Welcome back to another session of Brilliant Talks, our free weekly coaching for real estate agents. We want to help every single agent learn new and old strategies that will help them thrive in any shifting market.

Lessons from small wins

First, I want to share a small win we had. Mark was a little late joining us because he was talking to a lead that messaged me through Chime. I managed to reply to the lead, and upon checking the details, I figured it was a lead for Mark, so I told him to jump in on it. And, he managed to book a viewing with this lead!

There is one thing I want to highlight from this little story that might help other agents out there. That is, the importance of responding to your leads within 30 seconds. As Brian says, “speed to lead” matters no matter how the market changes—whether it is a seller’s or buyer’s market, or somewhere in between.

Lessons from Mark Rader

Mark shared a lot of wisdom with us this session, worthy of being compared to Marcus Aurelius. One is about mindset.

A lot of us in the industry right now are worried about the market shift and a possible recession that has slowed the real estate market. Some agents are leaving the business, others are coming in. 

With all this “negative talk” going on, Mark shared something with us that would hopefully “Flip the script.” In a recent coaching session, he taught several agents an interesting topic: The seven lies real estate agents tell themselves. 

He focused on one of them: The lie of “missing resources.”

We’ve all felt that feeling of “scarcity”—Like there is always too little of things we need to succeed because the “successful” people already have it all.

For agents, that could be anything from feeling that there aren’t enough people who want to transact with us to “we don’t have enough money to invest in ourselves and our businesses.” Or telling ourselves, especially for the newer agents, “I don’t have a network” or at least, time to build my sphere of influence.

There are always a lot of ways to build our desired business outcomes—social media is available if you want to build your network. You might not have past clients, but you have friends and acquaintances who have their own sphere of friends and acquaintances who could become potential clients. There’s online and traditional lead generation. In other words, there are lots of ways to do business. It all depends on how creative we are in making opportunities with the resources we have.

As Mark said, “It’s not necessarily about the resources. It’s about your resourcefulness.”

How can we be resourceful in getting more business?

There are no one-size-fits-all answers here. It will depend on each person and our preferences and strengths. Some of these might apply to you and where you’re at, and others not as much. But all these examples are good opportunities that you can explore and try to work.

One is something we’ve talked about a lot because it worked for us at LabCoat Agents: Online leads.

Some agents don’t want to lean towards online leads—they might prefer door-knocking, or open houses, which are also other opportunities. 

So, how can we get business really fast, regardless if we are new or veterans in the industry? It is to find the prospecting you are really good at and run with it. Do not blame the interest rates, the size of your market, or not having “enough resources” (i.e. time, energy, and money). Take ownership of your business.

Lean into what you are good at will always be good advice, especially when you are starting. But figure out the prospecting that works for you and really go for it.

For others, it could be cold-calling FSBOs and expireds, door-knocking, open houses, all those different prospecting arms that are tried and tested with time.

For us, it is online leads. For agents who don’t have the funds to hit hard on online leads, there are other options. There are companies you can outsource leads from. Or join brokerages and teams that have access to existing lead generation tools, resources, or partner referral companies. 

Some of us might feel iffy about this strategy because we have negative experiences between commission splits and other issues when partnering with referral companies or similar services, but a 50-50 split earned is better than nothing. As Brian says, “Stop looking at what we’re ‘losing’ and start looking at what we are gaining.”

At the end of the day, in order to get more real estate business, we need to get real estate conversations going. Some people say it takes around 25 conversations (it could be more or less) to get to a close. You just pick where you are going to have those conversations.

But you need to start with building connections, and you need to be resourceful with the techniques, tools, and other options in your arsenal to start somewhere.

The reality, for any business in any industry, is first you need to generate income. You need to put in the time and effort first to start earning money and build out your system. Once you have the money, you can use it as leverage to get that system running and do the type of lead generation that you “want” to do. 

As Brian says, “If doing any of these things is something that you hate, do it. Do it until you don’t have to do it anymore.” 

“Money is leverage… If you don’t have any money, then the only type of leverage you have is your time and effort.”—Brian Curtis

Treat failures as feedback

One thing that trips a lot of us up, especially those who are just starting in the business, is when something doesn’t work, we automatically think that it is not effective.

Some agents do one open house, and if it gets just two people coming in, they stop doing open houses saying “It doesn’t work.” Why stop at one? Why not do two or three more and try to do something different? Try to see how your open house will turn into a different outcome if you put up more signs. Or door-knocked on 40 houses. Or put up a Facebook or TikTok ad for the event.

Thomas Edison failed hundreds of times before succeeding at making the light bulb, and every time he failed, he took it as feedback. “Now I know what doesn’t work, now I am closer to knowing what does.”

It pays to treat our business scientifically in a similar way. Why didn’t your most recent strategy work? What can you do differently that might make it more effective? If it did work, how can you tweak it further to make it more successful and efficient?

Don’t stop after one failure. Treat it as feedback to inform your next iteration

Watch the YouTube replay to see more of our conversations and previous sessions, and feel free to leave us a message on our social and share your thoughts. If you want to learn more, we also do one-on-one and group coaching sessions. You can sign up below if you are interested to be part of our Brilliant Tribe, or message me for questions.