TIPS FOR NEW AGENTS (OR) WHAT DO I DO NEXT
One monumental key to success in almost any profession is communication. In part,
it means gaining knowledge and sharing knowledge. That sounds simple. But it is far from simple. There is a multitude of components and nuances lying within communication just for the purpose of making you stand out from the crowd and be heard. It is put to its ultimate test as it becomes essential for brand recognition.
You passed your real estate test and joined the NAR. After dropping around $2000, give or take, on real estate school and joining up with the NAR. You get a fancy-looking certificate with a seal and a pretty little pin square pin with NAR printed on it in raised letters. You have earned the skull and crossbones of the real estate world. It is your membership to an exclusive club where nobody tells all. Nothing short of extortion, fraud, late dues, or an egregious ethics violation will stop you from wearing it.
Yesterday you were a nobody. Today it’s a whole different story. They say realtors can make a lot of money. Stories, books, and reality shows abound about those who have made millions buying and selling real estate. If you are ambitious there’s no reason why you can’t be one of them. As I said, the key to becoming successful is putting all of the components together like some giant puzzle. Education, appearance, the way you speak, and your overall demeanor are some of the more integral parts. parts. We will address these things and others in more depth as we move through this tutorial.
WHAT ARE YOUR IMMEDIATE NEEDS TO GET STARTED?
Most brokerages have printers, computers, and desks you can use. When you start working at home you’re going to need a decent laptop and a multitask printer.
Before you spend a dime on anything your first purchase should be business cards. Purchase the best cards you can afford. They are an important part of your branding and you don’t want to pull any punches when you purchase them. Buy heavy stock cards, gloss or matte, whatever your style. There are metallic cards available as well, but they are expensive so I would hold off on them until you rack up a couple of sales.
I think bigger is better and would recommend buying 3.5 x 3.5 cards instead of the standard 3.5 x 2.5 business cards. Although they might not fit in the average wallet, they will fit in the inside pocket of a suit jacket or in a woman’s purse. Making them bigger may stop someone from tossing them into the first wastebasket they come across.
Make them nice and colorful with tasteful graphics and customers may hold onto them for a while. When you can afford to do it, it’s good to hand out personalized calendars and pens. Buy little gold or silver sticky notes with your information on them and stick them everywhere that it’s legal. Put them on elevators, on office doors, and paste them on any open bulletin board you find in supermarkets and other types of stores. I notice them when they are around so others must too. Maybe someone will notice yours.
Because you are new at this and haven’t found an area to specialize in, which will take some time, say something about your integrity or a promise to get back to someone immediately should you miss a call. At the beginning brand yourself off as Johnnie on the Spot, or Your Man Friday.
If a client falls in your lap, or someone hands you a lead that you were able to convert, at minimum know the comps for houses sold and in the area, you are showing the property. Know how much the yearly taxes are, the date when the home was built, the last time it was sold, and how much it sold for the last time. That’s the minimum you should know. Use any extra time you have to research all aspects of the house and the neighborhood that it sits in.
The client is going to start asking questions about the area. He will ask things like where are the closest Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Garden Centers, Doctors, and Hospitals, it doesn’t stop. They’ll ask you about the traffic, where the nearest highways are, whether is there an HOA in the development, and if so how much the dues are. The questions keep on flowing. Be armed. If you don’t know just say you don’t know, but try and text or email the questions they have asked on the same day they did the showing. Get all the information you can gather in the time allotted that you have to spend with that listing. Learn all you can about the inside of the home. If it has a history like a famous person once lived there make it known. Most all information is available on the MLS and the Internet. Make sure to bring your laptop. You can pull up Google Maps and show an aerial or street view of the house and the rest of the area in real time.
(this piece will be ongoing and is intended to culminate into a tutorial)
Now that you have your basic tools in place the next thing on your agenda will be finding leads. Most brokerages preach finding leads from the get-go. Your new mantra will be leads, leads, leads, so you might as well chant it, sing and dance around with it because finding leads will be the centerpiece of your occupation for some time to come. Welcome to the beginning of your real estate career.
Try to stay level-headed and calm in all of your business and personal endeavors. If you’re going to stress then find a way of turning that stress into energy. Take a deep breath and focus on finding leads because they are the lifeblood of your business. It can be frustrating at the beginning, but be patient. If you do the right things, good things will follow.
Unless you’ve spent your life in sales you most likely aren’t used to the sales term, LEADS, but don’t worry, that’s a word that will begin burning in your head rather quickly. In the beginning, you’ll find yourself searching for things that seem elusive, dim, and unattainable. It can make you feel like an idiot panning for nuggets after the gold rush has gone.
Try not to let stress consume you, just remember there are several ways to get leads. It all boils down to a numbers game, and the numbers will fall in your favor as long as you are willing to work hard and put the time in.
