8 Tips to Become a Successful Real Estate Agent
With all the hours you’re spending on becoming a successful real estate agent, you might as well want to push your luck further and get ahead in the game, leaving your competitors behind. After all, you’re not just after getting the bucks when you’re closing those sales. You’re also helping someone finally get their dream home. There’s a lot to keep in mind when you start thinking about how to be a successful real estate agent, even more so when you start thinking about getting ahead of the competition.
In reality, there’s no concrete step-by-step instruction manual. Being a successful real estate agent will still depend on how strong your desire to reach your goals and how much you’re willing to take on to become the best.
So the question of how to become a successful real estate agent and how one can get ahead in real estate remains. Is becoming a successful real estate agent really as difficult as it seems? Are the best practices you’ve written down not enough at the end of the day?
How can you really strive and succeed in being a successful real estate agent without feeling intimidated by the competition? Lucky for you, I have the answer to your question broken down into the simplest terms.
Once you’ve established that the career you want is in real estate, take a look at the five tips on how you can get ahead in real estate. Let’s look at them one by one.
1. Know the Market Better.
Nothing translates to a steady stream of income more than product knowledge. Your understanding of the market in real estate will help you land more sales. Spend a lot of time on research if necessary. Learn more about market conditions, local and global economy, and the industries of your covered areas. Knowing what you’re offering makes it easier to provide options to your potential clients.
To stay ahead and sound like the expert that you are, you should go beyond the obvious. We’re sure local market knowledge would suffice, but step up your game by also doing your research on the national scene, e.g., projects or economic changes that may affect land or property value. This makes you not just updated but also ahead of the competition.
2. Keep Learning.
If there’s one thing any successful entrepreneur will tell you, it’ll be that you should never stop learning. Learning from your mistakes seems like an adage, but it’s not the only platform you can find to learn how to become a successful real estate agent. You can also learn from the mistakes of others, but the best way to keep on learning is to attend conferences or join communities where real estate brokers share their insights, learnings, and tips.
Here at Pacific Playa Realty, we give sales and customer training as well as personal development training. We believe that our agents are the face of our company, and what better way to promote a company by enhancing our representatives!
There are numerous places to pick up a thing or two. So the main concern is how much effort you’re willing to put in finding these places and in putting yourself out there, hungry for more ideas that can elevate your game.
3. Elevate Your Social Media Content.
Social media platforms are one of the most common platforms people use to find clients. Sounds easy enough, right? If you think it’s that easy, you might want to reconsider strategizing for your social media content. Gaining a following on social media can be one of the most challenging things you’ll ever have to do.
Social media is not just about posting. A lot goes into play before your content even gets a little exposure. The key is ensuring your content is time-relevant and provides massive value to your potential customer. Ensure that it is also engaging and would drive people to comment and react to your content. This may equate to a couple of hours a day, a week, or a month.
Many successful digital entrepreneurs don’t know what to post initially, but they eventually find their “holy grail” of content one way or another. The same goes for your real estate journey. You need to know how to capture your audience’s attention and how to give them value. Identify your customer’s pain points and address them in your social media posts. Before you even know it, you’d be growing your following which can translate to closing more sales than you thought was possible.
4. Keep and Nurture Your Connections.
Did you know that your established connections with contractors can help you generate leads? The connections and relationships you make can be a chance to nurture your lead generation lists.
Anyone you meet can be a source of your leads. This is why it’s important to keep professional relationships healthy. One way or another, word-of-mouth is one of the best lead generators you could ever have. Testimonials from other people tend to close sales faster than without them. You’ll be thanking your connections left and right in no time.
5. Make Sure to Get Enough Sleep.
Getting enough sleep helps you keep your body and mind in tip-top shape. Many people would tend to reduce their sleep duration in order to do more tasks, but as productive as it may seem, it won’t benefit you in the long run.
The right amount of sleep will help you keep your memory fresh and provide you with the right amount of focus in a day. You’ll also have a better mood throughout the day and you’ll be able to deal with your clients better.
