Internet Lead Conversion: Complicate to Profit, Simplify for Results

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Complication is where other people earn money, you need XYZ training, you need XYZ software, you need XYZ gadget. It’s not possible to simply purchase success.

There is a natural tendency for us as humans to search for the silver bullet but the truth is it’s the simple stuff that will grow your real estate business.

The basics like calling leads consistently and responding quickly. But why aren’t more people talking about lead conversion. Well I think the answer is pretty simple.

Top producers, have little motivation to teach people how to compete with them and in fact there is little to teach, there are no secrets, it’s just doing the basics consistently. As you read this article, I want you not to think “Thats obvious, I already knew that” but think “Is this fully implemented in my business?”.

It is ridiculously easy to crush competitors that focus on the fancy stuff but completely miss the basics. Which means more market share, more transactions, more profits.

Vendors that makes money by selling you leads have little motivation to teach you all the in’s and out’s of conversion.

After all if you convert better than you need to work less and buy less leads to make the same amount of money (or much more money). Once you work that out, you start to realize you can generate your own leads and then you don’t need Mr Vendor any more.

In a recent Active Rain survey on marketing spend, there is no discernible difference between what agents earning less than 35k a year are buying and those that are earning over 100k per year.

Anyone can buy a few zip codes, get an IDX website made up and drive some traffic via PPC. Getting online leads is the easy part, it’s the conversion part that separates the top producing agents from the rest.

The leads are weak? You don’t like the software you’re using? You’re too busy to call internet leads? You need a new phone script?

Anyone can make excuses, in fact it’s easy to get other agents to agree with your excuses, Trulia sucks, Internet leads don’t work etc. What’s much harder is actually putting in the work to make internet leads convert, committing yourself to improving your business and lifestyle.

If you don’t like to call your leads as one industry expert put it “you shouldn’t be in real estate”. I agree, but I do know some great teams that are emailing first and doing well and of course outsourcing the initial call is a viable strategy. I’m open to other approaches.

One team leader uses a ‘Client Care’ team that helped him double his production. We got him to show us how he did it. Get the full webinar replay here.

I’m just not open to you being afraid to call people and help them, that’s not in your best interest or your prospective customers.

It’s ridiculous the amount of people that are getting leads and aren’t calling OR emailing. What’s worse is when they are investing hard earned cash into marketing, but not converting their leads. If you know that your not going to convert your leads, don’t pay for them with the false hope they will convert themselves.

I want you to think about the last 10 internet leads you received, how much follow up did they get? Did anyone call them? Did they get emails offering your help? Did they receive a quick response?

4 things that will make all of your real estate marketing much more effective:

1. Measure how much follow up every single lead gets.

2. Improve the speed you respond to leads at.

3. Improve the amount of call attempts every lead gets.

4. Improve the amount of emails every lead gets.

Doing the above leads to more conversations with buyers and sellers. A conversation is the start of the helping process, the more conversations you have about real estate, the more appointments you will get and the more transactions you will close.

You can’t make more money by cutting expenses

Some people begrudge paying $50 a month for their IDX WordPress website that they own. Other people spend $1200+ on renting a lead generation website + PPC costs and pay the money happily every month. What’s the difference?

The person spending the big bucks is converting their leads. They are getting regular commission checks and a positive ROI. They are committed to getting results. Of course spending $xx per month on a website or anything else will be a pain, if it doesn’t make you money.

Positive ROI is just a fancy way of saying, if you spend $1, you want to make back more than that. You need to be able to draw a direct line from the money you are spending to the money you are making.

Those who stop marketing to save money are like those who stop a clock to save time. – Henry Ford

Cutting expenses is a good idea, but it can only save you money, once you cut them all you are back to $0 a month. Focus on how you can generate more money first and foremost, there is no upper limit to that.

The real trick is you don’t need a $1200 a month website to get results. But what you absolutely do need is the smart business mindset of a person investing in their business and systematically measuring the results.

The person who converts the most, can afford to spend the most

If you are converting more of your leads than your competitors you can afford to spend more money to buy those same leads. This is super powerful when it comes to bidding against other people for leads, e.g. in Google Adwords.

The more transactions you close, the more happy customers you will get, which in turn brings more referrals and more money you can pour back into effective marketing.

Every happy customer you make is another person that won’t be buying, selling or referring through your competitors.

The teams that are going to take market share over the next 5 years are going to be the ones with the most presence online and the biggest databases. The teams that will be able to afford a large online presence are the ones that know their time and money spent online is converting on the backend into more business.

Action Time

I want you to pick just one part of your lead conversion process to improve today.

Speed of response, number of calls you make to each lead or number of emails you send.

Get committed to improving just one part, not just try it for a few days and then go back to your old habits.

If you normally send just one email, send one on the second day as well. If your currently not sending anything, just send one email.

Internet lead conversion is a process which you control and which will yield you massive financial returns if you get it right, are you committed to making it work? or do you just want the result of the work without going through the process?

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