Letters to the Editor

Re: 'Real estate, the Web and the great divide' (Dec. 17)

Dear Editor:

Your article is concise and on-point at pointing out several proverbial "elephants in the room" with regards to procuring, handling and converting Web-based leads. Great job.

I work as a general manager and national sales strategist for a company that has been operating in that "gap between the Web and the real world" you alluded to. It was like reading a running journal of what we've killed ourselves learning these past three years.

We switched our entire lead procurement system from direct marketing in traditional sources to click-through/capture strategies via Google SEO and SEM strategies in the spring of '05. This is not to say that we have it all figured out after three years -- far from it. But through bloody trial and error application we have been able to increase our effective conversion rate over that time from less than 1 percent to anywhere from 4 percent to as high as 11 percent annually.

It has taken completely re-tooling the people we hire with a new set of skills, mindset, schedules, expectations and logistical methodology.

These changes are a tough pill to swallow for most traditionally trained real estate agents. That said, it works.

In the last six months we began specializing the individual lead-to-closing tasks into what we call "greenhousing" teams. The results are preliminary, but in a horrid market we have seen a further 30 percent increase in appointments set and completed (Given an average conversion period on leads of over 14 months, it's too soon to know final conversion, although one pipeline improvement tends to correlate directly into more throughput.)

The facts are that (a) there is no free lunch in Web leads and (b) they don't suck, they just require a different approach. We will do 98 percent of all our business in five markets this year solely from Web-based leads, and will expand to as many as five new markets once we are convinced we can consistently convert at high single- or double-digits.

Thank you for a salient look at the business model. Although I am skeptical of the general Realtor's willingness to read and believe your counsel, it is spot-on and deserves their attention.

Chip Hickman
EasyStreetRealty.com
Indianapolis, Ind.

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