Managing cyber leads
Manage Online Leads By Phone

A new service allows you to filter serious online prospects and immediately respond to inquiries.

BY MICHAEL RUSSER

One of the biggest complaints that sales professionals have about online leads is that you practically have to live in front of the computer to respond in a timely manner. Today’s Internet-empowered consumers expect almost instant response to their online inquiries, but that doesn’t mean you have to be glued to a monitor all day.

In fact, there is now a way you can respond to online inquiries by phone from anywhere, almost as quickly as consumers’ hands leave the keyboard.

Thanks to a very clever and affordable Web-based service called LeadPhone, you can listen to and respond by phone to those online inquiries from consumers who want to talk with you right away. Here is how it works:

Filtering for Gold

Your online inquiries can come from many different sources, including online newspaper ads, forms on your Web site, REALTOR.com, your MLS, etc. Once you register for the service, you’re given a special LeadPhone e-mail address to which all your online leads are forwarded. This gives LeadPhone the ability to analyze every one of your online inquiries and then immediately act on it based upon certain rules you set up. For example:

• Web Form Inquiries. If an online inquiry comes in via a Web form on your Web site and the person completing the form includes a phone number, you can have LeadPhone automatically call you on whatever number you choose and “read” the e-mail to you using text-to-voice technology. This allows you to hear inquirer’s questions immediately and then be able to call the person back. This process usually takes less than two minutes but can vary depending on the length of the message. You can set up rules so that the service only calls you when certain conditions are met (e.g., the Web form inquiry contains a phone number), so that you can be alerted to only the most promising leads.
  
• Keyword Triggers. For online inquiries that don't have structured content like those coming from a Web form, you can have LeadPhone scan for certain keywords (e.g., MLS numbers, names, addresses, etc.). If a message comes in containing one of your keywords, then LeadPhone will immediately call or page you. The paging functionality only works if you have an e-mail-based paging service.
  
  LeadPhone allows you to go about your business without being joined at the hip to your computer. At the same time, you can respond nearly instantly to those online inquiries that are likely to turn into leads. In this way, the service acts like an online filter that helps you find those inquiries that are most likely to turn into gold. And you still will always see all your e-mail inquiries, whether LeadPhone calls you or not.
  
  Also, if you use Top Producer 7i, LeadPhone will automatically populate your contact database with each new inquiry—a very useful and timesaving feature.
  
  To register, go to LeadPhone and follow the simple five-step process. After that, you will be sent e-mail instructions on how to set up the response rules for your inquiries. This service costs $15/month no matter how many leads it processes. At that price, closing just one new transaction as a result of your quick response will pay for this service for many years to come.
  
  It’s important to note that earlier this year, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®’ Center for REALTOR® Technology released its Messenger open-source software program that works in much the same way as LeadPhone. It converts consumer inquiries received from Web sites into voice messages that are then sent to a subscribing member’s cell phone. Currently, the Houston Association of REALTORS® is offering it as a free member benefit. But Messenger only works on inquiries that come from searches on the Houston MLS instead of any online source, and it does not have the same business-rule flexibility that allows you to indicate how the service is to act upon each inquiry. But the fact that CRT developed this product demonstrates NAR's awareness of the importance of online lead management.
  
  LeadPhone doesn’t provide all the answers to managing online leads, but it does let you catch and respond to those inquiries that request an immediate call-back. Before Messenger and LeadPhone came along, you had to spend way too much of your valuable face time in front of a computer screen. Finally, there are online lead management options that break those digital chains.
  
  

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