business growth

How AI Can Streamline Your Real Estate Business and Free Up Time

Jun 13, 2024

It’s large and in charge, apparently. One can barely find a website that isn’t, at least in part, utilizing artificial intelligence (AI).

But AI isn’t just the King of the World Wide Web. Many industries are using it, including:

Healthcare
Financial services
Data Analytics
Sales and marketing
Energy
Transportation

Even Starbucks utilizes AI’s predictive analytics capability to better understand their customers Let’s look at a broad overview of a few ways that real estate agents can use AI in their businesses too.

Kick lead generation into high gear

One of the most attractive aspects of AI for real estate agents is its ability to simplify lead generation. Traditional methods of finding potential clients can be time-consuming, and tedious and often yield mixed results.

AI, on the other hand can analyze a huge amount of data from various sources to identify high-quality leads. These sources may include social media, online behavior, and market trends to name just three.

These insights allow agents to target the right audience more effectively, ensuring that their marketing efforts are both efficient and impactful.

Streamline follow-up

Talk about tedious and time-consuming! Consistent follow-up with leads and an agent’s SOI often fall through the cracks because of how odious the thought of it is.

As we all know, however, a lead that sits with no nurturing is useless and, “the fortune is in the follow-up.” An AI-powered CRM system can be a game changer, especially for agents who generate a lot of leads.

Let AI send out personalized messages, schedule follow-up calls, and even predict the best times to reach out based on the lead’s engagement history.

The Holiday scheduled campaign is shown above. To learn more, Click Here.

AI: The appraiser in your back pocket

Whether working with a buyer or a seller, getting an accurate property value is crucial. AI can help here, too. By using algorithms, it can analyze details such as location, market conditions, and property features.

Improved client satisfaction

How about an AI-driven chatbot and virtual assistant? Yup, that, too is possible. These tools can handle a variety of tasks, from answering common inquiries to offering instant responses and personalized service.

Efficient transaction coordination

This one is an agent favorite. AI can automate document management, scheduling, and communication between parties to the transaction.

For instance, AI-driven platforms can track the progress of each transaction, send reminders, and ensure that all necessary paperwork is completed and all parties are notified.

Check out AI tech to see how it can help streamline the business end of your business, freeing you up to bounce down the street and make money!

When you have time…below are some marketing tools to help support your success.

1. Put Your Real Estate Business a Step Above with Your Own Branded Magazin

Homes & Life Magazine is a customizable magazine with rich, full-color content and a sharp, professional aesthetic. It includes compelling, direct, response-driven articles written by real estate industry experts and engaging lifestyle content. Send out Homes & Life Magazine in Just Minutes – No Minimums Required. Or we’ll ship it to you. Homes & Life Magazine is the ultimate “Coffee Table Lingerer”! …and it costs less than sending a greeting card! – Click Here

2. The Free 6-Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Planner

The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 6-Month Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do and when. Four key market segments include niche Markets, geographic farming, sphere of influence, and past clients. – Click Here

3. The Free Online Real Estate Business Plan

The Real Estate Business Plan allows you to enter your business goals for the year and get a breakdown of how many prospects, listings, closings, and so on are needed to reach your financial goals. – Click Here

4. The Become a Listing Legend Free eBook

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Become-A-Listing-Legend-3D-Book-White-274x300.jpg

Ready to take a vertical leap in your real estate career? If you’re looking for inspiration…and the tools and methods to dominate a market and go to the top in real estate…you’ll find them in this free book. – Click Here

The Pros and Cons of Real Estate Closing Gifts

Feb 28, 2024

“I think I’ll send my new patient a $50 Macy’s gift certificate to thank her for allowing me to perform her annual physical,” said no doctor, ever. Come to think of it, my hairdresser, accountant, and lawyer have never gifted me either.

Yet real estate agents, somewhere along the line, came up with this notion that they absolutely must provide a closing gift to their clients.

Obviously, the agent who first gifted a client must’ve found the practice successful because it was quickly copied and has now become standard practice.

Does giving a gift to a client make you memorable? If that were the case, more service industries would take up the practice, don’t you think? I don’t know about you, but I return to my hair stylist every month because I love the way she cuts my hair.

My accountant saves me money on my taxes. So, is it the gift that makes them remember you, or was it your performance?

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of giving closing gifts, to real estate clients.

