Many top agents make money but struggle with long work hours and have little time for themselves and their families. What can you do as an agent to save time without making a financial compromise? What’s the most valuable hire for a busy agent? And how can you make money just by networking with other agents? In this episode, Amy Broghamer shares how she achieved freedom without losing money.
The more value you add, the more valuable you become. -Amy Broghamer
Three Things We Learned
Build a network of skilled agents
Don’t be afraid to carve out a niche for yourself and work with only people who are a good fit for you. At the same time, you can make money even if someone isn’t a good fit. Network with highly skilled agents from different niches and send over clients who aren’t a good fit for you. This way, you still make some money without taking over more work.
The best first hire is a transaction coordinator
The best part about a transaction coordinator is not only that you can send them some of the things you don’t have time to do, but you also pay them a flat fee per each transaction. This will both save you money and time spent replying to emails and managing paperwork.
Build systems
Documenting everything and knowing the steps and how to speed up the process not only makes things easier for you and your staff. You just have to build the system once, and after you are done, you can just replicate it and save time on each transaction.
In your branding efforts, make sure you don’t use your picture too much. It’s safer to attach your name to the brand, but not your face. If you do use your face, all of your clients will have an expectation to work with you directly, which is not possible in most cases. This will also sabotage your efforts of recommending other agents and receiving a referral fee.
Guest Bio
Amy Broghamer is a team leader at Amy B in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a real estate coach at Amy B. Experience Success Speaking and Coaching. Her goal is to help agents build systems to increase their passive income via referrals and make money without sacrificing their time with family and friends.
Rockstar Agent Marketing Toolkit - Featuring our favorite scripts, tutorials and quickstart guides to marketing strategies like Facebook Live, door-knocking, remarketing advertising, open houses and referrals. Get actionable ideas and tactics you can use in your career right NOW.
The hiring process can be brutal. Often times, you’re flooded by resumes, and only a small percentage have both the soft and the hard skills you’re looking for in your ideal candidate. But how can you weed out the good from the bad? What should be your expectations when it comes to the hard skills of your next hire? Are top agents looking to join teams? And most of all, what’s the magical word that you can put into your ad that will scare the candidates that don’t understand what real estate is all about? In this episode, Wizehire founder, Jay Niblick shares the 3 things you should know before you make the hire.
Bringing someone on your team is like getting married. You are going to be around these people almost as much as you are going to be around your spouse. -Greg McDaniel.
Three Things We Learned
Put everyone on a probationary period
There are traits that can’t be measured by personality tests, and character is one of them. This is why it’s good to set an expectation from the beginning that new hires will go through a probationary period. You will spend a lot of hours every day near your hires, so why would you keep someone who doesn’t meet your standards?
Top agents don’t need teams to share their commission with
Many team leaders make the mistake of expecting agents that can jump into their business and crush it right out of the gate. But the truth is that teams are not mini brokerages. And a top agent doesn’t need the help of a team, so why would he or she split their commission with you? Instead, you need to search for talented and capable people and coach them into becoming top agents.
Mention “sales” in your ad
Many people become agents for the wrong reasons. Some like homes and interior design, and others enjoy the idea of doing open houses. But at the core, being a real estate agent is being a salesperson. For this reason, you should mention the word “sales” in your add. You might scare off the candidates who look for a comfortable job office and attract those who are comfortable working on a commission.
Bringing someone on your team is like getting married. You will spend a lot of time around them, probably as much as you spend with your family. The wrong people make you lose money and time, as you’ll have to search again to replace the bad hire. By using personality assessments and clearly stating in the ad that this is a sales position, you can weed out some of the bad hires. But in the end, what matters the most is that you use a probationary period. There are still variables that can’t be measured, and stating from the beginning that they will go through a probationary period makes your life easier.
Guest Bio
Jay Niblick is the founder of Wize Hire, a real estate recruiting software with a data-driven approach to the hiring process. You can take the personality test mentioned on this episode at https://wizehire.com/#disc-ebook-signup
Agents often have a hard time benefiting from new softwares and technology, even though most agents use at least a CRM. How can technology bring the “wow” factor and help you get the listing? What is the biggest money waster in real estate? How can you integrate every software you have and simplify your processes? In this episode, Chace Oldmixon, Gene Volpe, and Karri Flatla talk about technology, selling homes in neighborhoods with new constructions, and making your listing stand out.
Tech can help, but you actually need a system for how you want things done. - Matt Johnson
Three Things We Learned
Drone photography brings the element of novelty to the table
Novelty is a powerful tool. Call your videographer to the listing presentation and whether you give us the listing or not, this drone footage will be yours. While drones are not a new technology, they’re still underused, and it’s often exciting for the homeowner to see how much you invest into the presentation of their home.
