Summer is here! For many real estate agents, summer can be a challenge. There are often more pulls on your time, because there are a lot of people buying and selling houses than in the winter, your kids aren’t in school, and you want to relax and spend time with your family. The result is that a lot of agents let their businesses sit and put off things like lead generation and follow up, maintaining your sphere, and marketing.

The problem is that, if you do that, when fall rolls around your business is not where you’d like it to be. To help you out, here are some tips for how real estate agents can make the most of their summer, both personally and professionally.

Summer as a Real Estate Agent: Protect Your Personal and Family Time

There’s no getting around it, summer is the time for vacations, enjoying the warm weather, and spending quality time with families, even for real estate agents. Here are some tips for balancing that with your business:

• Make the weekends JUST about client meetings and showings – If you’re working in residential real estate, then there is no avoiding meeting with clients on the weekends. But one thing you can do to salvage some of your weekend time for friends and family is to make sure that meeting with clients is all you have to do. Complete other tasks like lead generation, filing documents, checking voicemails, and carrying out your marketing strategies during the week.
• Put boundaries on your time – Many agents block out one of the weekend days for personal and family time. They only make appointments on that day if it is very very necessary. Also, if you’re kid has a sports game or you have a family get together, treat that like an appointment on your calendar.
• Set clear expectations with clients – As with most things in life, communication is key. Be direct and upfront with your clients about when you work and don’t work. The vast majority of people are understanding when it comes to balancing work with your personal life.

Summer as a Real Estate Agent: Give Yourself Some Structure

Despite all the warm weather, pool parties, BBQs, fishing and camping trips, outdoor concerts, and whatever else you like to do during the summer, you still need to focus on your business. And I don’t just mean servicing your existing clients; that’s a no brainer. You need to be actively working on developing new business.

When there are a lot of pulls on your time, like there is in the summer months, having a structured environment where someone holds you accountable and you have set times to do specific tasks is key. That’s why I always recommend that real estate agents do some type of coaching or training program during this time of year.

For example, at Smart Coaching and Training, we’re about to roll out a summer program for real estate agents and ISAs that will offer structured classes and accountability. The goal of this program is to make it simple for you to continue sharpening your skills and filling your pipeline, while still having time to enjoy all the summer fun with your family.

That way, you can enter the fall market with a fat pipeline full of closings AND a summer full of memories.

Stay tuned for more information on our summer training program!

The best way to scale your real estate business is to hire an inside sales agent. Not just any inside sales agent though. You need a real estate ISA who is a well trained, highly effective lead generating and converting machine. At the end of the day, a great ISA can make all the difference between success and growth or stagnation for your real estate team or business.

What Does a Real Estate ISA Do for Your Business?

Inside sales agents in real estate are a relatively new phenomenon. Before they became more widespread throughout the industry over the past decade, it basically fell on agents to generate and convert all of their own leads. But when you have a successful team that is growing and expanding, real estate agents start having less and less time to do that legwork. They are so focused on their existing clients that things like lead follow up go by the wayside, hurting the agent and the real estate team in the long run.

What a real estate ISA does is free up the time and bandwidth of your agents, so they can focus on buying and selling homes and servicing your existing clients. Having an effective inside sales agent means that they handle the initial part of the sales process and then pass off clients who are ready to work with you.

The result of specializing these different tasks is that you can scale to levels that would never have been possible without the ISA.

Should Every Real Estate Business Hire an ISA?

The short answer is no. Hiring a real estate ISA before your company is ready will turn out to be a colossal waste of time, money, and resources. We go over when you should hire an inside sales agent in this article here. Check out the linked article, but here are some of the more salient points:

• You are bringing in around 150,000+ in annual GCI
• You already have an established and well trained assistant who is handling your transactions and can handle the ones generated by your new ISA
• You have solid inbound lead sources for your ISA to begin working
• You have a plan to either train your ISA yourself or leverage a third party sales training company

Who to Hire for the Role

Once you determine that your business is ready for a real estate ISA, you have to hire the right one for your business. I’ve written a lot on this topic, but the two biggest mistakes that most team leaders or company owners make is not treating finding candidates like lead generation, and not screening the candidates before they hire.

Here’s what the process should look like at a high level: narrow down resumes, screen their performance by talking to them on the phone to see how they sound, interviewing them, then deciding whether or not to make the hire.

For more details on hiring a rockstar ISA, check out this article.

