Is It Me or Is It the Leads?

We keep hearing that lead quality is getting worse.

Greg Harrelson is not just hearing it from his own real estate agents, but from agents all across the US in industry events.

But is this statement actually true?

As the owner of a business that gets close to 700 organic leads a month, and that monitors the quality and the acquisition of these leads consistently, Greg's not so certain.

According to him, "What seems to be happening is that the leads are getting captured a lot earlier, they need to be nurtured a lot longer, and that doesn't fit with what most agent's want."

In this article, we break down his assessment into three parts:

• leads are getting captured earlier
• leads need to be nurtured a lot longer
• this doesn't fit with what most agents want

As always, if you too would like most of your leads to come organically, join Greg's coaching group at www.RGMastery.com for less than $200/mo.

Leads Are Getting Captured Earlier

Greg's first point is that now, our leads are getting captured too early.

What does he mean by this?

"My home is in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. For many years, especially 25 years ago, the best leads were sign calls and print advertisements in home magazines." he says.

There's a reason why these were the best leads: In Myrtle Beach 40% of the buyers are buying a second home. 

Which means that the leads Greg would get from a sign call or an ad on a local magazine meant that these buyers were physically in town.

These guys weren't calling him from New York, with no plans to visit Myrtle Beach any time soon.

These were what Greg calls "bottom of the funnel" leads.

It was the best of times for realm estate agents. But they wouldn't last forever.

When the internet came along, all of these potential buyers could search properties from anywhere, and they were finding their dream homes with no determined date to go and visit them. Most callers were no longer in Myrtle Beach, which meant conversion was much lower, and when they did close, it took a lot longer.

These leads are what Greg calls "middle of the funnel".

"We had to figure out how to follow up with these people in an X amount of months so that they could come to the city and they'd remember to visit these properties with us."

Agents had to become well versed in the art of following up.

But the evolution of their activities wouldn't end there.

Along came lead services.

And now, they're everywhere (you only need a few minutes of wandering through Google to see how many sponsored ads there are for lead services). Because there's so many of them, lead service companies are forced to deliver to agents a certain quantity of leads.

This means everyone's being captured. Everyone's on some sort of list, because agents are demanding a high number of leads, and lead companies are competing to deliver.

"In my opinion, once again, this has stretched the leads' buying cycle."

We're now getting - you guessed it - "top of the funnel" leads.

And according to Greg, in the future, he predicts we'll be getting leads before they even enter the funnel.

"For example, algorithms will know when they bought a home improvement book in Barns & Noble, so they'll be captured as a potential buyer" he explains.

These aren't, but they're being captured long before where we'd like them to be. 

They require longer nurture.

Leads Need More Nurturing

This point hits home hard for Greg, he says, as he shares a personal story that happened recently.

"We pride ourselves on getting a high conversion rate," he prefaces, "but get this."

In one of his companies, Greg and his team use a technology that allows them to input their database, and every week sends them a report on how many contacts have listed a property on the MLS in the last 7 days. Additionally, they report on how many properties are sold within his database in the last 7 days.

"This morning, when I got the report, I almost fell off my chair."

18 properties had listed in the last 7 days. But 16 of them had listed with Greg's competition. His team only captured 2 of those leads. 

That's a lot of business missed.

And these are people who are consistently being nurtured by Greg's team.

"It was a rude awakening," says Greg.

So what happened?

Greg's team didn't call these leads enough.

They thought they had "bad leads" so they neglected those contacts.

They let automations do all the follow up work.

And because every other agent is going the same thing, automations have now become background noise for leads.

On the other hand, Greg's competitor stood out from the competition by calling these leads personally.

So, when we ask Greg if, on his mind, it was a problem of him or the leads, 

"For us, it was me," he answers.

It's time to stop hiding behind automations.

"I gotta do a better job at not overusing automations, and pushing my agents to call our leads."

The good news is that Greg knows this now. He knows his team currently converts 6% of his database, which converts 11-12% that convert. 

Now, he's committed to getting his team closer to a 9% conversion rate.

Agents Need to Adapt

Here's the other side of the "quality of leads decline" argument.

Most lead services arround PPC offer high quality leads. It's true.

The lead price might differ - which is why Greg and his team use RealLeads - but the quality is generally consistent across offers.

In fact, according to Greg, "the quality of leads is determined by the quality of your follow ups."

So what should we do, as agents?

What we've always done. We need to adjust.

We need to adjust like we did when the internet showed up. And like we did when lead services appeared.

Here's the thing: we all want the lottery ticket. That lead that's ready to buy right away. But that's an anomaly.

"The reality of the business now is that 96% of the leads you capture won't be a good fit, and the other 4% will take four to eighteen months to convert." says Greg.

We're capturing these leads earlier. And we need to nurture them better.

We cannot hide behind automation anymore.

So your homework should be pretty clear right now: do an audit of your database, and call every single one.

"I know most agents think this isn't a great time to be making deals, but trust me. If you call everyone, you're guaranteed to find opportunities."

Start 2024 with some deals moving forward.

And if you want to get more organic leads, join us at RGMastery.com, where Greg coaches you for less than $200/mo how to create the systems to generate a consistent stream of organic leads through your website & SEO.