19 Factors That Could Keep Your House From Selling
Selling your house can be an intensely emotional experience in any market, but it's particularly nerve-wracking when it seems like other homes are going under contract in a matter of days while your listing lingers. In that situation, sellers can't help but wonder if there might be something wrong with their place.Well, the unfortunate truth is that maybe there is something wrong. Usually it's the listing price, but there are a ton of other things that are keeping your house on the market -- maybe it's the marketing strategy, or even the house itself. If your house just won't seem to move in a market that's otherwise red-hot, consider whether one of these factors could be stalling a sale. The pictures are amateur It's hard to under-emphasize the importance of listing photos. Most buyers start their home search online, and your listing photos are therefore the first impression that buyers will get of the property.When all the other homes for sale in your neighborhood have crisp, clean images that show the home to its best advantage, and your listing photos are off-center, unfocused and scream "I took all of these pictures in 10 minutes with my cell phone," then don't be surprised when buyers aren't all that interested in your place. The pictures don't make the house look amazing Sometimes even if you use a professional camera (or a professional photographer), the house still doesn't look its very best in the listing photos. In this day and age of digital photography and the ability to preview and discard what's been shot, there's no excuse for shoddy images.Make sure that you're selecting only the photos that make your house shine, and if there aren't any, then you might need to reshoot. Talk to your agent and the listing photographer about shooting at a time of day when there's a lot of natural light and when the home is in pristine condition. You have too much stuff Minimalism might not be a big thing where you live, and that's perfectly fine -- while you're living there. But clutter is going to draw buyers' eyes away from the space of the room and their ability to fill it with their stuff, distracting them when you want them to be fully focused on their dream of homeownership.Garage sales, donation stations and storage units can all be a viable solution for too much stuff, but you need to get it out of the spaces where buyers can see it. (That means the closets, too -- buyers most definitely will open closets and drawers, and if all the clutter is hiding there, it doesn't leave a great impression.) It's not in great condition Some buyers are going to be fine with a fixer-upper, but working on a house is not everybody's idea of fun. Of course, no seller wants to spend money on something like a new roof or a sewer main when you're about to leave and can't reap the benefits of your investment -- but if you think a buyer is going to feel just fine about moving into a house that needs a major repair, then that could be why none have made a viable offer on your place.And sometimes the condition can be just fine, but the house hasn't entirely kept up with the neighbors. If most of the homes for sale in your area have newly updated kitchens and bathrooms, and yours are old enough to vote, then the price needs to reflect that or buyers will just move on to the next opportunity. Upgrades and fixes weren't done professionally If your profession is "home builder," then perhaps you might get a pass here, but most people who are trying to save money on home repairs will likely end up paying for it when the time comes to sell. Even if your fixes look as cosmetically solid as they would if you'd hired a pro (and that's a big if!), there's no telling what an inspector might uncover -- and the very last thing you want is for your home to go back on the market after being under contract because the inspection revealed a sub-par repair. The price is just outside a significant price band What's a price band? Consider how a buyer searches for a house: Usually they're looking on a listing portal or on the MLS, and in either case, they have a price range that fits their budget. Most search functions reflect those price ranges, allowing the buyer to search for homes between $100,000 and $150,000, or between $150,000 and $200,000, for example. The price band is simply the price range included in a search.Some sellers try to leverage sales psychology when pricing a home, so they'll price it by $1 less than the price band to entice buyers into thinking they might find a deal. For example, a seller might price a home that could sell at $300,000 at $299,999. That home would show up in a search for buyers qualified for between $250,000 and $300,000 -- but buyers qualified for $300,000 to $350,000 won't see it because it's outside their price band.Try to pick a sales price that straddles two price bands if you can, exposing it to more buyers. The price was based on an online calculator It's hard to find a homeowner who hasn't looked up their own house on a real estate portal like Zillow -- we're all curious, right? Well, even though that Zestimate price may have given you a warm fuzzy feeling, the truth is that it might not be all that accurate. Online calculators use public records data and sometimes MLS data to create their estimates, but if the data is patchy or there aren't a lot of comparable homes that have sold nearby, then the algorithm might end up pulling some numbers that just don't make any sense.Of course, this can mean an absolute steal for buyers if your automated valuation is below the home's actual value, and you could lose money on the sale. But on the flip side, if you trust that your home really is worth what the automated valuation says -- and you haven't asked an appraiser or a real estate agent what they think -- then that could be why no buyers are interested. Social media ads gave too much away Marketers know that advertising is in some ways an art of enticement. You want to give just enough away to interest buyers viewing your listing and invite them to learn more.If you give too much away in marketing, it can have the opposite effect: There's no mystery, and buyers will make a quick (potentially inaccurate) decision about whether or not they like the house. So remember, more is less -- don't put all your listing photos in a social media ad, for example, and try to leave a little bit of mystery in any listing advertising. You weren't careful about social media in other ways Loose lips sink ships -- and they also sink home sales. In an era when we're all super-connected, it's not outside the realm of possibility that a buyer might have access to what you're posting