Are you looking for tips for realtors to sell more properties? If so, you‘ve come to the right place.
Although it can seem like no one’s buying when you have a property to sell, roughly 40 million Americans moved in 2018 alone. Whether you have properties to sell or you’re actively looking for clients, you can be sure that people are still buying homes. Your success isn’t reliant on the market — it mostly comes down to your knowledge.
This article will go over some helpful tips for realtors to sell more and achieve more success. No matter what your professional goals are, keep reading for the best tips for realtors to sell.
Think About Your Brand
It takes more than passing your broker dealer exam to make a successful career in real estate. There are thousands of licensed realtors in the United States. What are you doing to stand out? Why should someone choose you over your competitor? Thinking about questions like these is one of the best tips for realtors to sell more. If you can’t answer those questions easily, chances are you may need to spend some time thinking about your brand.
Branding is a controlled process of gaining name recognition and boosting your reputation. Everyone has a reputation, but most people let their reputation develop organically, without doing anything to intentionally get people to associate them with positive ideas and qualities. While marketing is about promoting your message and service to the public, branding is mostly about defining that message and why it matters. Then the way you present that message, from your Facebook page to your business cards, will contribute to how people feel about you.
If you haven’t thought much about branding before, you should consider speaking with brand strategy consultants to begin defining your professional brand. However, we’ll give you a few ideas here to get you started.
The process of designing your brand can best be approached by asking yourself a series of questions. You want to think about your business from the perspective of your ideal client and define exactly why you’re the best realtor for them. When you do this process, you might discover that you haven’t clearly defined who your ideal client is to begin with. On its surface that won’t seem like a big deal. After all, your ideal client is anyone who has a home to buy or sell, right? But it’s actually deeper than that: when you try to appeal to everyone, you end up blending in with your competitors, because there’s nothing to set you apart from the rest of the industry. It’s not possible for you to be the single best realtor for everyone at once. That leads us to one of the best tips for realtors to sell: decide who you are, and just as importantly, decide who you aren’t.
For example, maybe you aren’t qualified to sell super-expensive, luxury properties. If that’s the case, then you don’t want to accidentally attract really wealthy clients by coming across as premium and exclusive on your website. On the other hand, maybe you are a parent or simply specialize in finding and recognizing family homes. You could tailor your brand to appeal directly to those who want to buy or sell homes for growing families.
Once you define your ideal client, you can define your message, values, and service in a way that appeals directly to them. Then you can reinforce this message in all of your branding and marketing materials, such as business cards and online property listings. Branding is actually much simpler than you might expect, and it’s not all about logos and trademarks. Everything from your notary stamps to your professional letterhead says something about you. Branding is all about defining what that is, and how to say it in the clearest, most effective way possible.
Hire Assistants
Business owners and independent contractors have a tendency to take on more work than is healthy. This usually comes down to doing all of your own paperwork, office cleaning, and other mundane tasks, just because you feel like no one can do it better than you can. While that may be true, it’s also true that focusing on daily maintenance tasks all the time when you could be promoting yourself or working with clients is bad for business. You might not find a cleaning professional who vacuums the front rug quite as well as you do it, but then your clients aren’t paying you to have a clean rug. The same thing applies to your paperwork and other organizational tasks. Somebody’s got to do it, but it’s probably something someone else could do well enough to keep your business going. Plus, outsourcing mundane tasks frees up your time and energy to focus on actually building your business, which can lead to more deals and more income. So one of the top tips for realtors to sell more is hiring assistants to help you.
The first kind of assistant you should think about hiring is an accountant to keep track of your finances. No matter what you do, accountants can help you structure all your operations in a tax efficient manner. Your accountant might even study the housing and investment industry on your behalf, so they can make relevant suggestions and direct your attention to what matters most. While you might get away with managing your finances and taxes on your own, it’s so much more efficient when you have a financial expert on call to help you make the best decisions.
Another employee you might consider hiring is a real estate assistant. This is usually a good idea if you have slightly more business than you can easily handle on your own, or when organizational problems and scheduling errors put you in danger of frustrating your clients. A real estate assistant can help take your business to the next level by doing some of those mundane tasks we talked about that are less critical to your business. They can also make sure you avoid scheduling errors, such as by preventing two different clients from setting up appointments with you for the same afternoon. When you’re being pulled in a dozen different directions, it can be easy to double-book yourself. A watchful assistant can look over your notes every evening and make sure this doesn’t happen.
Once you have a couple of employees working in your business, you might want to rely on a payroll processing company to get everyone paid on time. This is far simpler than using spreadsheets or physical books to keep track of everyone’s hours and earnings, and it helps avoid discrepancies.
As a side note, accountants and assistants aren’t the only professionals you should have in your corner. You should also have a good attorney on call for when you have legal questions or run into trouble. It’s a lot like having an insurance plan: hopefully, you won’t need it, but it’s there if you do.
