Real Estate Leads for New Agents in Seven Easy Steps
Before explaining how to generate Real Estate Leads for New Agents in Seven Easy steps, I, as a real estate agent, want to welcome as a new salesperson.
Done correctly, you have begun a journey that will be rewarding both financially and emotionally. It will change your life and the lives of others around you.
At first, we all feel a little overwhelmed. I remember that after the first week of working with my broker, I realized how little I knew about my new profession. How do you approach someone to ask them to sell their house? What properties do you use for a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA)? How do you get that first client? Where do you get leads? How do I compete against experienced agents?
Let me calm down your nerves a little. Almost every agent I know had those same feelings when they first started.
Take Barbara Corcoran, for example. When Barbara Corcoran met Ramone Simone, she was a waitress. After they started dating, he convinced her to go into real estate. She landed a job as a receptionist with a real estate agency. In the 1970’s they formed their own business. He lent her $1000 (the equivalent of $5000 today) as a loan from him so she would own 49% of the company.
Seven years later he announced he was leaving her to marry her secretary. When they split, they also dissolved the Corcoran-Simone company. Ms. Corcoran established the rules, “You picked the first person [her secretary]. I’ll take the second.’ We divide our receivables; we divide our cash — the little we had.” Web source https://www.businessinsider.com/how-shark-tank-barbara-corcoran-started-the-corcoran-group-2017-11.
Corcoran went to her old real-estate agency and asked her former boss if she could advertise one of his listings. He gave her a listing: a one-bedroom apartment (small bedroom room, L-shaped living room) like many others in New York City.
As she puts it, she “…wanted to make her ad stand out. She asked if she could put up a fake wall in the living room and wrote: “1 BR Plus Den: 340.” Web source https://www.businessinsider.com/how-shark-tank-barbara-corcoran-started-the-corcoran-group-2017-11
The listing fit on one-line, the right margin in the New York Times, but it was different from any others. She received 80 phone calls the next day and within two days had a check for one month’s rent as commission.
From those humble beginnings, she built a company had over 1000 agents, a business that was sold for a reported $66 Million in 2001 and has become a star on the television show “Shark Tank.”
Now let’s dig into Real Estate Leads for New Agents in Seven Easy Steps.
Step 1) You need to understand the source of the best leads.
Your sphere of influence (SOI) is the best source for leads. These are the people with whom you have meaningful relationships. They know you; they like you, and they trust you. Relationships need to be nurtured to grow. If you make this a priority in your real estate business, you will generate referrals and repeat business which according to studies by the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) account for 89% of all real estate transaction.
Step 2) Start with your SOI.
People I knew four decades ago in high school and college, who live in towns hundreds, even thousands of miles from me, and that I have not had a face-to-face talk with for years are selling real estate. How do I know this? They told me. They told me with cards, with letters, via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, other people that they had told spoke to me about it. Each of them took the time to let their Sphere of Influence know that they had begun a new career as a real estate agent at some point.
People don’t know what they don’t know. It is your job to inform them. Think of the people that know you, like you, and trust you. Think of your friends, your family, your barber, the dog walker, the postal carrier, former colleagues, anyone with whom you have established relationships and tell them. Tell them about your new profession. We live in what has been deemed the information age. Reach out to people who already know and like you and let them know you are beginning a new career as a real estate agent. Tell family members, friends, former colleagues, your dog groomer, and one with whom you have an established relationship.
One word of caution. I know, like and trust my children. Since none of them is a surgeon, I would not trust them to perform surgery on me or anyone else. Even those that already are in your sphere of influence may take some time trusting you to handle some of the most significant financial transactions in which they are likely to be involved. It may take some time to build trust in that aspect of your relationship.
Step 3) New People, New Friends.
Your sphere of influence will naturally change over time. People get added to your SOI, people leave your SOI, and your closeness to certain people ebbs and flows over time. Science tells us, according to Dunbar’s number, that we can only maintain a close relationship with 150 to 200 people at any given time. To maintain that number and to expand on it, you need to expand your network. You need to make it your mission if you want to get leads in real estate to meet new people.
Yes, you can meet people via social media, but if that is your only connection with them, it will not be a strong one. Face-to-face with people is what builds shared experiences and deeper relationships. Every day you should make it a practice to get out of the office, away from Facebook and the computer and meet new people.
Jim Weichert, the founder of Weichert Realtors®, made it a practice of meeting 20 new people every day when he started as a real estate agent. He always believed that “people buy people before they buy your product or service.” Today Jim Weichert, who is still the Chairman of the Board for Weichert Realtors®, has expanded his initial office to more than 500 corporate and affiliate offices in 39 states and is ranked among the top 150 on Entrepreneur Magazine’s Franchise 500
Consider a few of these ways to meet new people:
- Volunteer (added by listing the organization you volunteer at one your website you will also be providing value to some of your future clients)
- Join a Meetup group
- Join the local chapter of Business Network International and your chamber of commerce and attend events
- Hold a house party for your neighbors or at least talk to them
- Take your dog to the dog park
- Beyond the opportunity to improve your health and well being a Gym is a great place to meet new people
- Classes offered by many organizations are great ways to meet people and the people you meet most likely share at least one common interest with you.
