Here's how to monitor your day-to-day business metrics so you can manage your clients in the best way possible.
Director of Discovery Finance Group, Joshua Vecchio has written over $250m, using techniques and tips being shared on his website Top Broker.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a solo broker or run a team – you can’t successfully make business decisions without knowing if your sales and marketing efforts are delivering actual results.
With tools like Google Analytics, monitoring metrics and sales conversion statistics on your website and Facebook is so easy. With reports on your click through rate, return visitors and sales conversions, you can find out what works and what doesn’t and target your efforts accordingly.
Monitoring your online metrics is simple, but it’s important that you don’t stop there. Keeping an eye on your day-to-day business metrics is a lot harder, but it’s 10 times more important.
As they say, what gets measured gets managed. And if you’re not measuring your business metrics, how are your going to know what works? Here are my Top 7 Sales Metrics Brokers MUST monitor.
1.Contact Rate
How often do you reach out to leads? How many new and existing clients are you getting in touch with every week? This isn’t to chase pipeline deals, this is for new business and it doesn’t only need to be via phone – email, SMS, direct message on Facebook, contact them on LinkedIn – if you’re not in touch then you’re most likely not at the front of their mind.
I believe you need to contact potential customers at a minimum of once every 3 months and existing customers every 6 to 12 months. How do you know you’re in contact enough? Heres the simple answer: when you call your potential customers, do they remember who you are? Where you’re from? How you can help them? Do they your number saved in their phone? These are all signs. The more of these questions your potential customers can answer, the more you can feel comfortable with your contact program and pipeline management.
2.Cost per lead
This metric is SUPER simple, but gives you a great health check on your marketing efforts. Divide your marketing spend by the total leads that came through. So if you sponsored a sports carnival for $1000 and got 10 leads, your cost per lead is $100.
Are you measuring this? It’s amazing how many businesses spend time, money and resources on marketing without any idea on how successful their marketing spend is. Keep track of where your leads are coming from and you’ll soon find out where your marketing budget is best spent. Make sure to always ask your leads how they found out about you. Most importantly, don’t forget about lead quality.
3.Time to close
Time is money, right? How long does it take you to close a lead? If it takes 10 appointments to convert cold leads generated online, then is it really a good allocation of time when it might take just one to convert a lead from a referrer? You want to be expeditious with the time you spend with your clients while still giving them the service they need, so track the average length of time your deals take to close.
Keep the finger on the pulse with this one. Understanding where your time can be best utilised will increase your return on time spent. For example, you might find you add great value in a particular niche and can assist more customers effectively and efficiently than a customer from a generic source.
4.Leads by source
With your overall marketing efforts, you’ve likely received leads from a myriad of channels. Maybe a certain introducer produces more leads than any other. Facebook has been known to be one of the top real estate lead generation tools in recent years. In fact, 74% of referral website traffic for agents comes from Facebook. You need to identify the best lead sources, and once you know where they are, you need to focus more of your energy there. If your website isn’t converting then maybe you need to look at your value proposition.
5.Customer lifetime value
How much is a customer worth to your business? How much are they worth during the time that they are your customer? Once you understand the numbers around how much each customer is worth to your business you can make informed decisions around how much to spend to acquire a customer. This is particularly relevant given there are so many ways to acquire customers nowadays.
6.Your website, and Facebook
There’s no doubt about it, your business website is going to be one of the best marketing tools on the web. How often do you update it? Is the information on the website relevant to today? Is it mobile friendly? There are always ways you can improve your website. When customers are introduced to you for the first time, they’ll Google Search your business and yourself. What’s the first impression they’re getting when they jump onto your website? The same can also be said about social media, this is another awesome avenue to generate new business. The key with anything online it regular content, keep an engaged audience, and always look at ways to do things better.
7.Closing rate
This is the best metric in my opinion, it paints a complete picture of your sales efforts. Monitoring how many leads turn into actual clients may not take that much time to determine but it can give you an accurate picture of what you have settled and where you need to improve.
•Determine which referrers bring in lots of qualified leads
•Develop more targeted email blasts to existing leads, featuring local listings and company info
•Find out which blog topics perform best (likely ones with high click-through/social sharing rates)
•Take a closer look at your site’s value proposition and copy (including homepage, landing pages, and blog)
•Offer a referral program, or market your current one more often via social media and email
•Reach out to friends and family to learn about anyone they may know looking to buy
And that’s it! Monitor these 7 sales metrics and you will be on the fast track to becoming a Top Broker in no time!
