I'm getting ready to head to the airport in a few minutes to go to NYC and Inman connect. I have been asked to be on a panel about generating leads which is really going to end up being about converting leads. I can never get into the lead generation conversation without talking about lead conversion because that is what is really important. I think anyone can generate leads through a multitude of programs, but converting these Internet leads to sales is and has been for years, the great mystery. Heck, we are really good at it and still only convert at between 3% and 4% of our raw leads. Not bad, but I won't be happy until I'm able to get that number up to 10% or more which I know is doable.
Going to Inman is interesting to me since I'm not really into the social media aspect of selling homes. Yes, I have had a sale or two in the past few years from my blog, but nothing I could ever commit the amount of time to since I don't believe it's a viable tool to have predictable sustained business. To date, I haven't met any one Realtor or team who has done a significant amount of business (20 sales or more per year, each year) from their facebook, twitter, blogging and other online social fun stuff.
With that said, with my PPC programs I'm always within 10% of my prediction in sales. I'll put my stats below. What I would like to know, if you could take the time to answer this, is how many sales you have had over the past couple or so years and were you able to guesstimate the amount of sales you had based on any stats. In the end I'm a numbers guy. I believe that the numbers don't lie and when I figure out my marketing plans and business plans each year they are based on those numbers.
Here are my stats for the past few years along with what I had predicted they would be. To me, with PPC, I'm able to know how much I spend, which I know will turn into x amount of leads which will in turn become sales or as I would rather say, customers for life. If I get enough stats, I can put them together for my talk tomorrow at Inman...I think it would be interesting.
Number of Agents who are full time - 18
Year Predicted Sales Actual Sales
2007 200 193
2008 250 242
2009 350 311 (with 40 short sales on the board and 60 that fell through)
2010 425 We shall see! :)
If I can get enough of you to participate, this could be a fascinating stats. I know most of my members of The eHomes Realty Network are following lead generation programs but none are really doing much on the social networking side. If you are able to help me here, please mention why you believe you were successful or not successful with social media. BTW, this isn't a competition, I'm just looking for some honest answers. Thanks for your help!
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