The fact is, the effectiveness of real estate lead generation programs for brokers and teams is 100% reliant on how they track and report to drive higher conversion rates.  Great lead conversion rates are kinda like the Jack-A-Lope of leads for many brokerages and teams. It is this legend they talk about, they think they have seen once in the wild, and it's fun to talk about around camp-fires.

When we talk with teams or brokerages that are managing at least three agents and working on lead tracking and conversion rates, the very first question we typically ask is how you measure and report. The way you measure and report your leads can have up to 70% or more total impact on your lead conversion rate (ie. if you currently are at 3%, you could potentially be at 10%).

There are some keys to real estate lead conversion that agents, teams and brokers alike can implement. Some of these can be accomplished by simply changing the policy or practice you follow, and others require that you have the right automation and tools built into your lead conversion process.

Visit the next page to see the Top 3 Factors in Improving Real Estate Lead Conversion.

1. Self-Reporting is a big No-No in Lead Generation

This concept is a biggie. Your marketing, growth and lead management business decisions impact thousands of dollars that you will spend not to mention the potential bottom-line growth they affect. Does it really make sense to leave those decision up to you or someone else getting into a system and manually checking a box?

You need to make sure that you have solid automation built into your system that tracks calls, emails, text messages and other activities and automatically provides reporting on those activities so you can see what is really happening.

Lead generation and conversion in real estate has everything to do with knowing what is generating value and benefit and what isn't – this will tell you exactly what to spend your time with.

2. Distribute Leads based on Performance

Do you ever wonder how to make sure that you really are giving the leads to the right person? Have you caught yourself calling, emailing or catching someone in the office to ask how the follow-up on a lead went? This tip goes hand-in-hand with Self-Reporting. One of the trouble's with weighting lead distribution without seeing all of the data is that often, high-producing individuals have a hard time finding time or desire to login to a system for manual updates – so their leads might look out of date, when their close rate is higher than others.

The key here is making sure that your system is truly tracking all activity, then you can base lead distribution weighting on actual performance. This is best done if you base the distribution off of something rather than just a lead acceptance time frame, but more on things like Actual Response Time, Lead Conversion to Opportunity, or Close Rates.

3. Include the Follow-Up "How" in Your Best Practices

The other truth with lead conversion, is that after you get all of the automation of tracking and best practices on actions and other system-based items set up, you'll find yourself looking at data that tells you that you have some folks who are better than others at doing the "How" part of follow-up.

So, how do you incorporate the how?

In the IRE system, we implement call tracking and recording, and we include a log of all activity on the lead. So, when you get your next team/office meeting together, you can then start with some stats and end with some best practices training that really gets to the core of conversations over text.

What we help our clients focus on is the place where they are most efficient – working with their clients, and working with their team to close deals. We are most efficient working with your system and automation to make your life easier and reliable.

To view the original article, visit the Inside Real Estate blog.