What do you do with Internet leads?

Sure, I could do that, but I didn’t recommend it. After all –  how many people are willing to be put on hold?

If you send an inquiry to a company, you want a response. Not next week – today – and the sooner the better.

Real estate leads aren’t exclusive. That potential client might have inquired of 3 or 4 agents within a few minute’s time – and whoever calls back first is very likely to get his or her business. People don’t HAVE to wait until the agent feels like responding, because there are other agents who will respond within a reasonable amount of time.

So what should you do? First – if you don’t feel like bothering with clients you’re in the wrong business. And if you don’t have any faith in Internet leads, you should stop going after them.

But… assuming that you are set up to get Internet leads and you do want to bother with clients. First, DO have an autoresponder, but make sure your message says something like “I’m with a client right now, and I’ll call/ write just as soon as I can.”  Then do call or write as soon as you can.

I wrote an Active Rain post about this a couple of years ago – check it out right here. 

Some companies can get away with putting clients on perpetual wait, but yours isn’t one of them.

A year or two ago we switched Satellite TV providers, so they didn’t care if they answer a question or not. I wrote Dish Network and more than a week went by with no response. Their representative said they’d get to me when they got around to it. I had a contract with them so couldn’t go anywhere unless I paid big bucks – they didn’t have to give me one iota of service, and they didn’t even try until my contract expired. (Then when I switched away from them, they wanted to talk to me, and to offer me the moon.)

You don’t have the luxury of having captive clients. Your leads – and indeed your current clients – can go elsewhere.

An Internet lead may be as valuable as fine crystal – but if you drop either one, it will be useless.