As a real estate agent, it’s essential to stay on top of the latest trends and strategies to remain competitive. With the ever-changing market, agents must be prepared with the right tactics and techniques to ensure success. But how exactly do you do that?
Well, best-selling author and real estate coach Krista Mashore is here to help with her picks for the five essential tactics all real estate agents need to use today.
In this article, you'll learn all about Mashore, what her tactics are, as well as how to keep up with her to make sure you never miss a beat in your journey to become a true real estate professional.
Who is Krista Mashore?
Krista Mashore is number one in so many ways! She is:
- in the top 1% of coaches nationwide
- a Top 1% real estate agent for 20 years
- Yahoo Finance’s number 1 digital marketer to watch in 2021
She’s also award-winning and highly recognized for a majority of her work. She has:
- 5 best selling books on digital marketing
- A place among Success Magazine’s Top 125 Most Impactful Leaders of 2022
- 11 Two Comma-Club Awards
- 2 Two Comma Club X Awards
- 1 Two Comma Club C Award
She and her work have been featured in Forbes, Inman News, The Wall Street Journal, NBC, Fox, and many more big names in the industry.
With her master's degree in curriculum and education, she works every day to educate and coach real estate agents across the country, especially when it comes to digital marketing and utilizing technology to your advantage. And through this article, she’s sure to help you, too!
Why Should I Use These Tactics?
Maybe you're an experienced agent who doesn't think they have anything more to learn, or maybe you're new to the field and just trying to figure out what works. Regardless of your experience level, Mashore's tactics are a must-have for any agent looking to stay ahead of the competition. Not only do they increase efficiency, but they also help agents make more money by attracting more leads and sales. In addition, these tactics have been proven over time and used by top real estate professionals around the world.
Put simply, there's no quota or cap for success. Mashore went from zero to $48 million in just five years, and she's still constantly looking for ways to improve. Your career as a realtor can constantly improve and grow.
While you can always improve, it's also unfortunately very easy to fail in this industry. Even realtors on the right path doing all of the right things can lose their business because the market changes unexpectedly. By following successful, adaptable people like Mashore, you can get an idea of how to stay on top of these trends and what to look out for.
Mashore's 5 Essential Tactics Real Estate Agents Need To Use
These tactics come from Mashore’s podcast, F.I.R.E.D. Up with Krista Mashore, from an episode titled, “5 Essential Tactics ALL Real Estate Agents Need To Use Today Ep. (792)”. You can learn more about the podcast on Google Podcasts, or it’s available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.
1. Have a Solid Business Plan
Mashore says the most important tactic for any real estate agent is to have a solid business plan. “It is absolutely key,” She says. “Here's the deal: When you have a comprehensive plan, it's gonna
- Outline your goals,
- Identify your target market,
- and map out your marketing strategies.”
But why is having a real estate marketing strategy and business plan so important? Beyond the obvious help with organizing your business practices, Mashore says it’s because it will set you apart from the competition: “So many people just go into real estate – they have no idea what they're doing, why they're doing it, they're like throwing poop on the wall and nothing sticks. There's a reason for that. When you have an actual plan, everything can change.”
“So I know you hear this all the time:” Mashore sympathizes “‘Get a business plan, make sure you set out and outline your goals, outline your targets.’ But rarely do people do it. And if they do, they don't refer back to it often enough. So don't be like the average agent.” Mashore has seen that so many agents get their licenses and don’t know what to do afterward, and she wants you to have a plan to combat that.
She suggests asking yourself these questions:
- “Who is your ideal audience?
- What's your niche going to be?
- What's your marketing plan going to be?”
These will help guide your planning process to be sure that you include all of the information you need and are headed in the right direction.
Ultimately, this is probably the most important tactic to employ here. Mashore says, “This one tactic is going to give you a competitive edge, and you're much more likely to beat out the competition.”
2. Budget Your Expenses
It’s super important to budget for all of the necessary expenses associated with being a real estate agent, but most people don’t even know what a budget is or how to make one.
“It's gonna scare you,” Mashore admits. “We're not used to budgeting. In fact, it used to scare me to even look at my taxes. But understand this: understanding your finances is actually crucial for your success. Take the time to thoroughly assess what your start-up costs are going to be, what your ongoing expenses are going to be.”
“You're going to have expenses as a real estate agent, and it's just like any other business,” Mashore says. “Think about McDonald's. You buy a McDonald's franchise – it costs over a million dollars to buy a franchise – and then you make around $150,000 a year. But the investment is a million dollars. It's not gonna cost you a million dollars, but you have to think that. It takes money to make money, right?”
Mashore encourages her listeners to think about the money they put into their business differently: “It's not an expense, it's an investment.”
“One of the best expenses you need to make sure that you allot money for every single month (and one of the most important ones) is having a marketing dollar,” Mashore says. “You need to put money behind marketing yourself and marketing your properties. This is especially important and imperative if you’re new.”
In the digital and advertisement age that we’re living in, attention and time truly are money. “The more people see you, the more views you get, the more engagement that you get, right? The more that you constantly show up on their platforms.”
When you show up constantly on their feed, potential buyers will think of you and your agency first when they want to make a purchase.
Budgeting for marketing is another way to stand out from the competition, according to Mashore: “This is why so many agents fail, because they don’t put any money towards marketing, and they don’t plan out for expenses that are going to happen. So, the average agent fails within several years of being in the market. And right now, people are not selling as many homes as they used to because there are not as many houses that are actually selling, so a lot of agents are leaving the area.”
By investing your money in marketing digitally, you can reinvigorate interest in real estate and your company, allowing you to reverse this negative trend and build your brand, even in a difficult time.
