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What is the one thing that every real estate agent can do to improve their listings? New data shows that the answer is ridiculously simple: Get back to your leads quickly.
When we say “quickly”, we don’t mean “get back to them a bit quicker than you do now”. We mean get back to them immediately — in as close to an hour as possible. The data shows that agents who responded the fastest didn’t just win more listings, they win the bulk of the listings.
OpenAgent’s Behaviours of Top-Performing Agents Report analysed the behaviour of more than 2,000 agents who received our leads over a 12-month period. Understanding best practice around leads has been a virtually impossible science until recently because every real estate group — in fact, every agency — treats their leads differently. There’s been no single overview of lead behaviour.
But at OpenAgent, we are in a privileged position because we see how agents respond when leads are delivered in a consistent and deliberate way regardless of which agency they work for or the team colours they wear. The data set for the Behaviours report analysed nearly 58,000 referrals sent to agents across the country to just over 2,000 agents. We broke them down into 10 groups with each decile containing similar proportions of agents from different states and with similar metro and regional splits.
The data shows conclusive evidence that the top-performing 10 per cent of agents do one major thing that puts them heads and shoulders above their competition.
Top-performing agents — the elite of the elite — attempt to call back all their leads within 98 minutes of receiving a referral.
This compares to mid-performers who take 148 minutes (2.5 hours), and bottom-performing agents who call back in 271 minutes (which in case you’re wondering is 4.5 hours).
And what we can see in the data is a couple of key observations. That calling back every lead you receive quickly builds trust with potential vendors. Calling them back quickly signals to a seller that their business is important to you, that you’ll work hard for them.
From this fast, early call, top agents make contact with 5.5 per cent more leads than typical agents, and these small numbers around being more diligent and getting in contact with even slightly more people have huge ripple effects.
The top 10 per cent of agents get to make 18.7 per cent more appraisals than a typical agent, from where they will win 63.7 per cent and convert them into listings. This compares to a listing from appraisal rate of just 42.6 per cent for average agents.
Most significantly, however, the top-performing 10 per cent of agents succeed in winning 42 per cent of all their leads that go to market compared to average agents who win just 18.5 per cent of them.
So, if you want to do one thing to really improve your performance, smarten up your phone skills and jump on those leads immediately. It’s the single biggest way to move the dial, and the flow-on effects will be exponential.
By Zoe Pointon, OpenAgent CEO
