5 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS THAT WILL MAKE OR BREAK YOUR REAL ESTATE CAREER

According to National Association of REALTORS® studies, 50% of all new agents will drop out of real estate within 2 years!  What starts as a dream to make millions of dollars, host their own HGTV show, and and be the envy of everyone at their 20 year class reunion ends in a part-time job at Home Depot just trying to make ends meet.  In the first 6 months of 2023 alone, over 60,000 disillusioned real estate agents have thrown in the towel and moved on to "greener pastures".

Three months into my real estate career Home Depot was starting to look like a pretty good option for me, too.  I spent hours every day sitting at my desk, staring at a blank sheet of paper, while everyone else in my office buzzed around in a frenzy of showings, appointments, and paperwork.  I had great people skills, only missed one question on my license exam, and had an impressive resume of past experiences in my arsenal, but the phone wasn't ringing.  In spite of everything else I had working to my advantage, I was missing the most important thing of all....a freaking clue!  I didn't have one, and I didn't know where to find one, so I sat around watching my real estate career start to fade away before it even started. 

Why do real estate agents quit?  It's because they don't have a freaking clue how to get started, or what they need to be doing to generate business! 

10+ years later, I feel like I've finally got a few things figured out.  So, for all you new and struggling agents out there staring at blank pieces of paper at your desk, here's the clue that you've been looking for.  Here is the proverbial LAUNCH button that you can push to get your real estate career off the the ground.

1) LEADS! LEADS! LEADS!

It goes without saying that no leads means no clients, and no clients means no business!  The number one way to go broke in real estate is to sit back and hope the phone mysteriously rings because you have your license now. 

What is a lead anyway?

A lead is simply someone that you are able to contact.  If you have a name, a phone number, and or an email address, you have a lead! You might not have a hot lead, but you have a lead...and that's a starting point!

Where do leads come from? 2 Places, and 2 places only.

1) People you don't know! (TOP OF YOUR SALES FUNNEL)

Generating leads from a pool of people that you don't know costs time and money.  If you don't have the time to spend, you'll have to spend the money. If you don't have the money to spend, you'll have to spend the time making calls, knocking on doors, and stalking Facebook. 

As a real estate agent, you are going to be in charge of every little detail of your business, and your time is going to get swallowed up by minutia.  If you're going to succeed, you're going to have to spend some money to generate leads!  Do your research, though...not every lead is a good lead.  Find a source that you know and trust, and who can deliver the results they promise.

2) People you do know!! (BOTTOM OF YOUR SALES FUNNEL)

Believe it or not, you already have leads! Every person that you know and interact with is a lead. They might not be a hot lead at the moment, but if you are organized, intentional, and persistent, many of those leads will eventually convert into clients!

Most agents spend hundreds, or thousands of dollars buying cold, top of the funnel leads from sites like Zillow, REALTOR®.com, or other gimmicky lead-gen companies. This is fine, and a needed part of keeping your business running, but what agents often fail to realize is that warm leads at the bottom of the funnel (IE people they already now) are exponentially less expensive, and convert as an exponentially higher rate!

So, if you have a limited budget, or if you need some fast "wins", where should you begin your lead generation efforts? Reaching people you already know!!!!

2) AN ORGANIZED DATABASE

Whether you realize it or not, you have a treasure trove of leads already. If you have contact information for someone, they are a lead. The problem is, most agents have a console full of business cards from networking events, names off of open house sign-in sheets, iPhone contacts and Facebook friends all chaotically swirling around like a west Texas dust storm.

All of your contacts/leads need to be stored in one place, in one standard format, and organized in a way that you can 1) find them quickly, 2) classify them appropriately, and 3) reach out to them consistently. If there is one thing that is the beating heart of a small business, it's an organized database. If this is the one and only tool you have, you are going to do just fine in real estate. Without it, however, your chances of success go down to exactly zero. It's that important!

3) RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE (CRM)

A good CRM will provide the perfect place to store your contacts. An awesome CRM will allow you to sort, manage, text, call, email, voice-drop, track engagements, and market to the leads in your database.

With hundreds of CRM options out there, I get asked all the time, "what is the best CRM on the market? Which one should I choose?" The answer...THE ONE YOU WILL USE! There are a ton of fancy CRMs out there that have a ton of bells and whistles, but the truth is that all CRMs do basically the same thing. You should choose the one that you are going to use, not the one that's necessarily the cheapest. If you will use the $69/month CRM, use it! But if the one you like is $250/month, use it instead! Do not make your decision based on price alone!

If you were starting a delivery business, you would never roll up and choose the cheapest vehicle on the lot simply because it was the cheapest. You would insist on the best car you could possibly afford, because your success would be dependent upon your ability to make deliveries...and lots of them. Same with a real estate CRM, your success is going to be dependent upon your managing relationships effectively, so spend the money and get something that is going to be dependable, and that you are going to actually use!

4) AUTOMATED FOLLOW-UP SYSTEMS

Let's be real...the majority of agents suck at follow-up!

While it's awesome to have hundreds of leads in your CRM, you will make you zero dollars if you don't have a system in place to follow up with and nurture them! The problem is, there are not enough hours in the day to reach out to your contacts, and to build profitable relationships with all of them.

Enter technology and automations!

 Managing a handful of contacts is hard enough, much less trying to juggle hundreds of clients and leads simultaneously! But, with today's incredible technology, you can create systems and processes to follow up with your contacts on autopilot!  Not only that, but you can throw a little bit of AI into the mix and now you've got a personal assistant to respond to all the conversations generated from your follow up sequences! 

5) MASSIVE ONLINE PRESENCE

Not one person on the planet is thinking about you all the time.  The sobering reality is that most people don't ever think about you at all...ever.  If you're the type of person that likes to keep to themselves in hopes of somebody miraculously remembering your name at the exact moment they need to sell their home, you can be certain that your days in the real estate business are numbered.

Posting regularly on social media, building relationships, making connections with people in public, and having strategies in place to follow up and nurture these relationships "reminds" people that you exist.  You need to position yourself so that the  phrase"real estate" triggers your name and face in the minds of your community.  Somebody in your market is top-of-mind...it might as well be you!

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