Large brokerages are mismanaging leads and missing opportunities to capture insurance, mortgage and other home services business by not harnessing "big data," according to a new report from the real estate consulting firm WAV Group.
"Brokers need to understand that big businesses use big data to acquire big market share in offering home services," said Victor Lund, founding partner of WAV Group.
By updating and consolidating past, current and potential client data which often sits unused in accounting systems, firms have the opportunity to capture much more business, Lund said.
 Victor Lund |
Brokerages with 500 agents or more tend to have incomplete, stale and poorly integrated client data, like missing email addresses, phone numbers and insurance information, the WAV Group report, "Harvesting Business from Broker Data," showed.
This hampers the brokerages’ abilities to market effectively and to capture more repeat business, including business that’s peripheral to real estate transactions, such as insurance sales.
(In another recent report, "Improving Home Services Revenue," WAV Group concluded that large brokerages were missing out on opportunities to provide ancillary services like property management, mortgage, title insurance and escrow, and home warranties).
With updated and detailed data, Lund said, brokerages would recognize when past clients are ready to refinance a mortgage or re-up their homeowners’ insurance.
This detailed data is valuable for managing lead generation, too, Lund said — for both new and existing clients.
By analyzing how mortgage and insurance companies efficiently manage thousands of leads using detailed data sets, the WAV Group report points out that information like loan date, interest rate and amount, is available for brokerages to re-assess past clients and to better determine the quality of current leads.
For example, in-depth lead reports from a company like iLead.com show which lead sources provide the highest proportion of closed leads, so brokerages can focus marketing efforts in those places.