Agents are burning cash by not valuing their leads!

“….the leads were poor quality.”

A former client posted this on an ad I was running on Facebook for my current webinar training series and it hit me right in the feels – I HATE not getting great results for my clients.

I’m also the first to preach “don’t listen to the trolls and the haters” – hell I even tell you to run your Facebook page like a totalitarian regime and control the flow of information – but it doesn’t mean that you don’t feel like you’ve been kicked in the ol’ jatz crackers every time someone takes a shot.

So what was this guy a troll or did he have a genuine complaint?

I’ve stewed on this for a fortnight and finally, I cracked it – there was only one way to know for sure and that was to go back and cross reference every lead produced with every property sold in his postcodes.

Now a bit of back story – this agent (who I won’t name and shame, as this isn’t really about them), was with Check My House Price (my lead generation company) for about a month in 2016, they spent $398 on two postcodes before cancelling stating the leads were poor quality.

In that time we generated 27 leads for them – not a bad effort in a tough market.

So was his complaint a genuine one, or like so many agents, had he simply not placed the correct value on the leads?

Here’s what my research found

Of the 27 leads we generated in that month, 4 have now sold for a cumulative total of $4,770,000 – that’s $95,400 in comm at 2%.

Another is currently on the market at $1,500,000 (another $30,000 comm at 2%) and two others have now been rented out.

None of which were sold or rented by the agent who was with us at the time and who was given, through CMHP, first bite of the cherry LONG before any other agent knew these properties even existed.

Now this may seem like a big whinge, but it’s definitely not intended to be that way – the intent here is to illustrate the short term thinking that is prevalent in our industry as a whole and the value of a lead.

On average (nationwide), about 1 in 3 leads generated through Facebook and Check My House Price, sell within 12 months of making an inquiry. Most agents drop off the contact trail after 3 contacts or a couple of months…….

Most of the remaining leads sell within the 12 months to 7 year window.

This is why having follow up systems and valuing every lead, every contact is so vital. Ask yourself, would you spend $1 today knowing it could make you $315 in the next 12 months? Of course you would – yet so many agents will generate a lead, then give up on it when it doesn’t immediately produce a listing.

But lets put this in perspective of this story, would you spend $398 today if you knew it would generate you $125,400 over the next 18 months? Again the answer would be a resounding and ecstatic “YES!”

$125,400 in commission is nothing to sneeze at – in fact if we’re to believe the surveys that go around from time to time, it’s nearly 3 times the average annual wage of a real estate agent.

So why then, do agents throw away leads if they don’t list and sell with relative immediacy?

It’s not a question I can answer for you, but I can tell you stories like the one above aren’t uncommon.

This agent spent $398 and was given the opportunity at $125,400 in commission before any other agent even knew these people were considering selling – but they walked away stating that the leads were “poor quality.”

Within 12 months, 3 other agents had shared in over $90,000 of that commission, while 6 months later a fourth was sitting pretty with a listing due to bring them $30,000.

What that means is that each of the 27 leads generated in that month were worth $4,644.44 over the next 18 months. So every one of those leads coming into your office, what does that make them worth?

So what does all this have to do with Facebook, aside from the fact the leads were generated on Facebook?

There is no better way to stay top of mind, to provide consistent touch points and provide maximum value to your future sellers than Facebook.

If you’d like to learn how to maximize your reach, your return on investment and actually get Facebook working for you in your real estate career, join me on my latest webinar by registering at www.fbmacademy.com.au/webinar