Overcoming call reluctance: Real estate agents have to constantly be generating leads and having sales conversations with potential clients. That means you’ll hear “no” a lot.  The biggest determining factor for whether a sales person will or will not be aggressive with generating leads, setting appointments, asking for contracts, and closing deals is the story they build and tell themselves in their heads. If you have good stories in your head—if doing those activities that lead to productivity have a positive connotation—you will be unstoppable. Remember that each phone call you make is one step closer to building the life you want to live. Keep everything in perspective.

Don’t treat yourself like a machine: A lot of real estate agents eventually suffer from burn out. For go-getters, having complete control over your own schedule often means that they work themselves to the bone. Things happen, life throws curveballs, we mess up. Have your routine and stick to it, but don’t punish yourself if you have to break it once in a while. You don’t need to add “not sticking to my routine today” as another thing you’re feeling stressed about. Do the best you can and if your routine needs to be tweaked, do it.

Never stop training: Real estate agents need to constantly be honing their skills and improving. You have to work on your objection handling, your conversation strategies, your sales techniques, and your lead generation methods. When it comes to real estate training, it’s best to have a structured program to follow and a coach who is there to keep you motivated and hold you accountable.

Focus on these three things, and a successful real estate career is within your grasp!

If you want to convert 5x more leads, we have the training and coaching that can help! Click here to check it out.

Strategies to Lead Your Team to Success

Once you have your real estate team, you need to run it and lead it effectively. If your team doesn’t succeed, then you won’t succeed.

• Lead by example – Ultimately, your team will emulate the actions you take and the tone that you set. It’s important to maintain a proactive, motivated, and organized approach to team management. Experience, clear communication, goal setting, and mentoring are also standout qualities that agents look for in a real estate team leader. 
• Be a resource, but give them space – Your agents need the space and freedom to act and make decisions for themselves. Your role is to be there for them when they need guidance and assistance, but not dictate what they do, who they meet with, etc. Most agents got into the business for the same reason you did, to have more freedom and flexibility than in a typical 9-5 job.
• Devote resources to training – Part of being a successful real estate team leader is providing the training opportunities and resources your team needs to be as productive as possible. You can just hire agents or ISAs, hand them a script, and expect them to be top producers. They need a program that helps them work on conversation techniques, role plays, call reviews, and someone to hold them accountable (check out our training programs here).
• Use meetings sparingly – Meetings can be very helpful for your team, but they can also be drains on time and productivity if they are done correctly. Schedule them only when they are essential and have a clearly defined purpose.

If you want help bringing your real estate team to the next level, we have a real estate leader training program that can help! Click here to check it out.

Instead of memorizing a set of words, focus on conversation strategies. Ask great discovery questions that get at the lead’s deeper motivation. That way, when they throw an objection at you, you have the ammunition required to overcome it. Respond naturally to what the lead says, don’t just try to return to the script. People want to talk to other real people, not drones that just read the same thing regardless of what answer they give.

Prospect Smarter, Not Harder

As a new real estate agent, building up your network is crucial. In the old days, that meant dropping letters or flyers into mailboxes next to take out menus and window replacement advertisements. Nowadays, prospecting means finding people in your market on social media, sending out text messages, calling, and being religious about following up.

Plus, you need a great CRM to keep everything organized so you know exactly when to follow up with specific leads, how warm they are, and what, if any, reservations they have about working with you.

Rely on the Metrics

Key real estate metrics include both leading and lagging indicators. By reviewing these regularly and understanding what they are telling you, you will know where you currently stand AND what decisions you have to make to improve your business.

Examples of leading indicators:

• Number of leads generated
• Number of contacts made
• Number of appointments set
• Number of appointments met
• Number of contracts signed

Examples of lagging indicators:

• Active listings
• Pending deals
• Closed deals

Lagging indicators help you understand past and current performance. Leading indicators will give you a glimpse of where your business is headed.

Under Promise and Over Deliver

This last tip is a great tip for life, not just a real estate career. But many agents make the mistake of overselling their capabilities or what they can actually do for the lead. You want to position yourself as being able to deliver on the lead’s goals (instead of trying to force their situation into meeting your own goals) but avoid being unrealistic. Don’t just tell the lead what they want to hear if you can’t actually provide it.

Set and manage their expectations and tell the lead what they need to hear without overtly making them wrong or promising something you can’t deliver.

If you’re a new real estate agent and want to really set yourself up for success with scripting, conversation techniques, prospecting strategies, and much more—all with the help of a dedicated coach—then check out our training options here.