on social media, and that can come back to bite you big-time.For example, maybe you're excited about a possible bidding war, but posting "three buyers bidding against each other, can't wait to see how high these suckers go" on Facebook (or even worse, Twitter) could cause one or more of your buyers to decide they'd rather not transact with you. Even seemingly innocuous information about your neighborhood or the sights, sounds and scents around your place can turn buyers off, so think carefully before hitting "post" when you're getting ready to sell. The wrong agent is listing the home Like all of us, real estate agents have strengths and weaknesses. Some agents are great at selling condos but haven't sold any single-family homes, and that's just one of the many facets that makes up an agent's experience.It's completely understandable to go with the agent who helped you in your last sale, or a friend of a friend, but do ask any agents you interview about their experience in working with clients like you to sell houses like yours. If they don't have any, then you might be in for a long wait and several price cuts before your house moves. Showings aren't convenient for buyers One of the worst parts of selling a home is dealing with the showing process. It's a pain to keep your house spotless in case a showing gets booked, and then vacate the premises while strangers traipse through with an agent.Although sellers definitely deserve sympathy for how demanding showings can be, they're not exactly a picnic for buyers, either, who are usually trying to visit several houses in the few-hour timespan they've managed to clear out, typically on evenings and weekends when they don't have to work.If you aren't letting buyers come in and walk through on those evenings and weekends, and instead are dictating showing times that only fit your schedule, don't expect buyers to fit your home into theirs. If it's inconvenient, many qualified buyers who'd love your house will prefer to skip it. There's no marketing budget Listing the home on the MLS might be all you need to do in some markets -- but in others, there's so much "noise" that qualified buyers might miss your place entirely. Or they might not know about your neighborhood or street, so their search may not have lead them to your house.Whatever the case, there are times when a little marketing goes a long way. When you're interviewing agents, ask them if they have a marketing budget and what it covers. If they don't have a plan, then that's a sign you might want to try a different agent. There's an issue with the title If you're like most sellers, then the last time you did any research (or paid someone else to do any research) on your home's title was when you bought it. That's completely understandable, but if something has changed in the intervening years, then you might not know about it until you've worked out an offer and the title company discovers it, which is never the best time to try to sort out a potentially very complicated legal issue.Before your home is listed, it's always a good idea to conduct a title search and make sure everything is squeaky clean. You'll breathe easier during closing, anyway! The appliances are outdated No one is insinuating that you need to upgrade to all the best everything before you sell your house -- but the fact of the matter is that if most homes in your neighborhood sport the latest stainless steel kitchen appliances, and yours are avocado green and older than some of your buyers, then this might be an investment you just have to make.It's all about context and perspective. Make sure you understand how your home is measuring up against its competition in the neighborhood. It smells, or it's noisy There are a lot of things that can turn buyers off once they actually step inside a house, but two that there's almost no chance of mitigating include noise and odors. Sometimes there's nothing you can do about either -- the jets overhead or the water plant up the road are just going to do their thing sometimes -- but sometimes there's quite a bit you can do to freshen the space up for the senses.If you have pets, they may have contributed to some of the stink. Get an objective opinion (and don't shoot the messenger!) about how your house smells, and address it if the answer is "not the best." There's no curb appeal Ideally, buyers are going to start picturing your house as "theirs" as soon as they step out of the car to see it. One thing that will kill that fantasy before it even gets going is a house with little to no curb appeal.You don't need to landscape your entire outdoors, but make sure you're addressing the basics. Is the grass alive? If so, has it been mowed? Is the porch clean of clutter and swept? Could a couple of planters with flowers make it look more inviting? The listing description is flat or unrealistic Most buyers are going to look at the photos first and foremost, but many will also pay attention to the listing description. This is a chance to tell interested buyers what you love about the house, and they're going to be looking for information or nuance that they couldn't glean from the photos.For example, maybe the view from the master bathtub is your favorite in the house, or perhaps there's a greenhouse in the yard. Include details in the listing description that help the buyer round out what they know about the house from photos -- and steer away from generic descriptions if possible. Buyers see a lot of them, and they won't help your home stand out. You insist on staying during showings The impulse to do this comes from a good place nine times out of ten: You want to share all of the best features of your house with buyers, and how will they know what those are if you aren't there to help?Trust that buyers know what they are looking for and what appeals to them, and resist the impulse to give them a guided tour. It's uncomfortable at best and creepy at worst for buyers, and you'll never hear candid feedback about what they did and didn't like. Make the place look as amazing as you can, then vacate and let buyers walk through themselves. You're too attached Sometimes it's the right time to sell a house -- and sometimes it doesn't matter how hot the market is: You're just not ready to let go yet. That's a very normal feeling to have, but it can also sabotage your home sale for obvious reasons.Consider whether your attachment to the home could be undermining you in other ways, like insisting that it's worth a certain price or demanding specific concessions from your buyers. If you think it might be, then you have to decide whether your need to sell the house outweighs your desire to stay there, and act accordingly.