This article originally appeared on Top Broker, a growing online space where tips and strategies are shared by Australia's top mortgage brokers.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a solo broker or run a team – you can’t successfully make business decisions without knowing if your sales and marketing efforts are delivering actual results.
With tools like Google Analytics, monitoring metrics and sales conversion statistics on your website and Facebook is so easy. With reports on your click through rate, return visitors and sales conversions, you can find out what works and what doesn’t and target your efforts accordingly.
Monitoring your online metrics is simple, but it’s important that you don’t stop there. Keeping an eye on your day-to-day business metrics is a lot harder, but it’s 10 times more important.
As they say, what gets measured gets managed. And if you’re not measuring your business metrics, how are your going to know what works? Here are my Top 7 Sales Metrics Brokers MUST monitor.
1.Contact Rate
How often do you reach out to leads? How many new and existing clients are you getting in touch with every week? This isn’t to chase pipeline deals, this is for new business and it doesn’t only need to be via phone – email, SMS, direct message on Facebook, contact them on LinkedIn – if you’re not in touch then you’re most likely not at the front of their mind.
I believe you need to contact potential customers at a minimum of once every 3 months and existing customers every 6 to 12 months. How do you know you’re in contact enough? Heres the simple answer: when you call your potential customers, do they remember who you are? Where you’re from? How you can help them? Do they your number saved in their phone? These are all signs. The more of these questions your potential customers can answer, the more you can feel comfortable with your contact program and pipeline management.
2.Cost per lead
This metric is SUPER simple, but gives you a great health check on your marketing efforts. Divide your marketing spend by the total leads that came through. So if you sponsored a sports carnival for $1000 and got 10 leads, your cost per lead is $100.
Are you measuring this? It’s amazing how many businesses spend time, money and resources on marketing without any idea on how successful their marketing spend is. Keep track of where your leads are coming from and you’ll soon find out where your marketing budget is best spent. Make sure to always ask your leads how they found out about you. Most importantly, don’t forget about lead quality.
3.Time to close
Time is money, right? How long does it take you to close a lead? If it takes 10 appointments to convert cold leads generated online, then is it really a good allocation of time when it might take just one to convert a lead from a referrer? You want to be expeditious with the time you spend with your clients while still giving them the service they need, so track the average length of time your deals take to close.
Keep the finger on the pulse with this one. Understanding where your time can be best utilised will increase your return on time spent. For example, you might find you add great value in a particular niche and can assist more customers effectively and efficiently than a customer from a generic source.
4.Leads by source
With your overall marketing efforts, you’ve likely received leads from a myriad of channels. Maybe a certain introducer produces more leads than any other. Facebook has been known to be one of the top real estate lead generation tools in recent years. In fact, 74% of referral website traffic for agents comes from Facebook. You need to identify the best lead sources, and once you know where they are, you need to focus more of your energy there. If your website isn’t converting then maybe you need to look at your value proposition.
5.Customer lifetime value
How much is a customer worth to your business? How much are they worth during the time that they are your customer? Once you understand the numbers around how much each customer is worth to your business you can make informed decisions around how much to spend to acquire a customer. This is particularly relevant given there are so many ways to acquire customers nowadays.
6.Your website, and Facebook
There’s no doubt about it, your business website is going to be one of the best marketing tools on the web. How often do you update it? Is the information on the website relevant to today? Is it mobile friendly? There are always ways you can improve your website. When customers are introduced to you for the first time, they’ll Google Search your business and yourself. What’s the first impression they’re getting when they jump onto your website? The same can also be said about social media, this is another awesome avenue to generate new business. The key with anything online it regular content, keep an engaged audience, and always look at ways to do things better.
7.Closing rate
This is the best metric in my opinion, it paints a complete picture of your sales efforts. Monitoring how many leads turn into actual clients may not take that much time to determine but it can give you an accurate picture of what you have settled and where you need to improve.
•Determine which referrers bring in lots of qualified leads
•Develop more targeted email blasts to existing leads, featuring local listings and company info
•Find out which blog topics perform best (likely ones with high click-through/social sharing rates)
•Take a closer look at your site’s value proposition and copy (including homepage, landing pages, and blog)
•Offer a referral program, or market your current one more often via social media and email
•Reach out to friends and family to learn about anyone they may know looking to buy
And that’s it! Monitor these 7 sales metrics and you will be on the fast track to becoming a Top Broker in no time!
This article originally appeared on Top Broker, a growing online space where tips and strategies are shared by Australia's top mortgage brokers.
