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How do typical real estate agents respond to leads?

Promoted by Zoe Pointon, CEO, OpenAgent
18 February 2020 | 4 minute read
The Behaviours of Top Performing Agents report is free for download from OpenAgent

Promoted by OpenAgent

How effective are typical real estate agents at converting leads to listings? The insights from this new report might surprise you.

What does the performance of a typical real estate agent look like in Australia and how good are they at converting leads into listings?

Data from the Behaviours of Top Performing Real Estate Agents Report shows there is a big gap between the success levels of average and top performers, created by some very small shifts in behaviour. 

Put simply, top performers win more than twice the number of listings that go to market compared to average performers because they do three things just a little bit better. Top performers contact all their leads (not just most of them), contact their leads faster, and then dominate during appraisals. 

Here are the benchmarks for comparison:

Average agents: 

  • Respond to 96.7% of their leads
  • Take 146 minutes (2.5 hours) to respond
  • Make contact with 69.9% of the leads they reached out to
  • Receive appraisal appointments with 35.7% of those they contact
  • Win 42.6% of the appraisals they go to
  • Win 18.5% of all the listings that go to market

Top-performing agents:

  • Respond to 100% of their leads
  • Take 98 minutes (1.6 hours) to respond
  • Make contact with 75.4% of the leads they reached out to
  • Receive appraisal appointments with 52.7% of those they contact
  • Win 63.7% of the appraisals they go to
  • Win 41.9% of all the listings that go to market

You can see in these numbers just how much better the top 10% of agents are compared to average performers who sit around the 50% mark. 

But it also reveals a pretty clear path to how to be a better agent. Focus on being thorough and fast to respond to your leads and hone your appraisal skills. 

Most importantly, however, make sure you know how good are you at these key metrics in reality - using data, not just your gut instinct. 

What proportion of leads do you contact? How long does it take you on average to reach out to a lead? And how good are your appraisal skills really? You’ll be able to work this out by calculating the proportion of business you win from your appraisals. The question then becomes - do you have the tools to measure these metrics easily?

The Behaviour of Top Performing Agents data shows that when agents respond quickly to leads, they establish trust with potential sellers which sets up the rest of the relationship for success. The longer agents take to respond, the higher the hurdle becomes in winning over the vendor. And in some instances, that slow response does such damage that it discourages the vendor from listing altogether. 

But improve your game across the three key behaviours of contacting leads, being fast and delivering great appraisals by even just a small amount and you’ll significantly power up your performance. 

Download your free Behaviours report

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