Real estate can be a very profitable business for you to run. What’s better is that it only takes a few hours of coursework and passes your state’s exam, and that’s about it. You are now a licensed real estate agent.
What people don’t understand is how to be good at real estate.
Good real estate agents aren’t born. They don’t have a superpower or some other secret built-in advantage. Instead, good agents are good because they dedicate themselves to improving and learning about business and market trends.
Great agents are helpful to their clients, are seen as go-to experts, and engage with their prospects to the point of being perceived as friendly and charming.
Becoming a better real estate agent takes a little charm, a lot of hard work, and scalable systems that you can put in place.
Too often, as a new agent, you don’t know where to begin and how to get started. As you stumble your way through the first couple of months, it can be hard to know how to get to that first, second, and third deal. That strategy is what we’ll refer to as transactional; that is, you’re interested in the deal, not the process.
To be a better real estate agent, you need to understand first and foremost that real estate is a relationship business, so creating ways to build trust and expertise is crucial to your success. Shifting your mindset from transactional to relationships is the most significant thing you can do toward becoming a better real estate agent.
That said, there are ways to accelerate your learning curve, starting with learning from someone who’s already had success in the form of a mentor or coach.
Find A Mentor Or Coach
The first step toward becoming a better real estate agent is to find a mentor or hire a coach. Finding an expert that can lend guidance to what your goals are, the steps necessary to achieve them, and keeping you motivated are all crucial to the foundation of becoming a better agent yourself.
With a mentor, you’re entering into a dual relationship of sorts. Working and learning alongside a mentor will help you avoid hiccups and accelerate your understanding of the real estate business much faster than if you tried learning on your own. What could take years to learn by yourself can be absorbed in much less time simply by working alongside a mentor.
A mentor can broaden your understanding of what works and what applications are best practices that can’t be taught in a textbook. In addition, a significant benefit is learning the types of systems and processes that your mentor has in place after years of being in the business.
A coach, on the other hand, is a professional that will take a more aerial view of your business. They will listen to your goals and help you establish the routines and strategies necessary to succeed.
Coaches provide you with tools and an understanding of how to perform more effectively. For real estate agents, especially starting out, a combination of a mentor and a coach is a great strategy to build the foundations for success.
Some coaches are professional coaches, and others are retired real estate agents and brokers who have dedicated themselves to helping other agents grow and build successful systems.
When searching for a real estate coach, you want to look for coaches that have;
- A list of reviews from successful past clients
- An understanding of the real estate market and the needs of agents
- A commitment to helping you find systems to succeed
- The ability to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and provide solutions to maximize those traits
Most importantly, a real estate coach will teach you the steps needed to set achievable goals and provide mechanisms to assist you in accomplishing them.
Once you set up a system, establishing a routine is the next step toward becoming a better real estate agent.
Set A Routine
Success is a process, not a destination. Instead, it takes you from one point and moves you in the direction you want. Consider a successful athlete. If asked, they would likely tell you that it was their commitment to routine.
A sample routine would include a daily ritual, whether it’s setting aside time to exercise, meditate, or other routines that gets your brain going and allows you to focus your mind on the tasks at hand.
Part of your routine is setting a daily schedule with room for adjustments. For example, you want to have blocks of time set aside for prospecting, follow-ups, social media and in-person engagement, and scheduling appointments either for listings or showings.
Getting started on establishing a routine may take some outside assistance, which is where a mentor or coach could greatly benefit you.
Your routine should include activities that drive your business forward while also providing cut-outs for work-life balance and flexibility to adapt to your prospects' and leads’ various needs.
The first step is becoming more efficient with time management and prioritizing what processes need to be done. One productivity hack to consider is the Pomodoro technique, a business concept focusing on the top-performing actions in your systems. At its core, the Pomodoro technique is about time management and improving productivity.
There are two things to know about the Pomodoro technique. On the one hand, the principle states that 80% of our work accomplished very little, so focusing on the 20% of work that achieves results is the best strategy.
The second aspect is the time-management concept of the 80/20 rule.
Here’s how it works: First, prioritize a task. Next, break down your work into 20 minutes and take a 5-minute break from those activities. Finally, be sure to remove yourself from the task for those 5-minutes altogether.
Learning systems and processes that make more efficient use of your time are part of strategy and implementation. The next phase of becoming a better agent is utilizing your available technology creatively to stand out from the crowd.
Utilize Technology Creatively
Setting a routine and establishing schedules can be challenging to keep track of, which is where utilizing technology can be beneficial.
In general, you want to think about technology as a tool that helps you maximize your time and outreach.
Utilizing technology isn’t about posting on social media and forgetting about it. In fact, using tech to streamline your systems, keep track of your outreach and prospecting, and create engaging social media posts are tools you can use to grow your business, but they are all parts of the larger whole.
Some agents embrace Instagram, others TikTok. Whatever your preference, you want to create engaging content that shows your expertise without having a salesy call-to-action.
Content showing families, pets, and happy things get much more engagement than pictures of empty homes, so your content should focus on events and information without coming across as pushy.
Think about how you can best reach potential clients and prospects and utilize customer relations management (CRM) tools to help set up email drip campaigns, social media posts, and other ways to keep in touch and in front of mind with your prospects.
Tools that help you create email marketing campaigns to stay in touch and front-of-mind, having a CRM to set up appointments and provide reminders, as well as using YouTube and other social media tools to showcase your knowledge and build trust in prospects’ minds are great ways to use technology more effectively.
Technology is a tool that helps facilitate and automate systems and tasks but to become a better agent, you also need to have a better understanding of the real estate market and be perceived as the go-to expert for any real estate needs.
