Agents Can Win With Fast Follow-Up

Timing is key in business, especially in real estate. Home buyers and sellers expect prompt, personalized follow-up when reaching out to a real estate professional. This expectation has even increased with the widespread usage of smartphones. As a result, agents and brokers who fail to respond promptly to new inquiries will simply lose these opportunities to competitors.

If you're not on top of your follow-up game, you should make it a key piece in your business growth strategy. And, as many studies have proven, you'll be rewarded by focusing on responding in a matter of minutes, not hours.

3 Studies on Lead Follow-up Time and Conversion

Here are the results from three different studies which emphasize how important timely follow-up is to your lead qualification and conversion success.

• Harvard Business Review

  This study looked at 1.25 million sales leads received by 29 business-to-consumer and 13 business-to-business companies in the U.S. They found that firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later. They were more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer.

  

  Oldroyd, James B., Kristina McElheran, and David Elkington. "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads." Harvard Business Review, March 2011.
  
  

• California Association of Realtors

  According to a report by C.A.R., 94% of consumers expect an answer in less than one hour yet only 36% of agents respond within 1 hour. This means that agents who respond to inquiries within 1 hour will outperform 64% of their peers.
  
  

• WAV Group

  A responsiveness study conducted by WAV Group across 384 different brokers across 11 states revealed average response time was 15.29 hours. Victor Lund of WAV Group concluded:

  “These numbers reveal a staggering failure of real estate professionals to serve the consumer. But this failure represents an important opportunity. If brokers and agents take steps to rectify this problem and respond more effectively to consumers, they are opening the door to a great increase in revenue.”

  WAV Group. "Agent Responsiveness Study Reveals Critical Flaws in Real Estate Lead Response." WAV Group Consulting, 13 Jan. 2014.
  
  

The Follow-Up Challenge in Real Estate

A real estate professional's job is nothing like the traditional 9-to-5 office job. Many agents and brokers don't even get to the office more than once or twice a week. Instead, they are often on-the-go, meeting prospective customers, knocking on doors, attending networking meetings etc. This makes timely and personalized responses to every new inquiry even more challenging and unrealistic.

Real Estate Technology to the Rescue

There's a reason most successful agents and brokers take advantage of technology and automation tools designed specifically for the real estate industry. Technology solutions ensure consistent, timely follow-up for every precious inquiry. If you're really trying to grow your business, you can't afford to slip in your follow-up.

AgentWebsite's Answer

AgentWebsite + Pro IDX + CRM includes Marketing Automation. This provides an easy solution that gives agents and brokers peace of mind in knowing every new inquiry is being taken care of with consistent, timely follow-up. And personalized, automated emails continue the engagement process after the initial follow-up to help agents and brokers efficiently move each lead further through the funnel.

Follow-up & Engagement
New leads are placed in ready-to-use email campaigns that keep the conversation going, making you appear to be a vigorous researcher with lots of time to send personalized emails, even though the system is doing it all on auto-pilot while you're focusing on other important aspects of your business.

Smart Content
Marketing Automation email campaigns include Smart Content which places listing recommendations and market data within the emails based on leads' property search and viewing behavior.

Lead Aggregation
Even new leads from third-party lead generation systems like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and over 30 others, flow into the AgentWebsite + Pro IDX + CRM account and follow-up email campaigns.

Single Login
Will all leads in one place, you don't have to juggle multiple systems to keep track of your leads and your follow-up activities. Our goal is to help make you more efficient so you can focus on doing what you do best.