Technology can often be overwhelming
There are many CRM’s that do the same things but are marketed to different markets. Agents often end up paying more for software that overcomplicates things, or for technology that they never use because they don’t know how to use it. You don’t need a sophisticated software if it doesn’t make your life easier and isn’t integrated into your current systems.
Faulty lead systems are the biggest money wasters in real estate
One of the biggest time and money wasters in real estate is not nurturing the leads you’ve paid for. Building an online presence, funnels, and paying for advertising are useless if you don’t have the resources to follow-up on each lead within minutes.
Technology is supposed to make your life simpler and integrate perfectly into your systems. But in many cases, software makes an agent’s life more complicated because it requires a learning curve. Also, when you work with many types of software, things tend to get complicated because you need to transfer the data needs between them. Before you purchase any piece of software, make sure that you have an integration system or you work with someone who can help you pick the software you need and know how to use.
Guest Bio
Chace Oldmixon is the founder of Chace Oldmixon consulting and the consumer evangelist at Real Sync. He has a background in sales and now helps brokerages and team leaders figure out how they can integrate technology into their systems and make their lives easier in the process.
Karri Flatla is an experienced realtor and team leader with a background in marketing. She worked as a copywriter and web marketing consultant. Today, she is the team leader at Karri Flatla & Associates in Lethbridge, Canada.
Gene Volpe is the founder of GVI Media and has over 10 years of experience in real estate marketing. With over 200 transactions under his belt, Gene is known as an authority in his field and is often invited to speak at events. You can find more about Gene at http://www.genevolpe.com/about-gene/#.
Agents are often times confused about the many options they have when it comes to growing their new business. Should you partner up with a mortgage loan office, and how can they help you get more leads? Is cold calling still a viable option? What’s the best way to contact someone and ask for information from them? In this episode, Robert Wilson Ring shares how you can grow a new business and talks about what a mortgage loan office can do for you.
An add won’t hold much power in the future unless it’s strategically done. -Greg McDaniel
Three Things We Learned
What you should expect from a mortgage loan officer
As a real estate agent, you need to find a mortgage loan officer that does more than just help your buyers find a mortgage so you can close the sale. This could translate to helping you with your advertising efforts or working your sphere. But you also have to keep in mind that a mortgage loan officer earns only one-third from the commission you make, so it’s not realistic to ask from them for 50% of the advertising expenses.
Cold calling is no longer as effective as it used to be
Both buyers and sellers are flooded by sales calls. As a consequence, they grow immune to it. New cold calling involves going through a list of people you already know and are in contact with.
The best way to attract someone's attention is to show them how you can bring value
If you call someone and lay the process out on how you can help them convert more or what your lead generation system is, you will receive some call backs. But if you don’t go in-depth with how you can help, you won’t be able to stand out.
Both for real estate agents and for mortgage loan officers, there is a shift towards the direction of branding, building relationships, and trust. Because both buyers and sellers are bombarded with calls and emails, the marketing message gets diluted. As a result, the best way to grow your business and get a competitive advantage is to nurture the people who already trust you and keep in touch with them on a personal level. This can be done via send-out cards with their photo and a personal message or email.
Guest Bio
Robert Wilson Ring is a branch manager and a mortgage advisor at People Home Equity, Inc.
He is also the founder of Robert Ring Team and part of a humanitarian program that helps orphans in Africa. His specialty is helping first home buyers and sellers get the best interest rates and mortgage packages.
Productivity in a fast-paced world is a struggle, especially when there always new things appearing on our plates. But what does it mean to be productive as a real estate agent? How can you shake off the feeling of not being productive enough? And how do you fix the lack of drive? In this episode, we speak about how to become more productive by narrowing your focus.
What’s the one thing I can do that makes everything easier or unnecessary? -Matt Johnson
Three Things We Learned
How to shake off the guilt of not feeling productive enough
Sometimes we may appear to be productive to the outside world, but if we don’t do the things we think we should to, we still feel lazy and unproductive. Sometimes we avoid doing hard and uncomfortable tasks, but it could also be that we might set unrealistic expectations for ourselves.
You can have fun and work at the same time
Social media platforms are often labeled as time wasters. But if you’re spending time on Facebook, you could also contact people. Post useful content and stay in touch with previous clients and prospects. Many people are willing to work with a real estate agent but never do because some agents aren’t keeping in touch.
