Where do most of your sales leads come from?

• Networking, Referrals, Word-of-mouth
• Repeat Business
• Internet Marketing
• Advertising
• Direct Marketing
• Cold Calling - Cold Canvassing

It's very obvious in marketing business that networking, referrals and word-of-mouth are very powerful weapons. You can easily convince a person by your salestalk.

over the past year most of our clients have come from the internet. We have several of our team members that continue to be very effective at working their network and that continues to be their top source.

My .02 is that it should be that way for everyone in real estate.

Dave

Originally Posted by KeysToFlorida over the past year most of our clients have come from the internet. We have several of our team members that continue to be very effective at working their network and that continues to be their top source. My .02 is that it should be that way for everyone in real estate. Dave

What is the norm for real estate Dave?

Here are the results from the 2005 Profile of Buyers and Sellers research paper from the National Association of Realtors.

Numbers reflect where Buyers found their agent.

43% - Referred by (or is) a friend, neighbor or relative
28% - Used agent previously to buy or sell a home
5% - Personal Contact by agent
4% - Visited open house and met agent
4% - Saw contact information of For Sale sign
3% - Referred by another real estate broker
3% - Referred through a seller's employer/relocation
3% - Direct Mail (Newsletter, flyer, letter, postcard)
2% - Walked into/called iffice and agent was on duty
2% - Internet site
2% - Newspaper/Yellow Pages/home book ad
*% - Advertising Specialty (calendar, magnet, etc.)

And from the 2006 NAR Profile of Buyers and Sellers

Where Sellers find the agent that they list with:

44% - Referred by (or is) a friend, neighbor, or relative
30% - Used Agent previously to buy or sell a home
5% - Visited an Open House and met agent
5% - Personal contact by agent (telephone, email,...)
4% - Referred by another agent or broker
3% - Referred through employer or relocation company
3% - Direct Mail (newsletter, flyer, postcard, etc)
2% - Internet
1% - Newspaper, Yellow pages or home book ad
1% - Advertising Specialty (calendar, magnet, etc)
<1%- Saw contact information on For Sale Sign

So you can see in Real Estate the key to success is building a strong network that will referr business to you. Customer Care and keeping in contact with the people that you know and have worked with is the number one source of business...

Dave

Took too long to catch my mistake - 5 minute rule for edits

Anyway in my post above I have the wrong data for the 2005 Buyers results - the numbers provided are the 2005 Sellers results.

I will have to fish out the NAR Paper again - but my memory has the results something more like the following:

40%+ Referrals from Sphere of Influence
13%+ Past Clients
7%+ Open Houses
7%+ Internet Leads
everything else was 5% or less

Later,

Dave

The percentages from the Internet don't look promising.

When you think about 7% of the buyers finding the agent that they work with from the internet it sounds small until you realize that the websites on the first pages of Google, Yahoo, and MSN for the right keywords get the major part of these leads.

So in our area with somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 agents getting referrals and only less than 100 of us getting almost all the leads from the internet.

There may only be 2% of the sellers finding their agent online - but, I attribute that to a lack of education by us on how important the internet is to getting a home sold.

NAR's same report provides the following as sources for the Initial source that a home buyer found the home they purchased:

36% from Real Estate Agents
24% on the Internet
16% from signage
7% from Friends, Family, and neighbors
7% from Builder/Owners
5% from the Newspapers
3% from people that already know the seller
1% from Home Books and Magazines

So the internet is much more important in getting our listings sold.

Originally Posted by KeysToFlorida When you think about 7% of the buyers finding the agent that they work with from the internet it sounds small until you realize that the websites on the first pages of Google, Yahoo, and MSN for the right keywords get the major part of these leads.

Now it sounds even smaller.

The last time we bought a property, we used a neighbourhood agent who maintained a presence for years with a newsletter and we spent several afternoons driving around researching the areas we were considering.

This was over ten years ago and we didn't have an ISP at the time, though.