How to Take Your Real Estate Business to the Next Stage

Whether you recently launched your career in real estate, consider yourself a seasoned veteran or fall somewhere in between, there comes a point when you know you need to take your Real Estate business to the next stage. Maybe it's greater competition or simply a concerted effort to increase productivity and improve financial stability.

Knowing what you should be doing and actually executing it can be two different things, however. It takes discipline to actually follow through, day after day, with the tasks necessary to take your real estate business to the next stage.

1. Improve your qualifying skills

This step is not just for novice agents. A surprisingly large number of very experienced real estate agents sometimes have a hard time qualifying prospects, and end up spending time and other resources on leads that never pay off.  Buyers who intend to buy but need to work on their credit or other circumstances, yet have a strong likelihood of become qualified in the future, are worthy of your attention and should be prioritized accordingly.

But most agents have come into contact with prospects who present themselves as eager to buy, only to eliminate one property after another for superficial reasons. Spending time and resources researching and showing properties to buyers who have no intention of buying can be an albatross for your business, weighing it down by taking your time away from more productive tasks that could actually lead to business growth.

2.  Turn mornings into power hours

Many new agents are able to coast along the first few years after getting their license by generating new business from existing contacts and their direct referrals with little effort. But at some point, this business stream is likely to taper off. Even seasoned agents who have built their business model on referrals may hit a lull in activity at some point, making it difficult to reach their goals for business growth.

Dedicate yourself to spending one to two hours every weekday morning generating new business. Commit to being on the phone for the better share of this time and treat it as a calendar conflict that cannot be adjusted whenever you need to schedule other meetings. This portion of your day, spent prospecting and following up on leads, should serve as the launchpad for growing your business.

3.  Use your database to your advantage

Keeping an up-to-date database that you can use for lead generating and conversion, and link to your website, is invaluable as a growth tool for real estate. But a surprising number of agents do not work their database and have not even selected customer relationship management software to help them use their database for marketing purposes, such as email campaigns.

4. Bolster your website

If you're still making due with the basic website you set up years ago, you're missing an important opportunity to harness the Internet with low-cost marketing. With an estimated 80 percent of home buyers starting their home search online, you need a website that is going to pop up in search engine results. This cannot be accomplished with a simple website consisting of a homepage, listings search and contact page.

The way to turn a basic website into a useful marketing tool is to ensure that it consists of pages and pages of relevant information, including text, audio and video. All your site's pages should serve collectively as a valuable resource to home buyers and sellers. If you have no writing skills, spend a bit to hire a writer to regularly blog for you and manage your site. Done effectively, your website will be worthy of the small amount of money spent to generate content.

5. Be persistent with follow up

In 80 percent of sales, it takes five or more contacts by a salesperson before a successful agreement is struck. That being the case, it is surprising that an estimated 90 percent or more of real estate agents will give up after three or fewer attempts at engaging a prospect. While it can be difficult and time-consuming to nurture a prospect, there is strong evidence-based research showing such efforts will pay off. You can make this important step easier if you automate some of the process using by making use of task-oriented software and drip campaigns.

Finally, if you are serious about growing your real estate business, you must learn the art of discernment. That's important not only so you can identify serious home buyers, but so you can determine which actions will support your business goals and which ones will detract from them. Understand that your time is a limited commodity, and at times, you are going to have to say "no" to requests that have no way of contributing to your bottomline.  You also need to discern which tasks you should do yourself and which tasks you should outsource. Handing off certain responsibilities, whether it is managing your database or writing content for your website, will leave you with more free time to focus on tasks that will increase your productivity.