SOI campaigns

New to Real Estate? Let’s Bust Two Myths About Building Your Business

May 23, 2022

Welcome to the real estate business. You’re joining more than 1.3 million other professionals, at varying stages of their careers.

In fact, nearly 30 percent of agents in the U.S. have less than two years of experience (and the largest share of that group is aged 45 to 54), according to the NAR, so you are in good company.

Your first few years in your new broker’s office will be an eye-opener. Some of your misconceptions about being a real estate agent will be corrected and you’ll hear conflicting advice on everything from how to generate leads to how best to construct your new website.

We’ve gathered some of the most common misconceptions new agents harbor and dragged them into the glaring light of reality.

By the way, since the majority of real estate agents are female, we’ll be using the feminine pronoun throughout. (Sorry guys).

SOI scheduled campaigns shown above are on sale 10% off the first month. Use promo code: SPHERESALE (offer expires 5.28.22). Campaigns shown from left to right are Recipe I, Get More Listings, Quotes, and Inspiration Series, To see more campaigns, Click Here.

Myth #1: Your broker is your boss

Reality: One of the hardest habits that new agents find hard to break free of is the “employee mentality.”

Sure, a handful of brokerages across the country hire agents as employees, but the vast majority of agents are independent contractors. They are, in reality, small business owners.

As an independent contractor, working under a broker’s license, your broker is not your boss. She cannot (according to the IRS):

Direct and control your work
Tell you where and when to work
Dictate which tools you use or where to purchase supplies and services
Limit your ability to seek out business opportunities
Guarantee a regular wage amount
Provide employee-type benefits, such as health insurance, vacation or sick pay, or a pension plan.

As a small-business owner, you create your schedule, budget, marketing plan, health insurance, and anything else required of the typical small business owner.

In other words, you are your own boss. The growth and success of your business are completely up to you.

Build a robust SOI with the Free BusinessBase Tool, **Here**

Myth #2: Your broker will provide you with leads

Reality: This one goes hand-in-hand with Myth #1. Unless your broker is your employer, you can typically count out getting leads handed to you.

As a self-employed agent, you’ll need to drum up your own business and fill your own pipeline.

How to start?

Get your real estate website up and running and fill it with hyper-local information
Offer to hold open houses for other agents’ listings
Fill your CRM with your sphere’s contact information and start calling them. Download the FREE Businessbase, HERE, for help building a robust SOI list. Then launch an SOI scheduled campaign, HERE.
Determine an area to start farming near where you live or in your own neighborhood. Launch a Farm scheduled campaign, HERE, to start branding yourself in the neighborhood.

One of the biggest myths that the public holds about real estate agents is that anyone can do your job.

Succeeding as an agent, however, requires far more than just getting your license. That being said, we know you can achieve success with the right tools and attitude.

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 esthetic. 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 when. Four key market segments are included, 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 all of these boxes, but it is 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

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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

6. The Take a Listing Today Podcast

Watch the ProspectsPLUS!, Take a Listing Today Podcast for actionable content to help you get more listings. – Click Here

4 Ways You May Be Turning Off Your Clients Without Realizing it

Apr 8, 2021

Referrals should be the lifeblood of every real estate business. Sadly, they aren’t. It truly isn’t difficult to provide the customer service that will leave your clients raving. It’s also easy to turn them off to the point they warn others not to use your services.

When a client leaves you or doesn’t use your services for future transactions, you may be guilty of committing one (or more) of the Four Cardinal Sins of real estate.

1. You turn into Amelia Earhart

One of the most common complaints from consumers about their real estate agents is that they disappear. And they don’t have an out-of-fuel twin-engine Lockheed to blame.

The practice is so prevalent that Google offers up these suggestions for searches:

Realtors…why don’t they answer their phones???
What’s with agents who don’t answer their phones?
Why are most agents so unresponsive?
What to do when your realtor ignores you
Realtor not responding to emails
Real estate agent not responding
Real estate agent not getting back to me
Am I annoying my realtor?

We find that last one especially sad. The solution is to get clear on communication expectations on the very day that a client agrees to become a client. Not only should you learn their preferred mode of communication (phone, text, email, etc.) but how often they expect to hear from you.

If they call, answer. At the very least respond within a reasonable amount of time.

2. You haven’t mastered the art of listening

All of us have heard about the agents who show homes to clients that are out of their price range or lacking in their wish list “must haves.” Both are a result of not listening.

Are you guilty of letting your mind wander, of multitasking in your brain while a client is speaking to you?

Sherrie Bourg Carter at psychologytoday.com suggests:

Good listeners don’t jump in with answers.
Your client should be speaking 80% of the time. The 20% of the time that you speak should be spent asking clarifying questions.

Tune out the grocery list, the angst over your next appointment and everything else that rattles around up there and listen to your client.

3. You’re a cut-corners-penny-pinching agent

It’s amazing that, in this day and age, there are still amateur listing photos in the MLS.

As a listing agent, the most important job you have is to market the home. Photos that don’t present the home in the best light possible are not acceptable. Especially when one considers how much that seller is paying in real estate fees.

If you can’t afford a professional photographer, you can’t do your job properly. Stop taking listings and become a buyer’s agent.

4. You are a listing-buyer

A common complaint that we read online is about the listing agent who beats the client up, repeatedly, over lowering the listing price.

Then, there are the listing clients who complain that their homes sat on the market while others around them sold.

Either condition can result when an agent “buys” the listing.

Your job as a listing agent is to recommend a list price that is close to or matches the current market value. As a real estate advisor, your job is also to counsel a client or potential client what happens to homes that are overpriced.