15 Signs It's Time To Hire A Real Estate Assistant
You may know that more productive, successful real estate agents have assistants to help them manage the minutiae of the business — but how do you know if you’re there, yet? The question of when to hire an assistant can be a daunting one for many agents, and quite a few of them realize after they get an assistant that they probably could have hired one (and been appropriately relieved) much earlier than they did. Hiring an assistant doesn’t hinge on how long you’ve been in real estate, and you can absolutely justify hiring an assistant if you could use some help with the tasks that assistants are allowed to complete. Remember that flexible arrangements, such as sharing an assistant with another agent in your office who’s at a similar stage, can help you bring help onboard faster than you otherwise would, making you more productive and saving your sanity. Is it time to hire an assistant? If these are signs that resonate with you, it’s at least time to consider it. You feel like you’ve lost your work-life balance This is the biggest sign by far that it’s time to start thinking about hiring an assistant. Everybody knows the real estate industry is nonstop, and it can also feel isolating, especially if you’re a solo agent who’s trying to juggle everything by yourself. That can be a lot of pressure for someone when the stakes are as high as someone else’s place to live, immediately or for years — it’s a stressful environment with a lot of details to remember, and it’s no wonder a lot of agents struggle to keep all those balls in the air once they reach a certain level of success. If you’re having trouble sleeping at night, consistently neglecting your family engagements for work, can’t exercise or eat well because you’re too busy — you know the signs — then consider it a serious warning that if something in your real estate career doesn’t change, you might not have a long-term real estate career. You know how much money you make (gross and net) Most agents ask themselves first whether they can afford an assistant, not whether they need one. Well, before you can assess whether you can afford an assistant, you need to know exactly how much money you make and how much of that money you take home, usually, two different numbers for real estate agents who have to factor in brokerage fees, franchise fees, pay for photos and marketing materials, or other expenses that result from assisting a home sale transaction. Last year’s tax return might help, but it would be beneficial for you to keep running track of how much money you’re generating and what you’ve got to work with so that you can start to think about standardizing pay for someone who will help you maximize your production. You know what you like and what you don’t like to do It’s probably not hard to think about the tasks that you relish and the ones you loathe when you consider the day-to-day of your job. Some agents thrive on the marketing and networking aspects of working with buyers and sellers, while others are lead-generation whizzes, and still, others make transactions run so smoothly that everyone’s head on all sides is left spinning. But nobody likes to do everything, and nobody is good at everything. Make a list of the things you have to do every day, every week, every month, and every year in your job, then divide it according to things you enjoy and things you really don’t. Are there enough things on the list of things you don’t enjoy that an assistant could tackle? If not, maybe an inside sales associate (ISA) is a better fit? You understand which activities really require your personal touch … and which don’t If your sellers really expect you to answer every phone call personally and schedule all appointments, then maybe you have an issue with a high-maintenance client base that can’t really be solved with an assistant. But there are plenty of things that require your personal touch and hand-holding with your buyers and sellers, and plenty of things that really can (and should) be delegated to someone whose time isn’t at quite as much of a premium. This isn’t just about your sellers, either. Maybe you truly believe that you have to personally craft your business Instagram and Facebook presence in order to be taken seriously as a real estate agent. And it’s possible that in your market and in your niche, you’re correct. But you also need to be aware of what activities should be most hands-on for you, and which ones you can logistically and ethically release to someone else. You have a well-structured lead generation strategy Again, this goes back to the fear that you might not be able to pay an assistant consistently. Looking harder at your business can tell you whether that fear is founded or not, and lead generation is, of course, a big part of your financial stability. If you’ve just kind of been letting leads fall in your lap and have happened to get pretty lucky, then don’t hire an assistant until you’ve been able to establish a consistent lead-generation strategy that’s yielding some solid, reliable returns for you. And keep a regular eye on whether those lead sources are continuing to work well for you or whether some of them start to run dry so that you can start to diversify before your leads disappear “without warning.” You’re consistently closing at least a couple of deals each month Depending on which market you’re in, closing about two deals a month (on average) will give you the ability to take care of your own business expenses, pay bills, and have enough left over to invest in