Ask yourself what lifestyle you want and what you are willing to sacrifice for it
We often fail to get started or lack motivation due to the fact that our why is not big enough. If we aren’t willing to make the sacrifices needed to reach our goals, then we might be running in the wrong race or seeking to accomplish something we may think we should rather than something that will make us happy.
The biggest reason why we get overwhelmed is because we don’t eliminate all the tasks that aren’t as important to our goal. As a consequence, we set unrealistic expectations, and when we fail to reach those, we feel miserable. Focus on picking one thing, the one thing that makes everything else unnecessary or easier to do, and include it in your daily schedule.
The rise of internet has brought more lead sources, but few of those leads convert. What are your options when it comes to attracting leads that are more likely to convert? Why is Facebook a better lead generation platform, and what kind of content should you use? What kind of content should you post on groups? In this episode, James Rembert shares the strategies he uses to help his clients ditch Zillow and get more sales from Facebook.
Video is essential, and as much as we want to take that as an option, video is not an option for us as agents. -James Rembert
Three Things We Learned
Home evaluations no longer work
When everyone offers the same thing, the message gets diluted. Paid advertising is all about unexpected, high-quality content that your audience isn’t seeing every day. The easiest route to creating interesting content is to write home lists or guides about the neighborhood where the property is found, or anything lifestyle driven.
Leverage Facebook groups
Find Facebook groups with people that you have something in common with, or with people that you know need your help. If you are an agent who is into fitness, join a fitness group. You never know when someone on there will be interested in watching a video about a park in your neighborhood and the houses listed on there.
Leads are a byproduct of building relationships
Facebook is great for getting your message out there, but it won’t generate leads. The relationships you build are your lead generators. Social media platforms help you get more eyes on your content. The challenge is to create content that is of interest to your audience, and build a relationship with them.
The strongest relationship builder is video. People love stories, and the most attention grabbing way to tell a story and share all the details is using video. The secret to successful videos is focusing on the quality of the information you provide without even mentioning that you are a real estate agent. If they are interested in finding out more, they will click on your page and find out what you do for a living anyway.
Guest Bio
James Rembert is the Zillow Killer. Using Facebook, he provides marketing solutions to real estate agents who want to get high-quality leads without investing large amounts of money in platforms like Zillow. You can find out more about James and his work at http://www.jamesrembert.com/ and for coaching you can find more information at www.JamesRembert.com/hld
We all have time consuming tasks we don’t want to do, but when is the right time to hire an assistant, and how much should we pay them? Should we look for assistants who have a similar personality to ours? What traits make an assistant great, and how can expensive is the turnover? In this episode, Kathleen Metcalf speaks about how picking the right assistant can make your life less stressful and help you earn more.
Most of the tasks you need a real estate agent to do, do not require a real estate license. -Kathleen Metcalf
Three Things We Learned
The perfect assistant is good at doing the things you hate
The secret to success is not constantly pushing yourself to do the things that make you miserable but finding people who are willing to do it for you and enjoy the process.
When you hire, make sure you don’t select a candidate who wants to be in sales or one that has your personality. You need someone who is all about systems and details. If you hire your clone, who is going to do the tasks you hate doing?
The formula for compensation
In the employment realm, compensation has to make sense in the context of the market, the value brought to the table and how much you are willing to pay. You should aim at earning at least 4-5 times more than you pay your assistant and move up to 9-10 times. But in order to move up on the scale, you need to make the hire in the first place.
Turnover is expensive
When you find someone that makes your life easier, make sure you have at least 3 months on your payroll in case you are experiencing a dip in business. Excellent assistants are hard to find and training someone takes both time and money. In the long-term, you are saving money if you work on keeping your turnover rate low.
The right assistant is detail and system oriented and doesn’t have any ambitions for the sales department. You have to make sure you don’t hire a wannabe agent but someone who enjoys administrative tasks. High-quality assistants are hard to find, and this is why when you find one, even if your business takes a dip due to a market shift, it’s wiser to keep your assistant instead hunting for a new one and training them.
Guest Bio
Kathleen Metcalf helps business owners find solutions to their problems and improve their communication with their team. She served as a bridge between entrepreneurs and assistants for over 6 years, and she was herself an assistant to top producing real estate agents. You can find her free guides to hiring, training and coaching at https://www.kathleenmetcalf.com/
Building a real estate business that spans over decades and market shifts takes more than hard work. What is the philosophy of the real estate business owners that manage to build a legacy? What’s the importance of building a reputation and how can you avoid staining it? And most of all, how do you build a safety net when you have slow months? In this episode, we are so excited to have the Grandmaster himself Terry McDaniel, on the show. He shares how his journey started 42 years ago and how he build a business from scratch.