Build a Support System

It’s extremely difficult to be successful with real estate prospecting or really any part of your real estate career without a support system. You need people to help hold you accountable, complain to about unruly prospects, and celebrate your wins. Having this support system is made even more difficult these days because everyone works from home. But there are resources available to you. Do Zoom calls with your team and hire a real estate coach to help you stay on track.

We Have Resources that Can Help

In addition to offering several real estate training programs and dedicated coaches, at Smart Coaching and Training we also offer the Real Estate Prospecting Room. It’s a virtual sales floor on Zoom where you can do your lead generation, go on sales calls, role play with fellow agents, celebrate your wins, and commiserate with each other about any losses or bad calls. 

The Prospecting Room is a collaborative environment that takes the loneliness and isolation out of prospecting.

Plus, if you really want to bring your career or your team to the next level, then we have training that can help, including a Spring Training Program that will help you convert more leads when we enter the busy season. Plus, you get access to the Real Estate Prospecting Room with the program to help fill out your pipeline.

1. Acknowledge – Listen to what they say and let them know that you understand it.
2. Paraphrase – Restate what they said without leading and without interpretation.
3. Inquire into their perspective, process, and outcome – This is where you dig into their thought process how they see it. Get them to walk you through their knowledge, plan, and the unique thing they hope to accomplish. These are the three things you need to know in order to counter their objection, so ask questions that get you the answers.
4. Determine the unique benefit or result they hope to achieve – this is their sought after outcome.
5. Close if appropriate – Close if the lead does not bring up another objection as a result of the PPO process or if it becomes obvious that meeting is the next logical step in your conversation.

At the end of the day, you have to close on your calls and objections are your route to close. By taking the objections in stride, understanding what the lead’s fears are, and effectively responding, you have the ammunition you need to convert the lead and set the appointment.

The Key Is Consistent Role Playing

Role playing allows you to practice the five aspects of objection handling listed above. It’s a low stakes environment where agents and teams can perfect and hone their skills. That way, when it comes time to make the actual call, it won’t be as scary and you or your team will not be as flustered when faced with tough objections. Because they’ve heard them and responded to them many times before already!

The bottom line is that real estate agents and ISAs who don’t consistently role play tend to get stuck more easily on their calls and set fewer appointments.

Want to prevent that from happening to you this spring? Then join our Spring Training Program!

Our Spring Training Program

The Spring Training Program is 12 weeks solid weeks of objection handling training, role playing, and being held accountable by a dedicated coach. In addition to roleplaying key objections, filling up your sales pipeline, doing live call reviews, and learning the most important conversation techniques, you’ll also have a real estate coach who you can bring your questions to and who will help keep you focused.

What are you waiting for? Take the right steps now to conquer the market this spring.

Click here to see what our Spring Training Program can do for you.

• “I’m just going to wait until spring”
• “I’m just looking right now” (the window shopper)
• “That price is too high/that price is too low”

Use roleplays to master these objections, and you will start seeing a much higher conversion rate on your calls.

You Need Accountability in the Spring Market More than Ever

Talking about real estate training and planning for the spring is all well and good, but how can you make sure you’ll actually take the steps to do it? Despite the slower winter market, you still have a busy schedule with your life and your business. How can you be sure you’ll set aside the time? If you do set aside the time, how can you be sure you are preparing for the spring real estate market in the right ways? What happens is you have issues or questions you don’t know the answers to?

Do you see what I’m getting at? Effective spring real estate training requires a coach to hold you accountable.

How Can You Move Your Real Estate Business Forward this Spring?

Roleplaying. Handling critical objections. Ensuring you remain accountable. How can you accomplish all of these things? By entering our Spring Training Program, of course! For 12 solid weeks you and your small team will be assigned a dedicated real estate trainer to bring your skills to new heights and hit your goals. 

In addition to roleplaying key objections, filling up your sales pipeline, doing live call reviews, and learning the most important conversation techniques, you’ll also have a real estate coach who you can bring your questions to and who will help keep you focused.

What are you waiting for? Take the right steps now to conquer the market this spring.

Click here to see what our Spring Training Program can do for you.

In most of those situations, however, it’s because the company wasn’t ready for one. They didn’t have the proper training in place. They didn’t have good leads for the ISA to work with. They didn’t have enough agents to work all the new business the ISA was generating. They didn’t have realistic expectations for the ISA they hired.

Is Your Business Ready for a Real Estate ISA?

