Mastering Real Estate Brokerage: Key Strategies for Success

There’s a much broader growth prospect for the things in which you’ve got expertise. If you’re an intermediate-level real estate agent, you’ll only thrive at that level in the realty market. As such, it takes a great real estate agent to prove themselves successful at the industry’s zenith. 

But a question looms — what makes these great real estate agents so successful? The secrets of being a successful real estate broker have always been consistency. You might be familiar with the quote “Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” And in the real estate industry, it couldn’t be truer.

In this piece, we examine 16 of our top habits that can guide you on how to be a successful real estate agent.

Notable mentions include:

1. Create/Cultivate an Online Presence

You must market yourself online if you’re aspiring to become a successful real estate agent. But as any real estate agent worth their salt would gladly tell you, marketing can be stressful and time-consuming.

Still, it’s a necessary process, given the industry’s competitive climate. Many highly successful real estate agents are on the market, reaching new clients and engaging the existing ones.

Consistent branding across social media platforms is an excellent marketing strategy. Your clients can seamlessly find you if you’ve got the same tag for every account.

However, some real estate agents prefer to use separate accounts for business and personal. If you’re among this set, reply to all direct messages and comments as much as you do on your personal account. 

What if you get confused on what to post on social media? You can start by introducing yourself, tell people what you do and the uniqueness of your services.

2. Maintain Relationships with Past Clients

Just because a client closed a property deal with you doesn’t mean the interaction is over. If you wish to learn how to be a successful real estate agent quickly, you must understand that building relationships with your clients is crucial, even after the sale. Going this route is advised as it facilitates great Word of Mouth (WOM) crucial in attracting new patrons. 

Sending them birthday emails and checking in on how they’ve settled into their new home goes a long way. They’re likely going to remember the gesture and tell other people about it. Remember, most consumers believe in recommendations from friends and family over advertising. 

Since great WOM involves more than doing a good job and hoping for a referral, ask your previous clients to refer you or write a Google or Facebook recommendation. Highly successful real estate agents grow their businesses by being referred by credible sources, and no one is more trustworthy than their previous clients.

3. Utilize Innovations

Setting trends in a highly competitive market is one of the many ways that dictates how to be successful in real estate and stand out from the competition. Digital technology is where the battle is right now. Everyone knows the importance of high-quality and interactive online content, but not everybody has invested in the latest technological innovations.

Use 3D virtual tours and HDR photography in marketing materials to ensure buyers get an accurate depiction of a property. By using up-to-date technologies in your marketing efforts, you’re showing buyers you’re at the forefront of the industry.

Remember, most clients agree with their eyes before making a deal. Take advantage of this proven fact to make your visuals as appealing as possible. 

Read up on new technologies and think about ways you can use them to attract paying clients. Generally, homebuyers want to work with someone who takes initiative and doesn’t lag behind. 

As such, it’s important for agents to accompany their services with a well-oiled digital suite to help them keep track of leads. Additionally, they must ensure it’s the best fit. Top real estate investing experts and agents employ reliable, agile, and scalable customer relationship management (CRM) tools to win and retain clients.

4. Upgrade Your Schedule

To-do lists aren’t as effective as they once were. In fact, 41% of to-do lists items are never completed. A better way to manage your business is to schedule important tasks using the time blocking technique. 

This allows you to know your priorities and when exactly you’ll tackle those tasks. Time blocking lets you know important projects and draft documents. It works way better than a to-do list with no real deadlines. 

After all, what gets scheduled is what gets done. That’s one of the secrets of being a successful real estate broker. Anything different will leave you wondering why your productivity levels are so choppy.

5. Be Available/Accessible

Being on call 24/7 is stressful on the onset. Regardless, picking up a call or responding to messages right away is essential, especially for prospective homebuyers. To them, finding a home and tallying their precise needs is equally tedious.

Clients look to you for assurance and expertise, and they need answers as soon as possible. In a sense, you become a psychologist to your clients, rather than a salesperson. Being available and responding in a timely manner builds trust, so ensure you’re responding to clients as quickly as you can. 

6. Share Real Estate Knowledge

Being a real estate agent means you’re an expert at what you do; well, your clients would like to believe that. Maintaining this reputation isn’t challenging, especially when you can show you’ve done your research. 

For example, you can include clips of the local community when doing videos for property listings. For buyers, purchasing a home isn’t just about the home itself, but the area surrounding it. What restaurants can they eat at? Are there parks or lakes to visit? How about nearby schools?

Let them know more about the place, not just about the property. Above all, be truthful about the information you share. Sharing your knowledge on various communities builds your credibility as a realtor. Additionally, you can share local market trends, current city events like carnivals, book clubs, and book fairs.

You can post tips and tricks for beautifying various spaces on social media. Spamming buyers with listings isn’t going to create a relationship built on trust. Successful agents give their clients more reasons to follow them.

