We’re getting back to basics this week to figure out how to be a successful real estate agent.
No need for preamble; let’s get straight to it!
How to be a Successful Real Estate Agent – 10 Tips
10. Start With a Business Plan
Your business plan is your roadmap to success. It shows you where to focus your branding, marketing efforts, operations, and finances to hit your real estate goals.
But too many agents are so excited to start chasing down leads that they ignore this crucial step. If you don’t already have a business plan, set aside some time this week to create a real estate business plan of your own.
9. Know Your Market
Real estate 101: to be a successful real estate agent, you must know your market inside and out. If I asked you the average DOM in your market, could you give me a number? What if I asked for the DOM for five-bedroom homes specifically because I’m afraid my five-bed may take longer to sell than the average two or three-bed?
Checking your MLS hot sheets should be part of your daily routine. You want to be able to offer specific answers to specific questions. But for the new agents out there, don’t just give the answer and leave it there; answering a prospect’s question should always include an invitation for an appointment. Example: This week, five-bedroom homes are taking an average of 42 days to sell, but there’s a wide range depending on the home’s features and price point. I’d be happy to come by to take a look at the house and give you a custom price and DOM projection if you’d like. Would tomorrow work for you or would Saturday be better?
8. Leverage Listings Into More Leads
When handled correctly, each new listing can turn into multiple legitimate leads for new clients. In How to Get 5 New Clients Out of Every Listing, we cover specific tactics for leveraging listings into more clients. If you have any listings (or plan to), you’re going to want to check out that post!
7. Diversify Your Income
There are several compelling reasons to diversify your income as a real estate agent:
- it may take a while to close that first sale
- you could hit a dry spell at some point in your career, or
- your local market could slow to a crawl, resulting in fewer commission checks.
Savvy real estate agents plan ahead by creating multiple streams of real estate income. Here are a few ideas:
- Add a real estate service (like property tax appeals or property management) to your business.
- Turn your real estate blog into its own independent revenue stream.
- Create passive income with digital real estate products (like eBooks, online courses, or templates)
Check out 55 Ways to Make Money in Real Estate for more ideas!
6. Get Comfortable With Rejection
As superstar agent Barbara Corcoran noted:
Handling rejection is 90% of what sales is all about, and the better you are about getting up quickly, and not spending too much time feeling sorry for yourself, that’s what determinates who are the superstars.
You may need to get 99 “no’s” before you get a single “yes.” And that’s ok! It’s all part of being a real estate salesperson. You just need to figure out how to get comfortable with this rejection so it feels like a normal part of business and not a personal dismissal.
Check out Rejection-Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection by Jia Jiang or Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. Both are exceptional resources for teaching you to get comfortable with rejection and overcome!
5. Outsource Tasks that Don’t Generate Income
While new agents typically handle everything on their own (since you have more time than money at that stage), seasoned agents understand the importance of outsourcing tasks that don’t generate income.
As soon as you can afford to outsource your administrative tasks, consider getting a VA (virtual assistant). And when you start having multiple properties under contract, a transaction coordinator could free up your time so you can focus on generating more leads. Social media managers are also a good investment if you’re using social media to generate new leads (more on this coming up).
Keep adding to your team as your business grows. You could add a buyer’s agent which would allow you to focus on more time-efficient sellers. Or you could add a listing agent if you enjoy working with buyers.
4. Build Your Repeat Business
Repeat business takes time to build for obvious reasons. But if you’re planning on a long-term career in real estate, you need to start laying the groundwork for repeat business early.
Earning repeat business isn’t just about providing stellar service to your clients so they want to work with you again. It’s about staying top-of-mind with your client base so they remember to work with you again on their next deal.
There are several ways to stay top-of-mind, some more active and some purely passive. Here are a few of the best ways:
- Social media posts with useful real estate tips
- Annual holiday gifts
- Annual housiversary cards or gifts
- Monthly or quarterly newsletters
- Regular market updates
- Educational blog content
- Annual client events
- Personal texts just to see how your old clients are doing (no agenda here; just building on that relationship)
By the way, investor clients make the best repeat business because they’re always buying and selling! Some of them will have their own real estate license, but many of them use a licensed real estate pro because they don’t have the time to hunt down deals and market a listing.
