A New Approach to Real Estate Lead Management

The Internet helped many real estate agents change the way they market their services. Now the same agents are changing the way they approach other aspects of the business – in particular, the process of capturing, filtering, and contacting leads. Web marketing helps attract more leads, but it’s becoming clear that agents might not be the right people to deal with them anymore. As the job shifts elsewhere, the role of agents is being redefined.

Many real estate agents likely saw the change coming thanks to the difference between web leads and non-web leads. It can generally be boiled down to a difference in commitment: non-web leads are often solid referrals from other professionals who already know the client, while web leads can represent anyone with ten seconds to fill out an online form. Many Realtors with an online home search require people to fill out a contact form in order to view full details on a particular listing, and this tactic has had positive and negative results – mostly negative. People will readily supply their email address in order to view listing pictures, but that doesn’t mean they want to buy a home – in many cases,...