Think about that. It’s a very poignant quote and I think it’s very telling too, because where we place our focus, our emphasis, where we put our energy, is really informative of the results that we actually achieve. Oftentimes, especially in this business, in real estate, we’re pulled in a lot of different directions. We wear so many different hats on a daily basis, from marketing and sales to accounting and client service, to just the minutiae of the everyday inner workings of being a real estate agent that we can lose focus on the activities that truly move our business forward.
Today let’s discuss what are those top key activities, right? The ones that really can help us move the needle, generate more revenue, and really explode, better yet… exceed our goals in 2019.
What are your goals for 2019? Let’s also look back to see if you achieved your goals for 2018. And if you didn’t, that’s fine. But what’s not fine is if we don’t diagnose the problem, if we don’t understand why those goals weren’t hit, we’re doomed to repeat it. And again, it often comes down to where we place our focus that dictates the energy and the results that we ultimately achieve and realize.
2018 was a significant year for my real estate business. We were just recognized yesterday at our company meeting, over 80 agents in upstate New York in our territory and over 30 counties as being the number one agent and the number one team for closed sales last year. The reason I share that with you is because it often times people don’t see what goes behind the scenes, right? What goes on to get to that end result.
I learned that the hard way in the first couple of years of my career, I would spend a lot of the time doing the things that didn’t necessarily really grow my business. And it took me, again almost burning out a few times, when we see we’re working 100 hour weeks, where we’re not getting the sleep we should or running around managing 40 different clients relationships, lists, expires, contracts, all of the above that we couldn’t see why we weren’t seeing the results we set our minds to, that we focused on.
Now, they can see the award and say, wow, that’s great! But understand, this was years in the making. This took a lot of teamwork, a lot of hard work, a lot of determination, and a lot of focusing and realizing that I couldn’t do everything myself. If I was going to try to wear all those hats on a daily and weekly basis, I was going to hit a wall at some point. I wasn’t going to be able to grow and scale to a way that will really allow my team to serve more clients with the same level of service and marketing to generate the same superior results that we’re known for.
We get to a point where I believe where we have to evaluate what are the most important activities to do as a top producing agent, an aspiring top producing agent or a team leader that will really move the needle.
Here are the key strategies that really allowed us to reach our sales and revenue goals, and ultimately led to the award for my team. I’m bringing up my award because it’s not simply theory. These are the strategies I use everyday to focus my energy, focus my team, and execute as a top producing agent.
- Be purposeful in your lead generation
- Build a top producing brand
- Deliver world class service to your clients
Lead Generation
So you’ve probably heard a lot of different tactics and things that you should focus on as an agent, whether you’re a new agent, a seasoned agent, veteran or a team leader, etc. And oftentimes, it comes down to a few key activities that again, can make a meaningful difference in your business.
The first one is we always have to be conscious of business development. We’re always looking to grow our client list; the amount of buyers and sellers we’re working with at any time with the market. This comes down to really, really good lead generation. This is something that agents shy away from. Here’s a quick list:
- Cold call prospecting to expired listings for sale by owners and other sellers
- Home valuation leads to really create listing appointments
- Working with maybe cold online leads, whether it be through a website like a Zillow or Trulia
- Working with warmer leads. People in your network, right?
A lot of everyday agents under develop on this strategy. Whichever area you choose to focus on, a very large proportion of your energy each day and week should be spent on developing your business, lead generating, and growing your client list.
Building your world class brand
The second area too, that can really help you explode your business is focusing on building your brand. That’s the marketing arm of this. Not only do we have to be proactive in going after sales opportunities, but we have to be really adept at creating a compelling brand that will differentiate us in the eyes of consumers, buyers and sellers in our marketplace.
To do that, especially in this era of increased competition with all these different discount brokers, websites, more realtors in the market now are licensed in the United States really than ever before, at about 1.4 million is we need to be digital entrepreneurs. We need to run our own little media company, that can tell the world who we are, why we’re different, how we can generate better results. We couple that with a better level of service than the next eight people end up behind us and the marketing engine is turning. So to do that, we need to focus on building our brand, our personal brand in the marketplace.
World Class Service
The third area is delivering world class service to your clients. Delivering a level of engagement, of responsiveness, of meeting the needs where your client wants to be met on their terms and expectations. So that’s the biggest challenge that I sometimes struggle with is meeting people where they want to be and treating people the way they want to be treated.
So, maybe you have a client who prefers text message over phone calls. Well, you need to understand that it’s the expectation from the outset, right? Maybe you have a client that wants to be spoken to every week or two weeks, just for a simple check in, even if there’s nothing to report. That’s a priority and that’s sometimes not always easy and can fall through the cracks when we get really, really busy.
So we need to focus on delivering world class service to our clients for two reasons. One, we want to create raving fans, not just quasi-satisfied customers. We want people to go and tell all their friends and all their friends’ friends, “Hey, you got to work with this guy. If you’re looking to sell your house, he sold our home in a month for six percent over the average and it was a seamless, risk-free transaction. I couldn’t recommend him more highly.” That’s the type of testimonials and reviews we want our clients to be giving. You want to know why? Because that is the best source of the first strategy: Lead generation. That’s the best source of developing and finding new clients out there to work with.
Do you want to know why raving fans are so valuable? Because there’s no barrier of trust. Getting over the bar is low because they already trust the recommendation from a friend.
The other reason we want to do that too is because we want to create a reputation in the marketplace that is predicated on delivering great service and experience for our clients and great sales results. And why is that? Because reputation always precedes revenue. We need to remember that we’re not going to be able to scale our revenue, our income, and our impact if we don’t first focus on our reputation.
Without a strong reputation for service and results in your market, you’ll never achieve your goals and you’ll never get to that point of income, revenue and reputation that you aspire to.
We’re in the second week of the new year. I want to make sure that we’re really focused on placing our energy where it counts to execute on our goals for the year. Starting off strong in your market where typically people are still coming out of the malaise of the holidays and the stupor of all that. Too much eggnog and food!
You know, we’re very much focused in the trenches on our business and I hope you guys are, too. We’re actually really busy now. We’re excited to be, because we’re focusing those those three areas we just talked about.
Lead generation on a daily and weekly basis. Constantly being mindful, building our brand and creating the impression and stepping up to that impression for how we want to be perceived in our market. And three, delivering world class experiences in service to our clients so they become raving fans, not just satisfied customers.
Drop me a comment below or direct message if you have any questions, I’d love to be a resource for you as you grow your real estate business. And again, we’ll check in with you soon. Have a great day.