No one has to tell you that getting qualified leads is essential to any real estate practice. Since you already know that, I won’t go into all the reason that you need leads. What I will do is make suggestions on how to use your site to get qualified leads.

First a dose of reality. Not everyone who visits your site finds it informative and initiates contact will be converted to a client. Probably not even half, a quarter or an eighth.

That’s the way it is in real estate whether your lead comes from the web or a human referral. However, despite the fact that your percentage of client conversion may seem to be low, consider it from the standpoint of commission earnings.

If you only get two conversions from 1000 leads a month, a mere .002%, that still equals a very nice commission. Naturally the more leads you get, the more chances you have to convert them to clients.

There are those that will argue quality vs. quantity as far as leads go. Each may have a legitimate argument but the fact remains that being a successful sales agent also means playing the odds.

This means that you want to get a large quantity of leads and then filter out the quality ones to concentrate on converting. Converting them to clients will be up to you and your skills, but getting a large quantity to convert will come from your website.

Another consideration is prospective clients who may just have begun to consider buying a home but are not quite ready. People like this, whether they be walk-ins or have made an appointment are usually considered the bane of a real estate agent’s existence.

They have you drive them around all day, looking at houses all over town then say, “Thanks, we’re just looking”. Now the real estate agent has wasted the day and despite their best efforts at converting them, these same people may decide to use another real estate agent when they are finally ready to buy.

A friend of mine is planning to move to Kentucky in two years and she’s already visiting websites of real estate agents in that area, looking at houses and trying to learn about the different neighborhoods.

She likes one site so much that she constantly visits it and because of the information listed on it, she’s considering buying land there now that she can build on later instead of waiting two years to move and then purchase a home.

This is one of the beauties of lead generation from the Internet. People can browse houses online and then come back to you when they are ready without you ever having to leave the office. The trick is to make them come back to you.

Three ways to do this is by the use of email links, freebies, newsletters and information request forms. Lead generation will be discussed further in Chapter 3 – Build a User
Focused Site.

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