If you don’t follow up on your leads, don’t complain you are not converting leads.

Those who know me know that my only goal in life these days (ok, I have some non work related) is to have the highest conversion rate amongst Real Estate brokerages in the country.   The better we become with our lead conversion (leads to sales) the more excited I get and the more detailed I get in teaching my Agents how to get the most out of their leads.  It’s always a challenge.

Right now my biggest challenge is getting the right Agents who have the work ethic to become successful.

I’ll give you an example.  I have a new Agent, I think this is her 8th week with me so far.  She has her second closing tomorrow and she wrote 3 contracts this past month.  That gives her basically 5 transactions by the time she finishes her first three months with me (she has 120 leads in her system).  Pretty amazing.

I have another Agent, who started with me 5 months ago.  He has closed 3 sales, has 4 contracts on the short sale board and wrote 4 more contracts in October.  Both these Agents have just started their Real Estate career.  They are brand new Agents!

Now let’s look at my 5 bottom Agents.  Continue reading this post

It’s been a pretty busy time here at Tropical Realty in Melbourne Florida since we got back from the HomeGain Nation Conference. Business is going great and my Realtors® are busy as always.  Our system of creating all our leads for our agents is a true win in every aspect of my business.

However, there is a down side to this and if you don’t protect yourself while you build your team, it could cost you thousands of dollars!

So what am I talking about?

I’m talking about having a written agreement between you and your agents to ensure that you, the team leader or brokerage, own the leads.

This past week we dealt with a real estate Agent who left our office to take a full time job as an assistant for a broker. She did everything correctly by coming to me and letting me know she was leaving because she couldn’t afford to be a Realtor anymore.  She was one of our less successful Realtors who had a lot of potential, but never really put the effort needed into becoming successful.  I did like her and feel bad for her though so I kept her leads flowing (big mistake).

So lesson one is to never let your emotions guide your business.

It’s very important that you take all emotion out of any negotiation and run your business as a business.  Be strong and cut leads off from Agents if they don’t produce.  End of story. Continue reading this post

In many cases, the perception of an online consumer is that they are not real. The result is that they are not treated as a true prospect and, clearly, deals will not close due to this situation.

This perception is understandable since an online consumer is represented on a computer screen as a series of characters in an email address or in their name. The person is not standing in front of you. They have no pulse and you cannot look them in the eye.

Their preferred method of communication is email which, by its nature, maintains a certain level of anonymity. Due to this desire to remain anonymous, the online consumer controls the frequency, or even possibility, of contact.

This same desire prompts an online consumer to register false contact information on a real estate agent’s web site whether or not entering contact information is even necessary for the consumer to gather the information they want.

Clearly, this is a huge source of frustration and, in some cases, expense for an agent.

But, on the other hand…

Continue reading this post

Nothing beats attending HomeGain “Live” Nation in person, but the videos are second best!

This video features Mitch Ribak of The eHomes Realty Network in Florida, Linda Davis of RE/MAX Realty Group in Connecticut, and Dave Marron of First and Elm Realty in California.

These three Realtors® became successful by mastering techniques of leveraging the Internet to get people to their websites, turning visitors into clients, and building profitable real estate businesses as a result.

Watch the HomeGain Nation session video: “Traffic, Leads, Conversion: BuyerLink”

Keep checking back as we will be adding more videos over the next couple of weeks.

Up next: “Home Staging Session” with Lise Desormeaux of RMR.

Also see more HomeGain Nation videos on the HomeGain YouTube channel and on the HomeGain Nation Blog.

homegain.com

I thought it would be worthwhile to show agents, particularly HomeGain BuyerLink and AgentEvaluator members, some true stats of Internet leads (from one Realtor to another).

My goal in gathering this data was to discover  home buyer tendencies.  I randomly took 100 of our sales this year to come up with the following stats.

I figured it’s roughly 50% of our sales this year and would be a great sampling.

The main findings were the following:

Average Number of Days to Purchase: 180.5 days

Quickest Sale: 5 days

Longest Sale: 539 days

(Last year we had approximately 20 sales from leads that were from the year 2004.)

Number of Closed Leads with Phone Numbers: 88

Number of Closed Leads with no Phone Number: 12

(This is a tough number to quantify as many of our Agents put the phone numbers in the CRM once they have obtained it.  When I worked on this stat two years ago, we were at 25% of our sales came from leads with no phone number.  I believe we are most likely still around that level.)

Continue reading this post

Congratulations to the 17 real estate agents who have earned half a million dollars or more in gross lifetime commissions from HomeGain leads through the AgentEvaluator® marketing program!

We are pleased to recognize these agents for their tremendous success by inducting them into HomeGain’s new Diamond Club.

Diamond Club inductees include (listed alphabetically by last name):

• Jeffrey Bastress, Startpoint Realty in Massachusetts
• Virginia Cheezum, RE/MAX Allegiance in Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. areas
• Les Davis, Realty Executives Metro One in Missouri
• Dorothy and David Eiglarsh, The Eiglarsh Team in Florida
• Sheryl Goble, Realty Executives Premiere in Illinois
• Howard Gordon, Broward Brokers Realty Corporation in Florida
• Doug Goss, RE/MAX Real Estate Services in California
• Sharon Kunz, RE/MAX Greater Atlanta in Georgia
• Joseph Niece, Joe Niece Team at RE/MAX Results in Minnesota
• Brenda Porter, Porter and Associates in Nevada
• Barbara Tidwell, Keller Williams Realty in Texas

I spoke with Realtor® Virginia Cheezum, who said: “I am delighted to receive this recognition! I’ve been with HomeGain for many years and it’s become a critical piece of my business. I continue to be impressed and delighted with the quality of leads you provide. You do a magnificent job and provide a valued service.”

Howard Gordon also commented: “I have found HomeGain to be an exceptionally successful way to reach qualified, serious sellers who are seeking to meet with the best real estate professionals they can find. The leads are of high quality and high motivation to list I highly recommend HomeGain to agents wanting more listings.”

In the press release announcing HomeGain’s New Diamond Club members, HomeGain General Manager Louis Cammarosano stated “Unlike the anecdotal evidence of the success of our competitors’ marketing solutions, HomeGain offers concrete proof that our programs result in closed business and in many cases lots of it.”

Over a dozen other real estate agents are quickly approaching the $500k mark. Continue reading this post