A buyer is on 99acres on a Sunday afternoon, shortlisting projects. She taps “Contact” on four of them. One builder replies while she still has the listing open. The others get to her on Monday, or Tuesday.
You can guess which one she visits first. This guide is about closing that gap: why the first reply matters, where the minutes go, and how to get portal enquiries in front of someone fast.
In short, a buyer on 99acres, MagicBricks or Housing.com can enquire on several projects at once. The builder who replies first, with a useful answer, starts the conversation. Speed to lead is the time from that enquiry to your first reply.
Why the first reply to a portal enquiry matters
- The buyer may be comparing several projects at once.
- Right after the enquiry, the project is still on their screen.
- A late call can reach someone who has already booked a visit elsewhere.
Where the minutes are lost
A slow first reply doesn’t need one big failure. The time can leak out at each handover between the portal and the person who replies.
| Gap | Fix |
|---|---|
| Leads sit in the portal dashboard until someone logs in | Send every portal lead to one place, your CRM, automatically |
| Leads arrive after office hours | Reply at any hour on WhatsApp, and call inside the allowed hours |
| Leads are shared out by hand | Assign by rule, the moment the lead arrives |
| The first reply is a generic text | Answer the project and configuration the buyer asked about |
| Nobody measures it | Track the median minutes to first reply, per source |
How to get 99acres, MagicBricks and Housing.com leads into your CRM
- Check how each portal account delivers enquiries: its dashboard, email, SMS or a CRM connector.
- Pick one route per portal into your CRM and switch it on.
- Keep the portal name and the project as the lead source.
- Test it: send an enquiry yourself and time how long it takes to appear.
If you’re the CRM person, step three is the one that pays off later. Without the portal name on the lead, nobody can tell which portal is worth its subscription.
Can you call a portal lead back?
Yes. A portal enquiry is a written or digital enquiry, so in India it lets you call for 7 days, inside calling hours. See TRAI’s 7-day enquiry window.
How Intend helps
Intend has no direct connection to the portals today. Once your portal leads land in Salesforce, Intend reads them in within minutes, replies and books the visit. For any other route, we set up the connection with you during setup. See how Intend works with your CRM.
Try this today
Pick one of your own listings and send an enquiry from a personal number, in the evening. Write down when the lead appeared in your CRM and when the first reply arrived. That one test shows you which gap is yours.
Then set the follow-up plan for what happens after the first reply, using the pre-sales playbook.