The National Association of REALTORS® is not necessarily the first place that REALTORS® would turn to get advise on Internet Lead Management, but they have stepped up to the plate as a resource. Quite nicely I would add.
In a paper published this week, Todd Carpenter, Managing Director of the Data Analytics Group at NAR, published a paper titled The Intelligent Internet Lead, Providing Context, Coaching & Confidence to Web Source Leads.
Click Here for Download http://crt.blogs.realtor.org/2014/05/27/crt-white-paper-the-intelligent-internet-lead/
WAV Group has performed a lot of research on online marketing, mostly for the purpose of providing MLSs and brokers with good research for setting strategy and policy. Our discovery has led us to the primary issue that faces real estate today – more than ½ of consumer leads are never responded to, and when they are – the follow up efforts to convert the leads are too low to be effective. This paper from NAR attacks this problem.
In an effort to Raise the Bar in real estate and support the service levels that consumers get from REALTORS® and REALTOR® websites like realtor.com, NAR has published this paper. Carpenter does a great job of outlining best practices for REALTORS® to follow and provides a plethora of online solutions that will support REALTORS® on their journey to provide better support to the online consumer seeking real estate information.
“This is a real issue for professional real estate agents,” says Marilyn Wilson of the WAV Group. “REALTORS® can’t complain about intermediaries between them and the consumer if they are not going to close the gap and service the consumer.” Many agents are brokers are frustrated with third party listing websites providing online services to consumers. Regardless of the frustration, they continue to advertise listings online. Not responding to leads is pure insanity. In other industries before real estate, the failure to provide consumers with an online service level has led to the disintermediation of that professional.
Spoiler Alert: If REALTORS® do not engage in the online consumer, they will lose their position as the agent for the consumer to someone or some service that will.
If you have not tackled this issue in your business, download this paper and learn about some of the tools that REALTORS® may use to find the path to providing better service to consumers. Carpenter outlines 5 agent CRM solutions that will help with lead management. RE Technology provides product information on 57 CRM products for agents http://retechnology.com/agent/categories/products/crm#main_container
RE Technology also provides product information on 51 companies that provide enterprise CRM Solutions for brokers http://retechnology.com/broker/categories/products/crm#main_container
