Despite the market, 2007 was a very good year for me. To celebrate I decided to try a few of the paid referral companies in 2008. I was dubious, but had money to risk and figured if nothing else, I'd have some useful information of other agents. I signed on with two companies, Real Estate Client Referrals, and Eperks.
The executive summary: I'd stay away from both.
Real Estate Client Referrals works like this: they have hundreds of web sites that generate leads. When a prospect is interested in one of the sites, they call RECR who collects their information and passes it along to the agent in the area of the prospect's interest. There is no monthly fee, but a fee for each referral which you buy in blocks of 10 or so. It sounds good on paper. However, the agent does not know, and RECR will not reveal, on which website the prospect calls on. Thus, when the agent contacts the prospect, they may be relocating (though I haven't received a relocating referral), or they may be interested in receiving the "list of foreclosures in the area from the local foreclosure expert." I've learned that I am the local foreclosure expert, and that I have a list of foreclosures to send out to referrals. I've learned this from several of the prospects, who were told this by the RECR website they had found. In effect, RECR is making promises on my behalf that I am not aware of, and may not be able to keep. The prospect's aren't terribly impressed you can't speak intelligently about the website they found you on and they believe (correctly) you should have knowledge of. When you then need to explain that you don't actually have the list that the website promised, well, now you not only have an unhappy buyer, you have a buyer in your community that may think you're confused, dumb, or down-right slippery as an eel. Not good.
Eperks works like this: you pay a monthly fee depending on the degree of exclusivity you want for a given number of zip codes. In turn Eperks promotes you on their website and promotes their website on TV, the web, radio, etc. The results have been very different with Eperks than it has with RECR. To date I've had not one referral. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. If nothing else, it means that I don't have a referral that expects something of me I can't deliver even if I do know what it is. I did get one call. It was a salesman for eperks a few weeks ago. he was calling to see if I wanted to join their service. When I explained that, thanks but I was already a member of their service and was still waiting for a referral, he said he'd look into it for me. I guess he's still looking.
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Pike: Thanks for sharing this info. Very insightful.