For the most part, real estate agents pride themselves on providing exceptional service to their buyers and sellers—so much service that they end up failing themselves by not keeping their pipeline full. They over-service their transactions in some cases and then once those deals close, they find themselves out of business and starting the prospecting game all over again.
I have seen this over and over, hundreds of times. Agents spend all their time servicing the one or two deals they must close and fail to focus on any new business. This creates the infamous “feast and famine” effect, leaving the agent disappointed and without a listing, sale or income for the month.
It is even more important to focus on the new business calls your agents should be making to create and generate new business than it is to call and follow up with their existing clients. Read that again.
Agents are much more comfortable calling their existing clients than they are picking up the phone and contacting new people to get new business. It’s easier and, therefore, those are the calls that happen. I encourage you to motivate your agents to make more calls to new opportunities that will generate new listings or sales first, even before calling current clients or contacting the other agent on a home inspection resolution situation.
Here are key action items that will keep your team members focused on the highest and best use of their time: prospecting and generating new business opportunities:
- Time block the money hours. Time is money and it’s time to sell. Have your agents map out their week with daily prospecting time blocked on the calendar. Every activity they do is time blocked for success—even personal and professional activities.
- Designate service calls and prospecting calls on the calendar. Servicing calls are calls to existing clients. They either are clients that are listed, or they just bought a home. Prospecting calls are calls agents make to generate new business for themselves. There is a huge difference.
- Get out of the comfort zone and start before you are ready. We all must jump in the deep end quickly without overthinking things. The sooner your agents get into the habit of being successful, the sooner they will experience successful results that will show up in new listings, sales under contract and income. The feeling of fear or projected rejection needs to be eliminated and the fastest way for your team members to get over that is to just start before they are ready. Getting out of their comfort zone is the first step—being okay with being uncomfortable helps overcome the fear. Tell your agents to have the confidence to know that so they will succeed and just start doing it.
- Keep the pipeline of buyer and seller leads full. Keeping a large and full pipeline of listing and buyer leads is key. It’s crucial to long-term success and growth and if done properly, will provide months of months of listings and sales. Keeping the pipeline full is the answer to predictable and consistent monthly income and it works.
- Being strategic, intentional and on-purpose. Show your agents how to be strategic to get calls. By first realizing that there is a distinct and powerful difference between “service” calls and “new business” calls, it becomes clear to your agents where they need to be disciplined, focused and determined to separate these types of calls and time block for the highest level of success. Turn up the dial of success for your agents and help them see the difference of the calls they are making, and it will make a huge difference in their year in 2022!
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Sherri Johnson is CEO and founder of Sherri Johnson Coaching & Consulting. With over 20 years of experience in real estate as an agent, broker, and executive, Johnson offers coaching, consulting and keynote speaking services nationwide. She is a national speaker for the Homes.com Secrets of Top Selling Agents tour and is the Official Real Estate Coach for McKissock Learning and Real Estate Express. Sherri has also been named a RISMedia Real Estate Newsmaker in 2020 and 2021 as an Industry Influencer and Thought Leader. Visit www.sherrijohnson.com for more information.
