LeadRouter revisited

While I am pretty impressed with my post output for the month of January I noticed that all of them were what I call "academic" sort of posts...they used another situation to try to make a comparison or teach something. While I am sure my professors (or our Education Director) would be proud of that, this time I want to be more concrete.

Specifically I want to talk about lead distribution and LeadRouter. If you have never been trained to use LeadRouter, stop reading this and take the online class from Coldwell Banker University. If you are trained, however, let me do a little recap on how the process works.

First of all, LeadRouter is NOT a lead generator. It does not find people shopping for homes on the internet and force them to tell us their name and email address so we can go get them and bring them into our office. Sorry. Rather, LeadRouter is a TOOL for distributing the names and email addresses of people who are interested in our homes for sale to an agent quickly. Research shows that consumers are likely to work with the FIRST agent who gets back to them - even if that agent may not be the best one for the job. LeadRouter helps us be first by delivering the lead info to our cell phones.

Now, if you were with us in January 2009 you may recall my office tour to discuss lead distribution strategy. In those meetings (remember I played this cool video about the future beforehand?)
then you recall that I said that our new lead strategy was that leads would be delivered to the listing agent first, and the lead would be delivered Referral Fee Free. Well, that policy is still in force a year later...and we still use LeadRouter to make it happen most of the time.

BUT BUT BUT...there's more to the story

Just because you are the listing agent doesn't mean I am going to let you kill leads. No siree. If you mark a lead dead (or bogus) I reserve the right to hand it to someone else to check out. According to research done throughout our brand network, more than 80% of leads are killed within the first 48 hours after we receive them! That is amazing...and sad. The average internet consumer searches for up to a year for a house, yet because they didn't email us back within 48 hours with their best date to write a contract we mark them dead. Yikes.

Anyway...if that happens I ask other agents to follow up; maybe to see if there is still a chance for us. We have sold a few properties this way. What that means is that if you mark a lead dead/bogus because it was your friend (or because you didn't want to deal with the update process involved with LeadRouter) that person is most likely going to hear from another agent - and that agent is going to work hard to sell them a home.

Finally, some of you have noticed that some leads do not come from LeadRouter, rather, they come via email from me. That is because some of the web forms that exist out there are not compatible with LeadRouter so I distribute them personally. Sorry I am not as fast as the LR system but I do try my best. In each of those cases, however, I also use my handheld phone or my laptop to look up the listing agent before I send that email lead.

As we get into the warmer months I hope lead traffic will continue to increase. We do pretty well now, I want to see us do even better. With that said I wanted to provide a quick refresher on how things work. If you have a question post it here - none are off limits - and I will answer for the whole group to see.

Do you give $6 haircuts or fix them?

I know you've all been busy lately, so time for a quick commercial break...note that you may need to sign into your facebook acct to make this one work.

Click here to watch this video from Office Depot

I have seen this a few times (I guess NFL games are a key delivery method for Office Depot) and each time I do I think of my colleagues in real estate sales.

You see, the $6 haircut guy is the "new business model" broker. I'm not using any brand names here but you all get the idea. Cut commissions, discounted services, basically anything they can do to get the bargain-conscious consumer in the door. In economies like this one, $6 "Nitro Cutz" are popping up all over.

You, my Hearthside friends, are the guy who FIXES the $6 haircut. Be proud of that. You have been well-trained. You have tools at your disposal, and a management team that wants to see you make money too.

Hiring you may cost more, but at the end of the day who is going to have a good looking coiffure? Uh-huh.

OK, commercial time over...back to reality.

Go get 'em

Delivering on expectations (a.k.a. "Be careful who you piss off")

Shame on me - it's a Friday morning and I am looking at my twitter stream a bit too much (but I figure it is more productive than looking out the window, right?). At about 10:00 this morning I noticed some tweet traffic from one of the rock stars of social media - Chris Brogan. (if you have no idea who this guy is set aside the next few minutes and visit his site; and then promise me you'll never call yourself a social media expert again).

Anyway, Chris was (as he very often is) traveling around the country and sharing with his followers (more than 117,000 of them) a ton of info about the trip. Chris is known for putting it all out there when he is on the road.

Check out some of the tweet traffic (bold & italics mine) from his flight from Dallas to Boston...

"And now the @southwestair ticket counter doesn't have a ticket though I'm checked in. #sigh. Today's my boy's birthday. Need to get home"

and then....

"Now buying my own ticket as I've somehow messed up the ticket @southwestair tried giving me. #noteasy."

and then...

"Somehow, this is my fault."

