A new agent isn’t just an individual with a real estate license still hot off the printer… a ‘new agent’ is any agent who’s been in the business less than year, has zero sales or experience and lacks the confidence to work with buyers and sellers.
Here’s what new agent’s do have… the energy, passion and emotion necessary to serve their clients.
So why do 80% of new agents fail after just a few years?
They don’t understand the skills they need in order to succeed.
1. Working With Buyers
There are 3 essential skills that every agent needs to have if they want to be successful in real estate. The first is knowing how to work with buyers.
Working with buyers is more than just opening doors and showing homes. You have to be able to set expectations for your customers on what's going to happen, what they need to do, and what you're going to do for them.
If we're not setting expectations for our buyer clients, they are almost definitely going to be disappointed when they work with us.
In addition to setting the right expectations, you need to have stellar negotiation skills to navigate the complicated negotiations between the listing agent, seller, buyer, and yourself. Especially in a seller’s market like we find ourselves in now.
Lastly, a thorough understanding of your current market is necessary in order to work with buyers and provide a positive experience. You have to be able to provide your clients with more information than just what's on the internet and in the MLS.
You can gather this information about your local market and hyper-local market by previewing it. If you go and look at the homes that are for sale on the market (repeatedly over time), you’ll acquire that market knowledge and be able to advise clients and give them the expertise they don’t have (and that sets you apart from all the other agents).
2. Working With Sellers
The second essential skill all agents must have is knowing how to work with sellers.
Before going on a listing appointment, you have to have the right information to share with your clients in order to build confidence in your ability to serve them.
You’ll need a good process and set of questions to engage your seller clients and understand their motivation for selling in order to better serve them. Using an actual listing presentation to structure the conversation will guide the seller to the natural conclusion to hire you.
You do not want to seem like all the other real estate professionals that are out there. You have to be their trusted advisor. You have to be their expert. You have to have that special market knowledge that they value and appreciate. Your listing presentation will show your value proposition and make you the only person they want to work with.
3. Marketing
In order to work with buyers or sellers, new agents need to have marketing and sales skills. You have to be able to find clients, take care of those clients, and ultimately produce outcomes the client desires.
According to National Association of Realtors, the #1 determining factor that sellers use in choosing their agent is their reputation. You can use marketing to cultivate your reputation in the marketplace!
The easiest and quickest way to create a reputation that sets you apart and brings in clients, is to to focus on your contacts and connections. This is critical especially for new agents, because the people that already know you are the ones that are going to give you a chance - but only if they know that you’re in real estate!
Focus on providing those people with real estate related value on a consistent basis.
4. Consistency
Consistency in communication builds familiarity and trust. Just from doing this, you’ll become top of mind. Meaning, when they think of real estate, they’ll think of you and when they think of you, they’ll think of real estate.
Regardless of the amount of experience you have, it's an absolute necessity to be consistent in the messages that we put in the marketplace and in the value that we provide. That's how you succeed as a new agent!
The good thing is that it is something that you can control. You can control how consistent you are, because it's an issue of desire and will that leads to consistency.
As a new agent, you have that desire you have that will so tap into it, leverage it.
5. Sales
There are two elements of sales every agent needs to master –
- Asking questions and listening constantly for ways to better serve the customer
- Communicating your value proposition and how you are going to do just that
The average person has no idea what it takes to sell a home. In fact, before you go into real estate, YOU probably had no idea all that real estate agents do to market, price and sell a home.
So it’s important to be very specific about communicating what you do, how you do it, and the skills you utilize, as opposed to what other agents might do.
This doesn't mean you have to be an expert in marketing or a sales guru; it just means you need the basic skills necessary to take good care of your clients and effectively communicate those skills to your clients.
Plan of Action
In order to succeed as a new agent you have to master all of these skills in a short amount of time (if you want to make money anytime soon…)
Our New Agent Skills Accelerator (N.A.S.A) course is packed with all of the knowledge, training, systems, strategies, and tactics from top agents over the last 20 years. Designed specifically to help New Agents become successful, fast.
Master all of the skills necessary to become a top agent, fast. All in one simple course.
