Critical Mistakes to Avoid with Your Real Estate Business

Everyone makes mistakes—even the most seasoned real estate professionals.

Regardless of how many years of experience you have in real estate, you’ll likely make an unyielding decision or engage in an unfavorable trade.

From neglecting follow-ups to not having a functional website to not taking advantage of digital marketing channels… real estate agents make a lot of critical mistakes. But what sets great agents apart from the not so great ones is that great agents don’t make the same mistake twice.

Some mistakes are very common and basic while others are critical and could steer you down the same path taken by the 87% of agents who quit within the first 5 years. Take your real estate business to new heights by avoiding these critical mistakes. 

1. Neglecting to Follow Up with Current & Future Clients

Following up with current and future clients is the number one thing that every agent should do to build their client roster and grow their business.

Effective follow-up strategies are popular for a reason: They get results.

IRC’s research indicates that marketers who follow up with leads within the first few minutes are nine times more likely to convert them. According to IRC, not following up on leads can cost you as much as 98% of your sales.

2. Not Using the Right Tools

In today’s tech-centric world, the biggest mistake you can make as an agent is to rely on archaic methods of doing business.  

First, you’ll need to invest in transaction management software that will manage your transactions and help you stay organized. Agents who take the manual route often suffer from cases of lost documents, missed deadlines, and critical tasks falling through the cracks.

But with robust transaction management software, you’re able to see the status of each upcoming task and set critical due dates based on various milestones, so you will never miss a deadline or face compliance issues.

Next, you’ll need to invest in tools that will help you generate quality leads. This may include REDX, Boldleads, and social media tools like Hootsuite. Last but not the least, you’ll need a quality camera for real estate photography, especially if you’re a listing agent.

3. Not Hiring an Assistant

Hiring an assistant or a transaction coordinator (TC) is not an expense. It’s an investment that pays high dividends.

Imagine what 7 extra hours of prospecting a week would do for your business.

Real estate agents often make the mistake of seeing an assistant as a business expense that must be dealt with. They end up tied up in the office doing a lot of administrative duties and other tasks that are not much impactful to the business.

But, when you hire a TC, you free up your time so you can focus on more important tasks like prospecting, meeting up with clients, networking, and more.

4. Not Focusing Marketing Efforts on the Most Impactful Areas

One of the reasons why a vast majority of agents fail within the first five years is “Not knowing how to market their business.”

Many think marketing is all about bombarding prospects with curated sales messages. Others spend their marketing budget on channels that don’t yield results—newspapers, real estate magazines, etc.

Print marketing may seem like a visible place to place your ads. But in today’s digital age, you’ll need to place your ads in mediums where the digital buyer can see them—picture social media, blogs, real estate portals, etc.

According to a recent Omnicore report, traditional methods such as direct mail and cold calling yield a 1.8% conversion rate. SEO, on the other hand, has a 14.7% conversion rate, making it the best option for your marketing in today’s digitally-connected world.

By avoiding these mistakes, you’ll be able to scale your business to new heights and eradicate unnecessary future problems.