Some ways are old school, others more technologically sophisticated. In the beginning, I would develop a marketing mix that covers all bases so that down the road you're not thinking what if I tried this or what if I tried that. Remember the term (MARKETING MIX.) It comprises the heart of your lead generation strategy. Marketing Mix simply means you are using all sorts of marketing, strategies, and tactics in your efforts to accomplish your mission of generating leads.
Let’s talk about one of the first things that were probably driven into your head while going through real estate school and sitting through seminars at the brokerage you chose.
Sphere of Influence. Oh, that magical Sphere of Influence. What is it? It consists of all the people you have come in contact with through your life who you still believe are breathing and sustaining a pulse on their own or are on life-support. It doesn't matter, as long as they are above ground. Those are the ones you want to talk to first. You think about aunts, uncles, and cousins, along with old flames and affiliations. Your coach or instructor, whatever you call him, will most likely have you start with the contacts on your phone.
The first step is to strip all the unused contacts. It doesn’t sound hard until you do it. When I stripped my phone of contacts I didn’t realize there were a couple of thousand names I put in my contacts. If remembered 25% of those contacts were that would an overstatement. There were all these crazy names I invented, like Johnnie the Roofer, The Best Pool Cleaner, Master Plumber, Bicycle Sally, Used Tire Hank, Electric Joe, Computer Dan, and the list went on. For kicks, I called some of those numbers and most of them were disconnected. Hey, that’s Vegas.
There were so many people I didn’t remember at all or hadn’t spoken to for years it made the exercise seem like a waste of time. Remember that it’s not because you are formatting your mind.
Many of my family and friends had spread out and were now living in different cities and states than they lived in when I was still near them. When I started calling them I began finding out some have been in the same home for a minimum of 4 to 5 decades, others were renters, and a few were buying a different house along a cycle of every 8 to 10 years which is average. The problem with averages is they often reveal themselves over long periods of time. Regardless, the logistics and time frames shouldn’t matter or impede your efforts while working in the sphere of influence.
Approach the sphere of influence like a shot in the dark. If it works it works. If not you have nothing to lose but your sanity. It really is a shot in the dark because you have no way to know how to separate those who are sitting tight in the same house for maybe ever, from those who are in flux. All people are different. Some think of their home as a holy pyramid and wish to be buried there along with their wives, children, and favorite dog. Others see it as a whistle-stop or just another commodity. Go know until you call them up.
Like me, you’ll be wondering why should I take the time to call these people. When I got over thinking it was nothing but a waste of time I had a paradigm shift and reached the conclusion that at the core of those hundreds of names lies a mystery. It’s like throwing a fishing line into a dark pool of water, sooner or later something is going to come up. It might be a spare tire or a license plate, but still, you never know when you’ll strike that legendary big fish in the lake.
Look at it this way, what better time to get in touch with those you haven’t spoken to within 15 to 20 years? Don’t you want to know what they are doing now? Maybe not. Look at it another way. If it all fails at least you took the opportunity to shorten the contact list on your phone, and if you have a massive contact list like I did chances are more than half of those numbers have changed or have been disconnected. It’s a good idea to get rid of clutter for the sake of organization. You may also find that your phone is moving faster.
There’s no guarantee that your efforts in any exercise will be rewarded or turn into a big waste of time, but there’s no harm in trying. If anything it will get your game up for doing cold calls and other types of solicitations where there’s no prior knowledge of the customer or client.
On the sunny side, it might yield you something. It did for me. A few months after calling everyone on the list, I was able to get a couple of deals closed from working the sphere. It was one of the great surprises of my early real estate career and kept me in the game working at real estate full time. What I learned from that experience was worth much more than the commissions I garnered. It helped center the mind and taught an impulsive guy like myself that in real estate, like most sales endeavors, you have to go about gathering leads and making connections one step at a time.
Although there is no hard fast rule on what steps to take to garner leads, I took the next step and began with old-school lead-generation methods. This was back before the advent of social media, and the Internet was just starting to make its debut in the business world. There weren’t that many people who knew how to make money on the Internet market yet, and one of them was me. Here are some of the main staples for old-school marketing or for what they have recoined gorilla marketing.
Door Knocking (Or my next step into the misery of mining leads) Before 9/11 you could still get away with knocking on people’s doors to try and sell them something. It certainly wasn’t the best approach but if you are willing to put in the time it could pay off. In today’s world, people, especially those who live in metropolitan cities have cameras all over their houses and they start getting nervous when they see someone they don’t know come knocking at the door. They’re figuring it has to be a murderer or a Jehovah’s Witness.
