We hosted a webinar for brokers yesterday. In the course of the event, the discussion turned to a topic that I thought would interest the agents in our audience--namely, the role of internet leads in an agent's success.

Our moderator, Victor Lund, brought up an interesting statistic from NAR that says that 85% of an agent's customers come from sphere of influence marketing. That means the rest, including oft-talked about internet leads, only make up 15% of an agent's future clients. With web leads representing such a small portion of business, are they even worth pursuing at all?

Broker Richard Eimers says yes--for new agents.

A Tale of Two Agents

"I have a real estate agent," says Eimers. "His name is John. He's been with me six years, had no real estate experience [when he started]. In four years of working for me, he's gone from making very little money to making over $325k a year and he does not take internet leads anymore. I had an agent that came back, she was a REMAX agent, she had 2 children. She came back to work, I loaded her up on internet leads. In less than six months time, she's back to producing her good volumes."

Eimers uses web leads as a tool for his inexperienced agents to train and establish themselves. With time and diligent work, those agents are able to grow their own sphere of influence and wean off of web leads. "I see it as a way to get off the ground and going," he says.