9 Things New Property Agents Should Focus at the Start
You’ve just gotten your real estate license and will be starting your new career as a real estate salesperson. What should you start to focus on as you begin your new journey, your new life and your new career? This is what I’ll be sharing with you on today’s video. It's about what 9 things new property agents should focus at the start of their career or business. Stay on and continue reading.
I’ll be sharing with you the 9 things you should focus at the start of your new business as a real estate salesperson. For a start, you will need to improve your photo-taking skills.
Photo-Taking Skills
Picture paints a thousand words. Pictures will give potential buyers the first impression of the property you are marketing. Pictures open the window of opportunities that you’re showcasing to the world, to promote your listings and to attract potential buyers to take the first step to contact you. It is to make them to want to view the property and to influence their buying decisions.
Because of the benefits of a good picture or a photo of the listing can do for your, you would want to improve your picture-taking skills.
You may also want to consider hiring a professional photographer. But this will come at a cost.
For a start, a new beginner like yourself, when you're just starting out, I would recommend that you equip yourself with a mobile phone that comes with a good built-in camera. This way, you can whipped out a camera at any time and start taking good quality photos of a new listing that you’ve just signed on. Take as many photos as possible, from many different angles. Test out with different settings and learn photo-editing skills too.
Regardless, the goal is to get good listing photos. You’ll need a minimum of five photos for postings to all the various property portals in the market. Ensure there are no text, phone numbers and your own photos in the listing images.
Improve Soft Skills
The business of property agents is in the people’s business. It is about building trust, providing value and helping out another person who is looking to buy, sell or rent their property.
An important skill set that is needed to run this business successfully, it is to have soft skills. You need to have good communication skill. It is super important because it is a people business and therefore, handling of people’s emotional well-being is most important. If you manage this area well, your business will flourish.
It is a customer service skill. You are providing a service to your client. As such, you need to know how to communicate, be sensitive, be considerate, and know how to provide a suggestion or a solution whenever a concern is expressed.
The real art is in showing your sincerity, and honesty. It is definitely NOT about being manipulative and being greedy. Think of your client first and your client will follow you.
Find Good Mentors
Being new in the industry, you will be lost for sure. Without prior experience and knowledge, getting started can be over-whelming and daunting because everything is so new and you may not know where and how to start.
Find a good mentor is the first action you need to take. Find a mentor who is experienced, who knows what a newbie needs when they first started and they have an interest to groom and grow a new Property Agent to excel in the business.
On your part, you need to ask as many questions as possible. Ask what steps to take, how to be a top producer, what it takes to succeed in this business and how to run this business successfully.
A good mentor can bring you up many levels ahead of your peers. A bad mentor can stop your progress in this business.
Work Closely with Cobroke
Cobroke are your partners. They bring their clients to view your listings. They help convey the plus points of your property to their clients. They help convince their buyers to buy the property you’re marketing and they’ll negotiate with you on behalf of their clients.
This means, you need to work very closely with your Cobroke. Be nice, professional, ethical and above all, cooperative. Help them by providing proper and valid answers whenever they asks. You want to ensure their buyers have enough information so that they can make the decision to buy your property that you’re selling.
You will meet many unfriendly, rude and unprofessional property agents in the course of your work. For such property agents, I say to you, avoid working with them, stay away from them and do not be like them. Let them rot in their own comfort zone.
Understand All Contracts
In our business of real estate, contractual agreements, financial implications and legal framework are all part and parcel of the job. It is our job to know what they are and we need to be able to explain some of it to our clients. What we don’t know, we never commit. Always request your client to seek professional advice when it comes to any financial and legal matters.
Project timelines and contract timelines must be clearly explained to your client so that they can prepare the necessary documents and have funds available and be ready to commit when the time comes. Failure to do this will lead to many complicated situations and it’ll affect both the clients and property agents in the transactions.
Therefore, it is important that you get yourself familiarise with the processes, the financial calculations and the timelines correct. This will save you from all the troubles and stresses in a life as a Property Agent.
Enhance Marketing
In marketing, there are two parts of marketing in a property agent’s life. One is marketing oneself and the other is marketing the property.
You will need to brush up your skills in both areas. You’ll need to create a brand name for yourself and at the same time, promote and market your client’s property to the potential buyers.
Both skills are important and you need to be focused and find the most effective way to market them.
You will need to know about social media marketing such as Facebook Ads, google ads, design and distribution of flyers and doing roadshows and door-knocking activities. These are very important part of daily activities of all successful property agents.
Learn them, and find which strategy works best for you. If you can master this, you’re well on your way to the top.
Pre-Qualifying Clients
Each time you post a new listing, you’ll receive many enquiries. If you are new, you’ll get all excited and take in any calls and begin to arrange viewing appointments enthusiastically.
But as you begin to show the viewers, you start to see a trend. Some of them is a complete waste of time. The buyers are not ready, they have not sold their current place and for some, it’s just a weekend family activity.
So, to overcome such situations, try to learn some pre-qualifying questions. Ask these questions first before confirming the appointment. This will help save you time and energy as they reveal to you that the location is not even what they had in mind in the first place.
Get to Network - Fast
Networking is the most important part of the job of a real estate salesperson. It is the platform that will generate the most amount of leads, especially for a new Real Estate agent.
Join clubs, associations and social gatherings whenever possible and get to know more people. But it is not the time to promote yourself. It is a time of how you can help the others. By extending your help, people may want to help you back in return.
So, connect and network with as many people as possible because you’ll never know where and when a new lead will come back to you.
Sharpening Skills
And last but not the least, always continue to keep learning and keep upgrading your knowledge and skill set. Our learning cycle should never stop. We should always be curious, to ask questions and to always expand what we already know.
Only with such drive and attitude, we will be knowledgeable and be in a position to add value to anyone we meet.
Conclusion
I hope the above 9 tips can give you an idea of where you should start when you’re starting out as a brand new Property Agent.
The idea is to shorten your learning curve, pickup as much as possible and be ready to serve when called up. The faster you can impress upon your clients, the faster you can gain leads and start selling houses and help clients in choosing their dream home.
My name is Francis Lim, of Ming Property. I’ve been in this business for more than 8 eight. I’m a mentor to a group of associates and I will gladly help out anyone who has questions on property buying, selling, investing and how to succeed as a Property Agent. You can find my contacts down below.
Until next time, stay safe, be safe and I’ll talk to you again on another episode of my regular videos. See ya.