Speed and Persistence in Handling Real Estate Website Leads

How many times have you heard "I never get any leads or good leads from my web site?" If you are not getting any leads, you should take a good look at your web site. Are you promoting it properly? Is it set up to capture leads? Is the content on your web site what really makes sense on a real estate web site?

This article is more concerned about the leads that actually come to you from your real estate web site. To be successful with these leads, you have to be quick and persistent. What do I mean by that?

The quick part is pretty scary. Depending on the statistics you read, almost half the leads from the Internet are never even followed  up on. Ouch! If you spent money on a web site one would think converting the leads would pay for it. Statistics will also tell you that a huge number of prospects will work with the first agent they contact. Hmm.. Quick response increases your odds that you will be that one.

The persistence part makes sense when you start to put yourself in the place of an Internet shopper. Say you are looking to buy a new refrigerator. You start to visit different sites to find out about prices and features. You may be thinking it would be nice to have it for the holidays. You visit 4 sites. 2 send you information and the other 2 just plain don't respond. A couple of months go by. One site never sends you anything else. The other site sends you a series of emails telling you when they have a sale, information about different features, warranty information and information about the best temperature to keep your food. You get one or two of these a month. Now you are ready to buy. Who are you going to contact?

Most Internet visitors to real estate web sites are either impulse buyers who are ready right now or are just gathering preliminary information for a possible transaction in the future. The way to handle the long term prospects is to set up an automated follow up system on your web site. Once it is set up it is very little additional work. The competition falls away just like in our refrigerator example.

With the automated follow up systems available today, you have a chance to fill your pipeline for the future. By persistently following up, you have the opportunity some time in the future to do business. You also have the chance for referrals.

From now on when you have a lead from your real estate web site be fast and if that doesn't work be persistent in an automated way.