How to Create a Real Estate Agent Unique Value Proposition

real estate agent unique value proposition
real estate agent unique value proposition

How to Create a Real Estate Agent Unique Value Proposition

Being a real estate agent has become a very popular profession. In the United States alone, there is an estimated two million agents as of February 1st, 2020. This makes sense; real estate is widely considered one of the most satisfying career paths you can choose.

You can be a part of a team or be a solo agent, but either way, you typically have a large amount of freedom to set your own schedule, act as your own boss, and generally order your life in a way that isn’t possible with a normal 9-5.

On top of those perks, a career in real estate is one in which you have more direct control over your income. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, starting out can be tough. There is an often difficult learning curve and it is estimated that about 87% of all agents fail and leave the industry within the first five years. But if you can pull through, the sky is really the limit when it comes to how much money you’re bringing in. The more sales you make, the more money you make. This may intimidate some people, but all that really means is that your career and your income are directly in your hands.

How to Create a Real Estate Agent Value Proposition

So, being a real estate agent is a great career and there are literally millions of them working in the United States. What does that mean for you and your real estate team? First, it means that you will most likely never be the only agent in a given market. There will always be a lot of competition out there. Second, all that competition means that you have to find a way to make yourself and your team stand out from all the rest.

How do you do that? Part of it lies in crafting a unique value proposition, also called a unique value statement, that concisely and simply explains why a lead should work with you instead of a different agent. In other words, you have to show how your business delivers a not-so-unique service in a very unique way. Your value proposition needs to separate you from the crowd and showcase the benefits that you can provide in an easy to understand way.

Components of a Real Estate Agent Value Statement

The critical aspect of any real estate unique value proposition is that it is short and easy to understand. Here are some of the other key components:

Who is your niche market? – Whether you’re working with a big brand real estate team or not, you still have to understand exactly who are offering your services to and what you can do for them. For example, do you work primarily with first time home buyers? Do you deal with luxury, high end properties? Are you an expert in a particular neighborhood? The more specific you can be in your value statement, depending on who you are talking to, the more it will resonate with leads.

What can you do that other agents can’t? – Like we mentioned, there are a lot of real estate agents and many markets are saturated. Your unique value statement has to succinctly describe what you can offer that other agents can’t. This ties into the niche market component. For example, if you work with millennials, you should know a lot about the latest and greatest upcoming neighborhoods.

You should also touch on your marketing, local knowledge, experience, and anything else that makes you unique. Your value statement should leave the lead with confidence that they made the right decision in working with you. Again, specificity can help you a lot here. Really drill down into what you do well.

Focus on the benefits you provide – When crafting your real estate agent unique value proposition, the constant thought in your mind should be, “so what?” Because that is what your potential client is constantly saying in their head as you lay out all the reasons why you are the best and most amazing agent in the world. In other words, the main focus of your value statement should be how the client would benefit from working with you.

Don’t just list your accomplishments and awards, or even just describe all the success your team has had with clients in the past. Bring it home and explain clearly how you will help this specific person reach their specific goals. Focus on the client and the benefit you bring to their particular situation, not just general statements.

Speed Is the Key for Real Estate Unique Value Statements

Once you come up with the core components for your unique value statement, you have to cut it down to something that can be said in about 30 seconds or fewer. Think of it as your classic elevator pitch. Give this potential client a small taste of your skills, specialization, success rate, and personality in those 30 seconds, and communicate it in a way that leaves them hungry to learn more.

Examples

Here are some examples of real estate agent unique value statements that Inman lays out:

  • I specialize in helping empty nesters find the luxury downtown condo that’s just right for them.
  • I am a ninja negotiator with a track record of selling homes at an average of 2 percent over list.
  • Want to sell fast? Then I’m your real estate agent, as my listings sell in 26 days on average, 13 days faster than the norm.

What all these have in common is that they are short, sweet, and conform to the type of lead you are talking to and their goals.

Next Steps for You and Your Real Estate Unique Value Statement

The first step is to actually take the time and see what sets you apart from other real estate agents in the area. Next, draft what you think you’d like to say and, remember, focus on BENEFITS, not just past achievements. Try it out, tweak it, improve it. Once you have it the way you want it, craft a written version for your website and marketing materials and a short version for you to communicate over the phone or at appointments.

How Real Estate Agents Prepare for Spring

real estate spring season
real estate spring season

How Real Estate Agents Prepare for Spring

Although many of us are still in the cold, frigid depths of winter, it’s getting close to that time of year when we start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And that light is the springtime! Along with warming temperatures, blooming flowers, and increasingly sunnier days, the spring season in real estate typically means a hotter market, more appointments, more listings, and longer, busier days for agents and ISAs alike.

Whether it is true in all situations or not, the prevailing mentality among would-be home sellers is that the spring offers them the best chances to find the right buyer. Although it is very possible and, in some situations, preferable to sell a home during the fall or winter months, the statistics do tend to generally favor the springtime in most regions. In fact, homes sell an average of 18.5 days faster in May than any other month and for 5.9 percent more money.

What does that mean? That the majority of people, especially in regions with harsher winters, are going to want to sell their home during the spring season. What does that mean for you as a real estate agent or inside sales agent? That there is a lot of potential business out there waiting to be won.

How to Prepare for the Spring Real Estate Season

For many agents and companies, business slows quite a bit during the winter months and then it’s craziness starting in April and May. The question is, how do you prepare for the craziness so that you and your team are not overwhelmed and missing out on potential listings and sales? Well, the trick is simple, use the slower time to get yourself ready for the busier time.

