Adopt these 7 daily habits to grow your real estate business

In tough markets, it’s more critical to increase the time you spend on income-producing activities if you want to see your business grow.  The key to success in real estate is a systematic, daily plan of action that yields results.

Below, we’ll take a look at seven different activities — with a specific number of repetitions for each activity — that will produce results in any market environment.

If you’re serious about growing your business, this plan is for you.

7 conversations with homeowners

The first step in this seven-activity plan is to have seven real estate-related conversations with homeowners five days a week. These conversations should focus on adding value to the homeowners and not pressing them about whether they want to sell their house right now.

The sheer volume of calls and value you add will create opportunities for listings. If you aren’t sure how you can have seven conversations a day with homeowners, here are six ways to find homeowners to talk with:

• Checking in with past buyer clients
• Calling existing listing clients with updates on the marketing of their home
• Calling homeowners that are in your farm area
• Calling for-sale-by-owners
• Calling expired listings
• Circle prospecting with recent sales info

Focus on the most valuable thing each of these homeowners need or want. If you consistently add value to homeowners through seven conversations a day, five days a week, I guarantee you will have opportunities to list homes.

Still unsure how to generate conversation opportunities with homeowners? Check out this article on how to generate listings for additional ideas.

6 conversations with prospective buyers

The second activity is to have six real estate-related conversations with prospective buyers five days a week. These calls should focus on adding value or communicating details on properties meeting their criteria that have recently come on the market or had a price reduction.

If you aren’t sure how you can have six conversations a day with prospective buyers, here are four suggestions of who you can speak with:

• Any active buyers you have in your database
• Online leads you buy
• Renters who might consider buying
• Buyers you meet while hosting an open house

If you still aren’t sure how to find six potential buyers to talk with per day, check out this article that outlines 22 ways to scoop up more buyer leads.

5 conversations with past clients or people in your sphere of influence

Every successful real estate business is driven by repeat clients and referrals. These are conversations made through phone calls or personal meetings.

Here are a few ways to have these conversations:

• Check-in phone calls
• Pop-by home visits
• Wishing them a happy birthday or congratulating them on an anniversary
• Providing information about sales that affect their home’s value
• Inviting them for coffee or lunch
• Inviting them to a client appreciation event

By focusing on deepening these relationships, your business can’t help but grow.

4 handwritten notes sent to agents in feeder markets

Building a referral network with agents in markets where buyers typically move from when relocating to your area (also known as feeder markets) is a great way to build a consistent pipeline of future referrals. This can be accomplished by sending handwritten notes to agents in these markets.

The front of the custom cards should say “I Love Paying 30% Referral Fees for Buyers Moving to [Your City]!”

The inside of the card should read something like the following:

Dear [agent name],

My name is [your name], and I am a Realtor with [your company] in [your city]. I love paying referral fees to people moving from your city to mine. I will gladly pay a 30 percent referral fee to you for anyone you send my way, and I promise to provide them with the professional service they’ve come to expect after working with you.

Continued success, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

[your name]

Another great way to compound this effort is to follow up the card with a text one to two days after the card arrives to the feeder market agent.

Save your own contact on your phone as follows:

[your name], [your city] Realtor 30% Referral

Then share that contact in a text to the Realtor in the feeder market with the following text message:

Dear [agent name],

I’m the agent who sent you the handwritten card about paying a 30 percent referral fee for any of your clients moving to [your city]. I wanted to make it easy for you to reach me when the opportunity to refer someone presents itself. I’ve included my contact info in an easy format to find in the future. Simply save my contact info and when the opportunity presents itself search in your contacts for [your city] or 30 percent referral and my contact info will pop right up.

I look forward to treating your clients like family and paying you a referral fee of 30 percent in the future.

Thanks,

[your name]

Sending these cards to feeder market agents along with a text follow-up will provide you with referral opportunities on a consistent basis.

3 properties shown or previewed including video walk-throughs

If you don’t have appointments to show property, then you should be previewing listings in your market. The consistency of previewing three homes a day, five days a week will give you the ability to become the most knowledgeable agent in your market in a short period of time.

By taking walk-through videos of the homes, you will build a library of videos that are at your fingertips when buyers ask you about homes for sale in your market.

This knowledge and documented catalog give you the ability to set yourself apart from all other agents. The agents that know the homes for sale best can add the most value to buyers. The more value you add to buyers, the more your business grows.

2 video walk-throughs texted or emailed to prospects

Now that you have this video library of homes, let’s put them to work. Send, via text or email, two of these videos to prospective buyers every day. These buyers will see your extra work and that additional effort will lock them in as your clients.

These texts can be sent with a message along the lines of the following:

I was recently at the house located at 123 Main Street, and I immediately thought it might be something you would be interested in. I recorded a video walk-through of the home on my phone included below. Nothing fancy, but pictures never tell the whole story, so hopefully, the video gives you a better feel for the flow of the home.

Also, here is a link to property details on my website if you’d like more details on this home [put in link]. Let me know if you have any questions, would like to schedule a time to see it in person, or if you would like me to do a video walk-through of any others you may have seen online.

Have a great day, and I promise we are going to find the perfect home for you and your family.

[your name]

This is a unique way to add value to buyers. It will help you stand out as an agent that goes above and beyond. Sending these walk-through videos will lead to more sales.

1 video unsolicited CMA

The biggest question homeowners have is what the value of their home is. Providing them with a unique way of seeing homes that are currently on the market or that have recently sold will help you stand out as the most professional agent they know.

This process involves recording your screen using an app like BombBomb, Loom, or Zoom. During the recording go over the comparable sales information to give them a range of their current value.

The uniqueness of you on video going over the details of their home’s value is a way to add value that most homeowners have never seen. This is the process that helped me generate over $11 million in listings by doing 72 of them in a 90-day period. If you’d like to see the exact step-by-step plan on how to put these together, visit this article.

Executing on the one video unsolicited CMA per day alone can change your business. I know this because it changed mine.

Can success really be achieved by consistently doing seven daily activities? It absolutely can. Execute on this plan, and you will get results.

Jimmy Burgess is the CEO for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Beach Properties of Florida in Northwest Florida. Connect with him on Instagram and LinkedIn.