Outsource lead follow-up or do it yourself?

Outsourcing lead follow-up pays off if you have no inside sales team and leads are left waiting. An external party calls quickly and charges per appointment or signed instruction. Doing it yourself pays off if you want to keep the conversations, call script and lead knowledge in-house. Either way, measure the same thing: lead to signed instruction.

What outsourcing means in practice

When you outsource, an external party calls your leads back and books appointments for your agents. A well-known example is LeadAssist from BNDL, formerly DatHuis. According to its own product pages (September 2026), BNDL sets up the automation and calls the leads back using a fixed call script. BNDL invoices per appointment or per signed agency agreement (OTD, opdracht tot dienstverlening).

That model shifts the risk. You don't pay for call minutes but for an outcome. If a source produces little, you also pay little.

The alternative is for your own team to follow up: an inside sales team, a lead coordinator per branch, or the agents themselves. You then carry the fixed costs and keep control.

The pros and cons side by side

Both models work. Which fits better depends on your capacity and on what you want to know about your leads.

The most important difference is at the bottom of the table. When you outsource, the lead first speaks to someone who doesn't work at your agency. For a buyer who wants a viewing, that matters little. For a seller who is still undecided, the first conversation can be the moment they choose an estate agent.

When outsourcing is the better choice

Outsourcing is the better choice if leads currently go unanswered. A lead nobody calls produces nothing, and every appointment an external party books is then a gain.

Four situations in which the model fits well:

• You have no inside sales team and the agents are with clients during the day.
• You are launching a new campaign and don't yet know how many leads it will produce.
• The number of leads fluctuates sharply by season.
• You want to prove a source works before you hire someone.

In-house follow-up is the better choice if you have enough leads to keep someone calling full-time. The same applies if you want to work differently per branch, or want seller leads called by someone who knows the local market.

A hybrid also occurs: an external party makes the first contact and books the appointment, and your own agent holds the conversation. In that case, agree how the notes from that first conversation reach your agent.

What an appointment or signed agreement is worth

Before you choose, work out what a signed instruction earns you on average. That figure determines how much you can pay per appointment or per signed agency agreement.

In 2025, a selling agent cost an average of €5,800, at an average commission of 1.16% (Krib, analysis of 23,000 quotes). Use your own average price and commission if they differ.

Not every signed agency agreement leads to a sale, and not every appointment leads to a signed agreement. So work backwards:

If you don't have those percentages, that is the first thing to start measuring. How to do that per source is covered in which lead source wins the most instructions.

What to measure in either case

Measure the whole chain from lead to commission, regardless of who makes the calls. Only then can you compare the two models fairly.

For each lead, record:

• the source and the branch;
• the time to first contact;
• whether contact was made, and after how many attempts;
• whether an appointment followed, and with which agent;
• whether a signed agency agreement followed, and on what date;
• the final sale price and commission.

When you outsource, add one point: make sure the outcome of every conversation comes back into your own system, including for leads that produced no appointment. A lead who doesn't want to sell now may want to in a year, and then you want to know what was said in the first conversation.

With valuations, bear the long lead time in mind. A lead who holds off today can become an instruction in twelve months. So don't judge a source only on the number of appointments in the first few weeks. See from valuation to sales instruction for the method.

Questions for an external provider

Ask these questions before you sign:

• What counts as an appointment, and what happens if the lead doesn't show up?
• How is a signed agency agreement established, and who records the date?
• Can you see the call script and have it adapted per branch?
• What data do you get back on leads without an appointment?
• Does that data end up in your own agency software, or only in a report?
• What happens to the lead data if you stop?

For a comparison of BNDL with an approach in which you keep the follow-up yourself, see KeyVue and BNDL compared. KeyVue doesn't call leads itself, but under either model it records what each source produced, by branch and by agent.

Frequently asked questions