RISMEDIA, May 4, 2010—Derrick Jackson of Chase Real Estate in Naperville, Illinois, was relating his immediate success with his entirely new approach to Internet prospecting with enthusiasm. “I wish I would have known about this when I first got my license,” Derrick reflected. “I wasted a lot of time, money and emotion trying marketing programs and techniques that didn’t work. This works. I know each geographic market can be different, but this is as close to a no-brainer as it gets. These contacts represent real people who are looking for homes now. A Realtor’s most difficult challenge is getting people to ‘walk through the door.’ This system helps you sift through the Internet to find those people.”
Derrick continued: “Let me give you just one example of what I am talking about. I sold my first home from the program in 17 days. The price was $244,000 and it was the second contact I received. My site opened up for business on the 30th of the month and the contact came in on 6th of the next month. We went out on showings on the 10th and 17th and a contract was signed on the 17th. I also have several additional leads I’m working, the best of which is looking for a $500,000 primary residence and an apartment building for investment purposes just under $2 million. Before I had this system, I was struggling to find connections with real contacts (people ready to take action) and my average property sold was $189,000. I had no idea that any system could make things happen so quickly. I had tried other tools, like RealtyTrac and another service, but they didn’t work out for me. My professionally managed lead site is even better at getting customers to initiate contacts with me than I ever thought it could be.”
Clearly, the system is good for Derrick Jackson, and just as clearly, the system is great for his clients, too: any system that produces buyers quickly is good for everyone.
Customer-initiated contacts
What Derrick Jackson has happily discovered is that the new methodology of an interactive, professionally managed lead site has transformed the entire task of Internet prospecting from a drudge to a pleasure: when a customer contacts any agent with questions about properties, the agent opens a dialog with a real buyer who is usually a long way into the buying process. (The professionally managed lead site is an interactive site with an entirely different focus than an ordinary website that yields entirely different results for the owner.)
Simply put, professional marketers take over your Internet prospecting chores and attract Internet buyers to contact you with their real estate questions. It’s not like buying ‘leads’ or endlessly making telephone calls trying to uncover someone who is truly looking for a property in your target market; it’s someone already seriously looking for a property contacting you and asking for your assistance in the process. Because these contacts are real buyers, it is not uncommon for users to convert these contacts to escrow quickly. Derrick did so in 17 days; an agent in Norco, California put three into escrow in his first month; an agent in rural South Carolina did the same. Other agents everywhere have many millions of dollars of transactions in progress. Not everyone using the professionally managed lead site will have success this quickly, but many do, and successful agents are located in 49 of the 50 states and five Provinces.
Over time, however, most agents have success in selling homes to customer-initiated contacts for the simple reason that these contacts are real buyers, for the most part. They are well along in the process when they contact you. Not all buyers convert quickly: An agent in Windsor, Ontario, just closed his first transaction that took six months from contact to funding (and that one commission on that one sale so far is about five times what that agent has spent on his subscription to date). Today’s focus isn’t on how fast you can sell homes, it’s: “Will this help me sell homes?” The answer with interactive professionally managed lead sites is “absolutely, yes.”
It is well known today that most home buyers begin the process without an agent—searching online for what they want, viewing endless listings, becoming frustrated at the lack of agent’s response to them and finally making the effort to contact someone who will help them consummate their dream. When they reach out, you have to be there.
There is a right way and a wrong way to manage these contacts
Derrick is more receptive to new techniques than some others are. He paid attention to his PMLS coaching and he implemented what it told him to do to help develop these contacts into active clients. “I learned that—although I certainly knew how to follow up with contacts – there were a few things I didn’t know about following up with Internet contacts. I took the “How to follow up” course twice,” he told us, “and it has paid off tremendously for me. The vast majority of my contacts have been very receptive because I call them immediately (within the first 15-30min of receiving the contact). I text them if I’m somewhere I can’t call (like a closing). If no number is given, I email them immediately and send them exactly what they ask for. Or, I tell them I’m looking for what they have requested and will get back to them shortly. When I do this, people seem to be happy and very easy to work with.”
He explained: “Prior to obtaining my interactive professionally managed lead site, I’ve never really found a way to consistently generate high-quality contacts. I would get so-called ‘leads’ but they usually were from people who were not ready or willing to take action; lots of them gave false contact information or were not real people—some of them gave a false name when signing in somewhere because they weren’t really looking for a home, they were just looking at their computer the way many people watch television—out of boredom. Now, I get contacts that actually give me true information (no phony phone numbers, etc.) and often tell me in the contact form exactly what they want. Selling homes is so much easier when one is speaking to a real buyer. For example, here is what my first buyer asked for on his contact form: ‘Looking for a single family home, maybe a foreclosure, with garage, Naperville, IL. Price range: $200,000-$250,000.’ That’s exactly what I found for him and that’s exactly what he bought.
“My job is to give clients what they want and to match them with inventory, perhaps even one of my listings. When their contact comes in with exactly what they want in that customer-initiated contact, it’s a tremendous jump-start to the selling process.”
The interactive professionally managed lead site is not for every agent
There are agents who have received customer-initiated contacts and have sold nothing. It happens. Most often it happens when the agent just won’t follow up properly; you know, mindlessly dumping people into a drip email system without talking to them, first; not calling them back within minutes, or not calling them back at all – when those things happen, the contact goes somewhere else—to an agent who will respond to his contact. Even the best contacts spoil if not treated carefully. If you are “too busy” to immediately contact people who contact you looking for advice or assistance, please don’t get one of these interactive sites: the public is more than tired of entering information and not being contacted in any kind of relevant period. Simply put, if an agent won’t properly follow up a customer-initiated contact, there’s nothing we can do to help them.
Derrick’s outlook for 2010
Chase Real Estate has focused on foreclosures all across the vast suburbs of Chicago known as ‘Chicagoland.’ “My company specializes in handling them because we have a system for assisting clients from start to finish that works very well,” Derrick states. “Foreclosures and distressed properties was not a difficult target to choose when one realizes that in January 2010 alone, 58% of all home sales in the United States were distressed properties of some kind. I have been able to focus my professionally managed lead site on that market specialty and the results are so encouraging that – at the very least – I believe I will triple my gross commission income in 2010.”
We’ll check back with him to see if he does so, but with a clear target focus and a constant flow of customer-initiated contacts flowing to his phone and computer, I wouldn’t bet against it. In fact, I’d say it was pretty much a “no brainer!”
Would you like to receive customer-initiated contacts like those mentioned in this article? We will show you how you can – within weeks – if you click here. With special offers expiring soon on professionally managed lead sites, there will never be a better time to start selling to Internet buyers. Mike Parker welcomes your questions about online marketing: mparker@theblackwatercg.com.
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