There are few things that cause more frustration for an agent than losing a potential client because of a missed call or breakdown in communication.
How do you make sure you capture every lead, especially when it comes from a ready-buyer that is standing in front of your listing?
We already know that 42 percent of “calls from the curb” unfortunately end up in voice mail. That’s not what you want and it’s certainly not what the buyer wants.
Making sure an agent captures every contact has been a main driver behind VoicePad to market your properties: It makes it easier for you to make sure you connect with every potential lead, using call, text.
There are three things that VoicePad does for you to help you automatically improve your lead capture.
1. Give potential clients different options to acquire property info.
Not everyone wants to call, not everyone wants to text, someone people just want a link that gives them all the information via a mobile website.
Ginger McQuigg, president of Residential Sales for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Florida Properties Group understands this. “VoicePad gives our customers choices,” she says.
2. Handle every contact.
This is where the right phone solution can pay for itself many times over. You need to manage every call, every text, and don’t let that potential contact slip away only to reach out for help elsewhere.
VoicePad, as a call management system for your business, gives you identifiable buyer ring tones, simultaneous ring technology, and sends the buyer an automatic personalized message if you can’t answer the call. For your non-smartphone callers that are calling about your listing, VoicePad provides MLS speech technology that lets them listen to the features of your property on any phone, in English and Spanish.
“There’s two big side benefits to VoicePad’s call management system,” says McQuigg. “First, you eliminate receptionist costs and gain much better reliability. Second, being on the cloud means you don’t need any equipment with VoicePad. So there is no longer a phone system that sits in a closet and no more repair bills.”
VoicePad even handles phone calls after the office closes, providing a dial-by-name agent directory, ensuring every customer inquiry is handled around the clock.
3. Track everything.
McQuigg knows that VoicePad’s killer feature is the fact that agents get a record of every single call, text and visit to their mobile website.
That’s the magic of mobile. Unlike a lead capture system on an agent’s website that often delivers a fake email address, mobile captures real contact information, including their mobile phone number and even their name from a single text or call.
That’s why BHHS Florida Properties Group uses VoicePad to power the phone numbers on all of their yard signs. The phone numbers are text-enabled and the system can automatically describe properties in both English and Spanish from MLS data (for “non-texters”). Both text and phone inquiries can be provided links to property info on a GPS-enabled mobile site.
Once VoicePad captures that lead, agents can track where they go online and which properties these buyers are most interested in, giving the buyer a better experience as the agent can better understand what the buyer wants from their subsequent search activity. You can’t do that on a website, and that’s why VoicePad and its mobile first approach helps you track everything.
Give them what they want, when they want it.
Once you have captured the lead, what do you do with it? Give buyers timely and relevant information.
For example, VoicePad helps agents provide automated property details for prospective buyers while they are standing in front of the property they are interested in, powered by the GPS technology that’s built-into the customer’s mobile phone.
“This option allows us to give the caller exactly what they want at the time of their call,” says McQuigg.
In addition to automated property details, buyers using VoicePad can obtain information on other properties without calling another firm; that’s something McQuigg’s agents appreciate.
“Buyers love to drive around neighborhoods on their own,” McQuigg says. “When one of our agents registers a buyer (in the VoicePad system), the buyer can obtain information on any property they call on without feeling disloyal to the agent they’re working with. And the agent is totally comfortable that they aren’t going to lose the buyer to another company.”
Open Houses also provide an excellent opportunity to reach out to prospective buyers with information they are interested in receiving. While it is great to let your buyers know that an Open House is coming up, it’s even better when a technology automatically notifies them for you. VoicePad automatically presents open house information six days before the event to help selling agents promote and advertise their listings further.
Today, every BHHS Florida Properties Group agent receives a VoicePad GPS mobile site. That means their prospective buyers get the opportunity to access property photos, tours, and school information all from their mobile device.
For McQuigg and her team, it’s a great way for their customers to have the freedom to shop on their own, find the properties they want to pursue further and to eliminate the ones that don’t meet their criteria—all from the convenience of their cell phones. The agent mobile websites are linked seamlessly to the VoicePad call and text platform as well.
“The beauty of VoicePad is that the things it does to help our agents are the same things it does to help buyers and sellers,” says McQuigg. “It brings it all full circle.”