Congratulations, you are a registered salesperson! Now what? Well hopefully you have chosen a brokerage that provides you with some good training so you can learn the tools of the trade, and get rolling. If you don’t have clients right away though, what should you do? What is worth spending your time doing? I certainly wasted a lot of time I didn’t need to! I have developed my top 5 ways to spend your time when first starting your career in real estate, aside from your brokerage’s training programs.
- Develop and contact your sphere of influence! Introduction letter, phone calls, talking to everyone and anyone you can about real estate and let them know you are in the business!
- Spend time creating systems for your business. How will you handle a listing appointment? Will you have a printed marketing plan, a presentation on your laptop? What will you provide first-time buyers when you first meet them? How will you encourage clients to refer family and friends to you? Having these systems in place, and some sort of conformity when you deal with clients will help tremendously and make you seem confident and professional!
- Visit agent open houses! Our local market has agent open houses 4 days of the week, each day being a different area of the city. If you don’t have a lot of clients and aren’t viewing a lot of inventory, how will you ever get to know what is out there? I suggest finding someone else that is new in your brokerage and trying to get out at least once a week and view agent open houses. This will help you understand the market, help you price houses, seem more knowledgeable to potential clients, and also provides you with a good opportunity to meet other REALTORS®. It is important to develop good relationships with the people you will be working with, and REALTORS® will appreciate you coming out to see their property, and remember that you are active and out there learning the market. I remember specifically one day I was at an agent open house, and the experienced agent said to me “It is so nice to see the younger generation of REALTORS® like yourself out there physically viewing properties. Too many people think they can learn the market by viewing a house on the internet, but they sure can’t smell the cat pee in the basement from their office, can they?” LOL, so true!
- Do open houses for other REALTORS®. This can provide you with an opportunity to meet potential buyers and of course, view inventory.
- Take courses! Get those remaining 3 courses out of the way! Much easier to take the time now when you aren’t too busy. Those 2 years will fly by and all of a sudden you still have courses to do, you are busy, and can’t get into the course you need in time. Even though you may not need the credits in your first two years, there are lots of interesting courses that our local board puts on. They increase your knowledge, and also provide opportunities to meet other REALTORS®.
Those are my top 5 suggestions on how to spend your time when you are not working with clients and are new to the business. Does anyone else have some good suggestions?
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