Want to know how to make 6 figures in real estate? If we’re being honest, it’s not actually that difficult. After all, 6 figures isn’t what it used to be. But it’s still a respectable income and a solid goal for real estate agents.
In this post, we’re going to give you a high-level overview of what it takes to make 6 figures in real estate and show you how to make it happen without spending every waking moment working.
Here are the basics of how to make 6 figures in real estate.
Spend More Time Prospecting and Less Time on Everything Else
To make 6 figures in real estate, you need to have buyers and sellers. But this can be surprisingly difficult, especially for new agents.
There are two primary ways to find buyers and sellers:
- Prospecting, and
- Marketing/Advertising
Prospecting is actively seeking out new leads one-on-one. Marketing/advertising is putting your message out to many people and allowing those people to come to you. (And yes, technically there’s a difference between marketing and advertising, but for the sake of this discussion, we’re considering them as one thing.)
Prospecting takes a lot of time, but not a lot of money. And marketing takes more money, but less time. So if you have more time than money, focus your time on prospecting. You can still take advantage of low-cost marketing for passive leads, but that won’t take much of your time. So with the time you do have, focus on prospecting.
How to Prospect for Real Estate Leads
Prospecting is simple, but sticking with it day after day is difficult. The best way to prospect is to designate a set window in your schedule every workday as your Power Hour. This Power Hour will literally drive your business. And if you’re new to real estate or in a slow market, you may want to double up on your Power Hour and schedule a substantial 2-hour window just for prospecting.
Once your Power Hour is on your calendar, have a checklist of people to contact so you never have to waste time wondering who to contact or what to say. Here’s an example:
- Call on all newly-expired listings. These sellers may be looking for a new listing agent.
- Contact for-sale-by-owners. When these sellers learn how complex real estate sales are, they may decide to hire an agent.
- Follow up with potential clients on your CRM (Client Relationship Management) system. Staying in touch with leads is critical!
- Reach out to owners who are behind on their mortgage payments. Best case scenario: you might be able to help these owners reach a deal with their lender, in which case you won’t have an immediate listing, but you will have the trust and respect of these homeowners, who will likely use your services when they’re ready to sell. And if they can’t catch reach a deal, you may be able to earn their listing to help them avoid foreclosure. Foreclosure.com is the best way to find owners who are behind on mortgage payments. If you search the “Preforeclosures” section, you’ll see all the properties that have missed mortgage payments for 3 consecutive months.
- Call friends, family, past clients, and local investors. Give them a quick market update and ask if they (or anyone they know!) are looking to buy or sell in the coming months.
You can make your own checklist or you can buy a ready-to-print checklist for just a few bucks.
Stay Top-of-Mind
Here’s another incredibly simple principle for how to make 6 figures in real estate: you have to stay top-of-mind with your prospective clients.
I know, this sounds like it isn’t even worth stating. But you’d be surprised at how much business real estate agents lose because their prospective clients simply forget about them. When potential buyers don’t hear from you for a while, they don’t think to come to you with their needs. Instead, they get on a site like Zillow® and request information, at which point they become someone else’s lead. The average agent loses 20% of their clients every year because they ignore this seemingly-obvious advice to stay top-of-mind.
Staying top of mind doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. You can use targeted social media ads, market reports, monthly or quarterly newsletters, regular blog posts, hand-written notes, or personal phone calls.
Just keep in touch. It’s as simple as that.
Earn More Referrals
Staying top-of-mind will help you earn business from connections you’ve already made, but why not leverage those connections to earn referrals?
Referrals are a key in making 6 figures in real estate because they’re warm leads. Your connections are endorsing you, so the clients already have a reason to like and trust you even before they meet you. The trick is to figure out how to make your connections talk to their friends, family, and colleagues about you. Here are a couple ideas.
Strategic Closing Gifts
Some agents are shunning closing gifts as unnecessary, but they actually provide multiple opportunities for you. First, they allow you to show your sincere appreciation for your client’s business. And if the gift has a long shelf-life, your clients will remember you every time they see your gift. But the gift can also give your clients a reason to talk to their friends and family about you.
If you get people asking your clients “where’d you get that?”, your clients have an opening to talk about you as their considerate real estate agent. Things like personalized wall art, serving dishes, and home decor work well. Need more ideas? Check out 20 Affordable Closing Gifts Guaranteed to Impress Your Clients.
Public Displays of Appreciation
Another way to make sure your clients tell people about you is to send a token of appreciation to your clients at work. Whenever someone gets a bouquet of some kind (flowers, cookies, fruit, or balloons) at work, everyone wants to know what the occasion is. And your client gets to respond, “We just closed on our new house today, and these are from my real estate agent.”
You can send a similar thank you bouquet for each referral. It’s another opportunity to generate more referrals.
Outsource Tasks When Possible
If you’re serious about learning how to make 6 figures in real estate, you’re going to have to delegate some of your day-to-day tasks. In the very first point of this post, we discussed spending more time on prospecting and less time on everything else. Well, this is where you off-load some of the everything else so you can focus on prospecting and appointment setting.
Here are a few time-consuming tasks that are easily outsourced:
- Social media marketing. You can easily hire a social media manager who understands the ever-changing algorithms for the major social platforms and knows how to maximize engagement on your posts. At the very least, spend a little money to purchase a social media calendar so you don’t have to waste your prospecting time brainstorming and scheduling all your social media posts.
- Admin work. In the age of freelancing, you don’t need to take on an employee when you’re ready to hire an assistant. You can simply pay a VO (virtual assistant) to handle your administrative tasks remotely. They can handle your data entry, email replies, and presentation prep.
- Transaction coordination. You can even hire a transaction coordinator to manage your properties through the escrow process, freeing you up to focus on client-facing communication.
- Blogging. The agents who understand how blogging generates leads are quick to add blogging to their marketing plans. But blogging can be time-consuming. So savvy agents outsource their blogging tasks to a professional real estate blogger who is already an expert in writing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
With these items off your plate, you’re free to focus on prospecting and generating income.
Diversify Your Income
Speaking of generating income, when you want to know how to make 6 figures in real estate consistently year-after-year, you may need to think a little outside the box.
The COVID-19 pandemic has kicked off a recession, and home sales will slow in many markets as a result of the economic uncertainty. But that’s ok. Recessions are a normal part of the economic cycle, and nothing for agents to fear. You just need to diversify your income a bit if you can’t make the 6-figure mark with sales alone.
There are lots of ways to diversify your income. You could:
- Expand your real estate services to include recession-proof income streams like property tax appeals, property management, and credit repair for buyers
- Monetize your real estate blog
- Make passive income through real estate investments
Now that you know how to make 6 figures in real estate, all you have to do is execute. Commit to prospecting every day, staying top-of-mind, and earning those referrals and repeat clients. You’ll know you’ve made it when you’re outsourcing some of your daily tasks. And when you diversify your income, you’ll know how to make 6 figures in any market!
Get Your Complete Recession-Proof Guide!
If you’re serious about growing your real estate business during a slow market, check out The Recession-Proof Real Estate Agent. This book offers a complete step-by-step guide to recession-proofing your real estate business.
For those looking to take advantage of the benefits of launching a real estate career in a slow market, The Recession-Proof Real Estate Agent is a must-read!
