It is around this time of year, when one month is already gone on the calendar, that I begin to get a sense of who is on track to have a strong spring and who may need to really ramp up. How do I know? New connections and outreach.
Lots of agents begin the year with great intentions – a great big “to do” list, organizing their office and closets, but the outreach to new people is easy to move down the list because it is not a tangible problem to be solved like a pile of mail, an email from a managing broker, or a shared connection on Facebook with a past client. Furthermore, there may be a false sense of security based on some outreach you did in the fall to your database such as holiday cards or a client event.
If you want to keep your real estate business consistently bringing in new transactions, I highly recommend that you are not too reliant on just your database because of that false sense of security. If your pipeline is now empty, the time to hustle is now.
I want you to imagine that you don’t have any friends or family to rely on. I want you to imagine that you are brand new to an area, or even to real estate. I want you to further imagine that not only are your friends, family and your database unavailable to you to tap into, but you also can’t do open houses because you sprained your ankle. And you have to start generating leads all on your own. So where do you start? Where do you go looking for leads? They certainly won’t come knocking on your front door. Do you let your business well run dry or are you going to figure out another way to make things happen?
The best way to guarantee you have business is to guarantee you are consistent in your outreach efforts. You can’t control your results if you haven’t mastered controlling your outreach. You are living in a fantasy world if you think business will come to you without effort on your part.
One of the best things I used to do with my new agents was to make them send out ten letters a week to potential sellers who may need to sell. I would have them scour the MLS for clues to find out what properties or neighborhoods or price points were in the highest demand and then I would have them send letters to those potential sellers. That outreach provided much-needed calls and results. There are clues throughout your MLS, the community, your planning department, your assessor’s office, and more.
Don’t rely on anyone but yourself to guarantee you have a steady stream of income in real estate. Be consistent, do your outreach and make it a part of your business plan. Most agents rely too heavily on their current databases to feed their business leads. The problems with this is that it is hard to grow your business this way. It may keep you at the same level of income but if you want to increase your income, you have to increase your outreach.
Steady outreach that is treated as a regular part of your business practices will without question increase your bottom line!
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