OK, up to this point nothing but an idiot traveler story, right? Yawn. Granted the boy's birthday part tugged on the heartstrings - but nothing to make me stop doing something to pay much attention (probably had it not been Friday I would have quit looking).

But now it gets good...

"Yep. My fault. @southwestair sent a paper ticket to me. Guess that's the linchpin. No paper, no fly. Whoops. #1964technology"

and then the final pre-flight tweet - the proverbial "Nail in the Coffin"

"Really was my fault. But, paper? I'm thwarted by a non-digital transaction? @southwestair, I'll have to stick to things I can't mess up."

So class, do we really think Chris is signing up with Southwest for his next trip to (fill in the blank location)?

Southwest has spent millions upon millions making you believe it is the coolest, most streamlined, best option out there. Sort of the "iPlane". Now one guy is reminding 117,000 people that they shipped him a paper ticket. Oops.

Now it has been a very long time since I flew Southwest, so I am not about to pretend I know the nuances of their booking system. It doesn't matter. Perhaps Chris got a paper ticket because that's what he told them he wanted. Regardless, 117,000+ people (many of whom are business travelers) are at this very moment looking for another flight.

To bring that into our real estate business, if you call a house a "cream puff" it had better be. Just imagine for a second if Chris had started tweeting from your listing about what a dump it was? Oops, 117,000 buyers lost. Heaven forbid he drove a distance to find out it was a dump based on your recommendation...now you and the house are in the target.

Thanks Chris for a quick reminder of how important it is for us to deliver on expectations - or someone out there will be sure to let the rest of us know.

POSTSCRIPT - Go figure, as I was writing this Chris was also writing about his experience...feel free to read it right from the source here.

So you don't think brand is important

As you know, sometimes I like to just share dumb stories from my day that relate to our work in real estate. Today I realized (or remembered as the case may be) that I am a slave to the brand name.

Of course this is not a new affliction. I remember begging my mother for the Nike shoes when the KMart ones would have worked just as well (at 8 I wasn't any more of a world-class athlete than I am now) and throughout high school I was known with the guy who had to have an alligator or a polo player on his shirt. Brand has never been too far from center on my radar screen.

But today trumped those. I finished a lunch appointment and had a few hours left over before I had to be somewhere else. I decided, as many mobile professionals do, that today I would spend the time in the coffee shop sucking up wireless while I sucked down $4 latte.

My bet is that by now you have figured out what brand I was seeking - Starbucks. Armed with my phone/GPS/lifesaving device I found the nearest one and made my way there. Looking at the map it didn't seem that far...but then I remembered that the map is about 1/1000 scale.

So I drove...and drove...and drove. I am certain I passed 50 other places where I could have easily stopped to do my work. Chances are good I gave back 20 minutes to travel from point A to B. Why? Because I was convinced the only place I would have the "right experience" was at a Starbucks. That's the power of a brand name.

Brand matters. Our brand matters. When 99% of people can recognize Coldwell Banker in a blind survey, it matters. When people see blue when you say it, brand matters. When you go on a presentation and they already know you are going to talk about technology because of brand....it matters.

Will they drive 20 extra minutes for it? That is the $64,000 question. Keep going out there and asking it, and we'll keep working to make sure the answer is yes. Given the amount of caffeine I ingested today - I may have it all figured out by morning.

Two fascinating social media stories from last week

So now that my job as the marketing guy here has almost completely shifted from being a print-based job to being an internet one I spend far more time than I used to studying trends, emerging concepts and plain old "cool stuff" that happens online. With that in mind, I want to share two stories with you from my world that hopefully will help you think about how you do your business in the future.

1) The Facebook "Color Mystery"

If you are on facebook and remembered to check in last week, chances are good you saw several of your female acquaintances creating status updates that were simply a color, or a color with a pattern. I know I did, and like most everyone else caught outside of the inside joke had no idea what I was seeing.

Thankfully I didn't just blindly jump in and post a color, because it turned out it was a campaign started to raise breast cancer awareness by asking women to post the color of their bra online. [Editor's note, if you're just finding out about this now, don't go do it...you'll look really silly coming this late to the party].

So millions upon millions of women, ranging from teenagers to 70 year olds, were posting colors and patterns online. But what made this campaign successful? First, it was totally free. Someone started the plan (probably not even the cancer societies) and it spread "virally" until everyone not only was doing it, but everyone who saw it learned what it meant.

Here is a quick video from ABC News that shows just how large this online phenomenon grew in a matter of days.

