Did you know that most real estate agents don’t stay in business for more than five years? Obviously there are a lot of reasons they don’t make it. But one of the main reasons is that many new agents lack the training to be successful.
The other reason a lot of people don’t make it is because it’s not that hard to get into. Starting your real estate career requires some courses in ethics, basic real estate law and then passing a licensing test and paying some fees.
That’s about it.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much in the way of education and training offered to most new agents.
Most agents flounder about what to do when they get started, including signing with the first brokerage that they interview because it’s the easiest path. But easy isn’t the best long-term strategy for success.
It takes planning and follow-through to succeed in real estate, and more importantly, it takes being front of mind when somebody is looking to buy or sell a property. And to do that, you need to stand out from the crowd. But, before you can stand out, there are some things to learn first as a new agent.
From finding a mentor and coach, to learning how to market your services, you need to sit down and outline your objectives and the steps you need to take to achieve your goals.
And in order to do that, you need to understand that there is a lot you don’t know about the business, which is where a mentor or coach can help. New agents need to learn eight critical things to build the foundation of success for their real estate business.
Let’s take a look at each one so you can set yourself up for lasting success.
1. Find A Mentor Or Coach
In order to succeed, you need to know what you’re doing. And the best way to learn what you don’t know about the business is to find a mentor or coach that can help keep you on track toward your goals.
There are three ways you can learn about real estate and how to be successful.
- You can learn on your own, which is often difficult and costly.
- You can find a mentor to help guide you and your business.
- You could hire a professional real estate coach to help you strategize and implement the systems you need to be successful.
Benefits Of Finding A Mentor
The benefit of finding a mentor is that you create a mutually beneficial relationship. Sure, you may have to do some grunt work initially, but along the way, your mentor will help you avoid the pitfalls most other agents slip into.
Ideally, mentors should be someone in your office. But they can also be other agents and brokers who have the time to work with you. You can find a virtual mentor and set up regular video chat calls with them.
The primary relationship in any mentorship is personal, and the business side is a dual relationship; you’re helping your mentor and they’re helping you.
Because of this dual relationship, you want to talk with potential mentors and find the right combination of experience, personality and philosophies that align with your own.
A mentor will help you establish your goals, show you some practical tools and ways to message and market your brand and focus on the long-term strategies needed for success.
Benefits Of Hiring A Coach
A coach, on the other hand, will be a guide and counselor for you to help you achieve the goals you want for your business.
A good real estate coach will help you learn to put in place systems and processes that you can build from, often automating them, to focus your energies and attention on other tasks. In addition, a coach will help you with your business strategies and analyze your performance.
Coaches will listen to your needs and goals and help you identify achievable ones before showing you the steps needed to accomplish that feat. Typically, a real estate coach focuses on short-term tasks that can create better efficiencies for you to obtain larger goals. They are generally more focused on your overall strategy and the planning necessary to see it come to fruition.
Here are some of the things a coach can help you with:
- Time management
- Goal setting
- Self-discipline
- Accountability
- Effective lead gen strategies
- Prioritizing tasks
The best coaches are those who understand what it takes to succeed by having done it themselves.
For instance, I’ve been in the business for over 20 years and I’ve seen a fair share of success and failures. I know the processes it takes to be successful in real estate.
So, ideally, your coach is someone who has been there, done that and will teach you the exact strategies and roadmap to be successful.
Whether you work with a mentor, hire a coach—or both—getting expert advice and guidance are the first steps you need toward launching a successful career in real estate.
2. Set Achievable Goals
As you try to determine the type of business you want your real estate career to become, part of that planning includes setting goals you’d like to accomplish. Goal-setting is easy; you can randomly choose any amount of sales transactions or Gross Commission Income (GCI) and go about your day.
But setting achievable and realistic goals? That’s a little more difficult.
You may need an outsider’s perspective to set achievable goals so you’re not setting yourself up for failure. Goal setting should include a broad, long-term plan, medium-sized goals and short-term quick wins.
For example, let’s say that in five years, you’d like to have sold 200 homes. This breaks down to 40 homes per year. My question for you would be, “How will you accomplish that goal?”
It’s not impossible, but starting out may be difficult if you don’t have the systems to get you where you want to be.
Instead, take your macro, outsized goal and break it down into smaller chunks.
For example, think about what you need to do to average 40 homes sold a year. This is around 3.4 homes per month. Then create systems to help you get there—one home at a time.