At first glance, it may seem like hiring assistants is a good way to lose money, not earn it. But keep in mind that overextending yourself only results in poorer performance on your part. Everyone performs at their best when they’re free to focus on what matters most, and as a realtor, what matters most is your clients and marketing. Getting bogged down in paperwork or routine tasks isn’t good for you or your business. That’s why having the right help is one of the best tips for realtors to sell more properties.
Prioritize Your Health
This is one of those more unexpected tips for realtors to sell more: prioritizing your personal health.
Achieving success as a realtor requires dedication, commitment, time, and focus. But in order to perform at 100%, you have to take care of your health when you’re not at work. In fact, if you neglect healthy daily habits, you’ll find yourself feeling more tired, less focused, and more susceptible to illness. You might even have to seek out urgent care treatments if it becomes too bad. Even if you feel like working out takes too long and having a healthy diet is too complicated, you’ll lose more time — and money — if you ignore your health.
Our first health tip for better performance is to start a mindfulness practice. You don’t have to learn Transcendental Meditation to gain the benefits of mindfulness: simply spending two to five minutes focusing on your breathing is a good start. It gives your mind a break from thinking and worrying, and it’s good for your physical health as well. You’ll come back to work feeling refreshed.
Exercise is another excellent tool for clearing your mind. In fact, exercise is widely recognized to impact almost every aspect of your health. Since it helps with stress management and healthy brain function, it’s definitely something you’ll want to do at least a few times per week. Adding exercise into your daily routine doesn’t have to be complicated. Simply getting up from your desk to walk around the neighborhood every day can go a long way towards boosting your energy and productivity. You might even consider getting a treadmill desk so you can get more done while you work out.
Don’t forget to work on keeping your skin and hair healthy, too. They’re often overlooked by busy professionals, but they’re a major part of your look, and by extension, your personal brand. So consider visiting a dermatologist and getting some tips for healthier skin.
Finally, it’s critically important that you fuel your brain and body with healthy, nutrient-rich food. Keep fruit on your countertop so that you can always grab a healthy snack. Or keep fresh, chopped produce like celery sticks, carrots, and cherry tomatoes in the refrigerator. And don’t forget to get plenty of protein, which can come in the form of string cheese, nuts, and Greek yogurt. For quick snacks throughout the day, start keeping nuts with you to boost your energy and stave off cravings.
Be sure to look after your family’s health as well. Visiting your local pediatric dentist and pediatrician regularly is key to avoiding worrisome health problems for your children, which could result in more work hours lost.
Of all the tips for realtors to sell that come to mind, taking care of your health might not be the first in line. But that doesn’t make it unimportant. By prioritizing your health, you’ll be prioritizing your life as a whole.
Distinguish Between Your Personal and Professional Lives
And now we get to the last of our tips for realtors to sell more: keep a fine line between your personal and professional lives.
At first glance that might sound confusing or simply unimportant, but it’s actually very important for performing at your best. You have very important responsibilities, both at work and inside your home. As you get older and advance in your business, those responsibilities are only going to grow in size and number. Sometimes your responsibilities seem to be growing faster than you can keep up with them. When that happens, it’s important that you have both your personal and professional lives organized and balanced, so that neither has to suffer at the other’s expense.
One aspect of distinguishing between your two lives is taking care to prevent one from creeping in on the other. Your kids’ private elementary schools are important, but that doesn’t mean you want to hear from them every day at work. You may need to vent about a hard workday when you get home, but you shouldn’t take business calls at the dinner table. Likewise, dropping everything at work in order to tend to a family crisis should only happen when it’s absolutely necessary — too often and your clients will start to perceive you as scatterbrained and inefficient.
To keep track of your tasks at home and work, it’s a good idea to carefully schedule your time. While detailed scheduling might sound restrictive, it can actually be incredibly liberating. By assigning specific tasks to particular time blocks, you’ll ensure that you get everything done when it needs to be done, without accidentally letting work intrude on your family life, or vice versa.
Besides having your own schedule, you should make it a point to know the schedules of those closest to you. Knowing when your partner gets home or when your kids leave their elementary charter schools is good for planning around your family’s time. Take note of when your family members and closest friends start and end work, as well as when they break for lunch, so you know who’s available at the moment if you ever need a last-minute favor from someone. They’ll appreciate the consideration you take for their time and respective schedules.
The most important rule, however, is to be totally present with whomever you’re with, wherever you are. Whether you’re talking to a client or joining your family for dinner, you want to be focused on the here and now, not drifting off on mental tangents. That way you won’t miss out on important relationships, either in business or in your private life.
And there you have it: our top tips for realtors to sell more properties and get more done. Hopefully, you found something useful and inspiring on this list.