3. Build Your Referral Business
Repeat business is great, but referral business is magical! Think about it like this: only a handful of the people in your sphere will be buying or selling this year, but nearly everyone in your sphere knows someone else who will be buying or selling this year. Get your clients to refer their friends and family to you.
Staying top-of-mind is key, so all your repeat business strategies pull double-duty as referral strategies. You just have to ask one key question with your social media posts, newsletters, market updates, and blog posts: Who do you know who’s looking to move this year? I’d love to be of service to your friends, family, and colleagues.
Another way to build your referral business is to show sincere appreciation when a client sends you a referral. While you’re not allowed to give a referral fee to anyone without a real estate license, a referral gift (like a bouquet or gift basket) often makes a lasting impression. To make the most of your referral gift, have it delivered to your clients at work. A gift basket going through the office is bound to get people asking about the occasion. And this gives your client the perfect opportunity to talk about you!
2. Establish a Strong Online Presence
In the 2020s, an online presence is crucial for the success of your business. Many agents hear “online presence” and immediately think “social media.” And while social media should absolutely be included in your online presence, it might not actually be the most important thing.
Get Your Own Website
In my opinion as a real estate content writer, the single most important factor in your online presence is a website of your own (i.e. not your broker’s site!). Today’s buyers and sellers don’t trust a business without a website; having a site of your own gives you instant credibility, even if you’re brand new to real estate. Then there’s also the find-me-through-Google factor! When you have a website of your own, you have a chance to show up in Google search results when buyers and sellers search for real estate topics or agents in your local market. This means you generate passive leads month after month without spending a single marketing dollar. You get these organic leads for just the cost of having your website online.
Speaking of cost, most agents are nervous about the financial investment of launching a website. And, yes, there are some expensive ways to do it! But there are also affordable ways. Many agents, for example, choose to rent a website for a monthly fee. But if you want to save money while retaining full control and ownership over your site, consider building your own site. I know it sounds crazy, but with the tools available today, even non-techies can build a professional website. Check out our free guide to building your own real estate website to see if this would be a good option for you.
Start Blogging
Did you know that content marketing (aka blogging) costs 62% less than traditional marketing, but generates three times as many leads? Most agents have no idea that blogging is a legitimate lead-generator. The few agents who publish a single solid blog post once per week are gaining market share with very little effort. And you don’t even have to be a writer to maintain a lead-generating blog; there are lots of ways to create a killer real estate blog even when you suck at writing.
Want to learn more about blogging? Our post on Mastering Blogging for Lead-Gen has everything you need to know!
Get Social
And finally, social media. You either love it or hate it. But either way, as a business owner, you should have a presence on the primary platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter). You may also want to have a presence on LinkedIn and YouTube (which is more of a search engine than a social site but often gets lumped into this category). Instead of trying to focus on all platforms, choose one or two where your target buyers are most likely to be found. Focus there, and just keep a low-key profile on the others.
To avoid wasting time every week wondering what to post, spend a few hours this week creating a lead-generating social media content calendar (or get a head start by simply buying a ready-made content calendar online).
1. Prospect. Every. Single. Day.
Do you want to know how to be a successful real estate agent? It all comes down to finding new leads. And prospecting is the best way to do that.
This is the single most boring piece of real estate advice, but it also tends to be the piece agents struggle with the most. Prospecting every day is simple, but it’s certainly not easy.
You wear so many different hats and are pulled in so many different directions as a real estate agent. Sometimes it seems physically impossible to cram prospecting into your over-packed day. But successful agents know to build the rest of their schedule around their prospecting time. Prospecting is like working out. If you miss one day, it’s not the end of the world, but if you miss two days in a row, you’re suddenly at risk for going weeks before your next session.
Carve out time in your schedule now to run through your prospecting checklist every single workday. No other single activity will have such a transformative impact on your real estate business!
Do You Have Tips on How to Be a Successful Real Estate Agent?
We’d love to get your advice for other agents! Let us know your tips on how to be a successful real estate agent in the comments.