- How many leads do you need to generate to sell 3.4 homes per month?
- How many phone calls do you need to make per day?
- How many showings do you need to do on average?
- Do you have the proper administrative support to keep up with the number of closings you want? In other words, how are you going to stay on top of the paperwork?
- Will you need to run ad campaigns to generate higher quality leads?
Long-Term Plan
A good starting point is setting up a long-term plan that includes where your business will be in one, three and five years.
Here is a general outline of what you want to do, the time you give yourself to accomplish those goals and how you plan to scale beyond. Don’t be too specific at this stage of your planning, but also don’t be too vague–i.e., $10 million in GCI per year. Instead, plan your goals modestly at first and scale from there, understanding that you can iterate your plans as you gain more experience and grow your business.
Short-Term Plan
Long-term planning is the “moon-shot” of planning. What do you dream of doing, and how much time are you planning on giving yourself to accomplish it?
Your next step is to make more specific targets and objectives, breaking down your larger goals into things you can do daily to achieve them.
After you break down your larger, long-term goals into smaller chunks, take that and portion those goals into even smaller, more actionable ones.
As you look at a short-term plan, you should set up a system to achieve daily, weekly, and quarterly markers–with a process in place to accomplish those objectives.
3. Learn How To Market Your Brand
The third step in the process you need to know for new agents is how to build and market your brand. Yes, your business is your brand, so start thinking about it in those terms.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
- How do you want to be recognized?
- How will you stand out from other real estate agents?
- What is unique about you and your business from others?
- What would make your brand recognizable to others?
For example, one agent I know had a mild Australian accent and used “big hugs” as a call sign every time she emailed, posted on social media, and ended every call, text and in-person meeting that way. Her call sign became part of her brand and became known as the “big hugs” agent.
People knew her from her accent and her “big hugs” sign-off, which became part of her brand.
Another agent I know drove a pink car as she began in the market. She drove it to every meeting and put it on flyers and mailers. Eventually, she began to wear pink at every interaction as well. She became known as her community's pink lady real estate agent.
Once you decide what your brand will be, you need to market it in every way possible.
You can market your services and brand in all sorts of ways. The traditional way of mailers and door hangers may have some long-term ROI or return on investment, but what is cheaper to produce and easier to distribute are ads and branding opportunities using technology.
Technology seems more complicated than it really is, and you should explore various options to see what fits best for your branding.
- Email “drip” campaign
- Mobile apps
- TikTok
- YouTube channel
- Threads
- Other social media channels–Twitter (or X), Reddit, Telegram, etc.
Technology provides more accessible points of contact with people than older, more traditional methods such as door hangers and mailers.
When you post on social media for a personal page, consider the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of your page should be personal, pictures, fun events, etc., and only 20% should be about real estate.
Of course, for a business page, you would post more about real estate, but the type of content you want that gets the most engagement is pictures and videos rather than text.
Also, with many forms of social media, you can create what are called pixels. Pixels help you…
- Find out who opened your deliverables
- What were your most popular forms of communication
- How long they lingered on your messaging
- Capture their information to retarget for future marketing purposes
Your marketing strategy should align with your brand, and the most significant thing to remember is that you should always be marketing. Just don’t go overboard with signage and logos. But every chance you can, you should be sending some reminders about your business.
4. Grow Your Sphere
Using technology and social media specifically to grow your brand can also expand your sphere. By offering helpful tips, fun and playful posts, and promoting local events, your social media can be seen as a go-to for community information.
You can promote special networking sessions and host a happy hour Q&A for new buyers to meet new people and get your brand out there. These are actions you can take to expose your brand, and as you interact with people and get to know them on social media and networking events, you can continue growing your sphere.
With your sphere of influence, consider that you want to be seen as the go-to real estate professional. That said, nobody likes the tactics of old-school salespeople. So don’t hit your sphere about buying or selling; make those pitches subtle.
Every chance you get, you want to get people’s information. Do kids need to schedule a playdate? Get the other kids’ parents' contact information. A coach needs someone to assist with a party plan? Volunteer and collect parent contacts. Find a way to be the go-to person (as much as possible) to assist and help out, especially with putting information out to others where you have the opportunity to collect contact information and slowly build a wider sphere.
5. Nurture Your Leads and Prospects
Like any career in sales, it really is a numbers game. One stat that most people starting out in real estate are unaware of is that only about 3% of all prospects and leads will become a client. 3%! That means to have 3 potential deals, you would need to be in touch with over 100 prospects during any given time.
