Leads are the lifeblood for an agent. Without leads it really doesn’t matter what else you do well. If you have no leads you have no one to convert to a client and therefore no one to follow up with and no sales to close.

I think a successful REALTOR® will have more than one avenue in his lead generation model. If one method fails or slows he/she will have other ways to keep his business successful.

Consistency is one of the main keys in a successful Real Estate practice. I think you have to pick about 3 lead generation tools—a 3-legged stool if you will –- that will keep your pipeline full.

The three we use are as follows:

1) Internet—Surprise!

We use a combination of our own websites and the HomeGain system. Our own sites include one devoted specifically to Fort Benning, Georgia, Real Estate as well as one devoted to Columbus Georgia Real Estate and rank well on their own merit. Continue reading this post

So most of you know by now that I am all about leads. I can talk with the best of them about lead conversion, lead capture and basically anything lead based.

Today I want to talk to you about the human part of what we do. You can drive a million people to your site and get 10,000 leads, but if you don’t understand the human aspect of what we do as Real Estate professionals, this is all for not.

To me, and my staff, leads are a God send. We are constantly working and currently our Florida office is averaging 130+ different customers per month and we just grew to our final number of 22 agents.

Even though the market is tough right now, we are still selling 15-25 homes per month. Not very stellar for the amount of people we are showing, but if you understand our Florida market the past couple of years, you would think that is great!

If it weren’t for leads, my company would have been gone a long time ago, which has been the fate of about 20% of our Realtors and many Brokerages.

So you have a lead, what happens then? I’m not going to talk about your drip campaign or for that fact anything computer or tech related…except maybe having a good CRM system to insure your great follow up.

Firstly, if you are not picking up the phone and calling your new customer within 24 hours, preferably within a few hours, then you are wasting money. Continue reading this post

Max the HomeGain gorilla arrived by mail over the weekend and we had a long discussion about lead management.

He carried on and on about orange being consumers’ favorite color, even tried to talk me into using an orange font color to write this, but one thing he said that really hit home is that consumers don’t like to be pushed.

It might seem odd that a gorilla is concerned about pushing, but he has a point.
I don’t like to be pushed.

From what I’ve learned about “systems” if you push the system to get what you want, the system pushes back, until you find the right leverage to get results. In this case, if an agent pushes his lead management system to get immediate results, the system pushes back.

Leads are set up to receive information and then, in their own time, act on that information and hopefully use your services. I believe consumers look at a company like HomeGain as Continue reading this post

Max the HomeGain gorilla arrived by mail over the weekend and we had a long discussion about lead management.

He carried on and on about orange being consumers’ favorite color, even tried to talk me into using an orange font color to write this, but one thing he said that really hit home is that consumers don’t like to be pushed.

It might seem odd that a gorilla is concerned about pushing, but he has a point.
I don’t like to be pushed.

From what I’ve learned about “systems” if you push the system to get what you want, the system pushes back, until you find the right leverage to get results. In this case, if an agent pushes his lead management system to get immediate results, the system pushes back.

Leads are set up to receive information and then, in their own time, act on that information and hopefully use your services. I believe consumers look at a company like HomeGain as Continue reading this post

Mary Lou Skowronski is a real estate agent in Southern California with Coldwell Banker Platinum Properties.

She’s been a HomeGain AgentView agent for a few years now. She told me a great story about how she came about working with a new client – a client which was a lead that she received through AgentView, and was able to lock up 3 TRANSACTIONS out of one initial lead – through perseverance, patience and good customer service.

For the past years she’s been committed to investing in marketing and lead generating systems and felt that it would be a long time commitment in order to prove positive results.

When she signed up for AgentView in 2005, she felt like it would be the best shot in the arm that she could get, to reinforce her belief in Internet marketing and client prospecting.

With the efficient use of technology, she is able to market globally on the Internet, to successfully reach home buyers and promote home sellers properties. She feels that working online saves her clients time and money and it enables her to earn a full service commission.

Even in the more challenging situations when it looks like the odds are against you … which brings me to Mary Lou’s story: Continue reading this post

Many of you have heard me tout the advantages of capturing and converting leads. There are other great benefits to building a large database of home buyers and sellers.

Of course, as you know, the best way to build your database is excellent lead capture through your website.

Over the past 4 years, we have built our database to 18,000 active home buyers and sellers, mostly buyers. At last check we were just under 18,500 leads in our system. With that said, a funny thing has been happening lately; many people have been contacting me to advertise on my site.

Since we have over 55,000 people on our site monthly, and more than 13,000 of them are from out of state, we are quickly becoming the only local company that carries such a large database of consumers moving to the area.

This was one of those things that make you go hmmmmm.

So let’s look at two potential opportunities you can create by building a large database. Continue reading this post