Essentially, whether or not you’re ready to hire a real estate ISA comes down to four major things:

• 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

Once you have those four things, you are most likely ready to hire a real estate ISA for your company.

If you have questions about hiring an ISA, or want to utilize our ISA training services, then please reach out to our team today!

Because there might be less business in the winter, but there is still a lot to be had. So, keep pushing. Keep building your pipeline. Keep chasing down leads.

If Your Pipeline Is Lacking, Take Steps to Improve It

If your pipeline looks like it’s running dry, then the best real estate agent tips for winter that I have is to fill it back up.

• Reach out to past clients for referrals – Past clients are a great way to generate real estate leads to put into your pipeline. Since they’ve worked with you one-on-one, they are a reputable source that other people they know can trust.
• Be active on social media – Lots of people are on social media during the holidays, and during the winter in general. Use the slower winter months (if they are slower for you) to up your social media game. Start posting videos of you and your family, of your current clients, and other activities in your day to day work or personal life.
• Take a look at all your real estate marketing – In addition to social media, one of the best real estate agents tips for winter is to check out your current marketing activities and how they can be improved. Do your emails need to be refreshed? Is there a drip campaign you can implement when the New Year begins? What types of social media ads are currently working for other agents in your market?

The Bottom Line Is this: DON’T Slow Down

It’s fine to take a little break around the holidays and enjoy time with your family, but don’t look at the entire winter as a time to take a break. In fact, the winter is a time for speeding up. One of the best real estate agent tips for winter is to make the calls, send the emails, get in touch with old leads, talk to your network, shore up existing systems in your business.

Always be thinking: what can I do TODAY to set my business up for more success now and in the spring market?

If you’re feeling the stress because winter is here and you haven’t been working on your pipeline or lead generation, then we’ve got a solution for you here at Smart Inside Sales. Our Build Your Pipeline program is weeks in which you’ll learn all the skills, techniques, and strategies needed to build a predictable, reliable stream of new business.  

Check it out here.

“Just Sold” Video

Similar to a client testimonial video, the “just sold” real estate video will showcase your past work, show your relationship with your client, and let a potential client see the types of home that you normally sell. Show off the house, but make it personal and try to have yourself and the client in the video. You can just shoot it informally on your phone.

Showcase yourself

A lot of agents will have an “about me” video on their website. But if you really want to build a personal connection with leads and clients, then shoot videos of your life! Whether you’re on the job driving to a listing appointment or at your kid’s soccer game, shooting a quick video on your phone and sharing it on social media can help build a personal connection with your network.

Explainer videos

Explaining real estate topics or how the selling or buying process works is nothing new. But doing it on videos that are easily consumed will help establish yourself as the expert in your market on all things real estate.

Give Yourself an edge with real estate videos

People want to watch videos, so give them what they want! Implementing these simple real estate videos into your marketing strategy will help you get a leg up on the competition and help build trust with the clients and potential clients in your market. Just keep them informal, short, and sweet—the more personal, the better!

At the end of the day, you have to listen to what the lead is saying and process what they tell you. For example, don’t make them wrong and avoid using the word “why”. Instead of asking, “why do you think rising interest rates are a problem?”, say “what about higher interest rates do you think is a problem?”

Listen closely to what they have to say, understand it, respond to it, and then go into educating them on the situation. The important thing is to build on what they say and have a natural conversation; don’t just nod and then go into what you wanted to talk about anyway.

Here’s What You Should Do

When you’re thinking about how real estate agents can explain rising interest rates, you want to follow the same formula that you would use for any other real estate objection.

• Get the lead’s perspective
• Get the lead’s experience
• Tell the lead the benefit of moving forward now
• Educate the lead after understanding their perspective
• Identify motivation and ability
• Set a logical next step

Here’s how to cover all of these points and overcome this tough real estate objection:

Ask

• When you say rising interest rates…what do you mean?
• Do you know that lenders will work with you to determine your rate?
• What will waiting for interest rates to change do for you?
• What if a change doesn’t happen?

Tie the Lead to a Logical Next Step

• When will you talk next?
• Why will you talk next?
• What will they get out of it?

When it comes to how real estate agents can explain rising interest rates, a key part of overcoming this objection is getting the lead to commit to a logical next step. And be specific. Don’t just say “give me a call when you are ready to move.” Tie them to something that they want to talk to you about. Focus on the benefit they will receive from meeting with you at that time.

If you want more information for overcoming this real estate objection and all other objections, then our Conversion University program is for you and your team! See all of our training programs here.