The Prospect's Purchasing And Selling Stage
Each prospect is at a different stage of their purchasing and selling decision at any given time. Some may be at the exploratory phase, determining if now is the right time for them.
Here’s a helpful breakdown of the stages in a prospects purchasing and selling journey.
Exploring: This stage of decision-making is like kicking the tires or window shopping. You rarely get a client today for a deal tomorrow at this stage. They’re still just shopping around and wrapping their mind around what they want.
Preparing: The second stage of a prospect’s journey is the preparation stage. This is where the prospect actively gathers all the information they can and looks at agents and home options. They aren’t 100% committed at this point and are still trying to decide their immediate path. How you interact and guide them can significantly influence their decision-making.
Purchasing (and Selling): The final stage is the purchasing or selling decision. The prospect is finally ready to make a deal and finalize a transaction at this stage. Think of this stage like an airplane. The prospect is the pilot and you’re the airport control tower and ground crew. You are there to direct and help land the plane.
Because your prospects are all at different stages of their potential buying and selling journey, your follow-up with them is critical.
6. Be Patient
Starting out your real estate career is so exciting. You’re finally working for yourself and are your own boss with all the potential in the world out in front of you. But you need to learn patience.
Getting your first deal could take months. And then, it could take 30 or more days to close escrow.
Part of being patient is also persevering. Of course, building up a brand reputation takes time, nurturing leads and prospects, and seeing your efforts’ residuals. However, the amount of time it takes to succeed also requires you, as a new agent, to stay on task, persevere and be disciplined.
Having the self-discipline to put in systems and see them through may be too much for some agents. (Remember that stat at the beginning about most agents not making it past the five-year mark?)
This is where the power of a real estate coach comes in. A coach can help you prioritize what tasks need to be done right now versus those that can wait. They will also help you build the foundations needed to get to where you want to be.
Being patient but strategic is what sets apart agents who can create a business that will last a long time from those agents that make a couple of deals and flame out. Don’t try to be the next real estate shooting star. You might end up just burning out.
7. Lifelong Learner–Know The Market
Getting your license is just the first step in your real estate education. Through your brokerage or mentorship, you’ll learn about best practices, how to write contracts, and more. But what’s most important is that you stay up-to-date on market trends, financing options, local regulations and laws pertaining to the industry.
As you spend more time in the business and your brand grows, you want to be perceived as the local authority for real estate needs and questions. The way to benefit from this perception is tied to staying current on all the market trends and information. This will prepare you for any situation that could come up.
Real estate, at its core, is about personal relationships. But legal and ethical ramifications and ordinances change and evolve over time. Staying current on the best practices, the most effective marketing, list prices and neighborhood comps, and seeing more significant market trends, will aid you in talking with prospects and clients.
8. Become The Go-To Real Estate Expert
Demonstrating your knowledge of the market and how you position your brand will boost your perception as a real estate professional. But to be perceived as an expert takes time and careful planning.
For example, staying current on list prices is one thing. However, being able to explain in a pitch meeting the trend for home prices, the causes that impact those trends, and the timing of listing due to those outside factors shows your client you have substantial knowledge of the market. They can rely on you for a big purchase.
You should also post shareable videos and infographics on social media that explain complex concepts and offer helpful tips to getting a better deal in selling or purchasing a home. This will help boost your credibility in the minds of prospects.
For example, you could post a video of different backsplash ideas in the kitchen, cost-effective upgrades for a bathroom makeover or ways to improve curb appeal to boost the list and selling price.
Being conversant about the market, making helpful suggestions and offering advice are great ways to be seen as a real estate expert.
Increase your skills, increase your knowledge, increase your value and become the expert that others turn to for all their real estate needs.
Starting out in the real estate profession is easy. Most of the time, you just have to take a class, pass a licensing exam, choose a broker to hang your license with, and pay a few fees. But sadly, nobody teaches you how to make it in the business, especially if you’re working independently.
Creating a plan for long-term success with short-term objectives that are easy to achieve and having an outside voice to guide you are significant to determining how much you may succeed or fail. For some agents, a mentor is all they need. But a real estate coach can help you set up the systems you need to reach your goals faster and maintain success long-term.
What do you think you need to succeed? Join us for our next three-day event to learn more about becoming the go-to real estate expert in your area.
