Do you play Red Light, Green Light with Your Real Estate Business?

Do you remember playing Red Light Green Light as a child?  Many agents play this game with their real estate business and though analyzing your business regularly is very important the idea of stopping and starting it, is going to hurt your business in the long run.

Why do agents start and stop: time budget, no systems and poor planning generally are the causes.  Does this ring true in your business?

Let's look at some strategies to keep your business in front of you at all times so you can flow with all that incoming traffic..  

The first goal is to grow your business proactively vs. re-actively.  How do you accomplish this.  Here are 5 important steps:

1.  Build a Database

2.  Feed the Database everyday

3.  Communicate with it in a systematic way

4.  Service all clients regularly

5.  Know your numbers

When I work with agents, budget is always a topic that most do not like to approach.  But you are building a business. If you were to open any other business a budget is critical to your success.    Real Estate is actually one of the least expensive businesses to get into.   However, you do a lot of work before you get paid so being aware and planning is critical to your success.

As we know in real estate you are really in two businesses:  Lead Generation and Real Estate Sales.  Without lead generation you won't have the latter. So your primary business is Lead Generation. When it comes to your budget, what is it going to cost you to lead generate and what are you going to do?

You have two options:  Money or Man Power (i.e. You)

If money is tight then you are the man power.  Once your customer and marketing plan is identified, you can either pay or use man power to find leads. Most likely you will do both, but for the purpose of learning let's say you have no budget, what will you do?

Let's look at how many contact you need to meet in order to get 1 contract in. Depending on your length of time in the industry the number of contacts it takes to convert into a contract typically falls as follows;

• 0-1 year:  125 contacts
• 1-5 years:  62 contacts
• 5+ years:   35 contacts

So the big question goes back to what are you doing to make these contacts? I like to encourage agents to do bit of both. The most important thing is to do something.  We recommend systematically lead generating a minimum of 3 hours a day.  That is not doing your marketing flyers to go door knock.  That is door knocking, etc. for 3 hours a day.

One thing to keep in mind, whether you decide you want to pay or use man power.  The fastest way to get a contract in place is to get face-to-face with people.  So the harder you work (utilizing man power (cost savings) the sooner you will have money flowing in.   If you are starting out and want to do direct mail, newsletters etc, with consistency this will build your brand but it will take longer for you to get paid.  Why? real estate is about relationships.  People want to work with people they know. Go out and get to know some people!

Five no or low cost lead generation tools:

• Phone Calls
• Door Knock 
• Open House
• Volunteer
• Social Media

Remember this is your business.. No one has the same business, this is yours to create and be successful in! 

So what is your plan..

Need help, don't hesitate to reach out to us for a complimentary coaching session or join us at our weekly open coaching session in our office Wednesday at 3pm. Just send us a note to let us know you would like to pop in and we will make sure there is seat for you.