What to Consider When Sharing Real Estate Leads with Team Members

All brokers or team leaders who are sharing real estate leads have some things that need to be thought out and addressed before providing those leads to agents. Of course, you'll want to put some rules and training in place regarding how each lead should be followed up with. But it is also very important to think about how leads will be handled and tracked when agents leave your office.

Things to Consider

• You have probably explained to your kids that if they put a photo on the internet, it will still be out there even if they delete it. Think of your leads the same way—once you share them, you can never delete them.

• As soon as you give access to a lead, you should assume the lead's information will be added to multiple databases. Most agents have their system set up to sync to their phone which may also sync to Outlook and/or show up in their Google Contacts, etc.

• If you share a real estate lead to an agent that is required to use an in-house CRM, you should still assume the lead info will be immediately copied and pasted into another private database.

• Responding instantly to inquiries can increase lead conversion rates by up to 391%, as indicated by recent Zillow and MIT studies on lead response. There is nearly a 400% difference in lead response rates by responding to inquiries within the first two minutes.

• A C.A.R. report on response time shows that over 94% of consumers expect an answer in one hour or less, yet the same report indicates that only about 36% of agents actually respond within one hour. By simply having a system to respond within one hour, an agent can outperform 64% of their peers.

• A study done for Harvard Business Review found that 71% of qualified leads are never followed up with. What's more, of the leads that are followed up on, they are only touched an average of 1.3 times.

How to Move Forward

So knowing the facts that when sharing real estate leads most are never followed up on, and of those that are called, the majority are never called again. Also taking into consideration that the leads you are providing to your agents are only "Hot Leads" for a few minutes and at most one day, you have to ask yourself how much time, effort, and concern do you want to put into worrying about policing cold leads that the agent who is leaving will still have access to. If the agent didn't follow up with the lead when the lead was hot and you were asking them to, do you really think they will now become self-motivated and start calling the cold leads once they leave your company?

In conclusion, we find that the only way to truly protect yourself when sharing real estate leads to an agent who may take those leads and move to a new brokerage is by written agreement. Each team member should be required to sign a referral agreement that clearly states how the lead provider or broker/team leader will be compensated if the agent closes a transaction with a lead provided, regardless of where their license is held.

To view the original article, visit the Wise Agent blog.