense to propose lest the match does not work out.

Posted on Mar 27, 2008 by Louis Cammarosano

How about placing some canned feedback responses for users? For instance, the users can select one of a few reason for rejection that goes back to the agent so they know why they were rejected. Not everyone will fill those out but it would be valuable information for those agents that do get that feedback.

Posted on Mar 27, 2008 by Orin Sherman,MBA

After reading the comments of most of the possible customers that did not choose a Home Gain agent, I believe the majority of them are correct. However, I do read what customers have to say in their comments and do address many of the seller potentials by address only because the prospect does not include a name. I think it would be helpful, as I am very thorough and would go to the extent of pulling a tax card to get more information on the proposed listing prior to submitting my proposal. Just a thought! :-)

Posted on Mar 30, 2008 by Jennie

to the swiftest comes the spoils….

HomeGain no doubt is trying to improve the response time and qualiy of proposal provided to the consumer. So set up a system where the first ten agents to respond back to home gain lock up the client. Also allow them a window of 24 hours to put together a proposal to send to that same consumer.

This way the onsumer gets a reasonable amount of proposals. The fastest agents are usually the ones who set up systems. Agents with systems usually are well thought out agents and would most like be a good agent.

Allow these agents time to put together a proposal that can be personalized. I myself do not have time to sit down as soon as I get the elad and put a proposal together. usually I have to run out for an appointment to show or list a home. Having some time back at the office to put the proposal together would allow me to address the eneds of the client. I am afraid I am one of those who send out a canned response many times because I do not have time to put a personalized one together.

I want to hurry and beat the crowd so the system as it is designed now lends itself to sending out canned proposals. with the timer you have showing how long it took you to send out a response, and the millions of agents that send the proposals.

nuff said….

Posted on Mar 30, 2008 by Robert Moreno

Robert

Thanks for the comments.

Please keep in mind why the consumers fill out they lead form- They want to compare realtors.

Rushing out a canned proposal actually hurts your chances as the type of consumer who fills out a long lead form is not necessarily looking for the first canned proposal that hits their email box.

Indeed, consumers are telling us they want prompt personalized proposals.(we only printed a handful of the responses)

Also keep in mind that up to 40% of our consumers that fill out the Agent Evaluator lead form go on to list on the MLS. Guess what less than 10% pick a homegain agent-the reason many give for not selecting a homegain agent- they received mostly canned responses.

The way to differentiate yourself is to personalize your proposal.

Posted on Mar 30, 2008 by louis cammarosano

Just catching up on my feeds, yep the consumers want a personal comment about SOMETHING they asked about.
I have profiles and then add the personal.

Posted on Apr 13, 2008 by Missy Caulk

I am very very new to Homegain and already I am getting leads far away from the zips I identified. Any suggestions from you experienced users as to how to increase the market area I work in. Hopefully this improves if not it is a waste of time and money!

Posted on Jun 30, 2008 by Janis

Janis, it sounds like you have the “bonus leads” option selected within your personal profile. When you select this option, you elect to receive leads from up to zip codes up to 50 miles outside of your selected zip codes. Many of our AgentEvaluator agents like this feature as it gives them more leads that they can respond to. While some of these buyers and sellers may be to far away, others may be in the next town over and offer a great opportunity to win more business.

If you wish to turn off these extra leads though, just de-select the “bonus leads” option in your control center and you will only get leads in those zip codes you have chosen.

Posted on Jun 30, 2008 by Matt Malmgren

I believe the 3 top ‘agents’ option would benefit those 3 agents for a period of time. The question is when will that cycle be over to select the ‘new’ top 3 agents? Homegain is a company set up with more than one streamline of income (closed transactions). I’m quite sure they also collect great revenue from agent members subscriptions.

If there is going to be a limited number of agentsit also has to be for a period of time. Just because you are a top agent this month doesn’t mean you will be next month. There is always a new agent who is just as capable of holding that title and deserves the same opportunity as the agent who has established themselves. Especially if they are paying the same subscription fees.

What we need in this world is another monopoly.

Just my opinion. :~)

Posted on Jul 06, 2008 by James Martin

We can’t personalize the proposals by name because Homegain will not give us the potential client’s last OR first name because they want to keep it anonymous until the potential client picks the agent.

Seems the least you could do is inform the people going onto Homegain that the agents do not know their names so they don’t blame us for not addressing them by name!

Also, I know it’s in your best interest to throw 15 or 20 of us agents “to the wolves” since as long as a seller picks a Homegain agent, YOU (Homegain) win…

But it would be nice if you actually checked the professionalism and effectiveness of the people you accept into Homegain, and base the member roster on the agents who are the best, not just whoever can write a check to join.

Posted on Jul 21, 2008 by Mike Riccio

Mike,

I appreciate your feedback and welcome constructive criticism from our customers. I must point out that throwing agents “to the wolves”, as you suggest, is not the underlining philosophy of AgentEvaluator. HomeGain truly wins only when professional agents, like you, win and therefore our goal is to have the best agents on AgentEvaluator proposing and competing for consumers’ business. The more we can get better agents on the system, the better it is for everyone. Consumers are happy, agents get more business and HomeGain delivers on its promise. Consumers like the basic idea of the product (being able to anonymously find and compare realtors) and they are willing to fill out a form to this end. Once they fill out that form you can rest assured that they mean business. But in order to get their business agents need to do their part. No doubt we at HomeGain can do a better job and I can tell you that we are in the process of updating the consumer sign up form so that we can deliver to agents more poignant information. This is just one of many new features and tweaks we will be adding to the product in order to make it more user friendly and more helpful to agents.

Responding to your specific case I can tell you that in average in your area you are not competing with 20 agents but less than half of that number. Also compared to other agents on AgentEvaluator in your area, who have one of the highest number of closed deals and one of the highest total gross commissions earned.

I agree with you that we can do a better job of checking the professionalism and effectiveness of the agents who sign up on AgentEvaluator. I welcome feedback from agents on this blog regarding this issue. We have internally discussed several ways to rate realtors. I hope you would agree with me that this is a tricky thing to do. How do you effectively measure realtors’ performance? I can easily see that if we don’t set this up correctly we might hinder the chances of any new realtor starting in their profession, and have only the senior agents win.

Salvatore Giammarresi, V.P. Product

Posted on Jul 30, 2008 by Salvatore Giammarresi