A lead from the internet in my opinion is not a lead, it’s a response.- Terry McDaniel
Three Things We Learned
Don’t rely on coming up with the right answers on the spot
Potential clients have sometimes tough questions for you, you can’t come up on the spot with the right answer for everything. Some conclusions your prospects have are illogical from the beginning and you can’t fight that. But for the ones who are looking for solutions, you should have a script otherwise your answers won’t be satisfying.
Keep a clean reputation
Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want to see in the newspaper. A reputation is hard to clean. Your job is to serve people and sometimes the best decision is not selling right now. You might lose some quick money but you win the respect of a prospect for life.These people will contact you when they are in need and refer you to others as well.
Have a safety net
Sometimes the clients you think you have in your hands will walk out and do business with someone else. You have to have a safety net, leads that you constantly nurture and communicate with. You never know when you touch someone on a personal level, even with a simple gesture such as a box of chocolate.
The real estate business is a people business, you won’t last in this industry for long unless you look at your job as a server of others. The best way to attract both sellers and buyers is to maintain a clean reputation. To do so, you have to work in the your client’s interest, even if it’s against yours. Sometimes the home shouldn’t be sold right now because the demand is low. This kind of attitude will get you remembered by your prospects and when the time is right for them to sell, you will be their agent.
Guest Bio
Terry McDaniel started his real estate business from scratch 42 years ago. He was long enough in the real estate industry to see how the technological advancements changed the game what it takes to build a long-lasting, successful business. Terry graduated with top honors from the the University of Wisconsin graduate business school and he is an active member in the Community Presbyterian Church.
Many real estate agents fall into the trap of doing what everyone is doing when it comes to branding, from advertising themselves as jack of all trades to using cliches in their tagline. But what message do you send to your prospects when you put “honesty”, “integrity,” and “trust” in your business description? Does it say something useful about what you do? Should you advertise yourself as a jack of all trades or go niche? In this episode, Tonya Eberhart, Michael Carr, and Gene Volpe talk about the power of narrowing your focus and avoiding cliches.
People don’t do business with a logo. They do it with a person. -Tonya Eberhart
Three Things We Learned
Marketing is all about standing out in the crowd
We sometimes end up doing the same thing as everyone else. When you start building your own brand, don’t just look at your skills and knowledge, but also at your personal traits and interests. What can you do to humanize your image?
Go niche
All of your marketing efforts should speak to your ideal customer. This not will only set you apart but it will also help you build a reputation in your segment. Many agents fear going niche. But by doing so, you aren’t excluding everyone else; you’re just narrowing your focus.
Avoid describing your business using cliches
Values such as high-quality service, trust, integrity, and honesty are plastered everywhere, yet they say nothing because everyone is using them. Worse, nobody believes agents that describes themselves like this. When you describe your business, you need to use something specific about your service that nobody else can offer in your area.
Many real estate agents believe that they should be experts in all areas of real estate, and this is what you were probably told after you got your license. But the truth is that you can’t do it all and maintain the same quality in all areas. Going niche is one of the shortest paths to getting recognized as an expert, especially if you focus on your buyer persona instead of hunting everything that moves. If someone needs help with finding a luxury home near a river, and you advertise yourself as the expert in that area, you will probably win the listing over someone who says he or she is a jack of all trades, simply because being an expert in all areas is less believable.
Guest Bios
Tonya Eberhart is a speaker, author of three books, and the founder of Brand Face. She helps real estate professionals, business owners, and improvement professionals build their brand and land more clients. One of the books she wrote, BrandFace for Real Estate Professionals, is written in collaboration with Michael Carr, a top selling real estate auctioneer.
Michael Carr is a top real estate auctioneer. He started his journey as an auctioneer in 1991, and in 1994 he got licensed as a real estate agent and made a shift towards selling homes. During his 24 years of experience, he has been involved in over 68,000 home sales across the country. Currently, he is the CEO of Michael Carr & Associates.
Gene Volpe is the founder of GVI Media and has over 10 years of experience in real estate marketing. With over 200 transactions under his belt, Gene is known as an authority in his field and is often invited to speak at events. You can find more about Gene at http://www.genevolpe.com/about-gene/#.
Both sellers and buyers work with the agents they know well, not the agents they’ve never heard about. How do you make sure more people know about you? Should you post content on social media? Should you market yourself as a jack of all trades or as an expert in one niche? In this episode, we talk about the importance of being top-of-mind and narrowing down your focus.
