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Want the "Silver Bullet" for Seller Leads?

By
Real Estate Technology with offrs.com

Everyone is looking for the Silver Bullet for Seller Leads. Much like the search for the Holy Grail or the Fountain of Youth, no matter how many people fail to find it - nobody seems to stop believing it exists.

If it did exist... what would it be? What form would it take? Obviously it would be more than just a better design for a direct mail, or a magical script for phone calls. If the Silver Bullet really existed, how would it work.

Well, I would like to take a stab at reverse engineering my version of a Silver Bullet for Seller Leads.

First, let's start with defining the deliverable - the Seller Lead. I think it is fair to say that any homeowner who has confirmed they are thinking of selling their home can be classified as a seller lead.  You don't have to necessarily know them or have been referred to them (although that would help) - the bottom line is a Seller Lead = Homeowner thinking of Selling.

 

SILVER BULLET CHECKLIST #1:  HOMEOWNER CONFIRMS THEY ARE LOOKING TO SELL.

 

Now, let's work back a little more. Obviously in order for it to a lead for you the agent, it would have to be in an area you can service and sell real estate. If you are in Florida, a seller lead in Ohio doesn't do much good. So geography matters.

 

SILVER BULLET CHECKLIST #2  HOME MUST BE IN YOUR TERRITORY.

 

Ok. So now that the Homeowner has said "Yes I am looking to sell" and they are in your neighborhood, you can now agree it is a Seller Lead for your business.  So what else do you need to ensure you can connect with this lead? Contact info. So we need atleast a name, address, phone, ideally an email and other information that can help us connect.

 

SILVER BULLET CHECKLIST #3  CONTACT INFORMATION ON HOMEOWNER.

 

I realize this sounds kind of obvious, but bare with me. I am deducting what we would need to build the "Silver Bullet".  So far we know for a fact the Silver Bullet would include:

  • Verification the Home Owner is looking to Sell
  • Home would be located in Agent's Territory
  • Agent would have Home Owner's contact info.

Now that we understand the building blocks how do we construct the Silver Bullet. First step is we need DATA. In order to get information about the property owner, we need to have as much data as we can on them so we can connect. Next, we would need to reach out to the home owner (somehow) to verify they are selling their home.

One major challenge with the verification, is that is would take a lot of money and time to contact EVERY home owner in a neighborhood. So we need to find a way to focus on home owners most likely to sell, so we don't have to connect with everyone to identify a good chunk of the sellers. (Enter Smart Data.)

So really if we have a good idea of who is going to sell, and a solid outreach campaign to verify they are selling - we are 90% to a pretty nice Silver Bullet.

You will notice that what we outlined isn't really "new" (except the ability to leverage math to identify properties most likely to sell).  The Silver Bullet comes down to hard work and investing time and money into a program. 

Our goal at offrs.com is to make that simple for our customer, and ideally automate it as well. 

If there really is a silver bullet for generating listings, I don't think we are that far off on how it could be done. I would be interested in your thoughts on if you have discovered your own silver bullet.

 

 

Comments (5)

Patricia Kennedy
RLAH@Properties - Washington, DC
Home in the Capital

Rich, so there has to be a silver algorithm!  And I'll bet it would gobble up things like time in the present home, location of the home in relation to other homes that have sold within the last six months, and maybe some way of gleaning information about obituaries or divorce filings?  

I know agents who farm homes within a six houses of a property that's sold in the past year.  We'll be watching your progress with great interest.

Sep 08, 2016 09:15 AM
Rich Swier
offrs.com - Sarasota, FL
We Predict Future Listings

Yes, exactly. We have developed a proven algorithm over the past few years for this exact reason.  Of course, at a minimum agents should be thinking about how they can identify sellers. So we not only process our algorithm, but we do the outreach to verify who is selling.  (If you think about it, most agents won't want to do all the heavy lifting, math and outreach). This is our value prop.  Thanks for reading!

Sep 08, 2016 09:19 AM
Nickisha Shell
Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc. - Mitchellville, MD
Serving Your Community

I don't mind data digging (I actually love it), however, this does spar my interest and I am wondering how much value it could yield for my area(s).

Dec 10, 2016 07:51 AM
Beatrice M. Stambulski
COMPASS - Sherman Oaks, CA
Sherman Oaks Real Estate

What's the difference between your company's service and SmartZip?

Jan 16, 2017 03:29 PM
Anonymous
Rich Swier

Great question. You can view the difference here http://offrs.com/offrs_smartzip.cfm. The big one is we generate leads using our algorithms and verify via phone, email or online survey and deliver them to you. They primarily use direct mail to market you (which you can do thru us as well, but not as proactive or effective)BestR

Jan 16, 2017 03:53 PM
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