Pros

I’m not a tax expert or an accountant, but the IRS says agents can deduct up to $25 for each person they gift during the year. No, that’s not a whole lot of money and if you make the big bucks, you’ll need to buy a whole lot of gifts throughout the year to even put a dent in your tax bill.

If you feel you must give a gift, consider handing your clients the keys to their new home on a quality (meaning, not plastic) keychain. With your branding on it, you’ll be able to deduct it as a marketing expense and possibly get a larger deduction. Talk to your tax professional.

A swanky annual client appreciation event, on the other hand, will give you a bigger tax deduction as well as put you right back there at the top of their mind.

The Content Card Series is shown above. To learn more, Click Here.

Cons

Since referrals are the lifeblood of a successful real estate practice, and keeping them coming in requires remaining top-of-mind with former clients, it would have to be a major gift to make you memorable throughout the years.

What will make you memorable is frequent contact throughout the year — the birthday cards, the client appreciation events, and the ongoing direct mail campaigns.

Here’s something else to consider: you are a buyer’s agent. You have been at your client’s beck and call, spending weeks or even months driving your clients to house after house before they finally found one they wanted.

You submitted the offer, you coordinated your client’s end of the transaction, and you smoothly paved the way to a successful close. All parties are satisfied with the outcome. In return, you are paid a percentage of the sales price of the home.

You did your job and you got paid. Shake hands, as business people do, thank them for their business, and move on to your next client.

The subject of closing gifts, as you know, is a point of contention among agents. How about you? Do you gift?

PLUS: When you have time…below are some marketing tools to help support your success.

1. Put Your Real Estate Business a Step Above with Your Own Branded Magazine

2. The Free 6-Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan

3. The Free Interactive 6-Month Real Estate Business Review

The Free Interactive 6-Month Real Estate Business Review allows you to enter your business goals for the remainder of the year and get a breakdown of how many prospects, listings, closings, and so on are needed to reach your goals. – Click Here

4. The Become a Listing Legend Free eBook

Why Hiring a Coach is the Key to Real Estate Revenue Growth

Sep 27, 2023

Learning on the job isn’t a bad way to become a successful agent: it’s safe to say pretty much every agent follows that path. After all, real estate school teaches nothing about how to run a real estate business.

That path, however, diverges at some point, separating the highly ambitious from the more complacent.

While those on either path can benefit from a business or life coach’s services at some point in their careers, it’s typically the former who seek them.

“Struggle + Coach = Achievement”

This is claimed by the amazing author Sean Everett at medium.com. “If you remove the struggle, there’s no need for a coach because it means you’re not working towards anything great.”

If you are working toward greatness and have hit a wall, a coach may be just what you need to break through it. But there are other benefits a coach can offer as well.

The Holiday scheduled campaign is shown above. To learn more, Click Here.

How to know if you need a coach

If you haven’t a clue about last year’s production (hey, you’re not the only one!), let alone the past three years, if you don’t have a business plan or a marketing budget, if you have no idea how to raise your production, you need a coach.

Some top coaches on Forbes Coaches Council suggest additional symptoms of someone needing a coach:

Feeling overwhelmed – that you don’t have control over your real estate business, or “feeling like there is too much to do and too little hours in the day.”
You need someone to talk to about your business, to bounce ideas off.
You’re frustrated because you know what to do yet don’t do it.
You aren’t getting the results you want in your business.
You feel paralyzed.

What you may get out of working with a coach

The late and legendary NFL coach Tom Landry summed up coaching in one sentence: “A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.”

All agents, even newbies, can get something out of working with a coach.

Don’t agree?

An Inman survey from a few years back shows that “the vast majority of agents working with coaches see a return on investment.” In fact, 90 percent of them said that in their first year of working with a coach, their production increased 10 percent or more.

Thirty-five percent said their business increased up to 26 percent more and nearly 10 percent saw an increase from 100 to almost 200 percent.

Convinced yet?

Think of a coach as being a fresh set of eyes. Someone who can look at you and your business in a way that you can’t.

It’s lacking that “big picture” thing that causes many of us to hit the wall. Then, paralysis sets in and we’ve no idea how to lift our legs and, if we can, which direction to tell them to carry us.

Come back soon for part 2, where you’ll learn how to choose the perfect real estate coach for your business.

PLUS: When you have time…below are some marketing tools to help support your success.

