The change is happening no doubt about that whatsoever but it might be that the last people to know about it are the salespeople.

We survey each salesperson after every sale and where they believe the first and primary contact was initiated.

Similarly we also formally survey each and every buyer a range of questions including where their primary contact with the salesperson was from.

The differences are amazing with buyers highlighting the internet at around 60% and over which is dramatically higher than what the salespeople indicated.

I was speaking with another principal on Friday who said that it was not until he started surveying his buyers did he realise that the internet is responsible for so much. He said till then he thought that the internet enquiries were virtually a waste of time.

It seems the buyers know it and some of us are just realizing its full potential only now.. I would suggest that anybody who believes that the internet does not result in a significant amount of sales in their office should start asking the buyers and not their sales team if our experience is anything to go by.

Maybe a few BFO moments are needed.

Thanks Dave.. our CRM package has been spitting out surveys now for over 8 years and it is interesting to compare trends between years.

Slightly removed but still related, one statistic that I find very interesting is the average number of inspections per buyer per week.

8 years ago in our office the office average was around 3 to 4 with peaks hitting 5 to 6. These days the average is closer to 1.5 with peaks hitting 1.8 to 2. Sure, every now and again a salesperson will get an individual case where they show plenty of homes to one buyer, but as an average across the week it always comes back to the same figures.

That change is huge and I blame the internet. No longer do we get buyers walking into the office asking to be shown everything we have between x price and y. After you show them a couple of homes you always had one up your sleeve just in case. When you dealt with a buyer you wrote at least a few hours out of your diary. Most importantly, all this extra time with your buyer meant you built a relationship with the client as you conducted an inspection run.

The internet empowers the buyers and now they know exactly what you have listed and what you dont. They now tell you exactly what they want to see and if you do think of something else that might suit they ask you to email them the link so they can consider it. An inspection run now consists of a buyer moving from agent to agent looking at individual properties one after another. Salespeople have very minimal contact time with a buyer now.

The internet is changing not just the source of leads but also things like how we deal with buyers. The good agents change their systems and procedures to deal with this change.

Last Friday I asked these questions of the same principal I mentioned earlier:-

1/ many email leads did you receive from each of the portals over the last month?

2/ How many were responded to and by which sales members?

3/ What was the average, median, quickest and longest time to respond to these enquries by individual salesperson and the office in total?

4/ If you had to rate your internet lead replies from a scale from 1 to 10 where a 1 is no reply at all and a 10 does everything you would expect in a professional reply (ie. professional layout, correct spelling and grammar, good detail on the property, asking for the inspection, offering alternative if sold, asking for the opportunity to assist with their current property ..etc etc etc) what would be the result for each salesperson and the office as a whole?

His responses in order were
1/ Dunno but I could count them up somewhere I suppose
2/ Don’t really know..
3/ Mine are normally pretty good but I would not know about the team.
4/ Thats a good point… maybe a 2 or 3

Now that sort of response would be fairly typical would it not? Why..?

For something that is responsible for 40 to 60% for most offices I doubt there would be too many agencies who would have those answers at their fingertips and very few could even go and research the results.

Till then, spending money, whether it be 100, 200 or 300% more than last year is like throwing money into the wind in my opinion no matter who or where you are. If you do a terrible job handling your leads and it is still a driver of 50% of your sales, why wouldn’t you handle those leads better rather than spend a whole lot more money?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not actually saying the agents you listed have it wrong What choice do they have? nor am I saying that I can answer the 4 questions, but I would like to.

The problem stems from the fact that everything involved in this process focuses on the quantity above all else. You just have to look at your own press releases for that. How many leads did REA deliver more than Domain, what percentage increase in leads did you each achieve. The simple truth that none of you seem to publish is that a significant amount of those leads went unanswered and the vast majority of them were handled very poorly.

Throwing money at a solution like that when they are generally handling the leads it generates pretty badly just does not seem all that smart.

Dave, here is a quick survey for you if you are interested… randomly pick 5 to 10 competing agents in a number of different locales from each state and fire off an email enquiry using your system on one of their properties at various times through the day and let us know the result.

They have a free listing offer for agents and a no “upfront cost” listing for private advertisers with a commision of 0.5% on a succesful sale - aprox $2k on a $400,000 sale.

Is this helpful for agents…Mmm?

http://www.onthehouse.com.au/sell/