You can still go into a decent neighborhood and do it. Even if you don’t manage to make a sale you can gather important information. People who like to talk may tell you things like a neighbor is thinking of moving, or someone is getting divorced and they’re selling the house. Or, that house across the street is going into foreclosure. If you ever do door-knocking take notes because you’ll probably forget most of what people said. When door knocking stay aware and keep your eyes open for loaded weapons and attack dogs
Cold Calling ( Or tell whoever it is that I’m in the shower and to call back later.) For me, it’s one of the hardest, most humiliating miserable ways to search for leads. But, some people are very good at it and have no problem sitting at a desk with a phone and headset calling strangers for a ten-hour stretch. Many recipients can be hostile and don’t want to hear from you ever again. They threaten you with everything, from lawsuits to calling the Realtors Board and filing an ethics complaint. (they may have a case if you didn’t check the no-call list.)
The best way to look at is another right of passage and again, a good way to format the mind toward selling. Don’t discount it when you’re first starting out. Be persistent. As I said, it's a numbers game, and if you keep at it sooner or later you’re going to bust through to someone who needs to sell their home and is open to your pitch.
The success ratio for cold calling is around 2%. Put one or two days aside and plan on calling around 200 people. At a 2% success rate, you could conceivably find 4 people who show interest in doing business. If one of those 4 people lands you one deal your time was well spent.
Let’s say you grab a listing for $400,000 and you get 3% from the sales commission after the sale. That’s $12,000. Not bad for working the phones for a day or two. Only a select group of people working 9 to 5 jobs can come close to making that amount of money in a couple of days. It certainly won’t happen every day, but if you keep at it eventually you’ll score.
Direct Mail Out of all of the old school bag of tricks direct mail is one of the least stressful options. The problem when first starting out is cost. The postal service becomes your partner. The good news is some direct mail campaigns are cheaper than others. Here are the three best direct mailing strategies that I found.
The Handwritten Letter Handwritten letters were once passe but now they’re back in vogue. There are services that offer handwritten letters that are produced on a high-tech machine. Pick whatever font you want, they’ll have it. If your cursive is up to snuff I would recommend doing them yourself or paying someone else to do it, because a handwritten letter that is not produced by a machine will always look more authentic. A handwritten letter is a powerful tool as readers find it more personal and engaging than a form letter. They give off that warm and fuzzy feeling and are often responded to differently than a computer-generated flier that looks like everyone else's computer-generated flier.
Postcards These are cheaper to mail in bulk than letters and brochures, and you don’t have to spend much time with them. No envelopes, no folding. Find a company that prints them cheaply and sends them to a particular zip code or area of town where you are farming. If you want to save money you can send them yourself. Most title companies give out sheets of peel-off address stickers, according to zip code and area. You can find plenty of places to send them if you do a little research.
Food Sending out packages of food can be expensive. You will have to pick and choose what you are going to send to clients you have done business with. For example, a client that you have closed two or three deals with may deserve an Omaha Steak or turkey during the holidays. Most people love getting food. It’s a great way to show you are being thoughtful, and it’s something most clients won’t easily forget. For people who crave it, a good box of candy a Bundt Cake, or chocolate may go a long way in maintaining a business relationship. Keep in mind that receiving is food ultimately more gratifying than getting a calendar or a pen and pencil set.
The Open House Maybe I should have started out with this one because when you begin at a brokerage as a new agent they’re going to pound the importance of doing an open house into your head like you were going on a quest to find the Holy Chalice or Philosopher’s Stone. At first, I was reluctant to do them until one of the managers in the office told me if I don’t do open houses you are dead. She really meant it and I’ll never forget the way she said it in that deep Dracula Romanian accent of hers. “If you don’t do open houses then you are dead in this business. Dead, do you understand me?” I believe that was close enough to her exact words. From that note, I reluctantly but earnestly started doing open houses on Saturday and Sunday.
There was a girl who became disenchanted with real estate at the same brokerage where the Romanian woman warned me. She gifted me all of her open house signs. I had already purchased some and now I have over 20. Some agents say 6 open house signs are enough, but there is evidence to the contrary. 20 signs are good. If I had room for 30 signs I’d put up 30. A bulk of points of contact by using open houses will gain more exposure. Another benefit of the more is a better theory is when people see them spread out all over a neighborhood they may think this must be a pretty well-known realtor with all those open house signs. Other realtors might mark you down as being successful when they see an agent who isn’t playing games with that many signs.
20 signs should be enough to cover most houses, even the ones that reside down twist and turns through a neighborhood riddled with streets that land at dead ends. The hard reality is you have to do them at the beginning of your career unless you have a lot of money for things like digital marketing on a big scale.
Pick a nice house in a good neighborhood and depending on the foot traffic keep the door open between 4 to 6 hours. Keep in mind the purpose of doing open houses is not only to sell the house. One of the main purposes of doing an open house is to gather leads and prospects because you will be speaking with buyers face-to-face. Always have a sign-in sheet, and use whatever means you have at your disposal to get a person's email address and phone number. Gathering information can be more important than selling the house you're doing the open house in.
