Info that may be boring to some and interesting to others

[Mitch]

I was just looking at my numbers for the year so far. It's always fun to look at the amount of leads we get and then what happens to them. My LCA's (lead conversion administrators) and I met this morning and decided that the coming year, 2010, we will work more on converting leads based on price verse trying to convert everyone. My goal next year is to convert less sales but more dollars. This year our transactions are up, but dollars are down. Our software allows us to search leads by price range...we shall see!

One thing I never checked, until this year, is how many deletions, unsubscribes and bounced emails and then look at my lead conversion. Deletions on our site are bad emails. That is the only reason we would delete a lead. Unsubscribes are kept in our CRM to use at a later date...not sure for what yet but I'm a pack rat, I hate to just delete them!

So here are the numbers through October.

Leads - 13,137

Bad Email Addresses (deletions) - 4,102 (Only 1,644 have been deleted. We just had a problem with our bounced email system recently and are going to unbounce all these to see which emails are actually bad.)

unsubscribes - 580

This leaves means that 31% of our leads have bad email addresses. This number should change based on our unbouncing we are doing today. In the past we have averaged around a 20% bad email rate.

So what does this look like to the business? In the past all my numbers were run just on raw leads. However, by taking out bad email addresses, which makes sense since they really aren't leads, it give me a different picture of my business.

Total Good Email Address Leads - 9,035
Sales so far in 2009 - 295 transactions through Oct. 31
1 Transaction in 30.63 leads. Currently we have 40 short sales on the board but we all know we can't count on eating dinner with those!

Anyway, I just thought this was interesting and I always like to share what I find because it's fun to me! I know, I need to get a life!

[Brett M]

Thanks for posting your numbers Mitch. Astonishing...as usual.

If you don't mind me asking...how many of your 295 transactions were from the 9,035 leads that you got this year and how many were from the leads that you've been following up on since before 2009?

[Mitch]

I haven't checked that out yet. I did stats in June that told me our average sale, based on 100 random sales this year, was 180.5 days. My guess is that most of these, probably 80% or more, are from this year.

There is no question that the more my Agents work on follow up, the better they do. That's why I hired LCA's to make follow up calls. Agents can't do calls, show property, write contracts and do closings. It's just not worth chasing Agents to do the work. By hiring LCA's, I only deal with a couple of Agents verse 15-20.

[jessiesc]

Unsubscribes are kept in our CRM to use at a later date...not sure for what yet but I'm a pack rat, I hate to just delete them!

Thanks for the stats mitch.

I thought I tracked a lot of info LOL.

Word of caution about the unsubscribes- be careful with them.

I did some work for a company a while back that had quite a few issues with spam laws regarding unsubscribes.

I delete all unsubscribes immediately, better safe than sorry.

[Mitch]

What we have found with our unsubscribes is that about half don't know what they are unsubscribing. We have been able to save many of them.

I'm very cautious that these people do not get any emails from us. If we do anything in the future, it will be most likely by phone to see if they still have any thought of buying. Just not sure yet so I keep them. We don't have that many so it's not a big deal either way.

[Logan UT Real Estate Gal]

How many agents do you have working for you? 295 transactions is excellent! Do you do any sales yourself? Great work!

[Mitch]

We have 27 Agents. Only 15 are on leads now as the others have not produced. I'm excited about my line up right now for next year. I'm still searching for another 5 agents that I can teach to be successful.

I sell about 3 or 4 homes per year. I'm a big believer that you can't grow your business if you are the technician. All of you know how much I like the eMyth book. I prefer to spend my time figuring out how to convert more leads to sales.

[ielts london]

Why don't you all invest in india

[dmyre]

Thanks for sharing your stats.
It's always good to see behind the scenes, so to speak...

[Bob Crain]

Where do you advertise for new agents?