Be An Expert: Know The Market
If you want to be a better agent, you need to be the go-to real estate market expert. In order to be perceived as an expert, you need to know the market better than anyone.
Educating on market trends and the latest topics will allow you to service your existing clients effectively. In addition, you need to see continuing education and professional development as opportunities to assist clients and stay at the forefront of real estate.
Market knowledge is one of the best indicators of an agent’s expertise and skill, and how you educate yourself will differ at various stages of your career.
Newer agents have a lot to learn but building a foundation that acts as a baseline for understanding purchasing trends, researching comps, and better grasping the current market trends are stepping stones to veteran agents who’ve learned to analyze and anticipate market changes in the local area.
As an agent, your clients are entrusting you with information and guidance to help them make an informed decision regarding their real estate objectives.
Mastering the local market trends, being informed on the broader scope of the market outside your immediate zip code, and being able to analyze national trends gives you a certain level of expertise compared to the typical agent.
Learning about the target market, tracking home selling data, and other vital metrics shows more than a baseline understanding. Showcasing that knowledge in your marketing will prove your mastery and skill.
Most importantly, by becoming a market expert, you’re better suited to assist your clients, and making happy clients helps them want to refer you to their sphere of influence, from friends to family to associates and colleagues.
An expert is a helpful tool, but having an unrecognizable name and brand will only get you through so many doors. Using a well-known brand name brokerage will help open doors and continue your professional education.
Leverage Your Brokerage Reputation
Much of the real estate industry relies on relationships and reputation. Joining a reputable brokerage shows a conscious decision-making ability and an opportunity to build clout in the mind of your prospects.
Trust is central to making a good agent/client relationship, and joining a reputable brokerage gives you more credibility when you start out than almost any other thing you could do.
With a well-known brokerage, you’re better equipped to present a professional, skilled operation than if you were working for a buddy’s brokerage.
Also, many of the larger, more reputable brokerages will have multiple departments attached, from finance to title, marketing, and education, to give you a leg up on other agents.
Finally, utilizing your firm's resources will enable you to improve your knowledge and skill, further giving you a competitive advantage.
People want to work with someone they can trust, and partnering with a well-known brokerage adds credibility and name recognition that you may be lacking as a new agent.
Now that you have systems in place, an understanding of the market, and name recognition to utilize for marketing and to build trust in your expertise, learning to be a more effective listener and communicator is the next step in your evolution as an agent.
Learn To Listen And Be Engaging
Real estate is about relationships. Building relationships with clients and prospects takes time, and people are more inclined to work with an agent they like than someone with the most completed transactions.
Learning to listen to prospects' and potential clients' needs will help drive conversations with them. In addition, being engaging and friendly helps build trust that you are there as an advocate to assist them in achieving their real estate goals.
Listening means paying attention to the little things. You want to ask questions about their family and their interests to get a better insight into the type of home they’re looking for–whether it’s a home to start a family, house older relatives, need a yard for pets, or just space to work from home.
In addition, asking about hobbies and activities close by to residences they want to see will help you analyze other similar properties.
Knowing the types of questions to ask will help you become an expert. Your job is to listen and find a home that fits your client's needs, and by listening effectively, you’ll also create a reputation for helping clients find their dream homes.
By learning to listen to your client’s needs and concerns, you’re better able to address those needs and provide informed guidance that they can use to get the best deals.
Being engaging doesn’t mean being overly talkative. Nobody likes an overly talkative know-it-all. Instead, attractive offers timely advice and friendly affirmations throughout each conversation that show genuine interest in the client’s story.
By being engaging and friendly, you’ll be perceived as helpful and disarming at the same time. You want to earn people’s trust as an agent, and long-time building relationships include following up long after the transactions are over.
Listening and engaging in conversation helps build the trust that your reputation and expertise have generated, but reinforcing those traits requires high-level attention to detail.
Attention To Detail
In real estate transactions, there is a lot of money at stake. Being sloppy in your appearance and with your paperwork is a surefire way to undermine your hard work. On the other hand, having attention to detail in all phases of your business will do more to build your brand and reputation than the number of transactions you have in a year.
Real estate is about relationships, negotiating in good faith, and diligence in your fiduciary responsibilities. Lacking attention to detail can squash a deal and, in the worst-case scenarios, potentially lead to legal consequences for you and your clients.
Plenty of conflicting messages out there propagate negative stereotypes of real estate agents, such as typically shady, pushy people who put “for sale” signs up and do little to nothing else.
Be the exception to the rule by learning to go above and beyond your client’s expectations. Taking an approach that highlights your knowledge of the market, is engaging and friendly to work with, and shows a genuine interest in the client’s wellbeing are great ways to build better client trust in you and your services.
Taking time to focus on the little things, explaining the process of negotiation, acceptance, opening escrow, inspections, and more, as well as educating your clients about the language of the contracts, shows your deep understanding and expertise, further building trust.
Using the tools you have at your disposal, from hiring a coach and finding a mentor to being a lifelong learner, are all things you can do to improve your reputation as an agent.
But to be considered an expert, you need to understand the market inside and out, be able to market your knowledge in friendly–non-salesy ways–and leverage the reputations of your brokerage to boost your own credibility.
Becoming a better agent is about finding ways to better serve your prospects, leads, and clients. Being an engaging and conscientious go-to expert is extremely attractive to people.
Building trust, becoming a reputable expert, and being someone people want to talk to are the best ways to use soft skills to become a better agent.
However, finding a mentor and coach, creating routines and systems to stay on track and accountable, using valuable tools at your brokerage, and finding ways to stay front-of-mind for your prospects are the hard skills you need to be the best real estate agent possible.