The trick to an open house is finding the needs and criteria people are looking for. Make sure to write down everything, because you will forget. If you develop good skills in presenting you should yield a sale of one open house out of the 6 to 8 open houses that you show. That doesn’t mean that every 6 open houses you show will automatically offer you an opportunity to sell a house. It could take 12-16 open houses to make a sale. Again, the law of averages only reveals itself over the long term, so don’t set your sights high enough for disappointment when playing the numbers game. Just follow the rules and keep on grinding until you break through.
Expired Listings (the nice thing about them is like open houses they can be obtained for free.) You can also purchase them, but use a reliable source. There are a number of reasons that cause listings to expire. Many times it happens when the property is priced above market value. If the price isn’t corrected right away and the house stays on the market too long at the wrong price it becomes stale, and most realtors shy away from stale.
(Too many questions arise about a house that has been on the market too long?) It could be several things. Someone had a job transfer fall through, a divorce, the house could have been rented out and the tenants left, and the owner who doesn't have the money to carry the loan on the property figures on selling it, but before that happens he gets lucky and new tenants show up. Or, the house could have been in disrepair, and the cost of fixing it up so it becomes marketable lay way beyond the means of the owners. Suddenly interest rates fell and the property owners were able to take out a second mortgage that fits their budget. There was enough to fix the house up and put it in a pool so decided to stay. Neighbors got into a fight and have been feuding for years. One of the neighbors has had enough and put the house on the market. Before they get a sales sign on the lawn the other neighbor dies and his kids, who are easy to get along with move in, and the seller retracts the listing.
We could sit here all day speculating. Let’s just say there are hundreds of reasons listing expires. You can find expired listings through the MLS, from other realtors, or on sites like Referral Exchange or Agent’s Referral Network. You can also find them on Public Search records in your county or just about any county in the country that isn’t living in the stone age. There are so many things that can happen to cause a listing to expire besides being overpriced. Maybe the
MENTORS
What I learned in real estate school were the basics. I didn't start my career in real estate until my late forties. I thought it would be easy, but I was wrong. Realizing how little I knew about my newly chosen profession was sorely humiliating, and it gave me pause. I seriously considered putting my tail between my legs and going back from whence I came from, the furniture business. But thinking about cutting and running was not in my nature. My pride wouldn’t allow it. It was time to get a handle on my career.
The answer to my particular dilemma was not that complicated. If I was going to succeed I would have to learn the business of real estate from the bottom up. Fortunately, there were some good things in my favor. I don’t know how it is now because I have been away from it, but when I began, most agents and brokers would happily share their knowledge with you.
Once I was inside a brokerage I began looking for a mentor. It was time to hit the ground running and seek out people who had become successful in selling real estate long before I came along, and make an all-out effort to learn from them. A seasoned agent with higher perspectives and takes on the real estate business are the ones you can learn from. Why not seek them out since the majority of them are willing to teach you?
A mentor can help you build up your network by helping you find new contacts, customers, and community support. They have the experience you don’t have and may help you sidestep mistakes that you would likely make trying to wing a deal on your own.
A good mentor can help guide you through tough situations that you might not have been able to handle without their help. They can teach you how to handle yourself in multiple types of situations. They can provide you with a sense of real estate beyond your local brokerage mindset, rising your sensibility and imagination towards a larger and more global scale. A good mentor can help you understand and imagine things that you might never be able to imagine on your own. A good mentor will support you, coach you, and tell you when you’re going astray.
The real estate industry by its nature has mentorship built into the culture. If you are working at a well-known brokerage with top sellers who are busy seeing clients and working the phones through the day, your might find that they will also take the time to help educate you. Take advantage of it and find the right people who actually get pleasure in teaching you how to become successful.
There are times in our lives when we all need someone watching our backs. Finding mentors and making friends within your brokerage will make you want to get out of bed and go to work. It’s rare to find a business that will put you into that type of mindset. Learn how to live to work, not how to work to live. Life is way too short to spend it punching in and out of the clock after the whistle blows.
THE FSBOS Going after FSBOs can feel like doing Door Knocking, Cold Calling, and Open Houses all at once, but it doesn’t have to be like that. In a seminar, I learned that 9 out of 10 homeowners who try to sell their homes on their own eventually turn to hire a realtor. There are several reasons for failure. Here are some of the things that eventually drive them to hire a realtor:
The inability to screen or qualify buyers
Not available for a showing
A tendency to hand over a buyer’s shoulder and pressure them
Failure to be able to negotiate things like price and contingencies
Unable to address problems found in a home inspection
Not enough market exposure
Misunderstanding of comps and pricing
(As I said, there are several reasons. This just gives us a general idea.)
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