Because most of you here at AR are web-savvy real estate professionals, the majority of you know that the sales cycle is much different now-a-days as most new business is now generated on the web.  This biggest difference between today's real estate lead and the real estate lead of old is that we are contacting the lead much earlier in the sales cycle, so early in fact, the leads aren't even at the point where they are ready to talk to a realtor.  This causes frustration for the real estate agents that do lead follow-up using traditional methods.  It used to be that real estate agents didn't see or hear from prospective buyers until they were ready to start seeing homes.  Now because of the nature of the web, we are getting lead information on buyers that are just starting the research phase of their home search.  This results in leads being unresponsive to realtor contact causing the realtor to devalue the lead.

This type of behaivor on the part of the realtor will result in a significant loss in business.  See my post on The REAL Sales Cycle of the Real Estate Web Lead on LouLynch.com