Two real-estate agents discuss tracking which lead sources actually close deals. They recommend picking one platform like realtor.com, auditing every lead daily, using scripted follow-ups, and setting flexible appointments. One agent projects a 13:1 ROI on realtor.com while wasting $500 monthly on homes.com with zero closes.
Yeah. So number one, it starts with good tracking. Number one, know how many leads were coming in, what you converted price points, average commission checks per lead source. We didn't have CT back in the day. We had the business tracker, which worked pretty well, identifying those. But for us, I know just simply homes.com come to mind. It comes to mind. First, it wasn't. I wasn't spending a lot, but it was 500 bucks a month. And I remember you asked me, he's like, how many, how many of you close from there? I'm like, I can't say a single one. He's like, why do you have it? I'm like, it's only 500 bucks. You're like, yeah, it's only $500. So that was the first X. Then I think it was hud, home store. And I look back and I used to write down all my closings and tracked, handwritten my lead sources, and I had closed two for 107,000 and 115. I was like, no, those are the two worst transactions ever. I forget what I was spending. Wasn't much like 3, 400 bucks. But really just looking at, you know, and when it comes to bigger lead sources like Zillow, right, There is a benefit to have like some paid advertising through Zillow to be a featured agent, for example, but just working with a lot of other teams and seeing these four, five, six, $7,000 budgets, to see a maximum two and a half, three, three and a half to one return, you know, that's not going to, that's not what, that's not scalable, number one. Number two, it's not going to be profitable. So with that, it's just knowing the numbers so well. Like, for example, this year we are almost on to be 13 to 1 on a realtor.com leads. Not because realtor.com's the answer for everybody. It's because that's our number one lead source, that we spend a lot of our marketing budget for those sort of leads. But we recycle them. There's a process like, it's really dialed in, but it's just the one lead source that we're probably going to do 1.1 million GCI this year, you know, on that one lead source.
All right, so, man, that brings up so much because we're, we're in mostly the same market. I mean, we could say that you're north and I'm, you know, we tried that same lead source in the same market and I got like a 2x return and so because I wasn't willing to do what you were willing to do. And so go a little bit when you talk about picking a lead source because I agree with you, I don't think it's really realtor.com I think it's the fact that you committed to all the nuances and all the follow up tactics and making sure that your agents say this one sentence and auditing it. And so talk a little bit about like when you pick a lead source, how can you get from a guy like me that. And it wasn't a main lead source for us. We thought we were just going to test it. But 2 to 3 times in the same market, how are you 9 to 13 times? What are the few things that you do differently that allow you to drive your returns even in a competitive pay per click environment? How are you able to drive returns up so high?
So one of the things like as there's a few things. So number one, we do track all of our realtor.com, we don't get a lot of Zillow leads, but a few, just enough, mostly on our listings. But we do track every single lead. For example, was it called a call logged in the first 10 seconds? Right. Were there four calls notated in the first hour? Right. Was text one sent out within the first minute? Right. So a VA goes in and audits every single lead on a daily basis. Right. So it comes with the accountability. So if you're on our team and you get that email saying like, hey, you know, three out of your four leads last night, these, these type of leads weren't called within the first like minute, what happened? Right. It doesn't take long. Right. There's also some encouragement around there. So when it does happen, we're high fiving, you know. And it's the same script, right? It's the same script over and over and over. And it's, you know, for us, we offer the appointment up front. Why? We don't know if they're qualified and I'm okay doing that. We can take the appointment away, turn it into a virtual consultation. We can turn the appointment into a date with one of our in house lenders. You know, there's, there's several different options now when it comes to like a certain lead source, there's usually three, four, maybe five objections that you're going to hear consistently and it's practicing those objections over and over and over. For example, I have an agent. Right. 80% of people in the world don't really have agents. They just say that to get you off the phone and if you can build a mindset around that with your team. They said they have an agent. We have some easy questions for them. Right. So a little bit more difficult, a bit more challenging. And we have a good shot at revisiting that lead as well. So this has been key for us as well around the scripting and just recycling leads is they told us they have an agent, we send it to somebody else on the team or ISA team gets it the following day, a month, two months later, we tag it, it gets thrown back into the dialer. So we're making a list for one of our agents. We're not going to give them 50 people have I have an agent. We give them some of the new stuff. Some of the people said I have an agent. Some people who said no longer interested. Right. But with that, you continue talking to these folks and it's just a general open script from there.