It’s impossible to stretch the 24 hours we’re given each day, so aside from proper time management during the day to help you get all your tasks checked off your list, there are other ways to aid in you getting that rest:
Limit Screen Time. Gadgets seem to be the last thing we lay our eyes on before dozing off. But more often than not, they’re making it more difficult for us to fall into REM. In fact, they make us more awake by making our imagination, and therefore our brains, more active. Set a limit for screen time each night to avoid overstimulating your brain, and you’re off to better sleep cycles.
Meditate. Whether it’s mindful meditation or just turning off your brain for a few minutes to stop thinking about work, finances, client forms, and whatnot, any form of meditation can help you snooze in no time.
Make a Sleep Schedule. Set a time each night for sleeping, avoiding going out or engaging in conversations long before the scheduled time for sleeping. If done regularly, you’ll find it easier to slip into your PJs and look forward to hitting the hay.
6. Get Out of the Stereotype.
It’s not the most ideal, but people often look at real estate agents as annoying sales agents who inflate listing prices to increase their commissions while having to do less. Even when you do get to talk to someone about selling or finding their home, there’s always that elephant in the room you have the strong desire to address: are you really making a lot of money off of this sale?
You can’t blame your client nor yourself for this stereotype. It’s been around for decades and there will be people who always assume the worst. The best way to avoid being stereotyped is by providing a lot of value to your client. Learn their pain points and address them. Know what makes them tick and be reasonable with your arrangements. Throw in a freebie or two to make them feel that they’re being heard and let them know that you value their time, which I’d like to talk about more in the next section.
7. Overdeliver.
As a result-driven individual, your goal is to close that sale at the end of the day. Nothing would make more sense than seeing the results of all the time, hard work, and effort we’ve put into a listing, which is understandable. But there’s more to the transaction if you want to know how to be a successful real estate agent. It’s called INTERACTION.
Spending a little bit more energy in making your interaction with your client pleasant and memorable can make a massive difference in your results. This interaction is crucial not just in closing any sale but also in future transactions because of referrals. Your current client can quickly spread the word of how wonderful you are to work with, how professional you are, or how you went the extra mile and gave them this and that. Before you know it, referrals will be pouring in, and more people will prefer your services over anyone else’s.
8. Get a Mentor.
You’ve probably heard how experience is the best teacher, and I totally agree. However, how does one learn when they don’t have any experience yet? All you need to do is find someone with the experience you’ll learn from and call him a mentor.
Finding someone in the real estate industry who has been around for a long time also exposes you to what happens in every real estate deal. From legalities, documents, and all the works- this helps prepare you to handle transactions on your own when closing your first sale. Or even in future transactions that you need to face alone.
The Bottomline
When we set our goals to achieve something, we’re often blinded by our desire to succeed, overlooking the possibilities of being able to improve even more. We tend to forget that beyond success, we need to be more strategic, anticipating that there will always be a competition we need to be up against and therefore level up our game. It may seem easy to penetrate the real estate market, but there’s more to it than we think, and knowing this gets you in a great position to be as competitive as possible.
As we always say, nothing in this life comes easy. Ultimately, our effort to excel, more than to simply succeed, is all we need to get ahead and be the best in our craft. Keep on learning and motivating yourself to constantly exceed expectations to remain one of the greatest competitions other real estate agents will ever have to face. There’s new knowledge everywhere. You just have to be open to learning at all times.
Sources:
Esajian,P. How To Be A Successful Real Estate Agent In 10 Steps. Fortune Builders. https://www.fortunebuilders.com/successful-real-estate-agent/
Burris, R. (2020, July 8). 10 Tips To Help You Become More Successful As A Real Estate Agent. Rocket Pro Insight. https://www.rocketproinsight.com/learn/real-estate-agents/10-tips-help-become-successful-real-estate-agent
Santarelli, M. (2022, June 4). 10 Tips to Be Successful in Real Estate Investing. Norada Real Estate. https://www.noradarealestate.com/blog/10-ways-successful-real-estate-investment/
