Remember the days when you finished the Real Estate Course and first got your license? The course does a good job of preparing you on how to protect your client and prepare real estate contracts. (Well it does a pretty good job). Most of the time we end up scrambling to complete our first contract hoping that we did everything correctly.
What the course doesn’t teach Realtors is the art of getting in front of new Buyers and Sellers. As you likely discovered early on in your career, it’s hard to find new clients. There’s a lot involved in running a Real Estate business beyond serving your clients well, protecting them from lawsuits, and bringing them the best deals. You’re running your own business. There are a million plus Realtors in Canada and the U.S. running small businesses, hiring assistants and contributing to the health of the economy.
Every business from Real Estate to Wall Street needs to do 2 things really well. Deliver the best product and service to their clients and generate leads.
How to get in front of new Buyers and Sellers
There are 2 main models in Real Estate to grow a business:
- Listings and Referrals
This is a common strategy among many agents who’ve been in the business for a few years. Get as many listings as possible. Use the listings as a net to capture buyer leads.
Ask every Seller and Buyer for a referral as soon as the deal is done.
- Leads and Marketing
Another common strategy among agents is the “investment” approach. Find a marketing method that generates leads. Reinvest a portion of every deal you get from that marketing method back into it.
As your business grows, so does your marketing budget, which in turn grows your business.
How to do both models better:
What are Top Producers doing?
In his book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, Garry Keller describes a successful Real Estate business as one that focuses on Listings, Leads and Leverage.
He found that Top Producers don’t do one model or the other, they combine both models. It can take time to get your business to the place where one is able to implement this 3rd model. But once implemented, you will have set your business to grow, year-after-year.
The Third Model
- Leads, Listings & Referrals
First and foremost Top Producers understand the power of an outstanding reputation with their clients. They put the needs of their clients first.
Isaac Verge, for example, explained to me how he is in Real Estate to serve his clients. That’s what drives him. Asking for a referral is an opportunity to get feedback from your client to see how well you’ve done in their eyes. This is important information as you grow your reputation in the market. If you’ve done something well, you’ll want to share it. Likewise, if you’ve done something poorly, you’ll want to improve it.
Next, Top Producers work on getting listings. In a Buyers Market this can add some pressure, as you’ve likely experienced. The needs of the Sellers increase as you do everything you can to get them a fair price for their home. Stephen, StreetText’s co-founder, used to say one of the hardest conversations he had to have was telling a Seller that their home wasn’t worth as much as they thought it was.
But the reward is worth the pain. Listings provide you with a “lead net”. They get you more inquiries and more opportunities to convert those leads into clients.
Also, listings give you market presence. The more your name is seen in the market place, the more credibility you get in the eyes of your potential clients.
Finally, Top Producers put into play good lead systems. The majority of our clients are Top Producers. Their is a reason they are consistently busy.
When Summer turns into Fall a lot of Realtors slow down as the market activity dwindles. Smart Agents stay busy because they’ve spent the prior 3 months investing in lead nurturing.
Darryl Reuter said that working with StreetText was the thing that made him consistently busy. This is a common statement among many of our Top Producers.
The best method that we’ve seen to get in front of new Buyers and Sellers is using StreetText with Facebook to digitally door-knock on thousands of homes.
Conclusion:
Wherever you are in your journey to grow your Real Estate business I want to encourage you to continue. Real Estate offers a great quality of life and is a rewarding business. Where else do you get an opportunity to see that young family get that perfect home, or to help a nice family make a big transition to a new town. Keep up the good work, you’re the reason we’re in business. We want to see Realtors that love their jobs and clients succeed.
What else can you do to get in front of home buyers and sellers?