3. Build a Strong Online Presence
Speaking of building your brand, Mashore cannot stress enough how important an online presence is for doing just that. “In today’s digital age, having a strong, online presence is paramount.”
“Just like I said above, perception is reality,” Mashore reiterates. “So if you don’t have any listings to post, no problem. You can start talking about market updates, you can create videos that are very informative on specific neighborhoods.” You can easily make social media posts about what you've learned and get prospective buyers interested in your brand and more keen to trust you.
These neighborhood and community videos are one of Mashore’s favorite things to do to get buyers interested. When making a video, she suggests you start by considering the following questions:
- “What’s happening there?
- What are the prices of homes?
- What are the styles of homes?”
And you don’t have to start big: “You can start creating community-related neighborhood content in a specific neighborhood. I actually have community funnels, and in my funnel, I have information specific about the neighborhood. Things like this:
- What are the styles of the homes?
- What are the prices of the homes?
- What are the schools like?
- What are the schools’ scores?
- What are the fun things to do in the area?
- Why does one house in a certain area in the neighborhood sell for more or less than the other one?
- Is there H.O.A.?”
All of these questions help guide Mashore’s video-making process and give her ideas of what to highlight based on what buyers tend to find most important about the area surrounding their potential new home.
There are other ways to boost your online presence, such as search engine optimization (SEO), creating an email list, etc. Mashore discusses these in her other podcast episodes if you'd like to learn more!
4. Continue to Educate Yourself
While it’s easy to think that you’ve taken the courses and there’s no looking back, Mashore believes that constant education is vital to staying competitive in the real estate industry: “Listen: the real estate industry is consistently changing and evolving, and you need to stay informed. You need to know what market trends are, what the interest rates are, are there any changes in the real estate laws, what are the new technologies, the new tools.”
But it’s not just all about educating yourself. The real estate market is hard to understand, and your potential clients and community need to know as much as possible to make an informed decision and understand why your prices, property listings, etc. are the way they are.
In Mashore’s words: “You need to educate yourself and you need to educate your community by posting all the different things that you’re actually learning.”
Even Mashore is still constantly learning, and it takes time and money. “Listen, this is key everybody:” She says. “Just the past five years alone (you’re probably not gonna believe this, but it’s true), I spent over 1.2 million dollars on my own personal development.” So not only should you be investing your money in your business, but also in yourself, because you are the biggest part of your real estate business.
Mashore talks about how her wall is full of books. “I ask myself, ‘Who can teach me the thing that I want to know?’” And she invests in books, lessons, etc. from the people with the knowledge she wants.
“In the real estate industry, the reason why I always stood out and ended up in the top 1% is because I was always evolving, always changing, looking for new, innovative ways,” Mashore says.
She goes on to talk about how she invests her time in learning about new technologies that her competitors aren’t using to stay ahead of them and develop her real estate career. She asked herself (and still asks herself):
- “What were people doing outside the real estate industry?
- How could I put that inside of the real estate industry?
- Could I utilize it for myself?”
Utilizing new technologies revolutionized Mashore’s agency and made her stand out. “It was different – nobody else was doing it. That’s how I averaged 135 homes while I was an agent in every type of market.” In conclusion, she says, “Education is crucial to your success.”
5. Learn from Experience
Experience can take many different forms for people throughout the real estate industry, but for Mashore, the best way to learn from experience in the real estate industry is through a coach. “Now, listen: everyone should have a coach. I have a coach. My coach has a coach. My coach’s coach has a coach. All successful, smart people know that you need a coach.”
But why is this important? Do you need a coach?
“As Napoleon Hill said in his book, Think and Grow Rich, ‘There are certain success principles that successful people have, and one of them is having a mastermind team.’” Mashore says. With a coach, you build that mastermind team behind you to achieve success.
“It’s taking the experience, the knowledge, the time, the money, the resources from somebody else,” Mashore continues. “You are collapsing timeframes, right? You’re learning all the things they did well, and all the things they didn’t do well, and you are then implementing them into your business. So you’re saving time, you’re actually saving money, you’re saving resources, and you’re going to make a much better impact much, much more quickly.”
It’s easy to have concerns about starting with a coach, and Mashore recognizes that: “Now you’re thinking, ‘Oh, but a coach costs me money!’ No, it costs you money not to have a coach because most of you will be out of the real estate industry.” In essence, a coach is necessary to keep your job because they will help prevent you from making costly mistakes that could end your career.
Learn How to Dominate the Real Estate Market with Krista Mashore!
So to sum things up, Krista Mashore believes the five essential tactics real estate agents need to use are:
- Having a Solid Business Plan
- Budgeting Your Expenses (especially creating a marketing budget)
- Building a Strong Online Presence (especially through community/neighborhood videos)
- Continuing to Educate Yourself (and sharing that education with your community)
- Learn from Experience (especially through a coach)
Employ all of these tactics and you’re sure to get your real estate agency on the right track and become one of the most successful agents in your neighborhood!
Want more tips and tricks from Krista Mashore? The best way to learn is through her podcast, F.I.R.E.D. Up with Krista Mashore. It includes episodes like this one with easy-to-understand lists, as well as interviews and talks where Mashore sits down with people from all different industries for a long chat. You can listen on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify.
You can follow Mashore online in lots of other ways, too. She has a website full of helpful info, including free resources, such as access to the first chapter of her book. She also mentions this video in this podcast, which tells you all about EXP, as well as a link to sign up for her next Unstoppable Agent Masterclass, where you can learn directly from Mashore and have the chance to win resources and merch.
Mashore also has a presence on the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. Her pages are full of tips and tricks, as well as updates on her own business and what's coming next. They’re also a great resource to learn from when building your online presence!