It seems obvious, but many real estate agents don’t successfully use their time during the winter or any other slow times of the year. Preparing for the spring real estate season means exploring new marketing options, improving your existing lead generation and sales funnel systems, making sure your team members have the resources they need or are using those resources to be as efficient as possible, and the list goes on.

Evaluate and Improve Your Marketing

As we already mentioned, for many agents, springtime is like floodgates opening for new leads and potential listings. But if the floodgates are open for you, that means that they are also open for every other real estate agent in your market as well. To get yourself and your business ready for the waters, you need to ensure your marketing is in top shape. That will allow you to capture as many of those new real estate leads as possible.

First off, go over your personal or your team’s website. The last thing you want is a bunch of springtime home sellers coming to your site only to find broken links or poor quality images. To avoid looking unprofessional at the worst time, go through your site, check all the links, make sure the images are looking good, update your About page, add any new customer reviews or testimonials, and make sure your copy and calls to action are as good as they can be.

Next, prepare marketing materials and schedule social media campaigns and posts in advance. Once you start getting busy talking to leads on phone, showing houses, and basically killing it in all your real estate agent duties, social media and other lead generating and nurturing methods tend to fall by the wayside. To help yourself out, plan out content in advance and then schedule it using a social media automation tool like Buffer or Facebook’s own scheduling tool.

Make Sure Your CRM Is up to Date

If you are keeping your contact list in spreadsheets, scraps of paper, or on cocktail napkins, now is the time to update and organize your CRM. Trust me, you will be pulling your hair out come the busy spring season if you don’t get everything in order now. Having a clean and orderly database within your CRM is the easiest way to know where you are at with specific leads, who you need to follow up with, as well as being reminded of important dates with existing or past clients.

So, dive into your CRM and make sure tags are right, emails are sending as planned, and you have all the necessary information for your contacts. Now is the time to do this before things get too crazy in the next few months.

Expand Your Knowledge

If you have some time over the next couple months, it’s always a good idea to sharpen your skills and your knowledge. Take advantage of training and coaching resources (like Conversion University), improve your phone skills with role plays and call reviews, work on your sales scripts, and learn new marketing techniques (like how to effectively utilize social media for real estate). We live in a time when excellent resources are never more than a few clicks away. But trust me, if you can’t find the time now, I bet you won’t be able to find it come spring!

How Real Estate Agents Prepare for Spring

Like anything, how successful you and your real estate business will be this spring depends largely on the amount of time and effort you put into preparing for it. Use your time wisely now so your life is a bit easier in the next few months!

Tips for Converting Expired and FSBO Listings

Converting expired and FSBO leads
Converting expired and FSBO leads

Tips for Converting Expired and FSBO Listings

Converting expired listing and for sales by owner (FSBO) leads is tough. If we’re being honest, they are probably the two hardest leads to set appointments with. One reason for that is that both of these types of leads have probably gotten at least dozens of phone calls from a lot of agents who are most likely saying about the same thing that you are.

Besides competition, the other difficulty is that converting expired and FSBO leads means cold calling. Cold calling is never easy, and, to make matters worse, expired listing and for sale by owner leads are not the easiest people to talk to. For expireds, the house they are trying so hard to sell didn’t sell. For FSBOs, they are typically convinced that the best route to sell their home is doing it on their own.

The thing is, despite their difficulty, expired and FSBO lead sources can be very valuable. They may not be the low hanging fruit that inbound leads can be, but if you know how to talk to them, you can set a lot of appointments. We’ve put together a few tips to help you along the way.

Have a Real Conversation – Scripts can be very valuable when trying to convert FSBO and expired leads. They give you something to fall back on if the conversation gets away from you, they can help you have tried and tested responses to common objections, and they can give you a greater sense of confidence on the call. However, scripts alone are not enough. Leads can sense when you are just mindlessly repeating something you memorized. Instead, use the script as a starting point but then have a real conversation. Respond to what the lead is telling you in a way that is tailored to and makes sense for their specific situation.

Track the Right Metrics – Prospecting expired listings (and any other lead type) is a numbers game. To keep score in this game you have to religiously track metrics so you can see where and what you can improve. If you miss a goal or aren’t converting like you think you should, you can look at the time of day you’re calling, how much you are sticking to a script or not, or if you’re hitting your contact goals.

Stick to a Daily Schedule – Along with keeping track of key metrics, you have to have a consistent schedule in order to produce consistent results. A clear daily schedule eliminates wasting time wondering what to do next and makes it harder for you to procrastinate and put off cold calling.

Mindset The thing is, you are most likely going to get rejected a lot when going after expireds and FSBO leads. It’s the nature of the business. One of the most important skills to develop is being able to pick the phone back up after a difficult conversation. When calling these types of leads you might get annoyed people, mad people, or disinterested people and the conversations are going to be tough. The key is to keep your overall goal in mind, remember that you are working for your business, for your team, and for yourself and your career. Don’t take it personally, and remember that every rejection makes you better able to deal with a future one.

Persistence Is Everything At the end of the day, converting these types of leads takes a lot of time and energy. Follow-up is a necessary part of prospecting for FSBO and expired listings and is often overlooked when agents face an initial difficult conversation or rejection. Create a database for these contacts and reach out to them multiple times. Sometimes, a challenging lead can actually get easier to talk to over time.

Conclusion: Convert More Expired and FSBO Listings

At the end of the day, the key to successfully closing expired and FSBO listings is understanding the situation from their perspective. This is true both when it comes to empathizing with them about their home not selling originally, overcoming any and all objections they throw at you, and getting at their true motivation. Focus on and follow these tips to increase your chances of converting these types of listings.

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