Arizona is a Zillow Flex marketplace where they have chosen teams to send their connections to. In today’s podcast, we’re sharing what Zillow has taught us about lead conversion as a Flex Premier Agent. These are lead conversion strategies we wouldn’t have otherwise learned.
Zillow tracks stats within their CRM such as call pickup rates, appointments, and conversion rates. They then get paid 35% on every deal we close (the first two deals only). In the Flex program, it’s all performance-based. The better you do and the more you convert, the more leads they dish out to you.
These Zillow lead conversion lessons are to help you be more focused and to close more deals.
Press play to listen to the podcast episode:
…or watch the video below…
Or read on to find out each lesson we learned…
Lesson 1: Try harder to talk to the leads.
If they’re not calling you, you need to come up with strategies to get them on the phone faster. A lot of times agents feel they’re “bugging” a lead by reaching out to them multiple times. In Zillow, you get credit for 2 types of appointments: an in-person appointment or a virtual appointment. A lot of people will take the virtual appointment, which is something you can use to entice the lead to get the appointment.
Lesson 2: Urgency for the appointment.
Zillow has taught us that instead of talking about the house you don’t know anything about, simply set the appointment. The customer then comes to the property with all of their questions at the appointment. This should be the very first question you ask, “when would you like to see the property?”. Setting the appointment stops the lead from continuing to look for an agent.
The agents that start asking questions during the first call are the ones that typically don’t get the appointment. Questions such as if they’re pre-qualified or what they like about the property don’t need to be posed prior to the meeting. Just get the appointment.
Lesson 3: More than 50% of the leads you talk to think you are the listing agent.
If we were more consumer-oriented, a customer would actually be able to talk to the person who knows the most about the house. As Zillow has taught us about lead conversion, move the conversation from trying to talk about a house you don’t know anything about, set the appointment.
Lesson 4: Mindset.
The old-school mindset is to not waste your time with someone who’s not qualified. Now, teams and agents are willing to waste their time simply to get in front of someone in order to build rapport with them. The mindset change is that you have to be customer service-oriented enough to think your goal is just to show the house.
Lesson 5: Talk less.
Keep the call to 2 minutes or less. We didn’t realize how much we were losing by talking too much. This week, we set appointments with 63% of the leads. If someone spoke outside of the appointment, they set the appointment 12% of the time. That means 50% of the time we didn’t meet with someone and we all know it’s hard to sell a house to someone you don’t meet. Don’t say things that will cause them to lose interest in you (such as “are you qualified” or “when are you planning on moving”).
Lesson 6: Property-level leads are where you should spend all of your time.
Zillow leads are typically property-level leads. And if they’re not, it’s up to us to turn them into a property-level lead.
If they’re not a property-level lead, how do you create them? Dangle carrots. Find the properties that fit their criteria and send them videos. When they respond, that’s when you go for the appointment.
Lesson 7: if you’re not free in the next 3 hours, the lead is gone.
Leads have an expectation that you’re available to meet at the property NOW. If you set the appointment too far into the future, you’re going to lose them. You have to be customer service-oriented and willing to move your schedule around to get the appointment.
When they call, they’re excited about the property. If you’re not available right then, their excitement level is going to fall. The amount of energy and effort it takes to get their excitement level back up is so hard that most agents just give up.
Lesson 8: Survey every single one of your clients.
Zillow automatically sends a survey to every client as soon as we interact with them. This is what determines the Best of Zillow badge and when we learned that every client was going to be reviewing us, our level of service improved. In addition, we started reaching out to every single one of our closings to find out how our agents were doing. This holds us more accountable for our actions.
The business of sales and marketing isn’t about being unique 100% of the time. Sometimes it’s about benchmarking, and taking what you learn from other successful models and implementing it into your business practices.
Zillow is good at sales. When they got into the Flex program (referral fee model), their business is to help us agents get better at lead conversion. Take note of how much attention Zillow puts on us when it comes to what we’re doing with their leads and then apply that same level of attention to our other lead sources when you’ve given them to other team members.