your business somehow. Making that investment an assistant could increase your productivity and boost your earning power, so if you’ve reached the stage where you can count on closing at least two deals a month or 24 a year, then it might be time to think about onboarding someone to help with the minutiae. You know what an assistant can legally do Some real estate agents get lost in fantasies of being able to lie on a beach while an assistant handles the bulk of the heavy lifting — which is just not realistic. Real estate assistants are legally allowed by law to complete only certain tasks, and it’s critical that you know what an assistant can (and can’t) do so that you don’t run afoul of the legal system and get yourself into trouble when you were only trying to alleviate stress and elevate your business. Real estate assistants can: * Answer phones, collect mail and relay messages * Schedule appointments, including closings, home tours, and inspections * Manage social media accounts * Place advertisements and create marketing materials * Create documents, presentations, and spreadsheets * Take photos of listings and enter the listings into the MLS * Help with expenses You know what kind of assistant you need In that list of things that real estate agents can do, you may have noticed tasks that they can’t do but that you are going to need to be done. So what are your options there? One is to hire a different type of assistant that will be a better fit for your particular business needs. Real estate inside sales associates (ISAs) can legally work with clients on documents (including sales contracts), manage paperwork or prepare escrow files, or call new leads on the phone — you would need to use an ISA for these tasks. You have some time to hire and train an assistant Real estate is a seasonal business, and there are definitely some times of the year when you are simply going to be too busy to onboard anybody new; it would be too big an interruption to your flow with clients. On the flip side, there might be some times of the year when it makes perfect sense to train an assistant, such as the beginning of the year, when you might be going over all your processes anyway, identifying inefficiencies and making improvements. When you have a decent handle on your schedule and it wouldn’t be too big a burden to spend a couple of hours a day for two or three weeks training an assistant, then it might be a good time to think about hiring somebody. Make sure you carve out some time for the hiring process, too! You have a budget for paying your assistant All of this talk about financial preparation has ignored one critical component that you’ll need to lock down before you’re ready to bring an assistant on board — the budget. It’s a smart idea to wait until you have three or four months’ wages for your assistant set back, whether you’re hiring someone part-time to share with another agent or two, or you’re hoping to have your own full-time helper bee. If you haven’t yet figured out where this money is going to come from, start by assessing the wages for good assistants in your area (no point in aiming low), then figure out how many hours a week you’d need, and do your best to stash up at least twelve to sixteen weeks’ pay for an assistant. Then you can feel like a responsible employer. You feel comfortable ceding control in some areas Some agents gravitate toward real estate expressly because they can control a business down to some of its most minute details. If that’s you, then you might find it hard to hire an assistant specifically because you don’t want to give up control of what you’ve built, and that is an entirely understandable sentiment. It’s also one that’s going to cost you a lot of time and energy over the long term as you spend your own precious minutes on tasks that are, frankly, below your pay grade at a certain level of real estate sales. Where do you feel comfortable giving up control to an employee — one you’ve hired and trained yourself? If you just can’t see handing over the steering wheel in any capacity to someone else, then you’re probably just not ready (or not desperate enough), and that’s OK. It’s better to understand that now than hire someone and realize you don’t want to give them anything to do! You’ve talked to your mentors about hiring an assistant Every real estate agent should have trusted mentors to provide advice; if you don’t, that’s a separate conversation. Hopefully, you do, and you can bounce questions off them about hiring an assistant. Ask them when they made the move in their careers and whether they wish they would have done it sooner or later — and why. Try to get as many details as you can about what went smoothly and what pitfalls they didn’t expect. Maybe your mentors have assistants today and you could ask them for their perspective about what they wish they knew about the job, their thoughts on training and, and anything else that you might want to know. After all, if you have resources, it makes sense to use them! You have a system for keeping track of transactions An assistant can help you communicate with clients to some extent, but they’re going to need to know what’s happening before they can tell one of your buyers or sellers what’s going on while you’re otherwise occupied. So you’ll need a way to keep track of everything ongoing that clearly delineates to your assistant where it’s fine for them to be involved and where they would need more training in order to respond to a question or request. This will also benefit you from a bookkeeping perspective, and any