Top Two Tips: Converting Contacts to Clients

Over the past several weeks, I've been tasked with finding successful Zillow Premier Agents to sit on the 'Agent Knows Best' panels for the various Zillow Summits we have held this summer.

(Curious? Read all about Zillow Summits here.)

I've talked to about 40 very successful Zillow Premier Agents — with 'success' being defined as closing transactions from contacts received through Zillow advertising — and found two recurring themes. Two things that every one of these agents, without fail, mentioned as big contributors to their success are:

1. Respond swiftly, to every contact. When these successful agents say, "Respond swiftly to contact inquiries," they aren't measuring response time in hours. Or even minutes. They are talking seconds. With contact notification from Zillow consisting of email, text and phone notification, you know when you get a contact. You need to respond to those contacts. Quickly.
2. Get more reviews. However many you have, get more. They make a difference in number of contacts you'll get. Many (emphasis on many) of the Premier Agents I talked to said that contacts who are interested in selling their homes are especially driven by the number (and quality) of reviews the agents have published on Zillow.

Let's look at each of these in a little more detail.

Why is a fast response necessary?

The typical Internet user these days has multiple browser tabs open, often open to several sites of the same type. They bounce back and forth from site to site, submitting multiple inquiries, rarely pausing for more than a minute or two after they initiate contact through a site.

And when they ask a question, they expect an answer. Quickly.

A study conducted by Harvard Business Review found:

Firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead (which we defined as having a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker) as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later — and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer.

The same Harvard study found that almost 25 percent of companies never responded to an Internet lead inquiry. It should go without saying that if you never respond to a lead, your chances of converting that lead rapidly approaches zero.

The Premier Agents I've talked to all said that rapid response is crucial. Even if you can't quickly respond to a specific question, respond in some fashion — even if it's just a quick text message that says, 'I received your question about 123 Main St. With a client, I'll call you back in 60 minutes.'

If nothing else, this tells the inquiry a few things:

• You received their message
• You have other clients
• You are responsive, and respectful
• You are helpful
• There is a real live human being on the other end of the website

Those are all great messages to deliver, and deliver it you can with a simple text message or email. Delivering that message may very well stop the site-to-site wandering behavior so many website visitors engage in, and should help greatly increase your conversion rates.

Why are reviews important?

Take a look at how Premier Agents are displayed on for-sale listings on Zillow:

Notice the first agent shown has zero reviews, the second agent has 28, and the third agent has 2.

If you were a consumer looking for information from an agent, which of these three would you select? Many will click on the agent with the most reviews. The savvy site visitor will click though all the profiles, and read what the agent has to say, in addition to what their clients had to say about them. Clearly there will be more 'stuff' about the agent with more reviews. Love them or not, people do read, react to and believe online reviews.

Several of the Premier Agents I talked to mentioned that the quantity and quality of their reviews has directly led to sellers contacting them with the always welcomed 'Will you come list my house?' phone call.

There is much more to successfully converting online contacts to clients, but fast response and good reviews are a starting point — a point that will give you a big head start on your competition in the on-going battle to convert contacts. So start asking those past clients for reviews, and put systems and processes in place to ensure you can respond rapidly to all contacts — even if it's just to say, 'Message received, I will get back to you shortly!'