Real Estate ISA Training Is Key

Once you hire your inside sales agent, the question becomes, what do you do next? Training a newly hired ISA and giving them the attention they need is imperative to their success. Just throwing them a scripting manual, access to your CRM, and saying “good luck!” just will not cut it.

But knowing exactly how to train them, what methods to use, and how to judge when they are ready can be difficult. Especially because, as a real estate team leader or business owner, you have a million and one other things to do.

But not to worry; that’s where we come in!

We have a training program that will take your newly hired ISA and put them through an intense 2 week training. 1 hour a day, 5 days a week, for a total of 10 sessions. By the end of it, they will be a lead converting machine! We’ll take the burden off of your shoulders.

Click here to see how it we’ll train your real estate ISA.

Real estate cold calling is used to generate new leads, set up appointments with people who may want to buy or sell a home, and schedule meetings with interested clients. Like cold calling in any other industry, you have a brief or very brief time to convince this total stranger that you can actually benefit them and help them achieve their goals.

You have precious seconds to show them you are not the typical image of a sales person that they have in their head. It’s difficult. You face a lot of rejection. And it’s becoming harder and harder as people answer their phones less and less for unknown numbers.

The question is, is real estate cold calling still relevant in 2023? Let’s try to answer that question.

What Are the Stats of Real Estate Cold Calling?

The question of whether or not real estate cold calling is still relevant in 2023 really comes down to whether or not it is still effective. Let’s take a look at what the numbers say:

• 28% of cold calls are answered by their intended recipients
• 7% of real estate agents report that cold calling is one of their best lead generation strategies
• 68% of real estate agents and ISAs are able to successfully follow up with a lead after a cold call

The bottom line is that real estate cold calling can still work, even in 2023. You just have to learn the tools and strategies to do it the right way. If you can master it, then you have a cost effective, productive lead generation method that can connect you with a ton of new business.

But how can you do it the right way?

Be Successful at Real Estate Cold Calling

At Smart Coaching and Training, we talk a lot about objection handling and how that relates to closing on your calls and being a successful cold caller. After all, caller objections give you the ammunition you need to be able to prove your value to the lead and that you understand where they are coming from, from the lead’s perspective. This means it is very important to recognize and practice common real estate objectionsand have a consistent strategy for overcoming them.

Are you doing everything you can to improve your real estate business or career? Whether you’re an agent, real estate ISA, or team leader, real estate is a tough industry that really requires constant work, skill building, and self reflection. If you don’t do these things, you not only will be missing opportunities for growth, but you’re going to end up spinning your wheels constantly.

Then you’re going to start losing out on business to other agents in your market. Then the stress is going to set in. You’re going to try to work harder instead of smarter. And eventually, you’re going to get burned out and decide to quit the industry. After all, more real estate agents stop working in real estate each year than people in other industries leave their industries.

But it’s more than just potentially being burnt out and quitting.

What Does Building a Better Business or Career Mean for You?

Improving your real estate business or career doesn’t just mean more clients, more houses bought and sold, and more money in your pocket. Those are all just means to an end. Improving your real estate career ultimately means:

• A better life for you and your family 
• More resources to hire more people
• Setting yourself up for success in retirement
• Means more flexibility and freedom

Is becoming a real estate agent or real estate ISA still a good career move? After all, prices might be falling, interest rates are increasing, and you hear a lot of people saying that a crash is looming on the horizon. Now I can’t tell you with certainty whether all or any of those things are true, but what is true is that, no matter what the market is doing, becoming a real estate agent or real estate ISA is still an excellent career choice.

But only if you’re ready to put in what it takes.

Why Is Real Estate Still a Great Career?

Real estate is and will always be an attractive choice for several key reasons:

• Unlimited salary – When you become a real estate agent, there is essentially no cap on your earning potential. The more you optimize your skills and processes and get better at what you do, the more money can make.
• You can be your own boss – Many people become real estate agents and real estate ISAs for the prospect of leaving their 9-5 and being their own boss. You might be on a real estate team, but ultimately your business is your own. All you need is a broker.
• Flexible hours and workspaces – Real estate agents make their own schedule and they don’t typically spend all their time sitting in an office. You do spend some time in an office, but you also are meeting with clients, showing houses, and can be out and about.
• People are always buying and selling houses – No matter if the market is strong or weak, there is always business to be had. When the market is slower you might have to work harder for that business, but with the right real estate training, that business will be yours.