1. Put Your Real Estate Business a Step Above with Your Own Branded Magazine

2. The Free 6-Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan

3. The Free Interactive 6-Month Real Estate Business Review

The Free Interactive 6-Month Real Estate Business Review allows you to enter your business goals for the remainder of the year and get a breakdown of how many prospects, listings, closing, and so on are needed to reach your goals. – Click Here

4. The Become a Listing Legend Free eBook

Starting a Real Estate Team? Here are a Few Things to Consider

Mar 20, 2023

Imagine a trip to a doctor’s office. You approach the front counter, and there she is, ready to check you in for your appointment. Then, she is, again, prepared to accompany you from the waiting room to the exam room. She performs your exam and is at the desk out front to take your check for your insurance co-pay and schedule your next appointment.

Aside from seeing patients at various times during the day, this doctor will clean exam rooms after each patient leaves, call-in prescriptions to pharmacies, order and interpret diagnostic tests, work on bookkeeping, schedule appointments for other patients, follow up on telephone messages, meet with pharmaceutical company representatives and clean the office.

If this were your doctor, we’d bet you would think she’s either crazy or arrogant. After all, she’s most likely not a trained bookkeeper, administrative assistant, or skilled in sanitation practices in physicians’ offices.

The Market Update Postcard is shown above. See more **HERE**

When any professional works in a practice with many moving parts, it’s simply foolish to presume to wear all the hats.

Many agents across the country figured this out long ago. “We aren’t professional photographers or stagers. Nor are we phone specialists or transaction coordinators. And, we don’t want to be any of those,” says a friend and agent in Los Angeles, California.

This is why this agent built a team, offering professional specialists to each client. In her estimation, this team’s approach to real estate has made her so successful.

When you reach a specific volume, taking your business to the next level requires assistance. Most agents start with admin help.

However, the next level is to build a real estate team.

Structuring your team

Before you jump into the hiring process, consider how you’ll structure your team. This helps you learn who you need to hire and which skills to be on the lookout for. Check out Chris Linsell’s brilliant but simple Real Estate Organizational Chart at theclose.com.

To give you an idea of how to staff your team, take a look at our California friends:

3 listing coordinators
3 staging strategists
An architectural photographer
Marketing Coordinator
6 phone specialists to attract and reach out to potential buyers
17 buyers’ agents

Photo Introduction postcard. See more, **HERE.**

Naturally, you won’t need this many team members when you start but consider adding as your business increases.

Each cog in the aforementioned well-oiled wheel works in tandem with the others. For instance, the phone team recently received a call from a homebuyer interested in one of the team’s listings.

“The call came in at 10:30 on a Saturday morning,” according to our friend. “Our phone specialist returned the call two minutes later, at 10:32, and alerted one of the showing agents on the team. This agent met with the buyers to show them the home at 1 p.m. An hour later, they wrote an offer. This team approach had our listing sold in four hours.”

Impressive, right?

Check back soon for more ideas on forming a real estate team.

PLUS: When you have time…below are some marketing tools to help support your success.

1. Put Your Real Estate Business a Step Above with Your Own Branded Magazine

Homes & Life Magazine is a customizable magazine with rich, full-color content and a sharp, professional aesthetic. It includes compelling, direct response-driven articles written by real estate industry experts combined with engaging lifestyle content. Send out Homes & Life Magazine in Just Minutes – No Minimums Required. Or we’ll ship it to you.

Homes & Life Magazine is the ultimate “Coffee Table Lingerer”! …and it costs less than sending a greeting card! – Click Here

2. The Free 12-Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan

The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 12-Month-Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do and when. Four key market segments include niche Markets, geographic farming, sphere of influence, and past clients. – Click Here

3. The BusinessBase, SOI building system

The most effective thing you can do to build a real estate business is to become more visible, more likable, and remembered more often. The BusinessBASE™ not only checks these boxes but is also a business-building machine. In two easy steps, you can begin to build a robust sphere of influence that will provide you a lifetime of repeat business and referrals. – Click Here

4. The Free Interactive Real Estate Business Plan

The Free Interactive Real Estate Business Plan allows you to enter your business goals for this year and get a breakdown of how many prospects, listings, closing, and so on are needed to reach your goals. – Click Here

5. The Become a Listing Legend Free eBook

12 3 Next

Page 1 of 3