Measuring lead sources in an estate agency: which channel actually produces sales

Estate agencies spend money on marketing, but most do not know which money comes back. Portal subscriptions, window displays, social ads, brochures, signage. At month end the total spend is clear; which line item produced which sale is not. So the decision is made on feel: “the portal seemed to go well last month”.

The trouble with feel is that we mistake the loudest channel for the best one. Portals make the phone ring the most, so they look the most valuable. But without measuring how many of those calls turn into viewings and how many into sales, that judgement is unfounded. A referred client may call once a month and buy one time in three; in that case the agency's best channel is the one that rings the phone least.

What a funnel is, and why it has to be per source

A conversion funnel counts the stages a client passes through from first contact to sale: contact, qualified enquiry, viewing, offer, sale. The number falls at each stage, and where it falls tells you what to do.

A single funnel shows the general health of the office but is not enough to decide anything. Decisions come from a source-based funnel: the same stages, kept separately for each channel. You then look at a table saying “100 portal contacts produced 3 sales, 12 referral contacts produced 4” and move the budget accordingly.

Step 1: Fix the list of sources

Free text is the first enemy of measurement. If one agent writes “portal”, another writes the portal's full name and a third writes “internet”, no report comes out. The manager defines the list, it is a closed list, and everyone picks from it. A reasonable start:

• Portal (one line per portal; you can be doing well on one and badly on another)
• Shop window / signage
• Referral (existing client, owner, business partner)
• Social media (organic and paid separately)
• Website / search
• Past client (re-contact)
• Other (if this line grows, your list is missing something)

Step 2: Record the source at first contact

The source is not remembered later. When the call ends, the message arrives or the person walks in, a record is opened and the source is chosen right then. That means opening a record has to take seconds, and the source field has to be required. If it is optional, “blank” becomes your biggest source within two months.

A small tip: “how did you find us?” is a natural question on the phone and clients answer it happily. Once agents get used to asking, the data arrives by itself.

Step 3: Define the stages and record the transitions

Stage definitions must be sharp, or everyone counts differently:

1. Contact: the person reached us and a record exists.
2. Qualified enquiry: budget, area and property type are clear; they are genuinely looking.
3. Viewing: at least one appointment took place and its outcome was recorded.
4. Offer: a written or verbal price offer was made.
5. Sale / let: the file closed.

The critical point is stage three. A viewing that took place but has no outcome recorded never happened as far as the funnel is concerned; the viewing count comes out wrong and every ratio breaks. Recording the outcome after each appointment (positive, negative, postponed, no-show) is the weakest link in the funnel. Start there.

Step 4: Record the reason for loss too

Recording why a client dropped out of the funnel is the second half of channel analysis. Budget did not fit, bought through another agency, gave up, unreachable, nothing suitable in the portfolio. When loss reasons are broken down by channel you see interesting things: if most clients from one portal drop out on “budget did not fit”, the problem may not be the channel but how you price your listings there.

Step 5: Look at the same table once a month

The report comes out monthly and in the same format every month; otherwise nothing can be compared. For each source: number of contacts, conversion to viewing, conversion to sale, spend on that channel, cost per sale. The last column makes the decision.

Do not decide before you have three months of data. A single month can be skewed by one large sale or one holiday week.

Common mistakes

• Confusing the channel with the agent. A channel can look bad because the agent who handles its enquiries works badly. Read the report by channel and by agent together.
• Looking only at the last touch. The client saw the listing on a portal, noticed the sign, then came via a referral. Fix on the first-contact channel and stick to it. Not perfect, but consistent.
• Cancelling a channel that needed fixing. Low conversion is sometimes not the channel's fault but the listing copy or photos used on it.

The funnel in PropOrdo

In PropOrdo the source field on a client record is chosen from a short fixed list of channels (portal, website, social media, advertising, referral, signage, existing client, business partner, event); details such as which portal or who referred go in a free-text field beside it. The source is not a required field; instead the Conversion Funnel screen shows the share of records with no source at the top and tells you not to trust the channel table until that share falls. Appointments are closed by recording an outcome; an appointment without one is excluded from reports and cannot open a sales file. The funnel shows contact, viewing, offer and won stages by channel and by agent, with loss reasons, and Branch Reports aggregate the same data at branch level. Entering ad spend per channel and reading cost per sale still lives in your own spreadsheet for now; the funnel side is ready. You can open a free 14-day account to try it.