How to Build a Successful Real Estate Career

Working in real estate is tough. Being a real estate team leader is even harder. But there are certain steps you can take to ensure you build and cultivate a team that consistently produces results. To help you out on your real estate leadership journey, we’ve put together some tips and best practices for leading your team to success.

The All Important Question

Before you even start building or training a real estate team, you have to make sure that even having a team is the right move for your own business and career. You need to ask yourself questions like:

• Do you have enough volume for a team?
• Do you have so many current listings and transactions that you’re sacrificing new leads?
• Are you too strapped for time that you don’t have time to generate new business?

It’s at this point when you should consider starting a team to help handle the volume you are generating. Typically, 50 to 60 transactions per year is the most that an individual agent can handle. A good rule of thumb is to have at least 40 to 50 transactions before you consider starting a real estate team.

Who Should You Hire First for Your Real Estate Team?

You might be tempted to hire an ISA or another agent as the first additions to your team. But this could be a mistake! Before increasing the volume of your business, you have to hire a rockstar administrator to help you handle the mountains of paperwork, your large database, and your busy schedule. Only once you have an administrator to take those burdens off of your shoulders should you begin to hire more producers.

If you’re new to the real estate industry, I first just want to say welcome! Few industries offer as much opportunity, the chance to be your own boss, and having essentially no ceiling on the income that you can earn. But it’s a tough industry to be in. Most agents who start out don’t end up staying real estate agents for the long term. And to top it all off, you might be hearing that we’re in a tough market right now or moving towards a tough market.

But that doesn’t matter.

Any real estate agent can be successful in any market. They just need to have the right strategies and tools at their disposal. If you’re just starting out, then you are in the best position possible to turn this into a career you can be proud of and successful at.

In this article, I’ve put together just a few tips and best practices for new real estate agents in ANY market.

Have Real Conversations with Your Leads

The key to success as an agent is real estate prospecting. No matter what kind of market we’re in, or what time of year it is, there IS ALWAYS a lot of business to be had out there. And there’s a lot of money to be made. But you can only take advantage of all that available business and money if you consistently add leads to your real estate sales pipeline.

Capturing new leads and then converting those leads into clients is the only way you’ll be successful in this industry.

The question is, how do you do real estate prospecting the right way? We’ve put together some tips to help you out.

You Need a Gameplan

Successful real estate prospecting requires you to be methodical and consistent. In order to do that, you need a plan in place. By “plan”, I mostly mean commit to time blocking your calendar. Let’s face it, real estate agents have a ton on their plate. By carefully laying out and organizing your calendar, and including things like real estate prospecting, you’ll be more likely to actually do it. Be specific on your calendar with what type of prospecting activities you’re doing, whether it’s phone calls, emails, maintaining your social media ads, or something else.

Set aside time for real estate prospecting at least several times a week, if not every day.

Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up

As we move through winter and get closer to spring, there are a few common objections that you are likely to hear more and more. Like all real estate objections, there is a tried and proven strategy for overcoming them and setting more appointments. Once you get that strategy down, you will convert more leads than ever before.

But first, what objections are you likely to hear in the coming weeks and months?

The Most Common Spring Real Estate Objections

Although you can be faced with any objection at any time, here are the few that you are most likely to hear during the late winter and spring market:

“I’m waiting for the spring”

“I’m just window shopping”

“That price is too high/Too Low”

“I want to sell it myself”

How to Overcome Spring Real Estate Objections

There are specific techniques to overcome each of these spring real estate objections, but at the heart of each technique is the strategy we teach here at Smart Coaching and Training. We cover this strategy in our training and in many of our articles.

The spring real estate market brings a lot of potential business, but also a lot of competition from other agents and teams. As a real estate agent or team leader, you have to start preparing for the spring as soon as possible. If you find yourself waiting until March or April to start figuring out how to tackle a hotter market, it’s too late.

The sooner you act, the better. If you want to take a bigger piece of that spring real estate market pie, then you need the right systems and concepts in place. That’s where our spring real estate training program comes in.

More on that in a little bit.

How Can Agents Prepare for the Spring Real Estate Market? Roleplay

If you are going to successfully train your team (or yourself), then you need all the tools possible at your disposal. Roleplays are an incredibly powerful tool for training real estate ISAs and agents alike. They not only allow ISAs to practice closing techniques, objection handling, and all the other sales components they are taught, but also allows other people in the group to learn from mistakes that their colleagues make. Just like pilots use flight simulators, so should inside sales agents use roleplay groups.

And when it comes to the spring real estate market, there are specific objections and call situations that every agent and ISA can use some practice on.