Focus your efforts on increasing your supply of listings and you will increase your income at the same time. Remember, every other agent working in your area is potentially helping you sell your listings but you are on your own with your buyers.
One question to ask when talking to FSBO’s is how they expect to be able to negotiate with a prospective buyer. They should know that it is rare for a seller to accept the first offer a potential buyer makes. There is almost always a back and forth negotiation that takes place and unless the seller is able to separate him or herself from the personal nature of the transaction, they are likely to be unhappy with the result.
Get into the habit of checking your website at least once a day. If there is a problem, you need to be the first to know about it. The company that hosts your site could have a problem that has shut you down and is probably so busy trying to fix the problem that they do not have the time or the ability to tell you about it. In fact, it is the policy of many hosting services that you are the one responsible for keeping track of this. Nobody cares about your site more than you so make sure you know what is going on with it.
Spam is unwanted and unasked for e-mail of any kind. Not only is it illegal to send anything like this, you are likely to anger the recipient so much that they will never even consider working with you. Ask for permission before you send any e-mail. If you don’t get that permission, don’t feel bad, your e-mail wouldn’t have worked on them anyway.
This may sound obvious but you would be surprised at how many people use dark colored paper with dark colored ink for their flyers. Ask yourself if anything could be harder to read. Even if your flyers are designed perfectly with the right combination of paper, ink, and copy you will still have a large percentage of receivers who will throw them away without looking at them. Don’t force everyone else to do the same as well.
Make your business card more valuable by printing a calendar or an amortization table on the back. You might even consider passing out laminated versions of the same with your contact information taking second place. Many potential clients and even other agents will hold on to these if they are done well and have a nice clean look.
One of the most common mistakes that an agent can make is to stop their marketing effort as soon as their business picks up. The secret to a consistent or increasing level of clients is a steady and determined marketing effort. All market planning should be long-term and you should always be looking a minimum of six-months to a year down the road. If often takes at least that long for your marketing efforts to convert prospects into clients, so be persistent in your efforts and eliminate those feast or famine cycles.
You have certainly heard it before but there is nothing you can do to help a person whose listing has expired more than convincing them to set their asking price correctly from the start. The “let’s try this price and we’ll lower it later if necessary” just doesn’t work. Buyers equate a falling price with a desperate seller and will write their offer accordingly, if at all. So, convince them to price correctly from the start or don’t bother taking the listing.
Quick, check your pockets or your purse right now. Do you have a supply of business cards to give out? If not, you need to change the way you do business. You should be in the habit of passing out your business card to everyone you meet and you certainly are not going to be able to do that if you don’t have a ready supply with you at all times.
One of the best strategies you can use to convince FSBO’s and expired listers to work with you is to present them with a deal that increases the odds of them attaining their most important goals. This doesn’t mean that they are guaranteed to get everything they want, but it does mean that you use your imagination and skills to set up a deal where the probability of them doing so is the greatest. Find out what is most important to them and then figure out how to accomplish that. If they need to sell fast, use listing price to do it. If they need a minimum amount before they will sell, show them how to spend the time, effort, and a little money to make their house worth more to prospective buyers.
Concentrating your efforts on increasing your listings rather than the number of buyers you work with could be the difference between a steadily increasing income and the opposite. Even the most organized agent can only work with so many buyers at a time. Servicing a few buyers can take as much time as servicing many listings so it only makes sense that if you want to increase your earnings you will increase your listings.
Make sure you have placed as many helpful links on your website as you can think of. You should have links to the local tax authorities, the recorders office in your area, and the Chamber of Commerce for all the cities in your area. Any links on your website should be set to open in a new window whenever someone clicks on them so that it is easy for them to come back to your page.
If you are like most people, you do not use your time as effectively as you can. You start one task only to be interrupted by something else. Or, you may find yourself trying to do two things at once with the result that both prove to be less than your best effort. One strategy you can use to eliminate this is to try thinking of your day in short fifteen-minute or half-hour increments. Use each period to concentrate on one task at the exclusion of all others. It sounds too simple to be effective, but this might just be the easiest way to work through all the things you need to do.
The most important item you and your clients need to discuss, and hopefully, agree on, is the listing price. In today’s housing market, pricing a house higher than the competition will almost certainly guarantee that it will sit for months. And, the worst part is that once you convince your sellers to lower the price where it should have been to start with, your prospective buyers will think something must be wrong with the house and will still hesitate to make an offer. If you really want to help your clients, get the price correct right from the start.
You should be constantly reviewing the areas you farm for all the real estate activity to continuously determine if they are active enough to be worth your time and marketing dollars. Keep track of every listing, sale, expired listing, and FSBO. Make a spreadsheet in which in you can easily enter the data and consider the results every few months. If there is not enough activity, you may want to focus your efforts elsewhere.
There is almost certainly no one thing you can do for your career and your life better than getting organized. Organized agents are able to service more buyers, list more sellers, and close more deals. They don’t waste their time trying to figure out what they need to do next, all the while hoping they did not forget anything important. Get organized and start earning more.
You are probably in the habit of sending out notices of your listings to people on your mailing list but are you also sending these same notices out to all the other agents in your area. The buyer for your listing will probably come from another agent so it only makes sense to let them know what you have listed. Start and maintain a mailing list of all the agents in your area and use it to spread the word about your new listings.
Do you spend part of every day chatting with your fellow agents? If so, ask yourself if your time wouldn’t be better spent doing something else. For example, you could spend the time writing out personal messages to people on your mailing list. And, since every one of these personal messages deserves a follow up call, you may use this time for that. The list of things you could do with the extra time is endless, so look closely at the time you are spending that is not furthering your career and then look for better ways to fill it.
One way to court the FSBO’s in your area by asking them questions designed to show them they might be in over their head. One such question is how will they know if a potential buyer for their home is even qualified to buy it. Most people have a natural aversion when it comes to asking others about their personal finances and people trying to sell their own home are no different. Let these sellers know that one of the most valuable services you can offer is the ability to sort through all the lookers to find the buyers who are really willing and, more importantly, able to buy.
One thing you need to do as an agent is to make sure you use your time as efficiently as possible. One way to do this is by keeping a To Do list. This simple tool can mean the difference between really accomplishing what you need to be successful and just filling your time.
