Since no one responded to my blog -- I thought I would answer myself. :)

I found something called Team Double Click and Virtual Assistants.  Has anyone used them and what is the value?

Jennifer,

We offer the lead to the agent and follow them closely.  We ask them in an hour, then at the end of the day, and finally the next day if they contacted the lead.  Then we follow up the results and the outcome.  If the agent had not contacted the lead by the next day, we take it away from them and contact the client ourselves.  If the agent does not get back to us to get the lead, we make the appointment ourselves, see the client and close the sale or listing.  A broker friend of mine warned me long time ago when I was thinking of owning my own office that to keep afloat I would have to produce 60-70% of the total business.  Hope this helps.

Marie Kletke, Real Estate Broker-Long Beach, CA

Marie,

This is helpful and yet another way to approach handing off leads.  Thank youf ro the feedback.  Do you mind me asking what your conversion rate is with internet leads?

I've actually experienced this in three different ways.  My office used House Values last year.  (Not recommended!!!!!)  Our conversion rate was appalling on this one.  A friend of my has a 5 to 1 conversion rate from another lead generating company.

However with Craigslist, we have had terrific results.  On one of the properties we advertised for the last two weeks1, we have had about twenty calls and have actually shown the property about ten times.  We have an offer and am expecting another offer.  The lesson?  You are better off generating your own leads using the internet.  They call this " Hurling your URL" - This I am learning a lot about. 

Marie,

Thank you for that advice that will come in handy as we start planning our lead generation budget. 

How about your website.  Are you converting any direct hits off your website from SEO or SEM?

Jennifer,

I am newly involved in SEO.  My partner though is a pro at it.  He is the one that got me started at really looking into network marketing (That is using the internet network for marketing).  He is so effective at it.  He consulted with companies that specialize in optimization, learned the techinique, applied  it and is reaping tremendous results.  In fact, there are a few companies that are AR members that are SEO consultants.  Katrina has some great posts on optimization.  What applies for AR and localism also applies for our own personal business.

What I have learned is that we have to have a clear idea of what we are using our website for, who our target market is and structure our website accordingly.  For instance, we create sites for each of our listings. One of them is www.4479laserena.info.  Our market is the high end market because this house is worth close to $2million.  So our words, tags, etc. are geared for this market.  Aside from the MLS, we have this site linked to our ads - including ads in craigslist.com.  We have had so many calls and showings as a result of this website.  Very effective.  Our goal of course is to generate strong interest and to get a buyer for this property.  We had the listing for two weeks, had about a dozen showings, close to two dozen calls, and two offers.  I had it listed on AR Mls on Line and it had over 50 hits in two days.

Marie, that is amazing.  I will keep that in mind.  I believe some of our realtors are using the seperate website approach for each property too.  I know that we just started offering virtual tours with the property address as the URL.  It is working fantastically.

I am starting to get the big picture now.  You are very helpful!  It sounds like your market is much like ours so knowing what works in your area may help us as well.

Jennifer,

I have not used leads from my broker because by the time I started with the company he had already decided to drop the lead system.  Most agents were not keeping up with the customer and the convertion rate was too low to make it profitable.  I guess it will depend on the agents and how hard and fast they will work to convert the leads into clients.