Month: January 2022

I’ve worked with a lot of independent real estate agents and real estate agents under brokerages and have observed firsthand how some brokerages do not care about their real estate agents. Sure, from time to time, they may give their agents websites with a generic real estate web design, maybe a couple of leads here and there but in a competitive market, that may not be enough. 

You see, an average broker has about 42% of churn with their real estate agents. The term trend or turnover in businesses measures the amount of churn or turnover of customers and employees. 

I remember a story back in high school, and remember the dean during our orientation, he said, look to the left of you, look to the right of you, look in front of you, look behind you. And he said by the time you become a senior and graduate, chances are maybe two or three of the people that you’re looking at will not be here anymore. 

I think the 42% churn rate of brokerages, resembles the exact same thing. Meaning if you’ve joined a brokerage, chances are two or three of the people that you’ve met at the point of you joining the brokerage and maybe a month or a quarter or a year from that particular point in time, they’re probably not going to be there now. This can be caused by a number of different reasons. Some of these agents that jump on board into these brokers, they’re really bad at time management or they’re looking for mentorship and they’re not getting the right support, or they’re leaving because of bad splits.

The list can go on and on, but really the point here is that the brokerage, they’re very well aware of this number. I’m using 42% as a generalization, but quite honestly the number is quite high. In order for me to really help you understand why your brokerage doesn’t care about you.

As someone who’s been in the real estate industry for quite some time now and in real estate web design in recent years, I go on the talking circuit to provide value to a number of brokerages out in California.

In one of these sessions, one of the gentlemen, a real estate veteran, in the class pulled me into his office to have a one-on-one with me. He wanted to learn a little bit more about what we do and talk about some of the struggles that he’s facing in his business.

I asked him what he was working on and what his biggest challenge was. He directed me toward these sheets of paper with a laundry list of all these different strategies, fixing and cleaning up his CRM, multiple websites for his businesses that he’s focusing on, mastermind groups, meetup groups, social media platforms,  ad campaigns. He’s doing commercial and residential real estate and he’s also interested in international transactions. He was clearly all over the place. 

You see, his story is not uncommon for a lot of the realtors out there, and this potentially might be speaking to you. I proceeded to ask him the question, where do you get the bulk of your business from? And he goes on to say that he has a database of about 5,500 people and about 85% of his business comes from this database of 5,500 people. 

Now, if 85% of the customer traffic of your business comes from your database, then why are you going to start and focus on another strategy and essentially start from 0%. So if I’m at 85% of success in my business and I’m 15% away from being able to get a hundred percent. 

Why the heck am I going to start this social media campaign and essentially start from zero on multiple platforms when I’m already 85% of the way there.

The answer is twofold.

Number one, this person clearly suffered from shiny object syndrome, when you go for a whole bunch of different strategies and tactics when in reality, the solution to fixing what you’re struggling with your real estate business is right in front of you. You’re blinded by all of these other different strategies and tactics like Facebook ads, Zillow ads, and all this other nonsense, but the bulk of your business is right there sitting in front of you.

All you really need to do for that last 15% is to look at yourself in the mirror and figure out what you need to do to solve this problem. You just need to look at yourself and figure out what excuse am I giving myself to make sure I don’t get to that hundred percent. And then once you figure out what that excuse. Then just throw it out the window and figure out what the problem is that you need to solve to get to a hundred percent of completion for mastering your database, systematizing your process so that you can have all your business just funneling from that database.

The second is fulfillment issues. 

He knew where 85% of his business is coming from, but how many of those were retained clients? If you have that many people in your database and you’re getting that many or that much business, but they’re not coming back to you, then it’s clear that you’re facing fulfillment issues. If they’re not coming back to you, this essentially means that you’re not very good at your job because your customers work with you, and then they ended up going to the other guy. 

So again, it’s maybe just taking a hard look in the mirror and figuring out what your flaws are. What’s stopping you from getting to 100% in this one piece of your business. Just be real with yourself and fix those problems. Systematize your process. Feed the mechanism and it’s going to output the exact same result, and over time you’ll be able to build that predictability within his database.

Find out more tips to help you scale your business and build predictability? Join our free Square 1 Facebook Group today. If you need help building out your real estate website, we’re just a call away! We’re experts so feel free to reach out to us and we’ll be more than happy to help you out.

As someone in the real estate web design business, I get to talk to a lot of real estate professionals, and the other day I was talking to a broker that mentioned something that inspired today’s video, he said that he wanted to be the authority, but didn’t want to be the face. And that really resonated with me because the idea made absolutely no sense in my mind. Can you be in authority or have influence without having really done the work to garner it? This particular topic will resonate with a lot of agents that are finding themselves really struggling in the real estate business and trying to find shortcuts to success. 

Authority is actually broken down into three main categories; legitimized by time, appointment, and charisma. Examples of legitimized by time are historical personalities. Like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, they were legitimatized over a specific time span. The second way to kind of garner authority is by being appointed, an example of this is the appointment of an authority to an office. Now the third way is through charisma or by being charismatic. If you’re in real estate, this is pretty much arguably the category that you fall into.

Now that we’ve identified, what is an authority, and how to garner authority? Then the next question to really be asked is how can an authority have influence.

The best way to really have that influence is really through relationships and expertise. 

This is the main thing that we focus on with all of our clients. We help provide value about their expertise. You as being the authority as an expert, but the main thing in this type of influence is that you have to be able to share your expertise in order to gain that influence. In other words, you’re giving away value in order to gain authority.

Now you can have influence without being an authority or really sharing your expertise by doing a few things. One, you need to have a good reputation. Two, you have to be very diligent. Three, you have to be a good role model or a good person. Four, you really need to be a good motivator.

How can you achieve these four items without having to do the work of promoting them? Essentially this means that you need to have other people do this work for you. You need other people to preach the good word of how great you are, how much of an influence you are. You need to increase your word-of-mouth referrals. If you did a good job, they’ll preach your good reputation. They’ll talk about how diligent you are and really helping them work a deal, an excellent agent for other agents to aspire to, being a motivator, AKA a leader, really taking charge of whatever deal that you’re trying to negotiate for your clients.

This really brings me back full circle to that first question. Can you be in authority without being the face without having done the work without having to provide your expertise? The honest answer is NO. 

In order to garner this pseudo authority without actual influence and authority, you have to have done the repetitions, you have to have done a lot of deals under your belt, you have to have a pretty significant amount of volume that you’ve done in terms of real estate transactions. You have to do the work. You have to be consistent in providing value. You need to keep flexing that expertise to really drive these inbound leads, into your pipeline.

If you want to achieve success in your real estate career, utilizing digital marketing efforts, you have to be the face. You have to put yourself in front of your, your camera phone or a camera and you need to become the face of your brand. 

Find out more about becoming an expert and authority in real estate. Join our free Facebook Group today for similar content that can help you in your Real Estate journey. If you are interested in one-on-one coaching, then schedule a strategy session with me today, and let’s talk about how I can help you move your business forward.