Tips to Help You Become an Influential Real Estate Agent!
If you meet someone who’s aiming to pursue a career as a real estate agent, the first question they ask is how long it takes to become successful in real estate.
Can you answer this question? Probably not!
It’s because the question is wrong. Being a real estate agent is one thing; being a successful agent is a whole different ball game. And it’s impossible to quantify the duration to be successful. Instead, it depends on the individual agent and their market.
Is Success a Challenge in the Real Estate Market?
A career as a real estate agent is appealing and exciting but also competitive. As of 2022 statistics, there are about 3 million active real estate licensees in the United States.
Furthermore, let’s not forget that real estate is a pretty demanding job. When the market is hot, you can’t afford to waste a minute as leads can pour in from all channels. But even when the market is cold, there are endless activities on the to-do list to keep the business going. Let’s see a bit of the rundown of what real estate agents typically handle –
- Advise clients on market conditions and pricing.
- Advise sellers on how they can make their homes more presentable to buyers
- Compare properties to determine the most competitive market prices
- Find appropriate properties for buyers based on their price range and needs
- Mediate through the buyers and sellers throughout the transaction
- Navigate negotiations between buyers and sellers
- Prepare and submit all required paperwork, including various contracts
- Advertise properties, use listing services (such as MLS), and host open houses
- Show properties to prospective buyers
- Identify and contact potential clients for buying, selling, and renting properties.
- Stay on top of the latest real estate laws and trends
- Working weekends and nights for the benefit of clients
Once you get the hang of all your responsibilities, there comes the challenge of keeping up with the constant industry changes and trends.
So yes, when you ask if it is hard to become a thriving real estate agent, we won’t deny it. But that’s also only the half-perfect answer. If you go the extra mile to stand out and keep learning and adapting to what the modern-day real estate industry offers, the roadmap to success won’t be as hard as you think.
If you’re interested in making up some ground in real estate, we encourage you to keep reading. In this blog, we’ve listed a comprehensive set of tips that will help you improve your property sales skills and your overall business.
Here’s How You Can Become a Successful Real Estate Agent
1. Show Your Knowledge of the Local Market; Don’t Show Off
What is the number one filter buyers and sellers have when looking for a real estate agent? Experience!
Why? Because experiences suggest the agent has in-depth market knowledge and is an expert in the area. Sales trends, negotiation rates, future market expectations, community quality, area facilities, neighborhood assessment — customers expect you to do it all.
However, you don’t need two decades of experience to be a real estate market expert. Here’s how you can be at par with the most accomplished local real estate agents –
i. Stay Active and Involved in the Community
Be an active member of the community by attending social events like church services and community meetings. Go a step up and talk to people about your interests (other than work). You never know what could spark a conversation or make a prospective buyer reach out to you. Doing so puts your name out there as a real person in society and not just a salesy real estate agent/business owner.
ii. Walk or Drive in Your Local Area
As a real estate agent, you should know your neighborhood inside and out. One of the best ways to do so is to take a tour of your local area. Learn the local and standard names of the streets, including the local pronunciation. Find the quickest routes from each of your neighborhoods to the nearest airport, bus, and train terminals.
iii. Know All the Local Real Estate Market Trends
Stay on top of all that’s happening in your local real estate market. You can watch the news — online or on TV — read newspapers, hear podcasts, or buy local magazine subscriptions to always stay updated. Gradually, with your local expertise and knowledge of the market, you’d be able to determine the market’s behavior and the factors affecting real estate in your area.
You can share all the latest trends and developments with your target audience through newsletters or blogs.
2. Don’t Be the Stereotype, Be the Real Deal
Mention a real estate agent to a group, and people immediately jump to the negative stereotypes. Reality shows, movies, and pop culture are to be blamed for this misrepresentation of real estate agents. Even the media portray real estate agents as cutthroat opportunists, possibly even ready to betray their clients at the slightest chance for more money.
As a real estate agent yourself, you must be aware of how wrong and damaging these negative stereotypes are. They hurt you, professionally and personally. Here are the typical stereotypes people have for real estate agents and how you can rise above them –
i. Real Estate Agents are Dishonest and Greedy
Pop culture has shown real estate agents to be unprofessional and dishonest. They make agents look like they don’t care about the client at all and are always ready to do anything to close a deal.
