Ten new year tips for real estate agents

We can’t all be Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook with his 800 million members. But you have to admire the guy. He is just about to become the 28^th wealthiest person in the world and he is only 28 years old. But we can and should be inspired by him. He realised only a decade ago that new technology and the internet was the way to go in the 21^st century, and he has built his dream from there.

He used the internet to do something that we can all do now on the web. We can communicate directly either by email or through our websites and blogs to a targeted audience that is interested in what we have to say.

It is still all about old-fashioned “networking”. And it is still about communicating with other human beings and getting our own message out to them. But nowadays it is also very much about using the world wide web as well, and it costs absolutely nothing. The trick is to use social media, which refers to “the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites”.

What has not changed in so few years is that social and business networking still works very much on the ground and person-to-person, and this means building your own brand by word of mouth and personal recommendations. But it now has to include your own branding on the web. It won’t be very long before you just say a search phrase out loud like “find me a real estate agent in Sydney” and the wall of your living room will light up with the answer from your favourite avatar.

According to a comment on Wikipedia this is how the network effect works:

“Network effects become significant after a certain subscription percentage has been achieved, called critical mass. At the critical mass point, the value obtained from the service provided is greater than or equal to the price paid for the service.”

The mind boggles after reading this quote, so what does all this mean for you as a real estate agent?

Read my tips below and decide for yourself . . .

1. It’s a new year, so get your critical m’ass moving! Don’t sit around waiting for things to happen to you. Make them happen instead. 
2. Build your own personal brand. At the end of the day it’s your own hard work and effort and you deserve the kudos. 
3. Start by building your own network, and don’t just rely on your agency’s database (you don’t control it and they are usually out of date anyway). 
4. Don’t listen to your boss’s insistence that you stay glued to your desk all day long on the phone. The “bums on seats” theory for real estate agents does not work. You need to get out there in your own market area and work it constantly. Talk to people, buy them a coffee, rub shoulders with them, tell them what you do and how you can help them. The real estate business is a “hard contact” game. If you don’t make an effort to meet and engage with people, they won’t know who you are! 
5. Work smart. Get rid of the BS in your work-life and use every minute of the day to achieve your own dreams. No one else can do it for you. 
6. Create your own blog or website and get yourself up on the web! There are simple and totally free ways to start branding yourself and get promoted online almost overnight. If you are interested (and you should be!) contact me by email and I will send you a couple of tips that will probably change your life for the thank you-much-much-better. 
7. Befriend a buyers’ agent! These guys will introduce you to a qualified buyer for your listing and save you a lot of time and effort, so work with them. You can read an article I wrote recently about this by clicking on the following link: ‘Selling agents and buyers' agents work together but have opposing goals’ 
8. Be good to people every single day, and help them in whatever way you can. Make an effort to show that you are not just interested in yourself. If you take a genuine interest in other people they will always help you down the track. 
9. Don’t lose your confidence or give up halfway through your efforts to build your own network (or achieve your own dreams) – it can take months or years. People who don’t want to be in it are not important; it is the ones who are in it that will give you the business. 
10.  NEVER give up! If you are finding it hard to get listings or a sale doesn’t go as well as you hoped, keep on trying. Your efforts will be rewarded sooner or later, so hang in there.

Tim Mansfield is founder and principal of Sydney-based buyers' agency Prime Property Buyer.