7. Get a Mentor

In the highly competitive real estate industry, it can be tough to find someone to share their expertise with you. But if you look out there, there’s a chance you’d find a good one. Remember, there’s always something new to learn, and who’s better suited to guide you than a veteran in the saturated realty sector?

With many real estate agents and their wealth of experience, you’ll walk away from each meeting with a mentor with more knowledge to overcome business challenges. Every agent faces difficult times at some point in their career. It’s important to rub minds and weigh ideas back and forth with more experienced realtors and learn along the way to become a better agent.

8. Build a Referral Business

Successful agents build their referral base with connections that stay in contact consistently, effectively branching out to new clients. Developing a referral business may mean hosting a quick open-house for someone in exchange for information on direct buyer attendees or meetups with prospective buyers.

9. Outsource Administrative Work

Best-performing real estate agents outsource work to others. When business is fast-paced, they’d hire someone to help out with the administrative aspect. This way, the agent can engage in activities that generate revenue. 

Alternatively, these administrative works can get sorted out digitally. Top agents in recent years have started to embrace AI and predictive data modeling in their processes. Since these routes are invaluable to agents in the digital age, utilizing them to streamline operations as a real estate agent is a no-brainer. 

10. Intuitive Nurturing

Prospects and convertible leads are hard to get, with many agents coming up short. In a bid to attract potential clients, they spend astronomical sums on marketing to first-time website visitors who aren’t ready to do business yet. 

Top agents craft an automated sales funnel throughout the customer journey, (i.e., retargets and emails) so visitors know they’re always proactive.

11. Set Realistic Goals

Top agents, whether they’re with a brokerage firm or going solo, have personal professional targets and goals they keep revisiting and updating throughout their careers. These benchmarks could mean making a short/long-term vision statement, analyzing the best strategies that work best for them, or determining unique selling points that set them apart from other real estate agents. 

To become a successful realtor, you must set goals for yourself and work towards them. You don’t have to be too hard on yourself but don’t get lazy about it either.

12. Make Great Content

Top agents share their knowledge and expertise through thought pieces or short blog posts on their website, presenting themselves as an authority in the field. Some realtors have taken things a bit further, launching YouTube channels or TikTok accounts and earning millions of views. 

Whether it’s a blog, podcast, or video, the effect is far-reaching, because the agent adds value or gives a rich resource/knowledge point to potential clients or consumers before they meet. You don’t have to advertise online frequently; you can create content to educate your audience about your business’s offerings.

13. Keep Learning

No man is an island of knowledge. As a top real estate agent, keeping your finger on the pulse of everything is essential. Commit to learning something new every day, especially outside your zone of expertise. 

Read books, watch a TED talk, and subscribe to other agents’ blogs to broaden your horizon. Gathering knowledge is one of the most excellent tips to be a successful real estate agent since your clients will get more comfortable knowing you’re versatile.

14. Get Good Customer Service

All top agents have one thing in common — excellent customer service. Treating the tenth or hundredth client like they’re the first is golden. With a rock-solid business plan and impeccable customer service, people will patronize your business and recommend your services to friends or family on the lookout for the perfect agent. 

15. Be Determined

If people were to describe you in three words, would one of those words be “determined”? As a real estate agent, be fixated on being the best version of yourself. Defeat should never be an option. Every deal is important; no matter how small. 

Every client must get what they want. But that doesn’t happen by accident. As the client’s representative, you’ve got to be dogged, relentless, and stubborn to make sure the client wins.

When you’re driven to win, you’ll do well in the real estate business no matter how many obstacles are thrown in your way (some of which will come from your clients). 

16. Be Trustworthy

Lastly, trustworthiness is crucial to becoming a successful real estate agent. To maintain trust with your clients and score a crucial referral, hold yourself to a high ethical standard. 

You may be working with someone’s life savings. For this reason, be principled and committed to doing what’s right. 

The world is already a harsh place, and it takes a long time to find someone truly trustworthy. When you strive to be a trustworthy agent, you’ll enjoy repeating patronage.

Wrapping Up

The real estate sector is vast and profitable. Millions of people consider it viable grounds for a lucrative career. If you’re one of them, do you think you’ve got what it takes on how to be a successful real estate agent?

You might need to do some soul-searching, but utilizing the secrets to being a successful real estate broker can also help you along the way. Consider the tips highlighted above to kick-start the adventure to the apex of the real estate sector.

As a real estate agent craving success, the learning never stops. To get a hold of viable tips and tricks to remain at the apex of this saturated market, tune into the Icons of Real Estate Podcast today. Each episode showcases a top-tier real estate professional delivering detailed insights into the realty sector and how you can stay ahead of the curve regardless of the evergreen competition.