- Talk to strangers
The chance that you are going to meet someone that is looking to buy or sell real estate right now is limited. You want to let people know that you are a real estate agent, but more importantly, you want to establish and build relationships with people. Listen to people more than you talk; get to know them. As the relationship grows, they will be happy to give your referrals and even work with you to buy and sell their homes.
Step 4) Add contacts to your CRM.
Business use tools, computers, cash registers, forklifts, and all sorts of devices. Different businesses dictate the use of various tools designed to track progress, ensure success, accomplish the task at hand, and provide systems for achieving success in our work. As real estate agents, we are in the relationship business. The tool that helps us build and maintain relationships is a customer relationship management system (CRM). When trying to maintain 200 plus relationships, a CRM is essential. It stores information about your contacts, their interests, the name of their significant other, the names of their children, marital status, the type of home they own, the kind of home they want to buy, what documents they have on file with you, and lots more.
Once you have met a new person, and for all the people you know, put them in a CRM. Do it while information is fresh on your mind. Did they say the name of a town they “always” wanted to live? What school district did they say they would prefer for their children? Was their birthday mentioned? You should, of course, ask for permission to contact them.
Step 5) Create a plan for developing the relationships you have formed and stay top of mind.
You have been talking with your SOI, and you have met mew people, you have a CRM with lots of names and data in it. What do you do now? That next step is creating a plan for building on the relationships you have formed and stay top of mind. The right mix of touch points is what will help. The use of e-mails, text messages, phone calls, cards, notes, letter, monthly newsletters, blog posts, face-to-face time, at a party, their home, or maybe a coffee shop are all potential parts of the solution. Share useful and valuable content with your contacts.
Here are some references for the type of content you might share:
101 topic ideas for your real estate blogs from Inman News
It would help if you learned how your contacts prefer to communicate with you. I have had clients, and customers respond much better to text messages than voice messages or e-mails. I have had clients that love my video messages and others that prefer only written notes. You will learn this as you develop the relationship. Be open to trying new things and new ways of contacting your contacts.
So, now that you have a plan, how do you put it into action?
Step 6) Build the process and put it in a workflow.
The best way to put your plan into action is to make it a process. A process is nothing more than a series of steps, designed to achieve a specific goal, that one does over and over. Putting the process into a workflow will ensure that it can be automated and that nothing all activities as completed.
Workflows can be made up of drip campaigns, reminders, prompts, and the like.
There are many different workflows included as part of the ZipperAgent CRM. These workflows are customizable, allowing you to meet the needs of your contacts and your business.
Following a process, or system is essential to getting your real estate business off the ground. Workflows provide you with the automation to ensure that you stay on track.
Step 7) Gratitude
When you start getting business from your contacts, whether they are buying and selling or just referring people to you, say “Thank You”. It is more than just good manners. It goes a lnog way towards building loyalty.
There are a host of reasons why customers choose whom they do business with today. “Value and being valued plays a big part in that decision. One source says that 9% of customer said they switched to a competitor because they preferred what they were offering. 68% of customer said that businesses had lost their business because they felf unappreciated.” Web Source https://www.proposify.com/blog/how-to-say-thank-you-in-business
So send a handwritten note, throw in a five dollar gift card, contribute to their favorite charity, do something a little bigger. Here is the thing. You want to set up reciprocity. Don’t go overboard but try to leave them with a feeling that says, “I would have sent them the referral regardless. I know them, I like them, and I trust them. They did this nice thing for me and now I should do something for them.
Summary
Let’s recap:
Step 1) You need to understand the source of the best leads.
Step 2) Start with your SOI.
Step 3) New People, New Friends.
Step 4) Add contacts to your CRM.
Step 5) Create a plan for developing the relationships you have formed and stay top of mind.
Step 6) Build the process and put it in a workflow
Step 7) Gratitude
I am not going to tell you that this is going to give you leads right away, I not even going to tell you it will generate leads in the first year of your business. It will though provide you with a solid foundation to grow your real estate business exponentially.
Just do the math. One average Americans move once every seven years. If you have 200 people in your SOI that means approximately 29 of them will move each year. If you are selling the homes of these contacts, when they move, for $200,000 and keeping 2.5% of the sales price as a commission then you would earn you around $145, 000 annually.
However, remember the referrals. Each of your contacts knows about 200 people, even if half of them are the same people you know your contact base could easily become 200,0000 and that could mean as much as $1,450,000 annually to you. Also, remember that you are out meeting new people. If you use Jim Weichert’s approach and meet 20 new people a day that would around 1039 new people every year I will let you do the math on that one.
