Ask HN: How do I generate leads?

dougbarrett · on Sept 21, 2012

I've worked with real estate technology, and the best way to get clients is to get to know the brokers. Create a relationship with a broker, "team", group, whatever you want to call it but that's what you need to do.

Find local real estate agents, and see who they are working with.

Just be careful though, chances are whatever service the agent is using for their website already has a listings creator.

I know that Zillow just created a service a few months ago, and there are some others out there as well.

Also, as far as the backend goes, you want it to be simple. Real Estate agents are concerned about making money, and for the most part they do not believe in the internet yet and they do not believe that the internet is a viable source for lead generation.

You're in a good position, because their mindset is changing especially with a wave of new real estate agents coming in.

In marketing it, you need to explain that your product is strong in two points, the front-end and the backend. Make sure your product at the bare minimum can export to a CSV file, but try to see what software agents are using to manage their agents, and create export features for that.

Make sure they get leads right away, and they are legit leads. I used akismet for our lead generator, and it worked great for the most part to weed out the spam.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I'd be more than happy to help you how I can in a general sense, I don't want to step on my previous employers toes though since they are also getting into the same market eventually (could be years though).

gawker · on Sept 22, 2012

Thanks for all your help! I've been speaking with a friend of mine who's a real estate agent. He's mentioned about IDX listings - would you happen to know how it works and whether or not, I can just fetch API data? It seems like some companies provide it as a full embeddable solution which looks horrible for my purposes.

Would you also be able to elaborate more on using akismet for lead generator? Did you mean that spammers would hit the contact form fairly often?

Thanks for your help. And I understand about not stepping on your previous employers' toes. If there are any questions I'm asking that you do not feel comfortable with, please let me know.

dougbarrett · on Sept 24, 2012

No worries. IDX Information you get from the MLS directly. They are very strict about their feeds, so you'll have to talk to them about their terms and conditions and how they allow you to access their information. The RETS[1] feed is slowly becoming the standard, but again, it varies.

To start, I'd just have it simply be a form the agent can fill out. I think Zillow might have an API, but you'll just have to put on the site that the data is from Zillow. A small price to pay for a huge convenience for the agent.

I used Akismet to weed out spam posts. I didn't want to implement a captcha, I set up a javascript honeypot as the first defense but Akismet was the second defense. It was great, because it allowed for "Mark as spam" "This is not spam" options that you can contribute back to the Akismet engine to make it smarter, and it took about an hour to implement in PHP...super easy and a great selling point.

[1]: http://www.rets.org/ (Looks like their website is down)

nalidixic · on Sept 21, 2012

I think it's awesome your reaching out for help. I think the problem your going to run into is the same problem I've run into many times before.

Your basically starting in the wrong place. Rather than coming up with an idea and trying to find market fit and leads you really ought to be finding your market and learning how to help them. If you take that approach not only will you know how to reach your market but you'll also know more about how to sell and talk to them.

A few questions to consider

1) Do real estate agents buy software?

2) Does the pain point your working on make them more money or drastically decrease pain?

3) How do you plan on reaching your market?

I'm not saying I'm an expert on this by any means but I'm learning as I go and have come to the point where I won't bullshit myself any longer on useless ideas.

Feel free to email me at nalidixic@gmail.com or hit me up on twitter @nalidixic

Cheers!

gawker · on Sept 22, 2012

Thanks for the advice! So far, I've talked to several people based upon Jason Cohen's advice on getting at least 10 people to say they would pay for it. So far, I have about 6 but maybe I'm missing something here.

I'll attempt to answer your questions :) I just checked out your rent management software. It looks great - had a similar idea but didn't work on it. Good luck!

gawker · on Sept 21, 2012

Clickable link: http://signup.mintspaces.com/