Well, indeed, real estate agents go above and beyond to close a deal, but very typically with the client’s best interest at heart. To prove that to your clients and break this pesky assumption, always listen to the client’s needs and be honest when there’s something unfavorable.
ii. Being a Real Estate Agent is Easy!
People think real estate agents are just the middle person. All they do is help money change hands and skim their cut-off at the top. It’s all easy money!
We’re positive every real estate agent wishes this were true!
An incredible amount of work goes into every single deal. Not only is it hard, but also uncertain. Several times, you end up wasting months on a deal that never closes. There are also long hours, late deadlines, and high-stress levels.
Escape this stereotype by being at your competent best. Always stay proactive about your clients’ needs.
iii. Real Estate Agents Can Have Huge Egos
Clients fear that their real estate agent will turn out to be self-obsessed and put their interests ahead of theirs. If you want to beat this stereotype, there’s only one way. Lose the Ego!
Your clients depend on you for one of the most crucial investments of their lives. Your job is to put their needs first. So, make them comfortable and trust that you have their best interests at heart. Once you deliver and help them find what they want, they’ll be impressed.
3. Use Technology to Enhance Your Customer’s Experience
Crafting an excellent customer experience is vital in the real estate sector. Innovative technologies help boost that process.
As Rich Cawley — President of Massachusetts-based real estate brokerage United Multi Family — puts it, “Being a real estate agent has good pay-offs, and it can be a lucrative career — but the good agents I know are always available for their clients. Especially with all the technology we have now, whether clients want to be reached via text or phone, real estate agents are never truly off-duty.”
i. CRM – Customer Relationship Management
Use CRM software to keep all your real estate processes moving in the most efficient and streamlined way. It can help you organize complete client information in one centralized database. It sends automated messages to the leads and reminds you to follow up with them. You can also get out of some of the paperwork with CRM’s help.
ii. Marketing Automation
There are an endless number of marketing tasks in a day for a real estate agent. Doing all of them manually is not only time-consuming but also impossible as you scale up. A marketing automation tool can help you streamline your marketing efforts to capture, nurture and convert leads. It can create landing page triggers, behavioral triggers, segment email marketing, and even automate social media and SMS campaigns.
iii. Workflow Management
Do you feel you spend most of your productive hours tending to repetitive real estate duties? If yes, workflow management software can help you set chronological activities to automate standard internal procedures and processes. It will help you eliminate agent micromanagement, resulting in more productivity. Also, the project execution standard will likely enhance with a faster agent response time.
4. Take the Lead in Your Brokerage, and Be Helpful to Your Clients
There are several real estate agents helping their clients buy and sell homes and commercial properties. However, if you want to stand out, focus on being great at your job. When you close every deal with perfection, is when you truly benefit your clients. Here’s how you can prove you can go above and beyond for your clients –
i. Step Up in a Crisis
Buying, selling, or moving in or out of a home is a chaotic process. There are a hundred things to handle — coordinating closing dates and moving dates, working with the title company, doing a final walkthrough, turning utilities on or off, hiring and guiding movers, and much more.
Great real estate agents focus on every little detail. They keep on schedule and go outside their comfort zone when buyers or sellers are blindsided by things that throw them off schedule.
ii. Go All-In to Turn a No Into a Yes
The best real estate agents are good with people and know how to communicate the interests of their clients. They don’t shy away from turning the tables and steering the deal in the favor of their client.
Thus, you should always be ready to put your exceptional negotiating skills to work to close a successful deal.
iii. Save Your Client Money
As a real estate professional, you want to build relationships with your clients, so they choose you over and over again. One way to do this is to go beyond closing a deal and helping clients be aware of how they can save money.
Give your honest opinion to the client about the financial side of things. If an investment is bad for a buyer even though they love it, express your concerns clearly to them.
In real estate, clients are always on the lookout for agents who they can trust to deliver on their promises. The above-mentioned are a few of the qualities and skills you must possess to thrive in the industry.
One of the lesser-talked about skills in real estate is tech advancement and adoption. We discussed how it can make a real estate agent’s day at work easier. If you wish to enhance your productivity and deliver customer satisfaction, ZipperAgent’s real-estate software can help you.
Get in touch with us today at 1-800-350-3695.