So what does this mean to you? First of all, don't take facebook lightly. I think that point has been hammered home pretty well at CBH already. If you can start something, even among your small network of friends, it can pay huge dividends down the road. Second, look for opportunities. It just so happens one of my friends owns a lingerie shop in Lahaska. I used this whole "color madness" as an opportunity to promote people to fan her page - just in case they were thinking their post of "white" or "tan" said something about their personality they didn't necessarily want it to say.

2) The Real Estate Zebra has a baby

This one has a bit of a different twist. I have been on twitter (@chrisbeadling) for some time now and over that time have developed relationships with people in the real estate profession that to this date have never met in the real world. That is one of the great things about social networking - it allows you to expand your list of friends, influencers, resources, etc.

Nevertheless, one of the people I follow on twitter is Daniel Rothamel - also known as "The Real Estate Zebra" because of his penchant for refereeing basketball games. Over the last nine months or so his twitter network has followed the stories as his wife (also on twitter and also an active user) carried their first child. Any of us who have been through that process know that it can be fun, can be frustrating, can be boring - but the Zebra did a good job keeping it lighthearted and fun through hundreds of posts, pics and quips.

The "big day" came Saturday just after a win by Zebra's beloved Jets. He kept us all in the loop minute by minute (even admitted when he passed out watching the epidural needle) until he was able to announce the birth. Trust me when I tell you, there were thousands of us checking our phones constantly waiting for the "magic moment" to arrive.

Again, this is a man I have never met. I have had online conversations with both he and his wife and I think they are fun people - at least in 140 characters. So why was I so fascinated by this whole thing? Heck, my cousin had twins two weeks before and I didn't know a thing until after someone had counted twenty fingers and twenty toes. It was because social networks are by their nature social...and we thrive on the interaction we have with other people.

So what in the world does this mean for all of you? No, I am not advocating you go get pregnant (or get someone else that way) just so you can share in the twitter love. I am advocating that you build your networks, on whatever platform you feel most comfortable, and get them to the point where they want to know everything that is happening at the biggest moments of your life. Those are the people who will want to share with you in their biggest moments...which we all know is when real estate happens.

The 2009 NAR Surveys are out!

If you took part in my marketing presentations during the early part of 2009 you know I often cited the statistics presented in the 2008 "NAR Profile of Buyers & Sellers" and the "NAR Member Profile". These are two pretty interesting directories that give us a great look into the buying habits of our clients, and the changing habits of our colleagues.

Well the 2009 version of these two surveys has been released. For the first time ever, NAR offers them free to all of us as a PDF file. I have downloaded them from Realtor.org, and they are available on our Intranet site for you to review. Simply go to the Education section, then Stefanie Hahn's Library, then the Interesting Documents.

Needless to say the data in them reinforces what I have been saying all year. The percentage of consumers using the internet to search is now up to 90%, and the percentage of them going to the internet first is 49%. Those are big numbers that just can't be ignored.

84% of them said they want photos more than anything else on a site (sound familiar?) and that superfluous info is no longer of any use.

On the member profile side, no surprise that agents are getting the hang of technology more and that smartphone use is growing rapidly. Interestingly enough, the median age of the profession also went up - showing that it is not just "young kids" who are catching on with technology.

Take some time to read these surveys - and see just where you and your client base fit in. Are you keeping up with your competition, or falling behind? Are you providing what the consumer wants, or sticking with old ideas? Most importantly, are you ready for what the 2010 survey will highlight as the big moves in the industry?

Happy Reading!

So you got it...now use it!

I know I saw many of you at parties over the last few weeks, but if I didn't please allow me this opportunity to wish you a belated Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah. I hope your holiday was great and that you received some great gifts from those around you.

From a selfish perspective, I hope you received something "techy" from your loved ones this holiday. Perhaps a new flip cam for taking video; a smartphone for grabbing your email; or (if you were at the top of the nice list) a new laptop computer for managing your business.

Every year I hear of these great new "gets" from agents...but then two weeks later I often hear about people who have given up on these new "toys" because they didn't know how they worked, didn't take the time to learn, or didn't have the resources available at home to teach them how the new device should work. Please, please, please don't let this happen.

First things first...play! You can not possibly break the thing you received (unless you throw it against the wall which is never advised). Try to set up the account, take some sample videos, create something totally random (like a twitter account) and use it from your phone!

Stefanie and I are always available to help you learn your new devices. If you found it in your stocking this year chances are good either she or I already know about it, have tried it, maybe even own it. We want you to be successful - which is why we are extra vigilant this time of the year about making sure we help.

Check with your administrator to see when Stefanie will be in your office (her 2010 schedule is already in place) or email either of us.

Happy playing!