What Are Your Statistics for New Business?

According to the NAR 2007 Member Profile, Realtors® receive a median of 25 percent of their business from previous customers and clients, which means that three out of every four clients come from new leads.

Did you track the source of your closed transactions in 2008?Did they come from advertising, online presence, a referral, an open house or a listing call? If you know the source of your leads, good for you! Now the challenge is to change that statistic, so that your marketing costs are lower in 2009 but new leads continue to come in.

You haven't a clue? It's not too late to go back and track them. Look at all of your sales, and your memory can probably fill on a lot of the blanks. If you can't remember them all, compiling some of the information is better than nothing at all.

If you DON'T know this number, it can negatively impact your business in the next year. How can you continue to gain new leads, close more deals, if you don't know the best source for leads? What if your method of gaining these new leads is expensive, and the return on your marketing dollar is low? Is this taking valuable money out of your family's budget?

If you would like help compiling these statistics for 2009 but aren't sure where to start, we would be happy to point you in the right direction. Sometimes all it takes is TIME, you don't have to enroll in a fancy software program to track it for you. Tracking this information will also help you document your lead to conversion ration - how many leads were converted into closed sales each month? How can we improve this number each month?

As we are bombarded with more and more technology tricks and information every day, it's easy to forget the basics. Remember that GRI 101 class? There's a wealth of information there about successfully growing your business with standard business practices, and it's never too late to start.