How To Manage Your Leads More Efficiently
In my last post “ Website Design & Usability Make a Huge Difference ” I had mentioned that we could discuss ways to improve conversions by using a good lead manager (CRM).
Once you are able to get a web design that has great usability that has lowered your bounce rate and improved your traffic. Now what do you do with all the users signing up and all the new email requests about properties?
On the old site we did all this manually. We were living in the stone age as far as how we kept track of the leads and assigned them to agents on the team. The users (leads) would sign up on the site and we would export all the leads daily that we did not mark as called from the day before and then send out a percentage to the different agents on the team. We handled the email requests from the site checking our spreadsheet to see if the lead had been assigned and then send a response back to the user letting the lead know our team member would be contacting them. We of course CC’D the agent and that was their trigger to call and follow up. Pretty archaic and very labor intensive.
When we redesigned the site and created the new IDX search we also decided to create our own Lead Management System (CRM) that would talk with the site. We have a team and serve the whole state (all Islands) of Hawaii. Our goal was to make it as efficient as possible and be able to have the system assign to agents on a Round Robin basis based on geographic regions as they came in. The goal was also to make it scalable and work in market.
We launched the new system a week ago and it is making a huge difference already. The agents are actually able to get back to the users when they are still on the site. This allows our agents to let them know how the site works and how they can use it as a tool to get new listings as they become available. Creating a personal relationship with the user when they first start using the site is huge and will definitely increase conversions :-). The agents are also able to login in as the user and save searches for them if they are a little computer challenged.
Here are some of the things our new lead manager allows us to do:
5 Different ways to assign leads as they come in:
1. Manual
2. Round Robin
3. Weighted Round Robin
4. Geographic Round Robin
5. Weighted Geographic Round Robin
We also have the ability to enable Idle Lead Reassignment feature — if the agent doesn’t take action on the lead within a specific time frame. The system will reassign the lead to the next available agent and notify the new agent of the new lead plus notify the old agent the lead has been reassigned. Pretty sweet option if you have a slacker on the team 😉
The agents get an email, text message or both when a new lead signs up depending on their settings. Once a lead is assigned to an agent any email requests from that lead from the website gets routed right to that agent. Of course the admin can get copied on all this if they choose to.
The system allows the agent to add activities, schedule follow-ups and many other cool things that all get archived in the detailed lead page. All the users activity from the website gets logged into the leads detailed page as well. Things like email requests, # of searches, visits, properties viewed, favorite properties, last logged in and much more.
The agent is also able to sort their leads by many different ways like– start date, time frames, urgency level, # of searches, activity level, plus others. It even has a pretty awesome advanced search option that you can set up different filters and save them. You can export the leads many different ways as well.
All agents and admin users have a dashboard that allows them to see things at a glance including up coming scheduled follows, past due follow ups, new leads, # leads today, # leads this week, # leads this month. Follow up stats, incoming emails.
The admin has more features and can see agent activity at a glance in a table that shows agents:
Leads: today, week, month & total.
Follow Ups: completed & past due.
Incoming emails.
All these items are links and can be viewed in detail by the admin.
One thing that I think is really helpful is the daily email reminder that goes out to the agent letting them know how many leads that still need attention, the # of follow ups for the day and the number of past due follow ups. Of course the admin can get that same email as well. The system also will send out an email reminder 3 hours prior to a follow up as well.
As I mentioned before, the new Lead Manager is already making a huge difference in our business. I would love to hear how you are following up on your website leads and what has worked for you. I am always interested in learning something new and growing from others.
BTW: I will be buzzing around networking in San Diego at NAR this next week and would love to meet new people in the business that are working hard to improve their business. Sharing is great way to do that!! My cell is 808-295-5714
PS: Sorry about the length of the post 🙂
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 19:39h, 08 NovemberI'm definitely interested – what kind of software are you using? Is is custom, or some off-the-shelf package that was integrated into your system?
We've been doing this manually for far too long, I'd love to follow your lead and take some of the busywork out.
John Wake
Posted at 21:38h, 08 NovemberDon't expect a lot of people to tell you how they follow up internet leads after reading what your impressive system does. It would sound silly.
Top 10 real estate posts of the day for 11/9/2009 : Hassle Free Phoenix Area Home Search
Posted at 09:34h, 09 November[…] How to manage your leads more efficiently – So you have a new fancy website that is getting you lots of leads, now […]
sherwoods
Posted at 23:55h, 09 NovemberA very good blog and one of the lengthiest blog….for best and spacial offers and hot deals of the week in indian property market…we will serve you best
Jeff Manson
Posted at 07:32h, 10 November@ Sam – It is a custom solution I had my developers program along with the custom IDX integration. Did not want to use a top producer type that was not talking with the IDX and website ( as little manual inputting as possible). The thing even flags bad emails which is nice to know. Sometimes the user does a typo by mistake.
@John – There is always room for improvement and this old dog likes to learn new tricks 🙂
lizklaser
Posted at 10:19h, 10 NovemberSounds like you guys are using Net Aspects. We use them here in San Diego. We have had much success and use them with our agents and broker solution. We do mass eFarming and traditional marketing that drives clients to our website and captures the leads from there. Our client care department (web leads) has increased 10 fold since implementing this new product. Our biggest challenge is getting the “old time” agents to understand the new internet-type buyer. We are getting the conversions, however. It is a great program, you just have to train the agents to utilize all the functionality of the back office and how to understand the client reporting.
Jeff Manson
Posted at 10:29h, 10 NovemberHi lizklaser – Thanks for jumping in!
No we are not using Net Aspects. We are using Real Geeks solution (want to disclose I am a principle in Real Geeks for the record).
Ne we do not do mass email farming. We consider that to be spam. Unless a user is signing up to be on a news letter, I think most would consider that spam.
Our system actually captures users that sign up on the site to get email updates of new listings and then we using the Lead Manager (CRM) that is integrated with our custom IDX search to follow up with them.
Pretty simple.
Liz Klaser
Posted at 11:47h, 10 NovemberThat is actually what we do as well. However, the agents have the ability to take their sphere, past clients, web leads, etc. and set them up on eFarming campaigns. They have been successful because we usually don't do the standard “How to sell you home” emails. We will send out “Hot on the Market” with our Investor inventory properties, or when our Little League Team won the World Series we did a bunch of emails to our clients on their progress (they really responded to those!) So we find the community based eFarm campaigns keep our clients connected to us and the IDX searches they can set up and get daily, weekly or monthly updates just adds. I try to instruct our agents to send out information that gives value, not generic info. Our system also assigns an interest level number to each client based on what they do, number of times they read an email, search your site, save a property search, save a property, etc. Each item is worth a number value, so you can sort your clients by interest level and then go into their audit trail to see exactly what they've been up to and respond appropriately. The same for our Relocation Department that runs the same system. Also, if a client has been idle we get email notification and we can reinitiate contact with the client.
Jeff Manson
Posted at 15:02h, 10 NovemberSounds similar to what we have created. We also have an activity level rating based on user behavior.
zen
Posted at 21:37h, 12 NovemberReally fabulous tips dude. Thanks for sharing.
commercial_mortgage_leads
Posted at 01:16h, 20 NovemberI have not much time, but I've got many useful things here, love it!
fprice
Posted at 15:17h, 20 NovemberJeff,
We have a live managed chat solution as well…would welcome your review of it. http://www.activsalesagent.com Thanks
Fred W Price
Posted at 23:17h, 20 NovemberJeff,
We have a live managed chat solution as well…would welcome your review of it. http://www.activsalesagent.com Thanks