Becoming a successful part time real estate agent doesn’t happen over night. Furthermore, it takes an entrepreneurial mindset, dedication and consistent work to developing your business. Let’s take a look at these 10 steps to building your successful part time real estate business.
Step 1: Successful Part Time Real Estate Agents Create A Business Plan
Create a business plan for your successful part time real estate business. This keeps you focused and holds you accountable on your WHY. Why are you building this business? Is it for financial freedom? To build generational wealth for your family? An additional source of income? These are all questions that you will be answer in your business plan. Furthermore, a well thought out real estate business plan shows you:
- Where your business is today and your mission statement (your WHY)?
- What are the 1 year, 5 year, 10 year, etc. future goals for your business?
- How will you achieve your goals?
- What are the key performance indicators (KPI) that will measure your progress towards your goals?
- When and how you will recognize when a change is necessary? Should you stay with your current goals or change them?
Step 2: Successful Part Time Real Estate Agents Have a Lead Management
Learning how to successfully gain and manage your potential clients can be a daunting task. Most successful part time real estate agents utilize a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. This will keep you organized, connected with all of your clients, and grow your relationships. Most brokerages will offer their in house CRM system to use, but you can also purchase one on your own. These systems can be costly, so utilizing your brokers CRM system may be more cost effective to start with. Here are a few examples a CRM can be used as a powerful tool for your real estate business:
- Send automatic personalized email marketing and monthly newsletter campaigns.
- Set up re-engagement campaigns.
- Keep track your referrals.
- Set up gift campaigns for birthdays, special occasions or memorable events such as closing on your house.
- Keep in constant contact with leads and past/current clients on new products or events.
- Powerful automated follow up messages based on previous activity from your prospective clients.
On more ways to generate leads as a new real estate agent, click here.
Step 3: Successful Part Time Real Estate Agents Create a Routine That You Can Stick With
One of the benefits of becoming a part time agent is for the time freedom to work around your schedule. However, developing a routine for building and cultivating meaningful leads is key to becoming successful part time real estate business.
A successful part time real estate agent’s daily schedule generally consists of:
- A morning routine that puts you in the right mindset. Examples include, read a book, mediation, exercise, or anything else that gets you pumped up for the day.
- Schedule tasks aimed at achieving your daily, weekly and monthly goals, while developing future business planning and accountability.
- Prospecting and nurturing leads.
- Completing transaction paperwork necessary for closing deals.
- Blocking time for showings, buyer and seller appointments, and marketing.
- Education and training. Setting aside blocks of time, above all will keep your real estate business always moving forward and improving.
- Scheduling YOU time. Juggling a full time job and launching a successful part time real estate business requires you to be on your A game all the time. Consequently, if you don’t schedule daily time for self care, your physical and mental health will suffer greatly. Daily tasks such as a daily walk, mediation, naps, exercise, nourishing yourself with healthy meals, etc will help you keep crushing it both in your full time job and part time real estate business.
Step 4: Successful Part Time Real Estate Agents Become a Lifelong Learners
The pre-licensing coursework is just the beginning of your educational real estate journey. In order to stay up-to-date with the latest in real estate, you must be continuously educating yourself. A successful part time real estate agent will:
- Constantly review and keep in the know of any changes in the market and neighborhoods you serve.
- Keep up to date with current mortgage rates.
- Review any changes to the current real estate laws and practices. Furthermore, check in with your state requirements for continuing education requirements.
- Keep up with any new technologies and tools that may help grow your business.
- Equally important, attend any relevant trainings that will help you build your business and personal brand.
Step 5: Successful Part Time Real Estate Agents Get the Training and Experience
The training you need to become a successful part time real estate agent is crucial. Furthermore, learning from other agents or brokers who have years of experience can help you avoid costly newbie mistakes. Here are some examples of the training and experience you need to be a successful part time real estate agent:
- Learn your brokerages rules and policies. This will help you avoid any issues down the line and making any costly mistakes. Additionally, attending your brokerage’s weekly meeting will keep you up to date with any changes in the real estate industry.
- Attend trainings on a weekly basis. Even though we touched on this in the last section, it is worth mentioning this again. Take advantage of all of the training programs your broker offers. Likewise, other ways to find training is to search for podcasts, YouTube videos or read books.
- Find yourself a mentor. Preferably one who is currently a successful real estate agent as they are going to have the most relevant information. Also, finding multiple mentors may be beneficial to you. They bring different knowledge and opinions that could give you different insights and aspects of growing your business.
- Put in the reps. Just like going to the gym and putting in your daily reps for building your stamina up, you will need to do the same as a real estate agent. The best way to do this is to gain experience by hosting open houses, filling out the real estate paperwork until your are comfortable writing and understand them or shadowing other agents on their listing and buyers appointment.
Step 6: Successful Part Time Real Estate Agents Build a Referral Network
Building a referral network is a powerful source of lead generation that is key to becoming a successful part time real estate agent. As part time agents, we don’t have the time to field every lead that is generated through traditional pay-for-play lead generation techniques. We have to be intentional of our time and building a strong referral network is one way to do it. Here are some tips of building a strong referral network, especially when your time is limited:
- Provide service above and beyond when working with your clients.
- Keep in contact with your clients, even after the deal is done. For example, one way to do this is to provide gifts on special occasions, birthdays, anniversaries, life-changing evens (like a new baby on the way), etc. Keeping in contact with your past clients will not only show your clients how much you value them but it will keep your name top of mind, especially if they know some one in need of your services.
