CONTRIBUTORSElite AgentFEATURE INTERVIEWS

Five critical pillars to drive your business

Real estate doesn’t have to be hard, if you have the right strategy. Claudio Encina examines the five critical areas you need to ensure are working together to achieve a constant flow of leads, sales and success.

Every real estate agent’s business is built on five pillars: how to attract new and future business, nurture those prospects, convert them to listings, manage vendor expectations, and work as many buyers as possible.

Everything in your business should have a system.

A system is how all of the interrelated parts in your business work together to produce a predictable result.

Without these five pillars and the systems for each, you’re just flying blind, and your business won’t take off as you want it to.

Let’s look at these pillars in closer detail. 

1. LEAD GENERATION

How do you find new and future business constantly?

There are three parts to lead generation.

For each sales campaign, you should aim to book four market appraisals, one listing opportunity and one listing.

We call this the ‘circle sales’.

Also, commonly known as hot-spotting, some agents drop a just listed or just sold DL card with a spray and pray approach.

You should have at least 14 touch points and a specific checklist with online and offline activities to have someone raise their hand for a market appraisal. 

Do you have a farm area or a business development area (BDA)? Outside sales are another part of lead generation.

You need to position yourself as the expert. You’re considered the expert when the people in your community see you as the resource, someone that does the research for them and gets the results.

Anything from letterbox drops, social media market updates or offering a quarterly report when door knocking helps people see you with ‘value perception’.

Value perception is presence + relevancy + consistency + frequency + authenticity = trust.

Be that trusted advisor in your community.

The final part of attracting leads is your database or ‘inside sales’.

These are the people that already know who you are, what you do and what you offer.

You have a database or, as someone said to me, call it a customer base.

2. NURTURE LEADS

How you nurture your leads is the second critical driver in your business.

Nurturing is about progressing people from the top of the funnel to the middle of the funnel and becoming a warm prospect.

There are many ways to nurture prospects today with various technology platforms, including artificial intelligence (AI) and customer relationship management (CRM) to stay in touch and have more meaningful conversations.

3. CONVERT

The third critical driver of your business is conversion.

One of the metrics you need to measure in your business is how many listing appointments you convert to a listing.

We’ve all heard that the money is made in the conversion.

If you have ever wondered why you didn’t get a listing, it’s usually because the prospect didn’t feel certain about you or your strategy.

Establishing this certainty needs to happen at the start of the listing appointment. 

Most of your listing appointments will be with people who have no idea how the presentation will go.

All they know is that they want to sell and have someone who can get them the highest sale price, in the least amount of time with the least amount of hassle.

Clarity is how you will take them on this journey and confidence is what you will use to get them their price.

4. VENDOR MANAGEMENT

The fourth pillar is about having the framework to manage vendors, especially in a see-sawing market.

Managing vendors’ expectations is key to a successful sale.

Set the foundation at a ‘set to sell’ meeting before launching the property.

Also, including detailed weekly reports with a face-to-face meeting will ensure the vendors’ expectations are in check.

5. BUYER MANAGEMENT

Buyer management is the important final pilar.

Developing a buyer management system will ensure ‘rapport opens doors’.

To build rapport, you need a strategy to boost the buyer experience, starting with buyers at open homes.

It is about having an effective buyer management plan to create buyer relationships.

The most effective way to service the buyers is to come from a place of wanting to ‘help’ rather than ‘sell’.

Now is the time to dial in on the five pillars that are critical to your success.

If you’d like to hear more from Claudio check out our Sales Caffeine Coaching program – the next kick-off date is the 24th of June.

Show More

Claudio Encina

Claudio Encina works directly with some of the leading agents and sales teams in Australia to identify how to deliver optimum performance. For more information visit claudioencina.com.