4 Things We Learned While Growing Our Real Estate Business

From a post in the “Lab Coat Agents” group from our clients Steve and Leslie Remy: 4 Things We Learned While Growing Our Real Estate Business (And Actually Increasing Our Work/Life Balance)

 

1) If you’re not growing, you’re probably shrinking. As a real estate agent, you SHOULD be growing every year even without investing in advertising, just because of referrals and word of mouth. If you’re not growing at least 10-20% a year, something might be wrong with your service. Clients might not be feeling appreciated, so fix that before you invest money into advertising.

 

2) Speaking of advertising, this is a sales and marketing business! The truth is that being a real estate agent is not extremely difficult relative to other highly paid professions like law, medicine, engineering, etc. We don’t have to go to school for 8 years to get our real estate license. But we DO have to have the courage to invest into ourselves in the form of marketing. Lead generation is not synonymous with marketing (ie just because you buy Zillow leads doesn’t mean you’re building a brand). When you find something that works, go all in with it. For us, we’ve been working with Platform Marketing for 6 years now. We’re very happy with the results (we’ve grown almost 50% every year). It includes both leadgen as well as video branding/retargeting campaigns. Find something that works for you, and have the courage to invest in it! We also have seen great results from Google LSA and getting good reviews. One good rule of thumb is to invest 10% of your target goal GCI into marketing. So if you want to make $400k in GCI, you should be investing $40,000 a year into local marketing. If you want to make $600k, invest $60,000 annually into your marketing budget, etc. Of course can grow slower and organically over time without spending money on marketing, but I’d rather not wait 5-10 years and “hope” I get more referrals. Time is money.

 

3) Marketing is useless without relationships. This is really important. If your marketing is only generating “leads,” but you’re not actually getting to know those people, it’s a waste of time. Names and emails are completely irrelevant unless you actually get to know them. A $20 coffee date with a past client (or a prospective client) is always a better use of time and money than spending $200 on more leads. Most agents don’t need more leads as much as they need to deepen the relationships with the people already in their database! As I said before, marketing is not synonymous with lead generation.

 

4) As a general rule, when you prioritize culture/relationship over money, you’ll actually make more money. Hire culture fits, even if it takes longer to train them because they don’t have real estate experience (or they’re not super tech savvy). Making money in this business is a lagging indicator of how well you build trust and relationships with people. If you focus on that, closings and commissions (and referrals) will come. It makes no sense to prioritize making a quick buck over authentic relationships. “Quick bucks” don’t have a lifetime value of referrals like RELATIONSHIPS do! This is the foundation of any successful agent’s business over the long term. We use this same principle when evaluating our vendor partnerships. I’d rather recommend my clients to an LO who has amazing service and a friendly personality than someone who is a jerk but offers to pay for Zillow. Too many agents have blinders on this issue. This is also why we’ve worked with Platform as long as we have, because they are a great culture fit with the way we want to do our marketing. They are not cheap, but when you prioritize culture over money, you’ll make more money in the long run.

Okay I lied here’s a 5th tip: join a mastermind or hire a coach if you haven’t already. We just got back from a mastermind in Naples, Florida and it was amazing. It gave us an opportunity to do 2023 business planning, work on the business not in it, and create a content marketing calendar for the next year. Sometimes you can get the best ideas from other agents, EVEN IF YOU ARE ALREADY MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN THEM. Don’t let your pride or ego get in the way of you learning. This is why I favor masterminds over hiring coaches, but everyone has their own opinion on this. I think it’s more likely I learn from a room of 100 people than from 1 person. Especially when it comes to creative side of the business like branding, marketing campaign ideas, sphere/referral campaigns, etc. There’s quality in the quantity.

Okay I lied again, here’s a 6th tip….when you prioritize work life balance, your clients will respect you more. This is a paradox to many newer agents. For example: it’s totally okay to let prospects know you won’t be working on Saturday because your son has a baseball tournament, or Wednesday nights are for church, etc. The right kind of clients (because let’s be honest not all clients are created equal) will want to work with you even MORE when you establish boundaries. The best doctors or lawyers don’t make themselves available 24/7 to any random person who calls. You shouldn’t either.
The more authoritative your marketing is, the more people will respect these boundaries. In fact, you should literally promote this in your ads!

 

-Steve and Leslie Remy, Astra Realty