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Understanding the Relationships Scores and rFactor

Relationship scores are used to track the quality of the relationship with a contact and determines when best to communicate people in the database.  If the relationship score of a contact goes above or below the average stage and the trend is continuing in that direction then the user should communicate with the contact to possibly move them to the next stage or make sure they don’t fall down to the previous stage.

Each line item below will be given “points” which will help move a contact through Stage segments of Aware > Know > Like > Trust.  As they move through the different stages the  closer they get to becoming an active client.

Time

How long have you known your contact.  This helps to determine how often should you communicate.  Someone that you’ve known for a long time can go longer without communication that someone you met just yesterday.

Category

A | B | C | D | (None)

This is your perceived “Grade” or category that is assigned to the contact.  Contacts that are more important to your business should be given a higher category.  When the relationship is scored, your perceived value is taken into account to rank a contact.

Stage

Aware | Know | Like | Trust | (None)

Contacts go through four stages of a relationship, each stage has a direct impact on the Contact Status.

Contact Status

(None) | Suspect | Prospect | Lead | Client | Past Client

There are 6 different “states” that contacts go through as a relationship is being built.

Understanding each state and what promotes a state change to move to the next stage is important. Contacts go through three basic Contact Status states before they become a Client. They are  Suspect, Prospect and Lead.  Once a Lead signs a listing or buyer’s agreement then they become an active Client.  After the transaction closes then the Contact Status should be changed to Past Client until the next time an agreement is signed.  From that point forward then contacts should cycle between Client and Past Client

Contact Type

Client (default) | Agent | Farm | Personal | Prospect | Vendor | Hidden

Only those contacts identified as Client / Farm / Personal / Prospect are used in calculating rFactor (see below).  This is important to weed out those contacts in your database which are not likely to do business with you and should not be part of the rFactor calculation.

Referral Count

The more referrals you get from a contact the more they trust the user.  This trust factor helps determine the contact’s overall value.

Details

The quantity and type of information you have on a contact determines how well you know this person.   People share more information with those people they know, like and trust.  Realvolve evaluates at the type of data, public -vs- private along with explicit and implicit to determine this person's interest in you.

Lifetime Value

Lifetime value shows the percentage of your overall revenue that this contact represents.  The higher the value the more important that they can be.  

Engagement

Send/Receive communication (all forms) - Reply to emails or social media messages.  Being engaged through correspondence determines a contacts importance.

Bonding

Doing things with a contact (breakfast/lunch/dinner/parties)  gathered through your calendar usage.

Relationship

This goes along with the concept of “Propinquity”... The closer you are to someone, the more likely they are to do business with you.  Getting to know someone with One-on-one meetings, Personal visits, Calls and Personal Notes should be a focus of a user’s business.

Intensity

Calendar items which have high importance can weigh heavy on the intensity of the person or project that is at hand.  Realvolve uses this to determine who currently has high emphasis in your business.

Reply Intensity

Amount of time between replies to your emails / SMS texts / calls can tell how important you are to the contact.

Frequency

Evaluates the number of activities in a given time using a clustered algorithm for the past 14 and next 14 days.  The frequency factor looks at the amount of time between activities - the more frequent you do something for a contact the higher the importance.

Score Decay

Score Decay automatically reduces the score when there has been little or no activity in a number  of months.  Realvolve reduces the score of any contact by n/12 %.  Score decay does take into account the TIME you have known a person - Good friends can pick up from where they left off as if there was no time difference.  Where newer contacts can lose faith quickly if not contacted frequently.

 

rFactor

rFactor is used to rate the quality of your overall database on a scale of 0-10.  Is your database filled with low scoring leads that have little chance of bringing in income?   Do you have mostly contacts with high relationship scores with high probability of new or repeat business along with strong referral chances?  

Realvolve evaluates the relationship scores on contacts that have a “Contact Type” of Client / Farm / Personal / Prospect to determine the rFactor score.  This represents the majority of the contacts which would typically buy or sell a home through you.  

From the rFactor score we calculate the Predicted Number of Transactions and Revenue that you should be able to get out of your database.  Obviously, this prediction could be higher or lower but we have found that in most cases, it is pretty reliable.

Another benefit of rFactor is that you have a quantifiable “Score” of your database representing its value should you decide to sell your business and the database along with it.

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    Eric Auger

    What is the scale for the rFactor?

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