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There is a surprising amount of fatalism in the real estate industry about leads — that people fall into two camps and are either ready to sell, or they’re not. If they’re ready to sell, an agent should give those people a lot of attention, the thinking goes. If they’re not, you can ignore them.
But what data from OpenAgent and the Behaviours of Top-Performing Agents Report show is that there’s a lot of people in the middle — people who are thinking about selling but haven’t quite committed yet.
What we can see in the data is that despite the fact that the non-committed folk make up the largest pool of leads, the majority of agents write them off early and then leave these people alone.
Perhaps it’s due to a misplaced sense of service, that agents don’t want to push? Or perhaps they feel that converting those leads is just too much effort.
What we found in the Behaviours data, however, was something truly surprising: that the top-performing 10 per cent of agents are highly skilled at converting these less-committed leads into listings.
So, how do they do it?
The data shows that top-performing agents do three key things better than other agents which help them stand out significantly from the crowd. They contact every single one of the leads they’re given (not just most of them), they contact them quickly (within around an hour and a half) and they are excellent at appraisals.
The data shows conclusively that agents who are able to develop a strong rapport with their clients early, develop their trust and give them the confidence to go forward with their sale, retain a higher proportion of leads than agents who have weaker relationship skills.
How much better are they? Well, the top-performing 10 per cent of agents succeed in listing 41.9 per cent of all leads that successfully went to market. This compares to just 18.5 per cent of average performers.
What we know about those non-committed leads is that their lack of commitment is often due to fear and anxiety. Selling a property is a big job, both physically and mentally. There’s a lot of work involved, and a lot of emotion to work through, especially if it’s a family home.
People are often highly anxious in the stages leading up to the decision to put a property on the market. They’re worried about it being the right time to sell; they’re worried about how much work it will take to get the property ready, and how they’re going to juggle all of that around their other commitments; they’re scared they’ll be ripped off, of being homeless because they won’t be able to find something better to move into; that they won’t get the price they need to pay for their next home… the list is endless.
What great agents do is give their potential vendors reassurance, and confidence, that now really IS the right time to sell and that they’ll be supported to get the result they’re expecting.
The Behaviours data shows that the poorer an agent’s skills at reassurance for potential vendors, the more likely the leads are to fall out of the market altogether as the fears of those potential vendors become overwhelming.
So, while you can’t convince someone to sell their home from a cold start, the data shows that really good agents can certainly influence those considering selling significantly by demonstrating behaviours that make them feel “safe” and build their confidence around embarking on the roller-coaster of selling.
Zoe Pointon is the CEO of OpenAgent.
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