To take an overpriced listing with the hopes of a price drop, later on, is shoddy customer service. If you’re guilty of committing even one of these “sins,” you may be losing clients. Think about the best customer service you’ve ever received and vow to mimic it with every single client.

Hurry! SOI Scheduled Campaigns are on sale 10% OFF the first month for ONLY 3 MORE DAYS! (sale ends 4/10/21).

One of Seven SOI Scheduled Campaign Designs (shown above). Learn more, **HERE**

TO LAUNCH AN SOI CAMPAIGN:

Hit “CLICK HERE”, below, to get started on your SOI Scheduled Campaign (from a desktop or laptop computer).

And, remember, YOU DON’T PAY for each mailing until it actually goes out (cancel or change each mailing up until the night before it goes out. The price shown at check out is per mailing, not campaign total).

Launch an SOI Scheduled Campaign now, CLICK HERE!

Please reach out to our support team at 866.405.3638 with questions or if there is anything we can do t

o help you with your success.

PLUS: When you have time…here are some helpful resources we’ve made available to support your success.

1. 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 when. Four key market segments are included, Niche Marketing, Get More Listings, Geographic Farming, and Sphere of Influence. –Click Here

2. The Free Interactive Real Estate Business Plan

3. Become a Neighborhood Brand

Become branded in a specific neighborhood with a 12X15 marketing piece sent automatically each month to an exclusive carrier route. Watch this video to learn more or Click Here.

4. The Free Real Estate Mailing List Guide

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The Real Estate Mailing List Guide outlines the top tools for generating targeted prospecting lists including Baby Boomers, Empty Nesters, Investors, Lifestyle Interests, High-Income Renters, Move-Up Markets, and more. The Guide also defines done-for-you marketing campaigns to match these markets. –Click Here

5. Become a Listing Legend Free eBook

6. The Free Online ROI Calculator

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Consistency and automation are the keys to success. Discover how effective direct mail marketing can dramatically increase your bottom line. Enter your statistics in our Free online ROI Calculator and click the ‘CALCULATE MY ROI’ button to see your results instantly! –Click Here

7. The Free Real Estate Marketing Guide “CRUSH IT”

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The “Crush It” Guide includes easy steps to launching an effective direct mail marketing campaign, how to create a targeted prospect list, the perfect way to layout marketing materials for success, seven opportunities available to target in your area right now. –Click Here

Want to Make More Money? Strategically Spend More, HERE’S HOW

Jan 14, 2021

There seems to be this weird dichotomy that rules many real estate agents: that the money they spend promoting their business cuts into the amount of money they’ll have for personal use.

In the short-term this may be true. But if you plan to be in the real estate business for the long-term, not promoting your real estate business, or not promoting it well, is crazy.

You’ll remain on that hamster wheel, spinning and spinning and spinning in your efforts to earn more.

“Too many business owners under-spend on marketing, thinking that not spending is the same as saving,” claims Heidi Sloss, author of “Fortune is in the Follow-Up: Five POWER Strategies to Grow Your Business.”

While it’s an old and somewhat tired adage, it really does “take money to make money.”

What comes first, the spending or the making?

Almost a decade ago, the folks at ActiveRain.com published the results of a survey of 2,000 agents in the form of an infographic, “How Much do REALTORS® Work, Earn & Spend.”

The “average” agent (those earning, on average, $35,000 a year) spend only $1,070 a year on marketing. That’s $89 a month. They spend more on their car than on promoting their businesses.

Agents who earn, on average, $100,000 a year spend five to ten times more on marketing than those that make $35,000 per year.

It’s easy to assume that “Well, yeah, they have the money to spend.” It could be, however, that they understand the value of promotion and aren’t afraid to spend the money.

Let’s face it, there are a number of money pits in the average real estate practice, from keeping up with the latest technology to what we drive and what we wear.

The truly important stuff, however – most of what’s in your business plan – is where to focus if you’re looking for ways to gain more clients and grow your business.

So, while it’s important to invest money in continuing education, professional development and ensuring you have the office systems in place to make your job easier, none of it means a thing without clients.

Overcome your fear

In a commission-based business, parting with money is frightening. Who knows when you’ll close another escrow? What if you make the wrong marketing decision?

It’s only natural then that you might question whether any particular investment is really the right thing to do. Marketing dollars are especially hard to spend. What if the campaign doesn’t work? What if I lose this money? These are perfectly valid questions as you tenaciously hold on to your dollar.

One of the best ways to overcome the fear of spending is by paying close attention to the annual budget every year when you revisit your business plan. Then, once the money is budgeted, consider it spent.

And, make careful, informed decisions about where to spend the money when it comes time to do so.

The bottom line is that if you really want to succeed in your real estate business, you’re going to have to spend some money on it – whether it’s on marketing, staff or technology.

So, overcome the fear and lose the death grip on the pocketbook.

Start your strategic plan to “Make More Money” today by scheduling an SOI Campaign with the Content Card Series.

And, remember, with Scheduled Campaigns YOU DON’T PAY until each month’s mailing goes out (you can change or cancel up until the night before mailing).

Don’t put off until tomorrow what can get done today, because what GETS SCHEDULED, GETS DONE!

TO GET STARTED:

STEP 1: Choose the SOI Campaign, Content Card Series.
STEP 2: Then, choose your “Start Date” (See image illustration below), which postcards to send & for how long. It’s that easy!

LAUNCH A CAMPAIGN NOW, CLICK HERE

Need help targeting a specific niche of buyers or sellers? Use our prospect list tools to create the ideal list (it’s easy) or call our support team for assistance at 866.405.3638!