Lead Recycling in Real Estate and Mortgage

Most in Mortgage and Real Estate industry waste leads and have huge databases of discarded leads, old prospects, and deals. This adds up to millions of dollars of investments that sit rotting in the lead graveyard. The growing trash pile is a reminder of the hard work that is lead generation. But this is not actually a dumpster fire, it’s a gold mine.

About 8.4% of Americans moved last year, (28 Million people per Census data) and a slightly lower percentage is projected to move in the next 12 months. When you look at your database of old leads and contacts, realize that around 8% of your database will move next year.

Today, Kingsford charcoal is one of the most recognizable brands in the BBQ industry. But had it not been for a keen eye for the bottom line and a desire to recycle waste – the company would not have existed. In 1919 Henry Ford worked with Michigan Real Estate Agent Edward Kingsford to produce his own lumber for the 1 Million Ford Model T’s that they were producing. The following year, they would create Kingsford Charcoal, using the sawdust waste from building the cars to create charcoal briquettes that they began selling it at Dealerships.

When I was growing up, recycling in the home and office was a foreign concept. We would buy a bottle of wine, or a newspaper, drink the wine, read the paper and then chuck it in the garbage. After consumption, there was not any value in the bottle or paper. However, like Henry Ford, this trash held an opportunity. There were millions of dollars of revenue mixed in the trash. Melting down beer cans, wine bottles and pulping paper that could be re sold as a new product at lower cost than buying new.

There is a lot of waste in Real Estate. Traditionally, Real estate leads are worked linearly. At the start, a lead is purchased, and its worked for a period of time, till one of two outcomes: It closes, or it dies. Having extracted the value from the lead, its common for our industry to simply turn our backs on them, or throw out the lead, away onto the ever growing trash pile of discarded prospects. Linear lead flow is the old, outdated way of thinking.

I’d like you to think about two terms from the marketing and finance world that are parts of the new way of lead flow:

Customer lifecycle:
A prospect is not always in buying mode, but that mode happens in cycles. Purchase:> Awareness:> Research:> Purchase.

Customer Lifetime value:
Think beyond one home purchase. Think about the total worth to your business of a customer over the whole period of the relationship. Think about 2 or 3 home purchases per client.

Your discarded pile of used leads, prospects and closed deals contains riches if you recycle them or in this case, if you Revaluate your old leads you can drastically increase your Customer Lifetime value. This will decrease your lead acquisition cost, increase your margins and grow your bottom line.

Recycling is in our DNA.You already know that our company is named Revaluate, but most folks don’t know the true meaning of the company name.

Revaluate: transitive verb. : revalue specifically : to increase the value of

The literal meaning of the word Revaluate is to make a new valuation out of something. To Revaluate is to re-value that item, to Recycle and increase the value of your old leads.

Revaluate is proud to be leading the way in Lead Recycling and increasing your efficiency. To learn more about lead recycling, schedule an appointment with one of our data experts to learn how much your dead leads could be worth. http://revaluate.com/talk

Nerd Alert: Extra Credit Bonus Historical Fact:
Here’s a great example I didn’t use in the body of the post, as it didn’t have a real estate play that Kingsford did – but I love it none the less.
An early (the first?) example of metal recycling in the United States came 4 days after the signing of the decoration of independence, in the war of 1776, when the statue of Englands King George was torn down, melted and turned into 42,088 musket balls (bullets). Source: Smithsonian