- Have a good working relationship with other agents on the other side of the deal. If they remember how great an experience it was working with you, they may be more likely to refer a client to you.
- Be involved with your community. Attending conferences and events will keep you top of people’s mind and will show that you are a contributing member of the community you serve. Hosting food trucks, block parties, and working with local charities are just a few ways you can give back to the community.
Step 7: Successful Part Time Real Estate Agents Keep a Budget
Have a budget is important for any business, but it is especially important if you want to run a successful part time real estate business. You should be planning for no guaranteed income for the first 60-90 days and that you will need to pay for your expenses up front. The good news, since we are still holding our full time job, your main expenses are being covered as before, but we need to now budget in our real estate expenses as well.
It is also a good idea to have about 3-9 month cash reserve set aside, just in case any out of the ordinary expenses come up. Here are a few examples of expenses that you may incur for your real estate business:
Education, training and real estate conferences: This will vary greatly, but if your current broker does not offer these for free, you may be expected to spend $100-$1,500 per year or more, depending on which activities you choose.
Marketing and advertising: You could spending anywhere in the area of $100-$500 per month for a website, social media, flyers, postcards, and other marketing expenses. Often times when starting up, you are putting more of your time into the marketing aspect of your business, but as you get busier, you may need to start allocating a larger budget.
Managing your cash flow and building a budget that works for your business is key. You should strongly consider purchasing a business data base, such as QuickBooks, to manage your daily, monthly, and yearly expenses. Also opening a separate business bank account and business credit card will help you keep your business expenses separate from your personal expenses, which will help your tax accountant file your taxes and keep you out of IRS hot water.
Step 8: Successful Part Time Real Estate Agents Treat Your Clients They Way You Want to Be Treated
A large part of becoming a successful part time real estate agent is learning how to engage with your clients and provide value. One of the best ways of doing this is to follow the golden rule: Treat others the way you would like to be treated. Here are a few attributes that will serve you well when you serve others:
- Trustworthy
- Responsive
- Polite and respectful
- Respects personal value
- Positive reputation in the community
Think back to a time when you were working with an individual in sales and had a great experience. What did that encounter entail? You may have walked away and experienced all of the above attributes from that salesperson, all of which had nothing to do with the sale itself. At the end of the day, people want to do business with people who they know, like and trust.
Step 9: Successful Part Time Real Estate Agents Build Your Presence Online
Building your online presence is so crucial to becoming a successful part time real estate agent. Your potential clients are already on various social media platforms, so you need to be where your clients are at. Regularly updating your website and social media platforms with informative content that provides your clients value – is a great way to become successful.
- Build a website. Whether you utilize a website offered by your brokerage or if you build your own, keeping your website updated with search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, informative blog posts, provide multiple ways of getting in touch and clear calls to action is a great way for your site to be found, and used by your clients.
- Develop a social media strategy. Sharing market updates, listings, creating ads that target clients, engaging with your social media connections and providing valuable shareable content like real estate articles, and blog posts will help you build a better online presents. Also, keep in mind that there is no way you can be on all the social media platforms, nor that you should. Do only the ones that you like and what you are currently on and this will come across naturally to your social media connections.
Step 10: Successful Part Time Real Estate Agents Communicate Effectively
Learning how to communicate effectively with your potential and current clients is trait of successful part time real estate agent. You will need to become masterful on all of these modes of communication:
- Text messaging. Text messages can get a quick response and can be used to prompt further communication with your clients via other modes of communication. This is becoming increasingly preferred by both buyers and sellers.
- Phone calls. A phone conversation is a great way for your clients to hear your personality come through. It is also vital to setting up future appointments and converting leads.
- Email. Sending an email is often the most preferred method of communication, especially if you need to establish a paper trail with your client and allows your customer time to digest information. It can also be your lowest form of communication, because it is least personable. None-the-less it is still a great way to follow up with clients and generate leads as it keeps you in top of find fairly easily.
- Video messages and virtual meetings. Especially considering the world we live in today, video messages and virtual meetings are become the best way of communication with clients. It allows you to not only convey your personality and tone, but also your expressions and feelings.
- Meet your clients face to face. This is still one of the best ways to communicate with your clients, especially if you are trying to build a genuine report with them and continued referral business. This is the best way to build trust and establish a relationship with your clients that will be with you for years.
Conclusion
In conclusion, embarking on a journey as a part-time real estate agent can be a fulfilling and rewarding endeavor if approached with dedication and strategic planning. The 10 steps outlined in this blog post provide a comprehensive guide to set you on the path to success in the ever-evolving real estate industry.
By thoroughly researching and meeting state requirements, investing in quality education, and aligning yourself with a supportive brokerage, you can lay a solid foundation for your part-time career. Building a robust network, establishing an online presence, and leveraging technology will help you reach a broader audience and enhance your professional credibility.
Effective time management, goal-setting, and a commitment to continuous learning are crucial elements for sustained success. Providing excellent customer service and staying attuned to market trends will contribute to client satisfaction and, in turn, generate positive referrals.
Remember, success in real estate is a journey, not a destination. Regularly assess your goals, adapt to industry changes, and embrace new opportunities for growth. Whether you’re supplementing your income or exploring a passion, being a successful part-time real estate agent in 2024 is within reach with the right mindset and a well-executed plan. Best of luck on your journey to becoming a thriving part-time real estate professional!
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