This is a game of eyeballs and ears. If we can capture the eyeballs and we capture the ears, we can get the business. -Greg Mcdaniel
Three Things We Learned
Find a category where you can be king
If you are new to the area and surrounded by older agents, it’s harder for you to be on top when your competition has been around for 10 or more years. But you don’t have to be the top Realtor. You can be the listing expert, or whatever suits your skills and talents. You don’t have to market yourself as a jack of all trades.
The 80-20 rule for content creation
Many agents either create too much content that has nothing to do with real estate or content that is only about real estate. You have to find a sweet spot between being someone who is just a realtor and posting content for fun. You need to humanize your brand, but at the same time you have speak about what you do for a living. If you can do 80% fun and 20% business, you are not going to fail.
Narrow down your focus
You may get mentally bored and try to focus on three things at the same time. But marketing is all about focus, not about going wide. Instead of building two businesses at the same time or trying to break into two niches, focus on only one. Unfortunately, most of these ventures fail because you can only spread yourself so much.
Your audience won’t remember you if you don’t find a way to stand out. In a competitive market, the riches are in niches and uniqueness. Everyone says they are the best agent in the area, but that doesn’t really say anything about them. You have to be more specific about what you do and why they should work with you. The best way to get other people to remember you is to be more than the realtor who pushes listings on social media. At least 80% of your content should fall under the “fun” umbrella, the type of content that shows your human side. You don’t need more than 20% to be focused on your business. If they like you and they know what you do, they will come to you.
Technological advancements scare us. What if we will be replaced? Should we look at new tools as helpers or enemies? Will administrative work be mostly replaced by AI? How will technology impact the way people socialize? In this episode, Gene Volpe shares his insights on how agents will be forced to embrace the technology or get left behind.
I don’t think we are really that far off that day of Alexa taking care of initial stages of buyer consultations. -Matt Johnson
Three Things We Learned
Google assistant might replace some of the admin work
Some assistant and admin work might disappear because Google is working on an assistant that will speak to service providers, clients, etc. Alexa is also not far behind from dealing with the initial stages of buyer consultations.
Adobe Capture CC takes photos of designs and saves the font and colors
If you’ve ever had someone design a brochure, you know how hard it is to recreate it. First you have to look for a similar font and then you need to pinpoint the right color. Adobe Capture CC helps you find both the font and the color just by taking a photo of a design you like.
Social media will be a shield against direct contact
Nobody answers to phone numbers they don’t know anymore, but everyone reads their texts. Social media will work as a shield between aggressive salespeople who want to push their services and prospects. You will no longer give a phone call unless the prospect gives you their contact information and is ready to move to the next stage.
Technological changes will force real estate agents to go full-time and learn more about technology and how people want to be contacted. Some people may lose their jobs, but those who learn how to use technology as tools to sell more and make their lives easier will thrive.
Tools such as Google Assistant and Alexa will only get better in time, but they won’t be able to replace human contact.
Converting leads over the phone is getting harder and harder. But why does this happen? Do people no longer want to be contacted over the phone? What is the best platform to be on right now as a real estate agent or team leader? On this episode, we discuss the death of phone prospecting in the near future and the rise of social media.
Now we are starting to use the phone as an insular so we don’t have to talk with the people we don’t know. -Matt Johnson
Three Things We Learned
Prospect on the right platform
Newer platforms make people more open and willing to look at content published by strangers. Facebook has already become a place where it’s harder to go viral and create business accounts that thrive. The reason behind this is that it’s users are more interested in the posts of their friends and family as opposed to content pushed by businesses. Instagram is now the platform where you should be promoting your business. It’s both new and popular enough to expose your content to a large audience.
Calling prospects will disappear in the near future
Calling prospects will either become illegal or it will no longer be culturally accepted. Most people don’t pick up the phone if they don’t know who is calling. Social media, on the other hand, is a safer way to interact. Platforms like Instagram attract through their novelty, and they don’t make people uncomfortable either.
Don’t ask people to buy from you
Nobody wants to be sold to. As a result, messages where you ask people to contact you if they need your services rarely work. Focus on building rapport first. You can’t ask for somebody’s trust and hard earned money if they don’t know who you are and what you do.
People are attracted to novelty. In the past, we were more open to picking up the phone and interacting with strangers. Today, we are no longer comfortable speaking with people we don’t know. Social media platforms are the same. In the beginning, we are attracted by its novelty and are more open to connecting with strangers. As time passes, we are less likely to connect with people outside our family, friends, and business contacts. Platforms like Instagram, where there is still novelty, are the places to go and push content to promote yourself.