RealTown's RealTalk

I have narrowed it down to the following and would love to hear what others have to say if they are using websites from these companies: Z57, Real Pro Systems, Ala Mode, Top Producer, Number 1 Expert, Birdview, Web Agent Solutions and Point 2 Agent.

JoAnn,

I had a Z57 site a few years ago and got no results from it. I had a Realtor.com website which had slightly better results. 1 year ago I signed up with Compass Internet and was told that my Realtor.com site was difficult to optimize. Compass helped me set up a Point2 site in September and told me that the Platform change could mean a drop in search engine results and leads for a little while. They were right. My site is now ranking much better on most search engines and is getting more traffic and more inquiries. The Compass service team has undergone some changes and growing pains in the last year, but the support I have gotten from them recently has been markedly improved. The service person I have been working with for the last few months has recommended changes that have immediately gotten some hits. I am pleased with their service and with the Point2 site. I have the professional version of the site and have been amazed lately to see people opting in to the drip email campaigns that are part of the professional plan.

Good luck with your search.

Lisa Rosenfield

>>>Now in looking at the Top Producers recognized each and every year by the Northern Virginia Association of REALTORS here in the suburbs of Washington, DC with over 11,000 members, the #1 Top Agent/Team only closed somewhere over 300 sales. The next highest closed just over 200 sales. #5 through #10 closed less than 100 sales, with #10 closing around 70 sales - or about 6 transactions a month. (And these Top Agent/Teams are not solely relying on the Internet for their prospecting either.)

>>>So if someone is really getting over 2,500 leads a year from their web site and is closing just 300 of those (assuming that 100% of their real estate business comes from their web site), that is a 12% closing ratio of leads to actual closings (a little more than 1 in every 10 ends up as a sale). And if that salesperson is a "mere mortal", and not one of the real estate industry's Super Stars, with less than 50 closed transactions per year, that is only a 2% closing ratio out of that many inquiries or even far worse if that agent had fewer sales.

>>>This just doesn't add up. If these numbers are true for some, there must be something wrong with this picture if a top producing agent can only close 2% to 12% of all of the Internet inquiries they are getting! Or else the inquiries are either extremely poor quality or the numbers per day being cited here by some are very suspect. ;-)

Win, am I correct that many of those Top Producers in Northern Virginia are actually teams or groups within a brokerage? That is, Sally Smith did not personally close 300 sides in a year, rather Sally Smith and 10 associates (or whatever number) closed that many sides.

Long ago I wrote about a Top Producer in Northern Virginia who did $42 million -- in 1989. He had a total of 230 transactions and a staff of nine.

The Top Producer had a major mailing operation which allowed him to get such numbers. He sent out roughly 80,000 pieces of mail per month. If he got a response of one-tenth of one percent each month then he was doing great -- that's 80 inquiries which translated into about 20 transactions. Remember that both postage and homes were a lot cheaper back then.

As I have written somewhere, I would imagine that the number of leads per site relates to a variety of factors, including but not limited to:

___ The quality of the site in terms of content and design. As Nielsen reports, a typical page visit in November (the last month available) was 50 seconds. If you can't capture hearts and minds in less than a minute you're done.

___ Traffic -- with a caution. Traffic is not the real measure of site success, the real measure is the business traffic produces. It's like the guy who has a store in Times Square that sells bricks. There's a lot of traffic but not a lot of sales. Alternatively, I suspect there are a number of sites with little traffic but impressive sale results because the site owners know how to get a lot from every lead.

___ The marketing of the site, both online and off.

___The marketing of the site owner, both online and off (that is, people will know to search for Sally Smith because they have heard the name).

___ The size of the local market. More people are likely to be looking in bigger population centers.

___ Email responsiveness (how quickly emails are answered, and how well).

___ Outgoing email volume with newsletters and such.

___ Coordinated marketing -- making sure that off-line and online marketing efforts complement one another.

And, as Jim Lee points out, I continue to "define a quality lead as something that I think has a reasonable expectation of producing a sale leading to a commission check I can deposit in my bank account."
 

Some things just never change....

All the best,

Peter G. Miller

OurBroker.com