Tech Insights

Your best agents are wasting time on bad leads. Here’s how it’s costing you sales.

An inside look at agent productivity and the simple change smart agencies are making to grow their business.

Marino Pernía

Marino Pernía

Tech Insights
23 Jul 2025

An inside look at agent productivity and the simple change smart agencies are making to grow their business.

Villa in la Costa del Sol

Picture this: It’s Monday morning and you have a fresh list of 100 new enquiries for a beautiful property. Your first instinct is to give that list to your star agent. They’re your best closer, after all.

But this is where the problem starts.

By giving your best person a list full of both serious buyers and time-wasters, you’ve unintentionally made them the main roadblock to your agency’s growth. You’ve asked your fastest runner to wade through mud.

Let’s break down why this common practice is so damaging and what you can do about it.

The daily flood of unqualified enquiries

Every real estate agency gets them: a constant stream of enquiries from property portals and your website. The problem is, most of them aren’t serious. They’re from people who are just dreaming, aren’t financially ready, or are simply curious.

In fact, industry research shows a clear pattern:

Up to 70% of all initial property enquiries are from people who are not qualified to buy.
real estate agent

This means for every 10 hours your agents spend following up with potential clients, 7 of those hours are completely wasted. While your team is busy filtering through the noise, other agencies are already talking to the few serious buyers on the market. This isn’t just inefficient; it’s a direct loss of potential sales.

Why paying your top sellers to filter leads is a huge mistake

When your best agents are spending their day making call after call just to find out if someone is a genuine buyer, you have a major problem. You’re paying an expert negotiator the salary of a master closer to do the low-level work of an administrative assistant.

Think about the real cost.

Every hour your top seller spends on a dead-end enquiry is an hour they are not spending with a high-value client who is ready to make a move. It’s a lost opportunity to build a relationship, conduct a viewing, or close a deal that would have made your month.

It’s not just about the money, either. It’s frustrating. Great salespeople are driven by results, not by repetitive administrative tasks. This is how your best people get burnt out and start looking for a job at an agency that works smarter.

real estate deal

A real-world example of working smarter, not harder

This problem can be solved. I was talking to the director of a successful agency in Marbella who faced this exact challenge. He told me a story from a recent Saturday night.

At 11 PM, he got an alert. A potential buyer from New York had just had a full conversation with his agency’s new system. The system had asked all the important questions, confirmed they were a serious buyer, and had even scheduled a viewing for the following week.

The system sent a confirmation to the buyer and all the details to the right agent on his team.

He told me, “In the past, that enquiry would have gone cold by Monday morning. This time, my agent was asleep, but my agency was working. We captured a serious client while our competitors were offline. That’s the advantage.”

The simple shift that changes everything

The most successful agencies are no longer asking their agents to do everything. They are building a new “front door” for their business that handles the initial contact for them.

Imagine a system that works for you 24/7. It gives every new enquiry an instant, professional response. It asks the qualifying questions for you, sorting the serious buyers from the time-wasters.

This means your agents’ phones only ring when there’s a genuine, high-intent client on the line who is ready for a real conversation.

This isn’t about replacing your agents. It’s about freeing them up to focus on what they do best: selling property. You remove the frustrating, time-wasting tasks and create a fast lane that connects your agents directly with qualified clients.

Your top agents should be your agency’s greatest strength, not the part of the process that slows everything down. The question is, are you giving them the tools to succeed?

luxury real estate agency
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