Real estate is a saturated field, with fierce competition. Only the best agents will become successful, and you simply can’t improvise being a good real estate agent. It’s important to stand out, brand yourself, and thereby score lots of referrals.
Here are 5 tips to help boost your reputation and raise your efficiency!
1- Be Organized
Buying and selling a home can be stressful for all parties involved, including yourself, and replying to messages and inquiries in a timely manner is one sure way of reassuring everyone. Whether you wish to remain informed of all developments, manage your calendar or structure your messages, it is crucial that you be organized or you risk dropping the ball when things get really hectic. To do so, you may rely on an app such as Touchbase that offers various features to make your job a whole lot easier.
One way to improve efficiency with Touchbase is to use the Availability Calendar. For each listing, you can program (or even let your seller program) showing availability on a one-time or recurring (weekly) basis. You can set certain times to be pre-approved, and decline showings during certain periods. You can even use this feature to advertise an open house to other real estate agents, as the calendar will show up on the MLS as well as in Touchbase directly.
2- Be Efficient - Automate Everything
Picture this: You get a notification on your smartphone - it’s a showing request on your latest listing. Before you have a chance to open the message and take a look, the buyer agent has already received a showing confirmation, complete with showing instructions and lockbox code. Smiling, you put your phone back in your pocket and continue with your day. Three hours later, you receive another notification ͢- a feedback form that was automatically sent out to the buyer’s agent after a showing, with customized questions that you came up with last week, after speaking with your client.
All of this is entirely possible in the Touchbase mobile app.
Once you have programmed your Availability Calendar to automatically approve or decline showing requests, you can take it a few steps further by adding showing instructions and lockbox information into Touchbase. You can also choose to require up to 48 hours’ notice before each showing, and whether or not to allow double bookings.
Simply go to the My Listings section in the Touchbase app, select My listings, and fill out the fields under Showing settings and Notes.
Setting up Customized Feedback Requests
You can find this option under each listing, or in the Settings section of the mobile app. Creating and editing feedback forms is straightforward and extremely useful. Create your questions, add multiple choice options, text answers, or star ratings, and set a default form for each listing.
You can even decide to automatically forward feedback forms to your client - or relay the information yourself, in person. The choice is yours!
3- Brand Yourself with Social Media
Using social media is a great way to reach potential buyers. It creates an opportunity to brand yourself. In other words, differentiate yourself from other agents. Make your name known and try to stay top-of-mind for potential clients, as well as for others working in the real estate industry. Establishing yourself as the go-to expert in a specific neighborhood, type of housing or type of community is a major differentiator.
Keep in mind that social media target different audiences, i.e. avoid posting the exact same message on Twitter as you would on Facebook or LinkedIn. Know who’s following you and who could possibly become a follower and adapt your messages accordingly. Remember: it’s better to have only one, well-managed social media platform than to have multiple poorly managed ones.
Use your social media platform(s) to provide a wide variety of shareable content, including customer testimonies, articles on home trends, market statistics, interesting videos, etc. This way, you continue to stay relevant, while generating traffic around your page, because you give potential buyers and colleagues alike a reason to interact with your page!
4- Know Your Client
Every client is different - some like to be hyper-involved in the process of selling their home or buying a new one, and others like to be left alone while their agent (hopefully, you!) takes care of everything. No matter which type of client you’re dealing with, you can accommodate them, and even blow them away with your effectiveness and reliability.
Hyper-involved clients can participate in the showing process. With the free Touchbase app, you can copy them in on showing requests, confirmations, cancellations, and even post-showing feedback, by text message or email. They can even confirm or decline showings themselves, and set up or modify their own Availability Calendar!
Want to really blow their mind? Send them an automatic weekly report of all the showing requests for their listing. You can generate any type of report directly from the app.
For clients who do not wish to be involved in the showing process, you can simply generate reports to keep them posted when they want to know what is happening. Touchbase is as flexible as you are!
5- Give Leads, Get Leads
Imagine having access to a huge network of professionals capable of sending business your way. Referral networks can prove incredibly useful: providing leads to a lender, house inspector or mortgage broker can come back around in the form of your own potential clients. Some REALTORS® report that referrals and networking groups account for up to half of their leads!
If you don’t want to join a referral network, you can always focus on targeting real estate agents who specialize in relocating. They will take care of the client’s needs in their area, and you address the client’s needs once they reach their new destination. In doing this, you can put yourself on the map as the relocation specialist in your area and someone other agents can trust their clients with, which can be especially lucrative in a big city or area prone to relocations.