Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies. Zeller Dirk

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      ❯❯ Multiple streams of income: Listings generate interest and trigger additional transactions. Almost the minute you announce your listing by putting a sign in the ground, uploading the property on your website, and placing the listing in the MLS – syndicating the listing to sites like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and thousands of others – you’ll start receiving calls, emails, and texts from active buyers; calls from neighbors; inquiries from drive-by traffic; and queries from people wanting to live in the area. These leads or inquiries represent current and future business opportunities that only arise when you have a listing with your name on it.

      ❯❯ Promotional opportunity: A listing gives you a reason to advertise and draw the attention of prospects whom you can convert to clients or future prospects. And when your listing sells, you can spread the word of your success with another round of communication to those in the neighborhood, on social media, and throughout your sphere of influence.

      ❯❯ A business multiplier: Talk to any listing agent and you’ll have this fact confirmed: One listing equals more than one sale.

      ❯❯ Creates quality of life: Being a strong listing agent creates quality of life as well. By my fourth year in real estate I was on pace to sell 150 homes. I also was in construction of a vacation home in Bend, Oregon. Joan, my wife, was a general contractor. She needed to be onsite on Fridays to meet with subcontractors. I shifted to working Mondays through Thursdays, and taking Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays off. It was totally unheard of for an agent to take weekends off then, and even now.

      I would have not have been able to accomplish the high level of sales and time off without being a strong listing agent. I didn’t work a buyer the rest of my real estate sales career. They typically want to see property on weekends. I was enjoying my lifestyle at my vacation home playing golf, snowshoeing, hiking, and biking.

      ❯❯ A free team of agents working for you: The moment you post your listing, all the other agents in your area will go to work on your behalf. And the best part is that they don’t require payment until they deliver a buyer, and then they’ll be paid not by you but by your seller through the commission structure.

      ❯❯ Become a workaholic. More than 80 percent of agents who generate a reasonable income achieve their success by turning their careers into a 7-day-a-week, 24-hour-a-day job. They answer emails, texts, private messages, and business phone calls day and night; they make themselves constantly available to prospects and clients; and they work on demand with no restraints or boundaries because of technology. That can lead to burnout.

      ❯❯ Buy clients. The second-most-frequent pathway to success is to buy business through excessive marketing campaigns. Marketing can be a valuable tool, but you must monitor, track, and count the results. You have to be consistent in your marketing and branding. You can’t start and stop campaigns. Some agents buy their way to top-level real estate success by investing in large branding or marketing campaigns – you will get called, texted, and emailed endlessly with both online and offline marketing and lead generation. The challenge is the risk-versus-reward position, and earlier in your career the risk is even greater. Others buy their way to the top by discounting their commissions. By offering themselves at the lowest prices, these agents eliminate the need to emphasize their skills, abilities, and expertise.

      ❯❯ Take the shady road. Another avenue to real estate financial success is to abandon ethics and just go for the deal and the resulting money. Unlike the vast majority of agents who advise and advocate for their clients, agents who take this route choose not to be bound by ethics or any codes of conduct. They put their own needs first and put their clients’ best interests in distant second place. Fortunately, these agents are few and far between.

      ❯❯ Build a professional services business. The fourth and best pathway is to create a well-rounded, professional services business not unlike that of a doctor, dentist, attorney, or accountant. The balance of the two connected and complementary segments of prospecting, lead generation, lead conversion, and marketing is essential to reach this level. Fewer than 5 percent of all agents follow this route, yet the ones who do are the ones who earn the largest sums of money – some exceeding $1 million annually while also having high-quality lives and time for friends and family. Plus, when they’re ready to bow out of the industry, they have a business asset they can sell to another agent. (See the sidebar “Mining gold from your professional services business” for more details on creating an asset you can sell.)

      The best professionals provide ongoing services to clients who wouldn’t think of taking their business elsewhere. These professionals develop reputations and client loyalty that reside in their company name, even after the founding professionals move on to other ventures or into retirement. Doing more than just earning an income and building a clientele, these professionals build an asset that they can sell, which allows them to receive compensation from the value of the successful businesses they’ve built.

      As a favorite example, my father was a dentist for 30 years. When he decided to retire, he sold his practice to another dentist. He sold his building and equipment, but most important, he sold his patient roster, which raked in the majority of the money he received.

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