One of the favorite vendor pastimes is trying to solve “the big problems” in online real estate today. This happens in hallway conversations, lobby bars, or big plush chairs in hotel lobbies. One of the biggest topics is the fact that most agents don’t respond to leads. Who cares if your site has tons of traffic, if the leads it generates don’t get responded to? And if you are selling products to agents that claim to generate leads then you have a bigger problem. Retention.

Typically the conversation ends in a head shake, a swirl of the adult beverage you’ve been sipping on, and the muttering…

“Stupid agents”.

I got a call from Dave Howe from MetroList Services in Sacramento. Dave has been in the MLS business longer than most. He’s seen vendors come and go through his market for many, many, years. I fondly call him the “hardest working man in the MLS business”. Anyway Dave wanted to chat and said to me, “You know I’ve come to realize, it’s more important to brand a lead “trusted” to an agent, than it is to brand a listing “trusted” to a consumer”. In a Yogi Bearish type of way Dave was on to something.

But how do you brand a lead “trusted”, or maybe a better word is “legitimate”? Most lead notification comes via email, and you can’t really brand a subject line.

After a bit of back and forth what we came to was that the problem really wasn’t “stupid agents” not responding to leads, but the shear amount of other email filling their inboxes that causes the agent to be distracted. I’m not talking about the “mickey mouse” or “john doe” leads, there will always be those. What I’m more talking about is the desensitization agents get from the promotional email they get from vendors promising them leads/services. Sometimes they can be from the very vendor who they are paying to receive leads from trying to upsell them to a another package.

There have been several solutions to this problem, most of them center on the broker (i.e. Weichert) taking over the lead follow up process and doling out the leads to paying/qualified agents. But the problem still remains for a vast amount of agents wanting to sign up for these lead generation services directly. It’s a huge opportunity.

But it’s time to change the premise of the argument. We (vendors) are so compelled to upsell agents to the next column of products and services we forgot the rules of any long term relationship. We need to establish trust first, then deliver on what we promised. If we do that, the rest will follow.

The big problem in online real estate isn’t just the agents not responding to leads (or using your product), it’s stupid vendors who want to jump from first base to third base too quickly.