Lead generation: It's the lifeblood of the real estate professional. And because of this, you continually seek out ways to improve your lead generation strategy and the results it brings.

Agent Reviews is a lead generation trend that has been a topic of significant conversation, controversy and scrutiny within the real estate industry in recent years. From Redfin's "Scouting Report" to realtor.com®'s "Agent Match" to high profile undertakings from the Houston Association of Realtors®, the real estate press has been full of stories about Agent Reviews, industry reactions – positive and negative – to Agent Reviews, and how Agent Reviews are changing the competitive landscape of the industry, for the better and for the worse.

A new study by T3 Experts sought to tackle the controversial lead generation strategy of Agent Reviews. One conclusion reached from the survey, which included nearly 900 real estate professionals: For those who make it a key part of their business strategy, it does pay to generate leads from Agent Reviews.

Here are some of the key findings from the T3 Experts Survey and the Survey Report:

• The group getting the most leads from Agent Reviews - those with 51+ leads from Agent Reviews in the last 12 months, whom we refer to as "Top Lead Generators" in the Survey Report - are intentionally and purposefully focused on leveraging Agent Reviews as a specific part of their online lead generation strategies. Ergo, more focus equals more results.

• Comparing transaction sides closed during the last 12 months, that same group - Top Lead Generators - (1) sold 20+ homes more often (69% vs. 48% for Total Survey Results), sold 30+ homes a lot more often (54% vs. 29%) and sold 51+ homes more than twice as often (31% vs. 13%). As the volume of transaction sides increases, the advantage of the Top Lead Generator widens.
• Almost 70% of agents consider leads stemming from Agent Reviews to be either "relatively easy" (47%) or "very easy" (22%) to convert.

T3 Experts CEO Jack Miller tells RE Technology, "We knew there was some correlation between getting leads from Agent Reviews and having a higher income - that's obvious. However, what we didn't know what how strong that correlation was, and how that correlation increased at greater levels of transactions closed by agents, teams and brokers."

The result is clear: Those receiving the most leads are intentionally and purposefully focused on leveraging Agent Reviews as a specific part of their online lead generation strategies.

Three Action Steps You Need to Take Now:

To begin leveraging online Agent Reviews in your business, start with these steps:

1. Complete Your Profiles - Create and/or update your profile in as many places as you can. You should, at the very least, have complete and substantial profiles on Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com and Google Plus Local. Make sure that the photo you use as your image/avatar is used consistently on social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as any personal websites or blogs where people might find you.
2. Do Competitive Research - Analyze what your competition is doing and react accordingly. Specifically identify the "context of least resistance," where you can more quickly and more readily compete and win in terms of having the highest number of reviews in comparison to your competition. It's crucial to create your review presence in the place(s) where people will find them quickly when they do searches.
3. Optimize Your "About Me" Page - On a typical website, the second or third most visited page is "About Me." Since you know you're going to have relatively high web traffic on this page, use that knowledge and lead with your best and most powerful reputation-enhancing content. We recommend that you include information about your client service philosophy, written and video testimonials and your contact information.

You can download a copy of the Survey Report here.