partners you work within the title or mortgage world will appreciate your newfound organization if you haven’t already systematized your transactions. You’re organized enough to start handing over some tasks Another barrier some agents have to hire an assistant is that they are barely hanging on to the current state of affairs by tooth and nail; they definitely don’t have time to pause and outline job responsibilities and transitions, let alone even think about the mess that can be the hiring process. If that describes you, then you probably already know an assistant is more critical for you, personally than ever. Start by getting organized with some of the smaller tasks that you know an assistant can help with, such as scheduling appointments and entering listings into the MLS. Maybe you can hire someone part-time to start, with the understanding that you’ll ramp up hours as you get more organized. Technology won’t solve your challenges There are a lot of fun toys available for real estate agents in this day and age, and it’s entirely possible that one of those is going to be a decent answer to your problem. Perhaps you don’t really need an assistant to handle your social media posting and instead, there’s an app that will coordinate everything just as well. The question you have to ask yourself is, how well do you need these things done, and is it really something you can trust in technology? A bot that schedules appointments might work fine for something simple, but for a more complicated request, you might need a human involved. Similarly, maybe your social media needs a personal touch. Use technology tools where you can, but don’t become blinded to their limits. Some agents struggle with the question of when to hire help for their business. If any of these scenarios describe your life as an agent, it might be time to think about bringing an assistant on board, boosting your productivity and catapulting you into the next echelon of real estate success.
Should You Host A Real Estate Seminar To Generate Leads?
When seeking new and different lead-generation strategies, you’ve probably come across the recommendation to host a real estate seminar for potential clients. It’s a common way for real estate agents to get their names and brands out into the community, meet possible buyers and sellers, and explain how a qualified agent can smooth the real estate process. If you’ve ever tried to create a seminar, though, you know that to craft a good one, you need to invest quite a bit of time and possibly some money into the effort. Is creating a real estate seminar something you should consider in your real estate business? These 13 questions will help you determine whether it’s a good strategy for you right now and give you some tips for how to get started. Do you have an audience in mind? It’s not enough to say that you want to target more buyers and sellers. You’ll need to get pretty specific in order to create a real estate seminar that actually brings qualified leads to you. For example, maybe you can create a seminar for first-time homebuyers about how to save up for a down payment, how credit affects the home purchase process and what they can do to improve theirs, down payment or loan assistance programs, different types of loans, how to shop for a home, what to know about closing — there are myriad opportunities to target buyers at the appropriate stage of the sales journey, but first, you have to identify that stage. For sellers, seminars on home renovations or repairs that yield high returns, renting instead of selling, selling a house as an FSBO (this seems counterintuitive, but once many sellers realize just how much work is involved, they will be happy to talk to you!), staging, and more. Investors might be interested in seminars about the history of different developments in your area, how to navigate cash sales, the big home repair red flags in your region, and so on. And you can capture current homeowners with seminars about renovations and repairs, how to leverage vacation-rental trends and rent their house out part-time, and much more. When you know the audience you’re trying to reach, you’ll no doubt come up with plenty of ideas for things they might need to know, but if you try to create a seminar for everybody in your market, it’s not going to appeal to anybody. Get as specific as you can with your audience. What topic will you choose? Now that the audience has been narrowed down, it’s time to choose your seminar’s topic. Some agents find success in starting with the most frequently asked questions they get from buyers or sellers, while others might make the decision based on their own current lead-generation needs. If possible, you can establish some mini focus groups or conduct polls and ask your own existing clients what they wish they would have known, or tap clients who already trust you and who are representative of the audience you’re trying to reach. Provide a list of possible topics and ask them which would be most appealing to them right now. You can also ask your fellow real estate agents who have created seminars — either other locals or agents from across the country via sources like Facebook groups — which topics yielded the best results for them. Can you avoid a sales pitch? There’s one thing that will without a doubt make your seminar a crushing failure, and that’s turning it into an opportunity to pitch your services to your audience instead of providing them with educational, actionable information that benefits them more than you. Of course, you should set your seminar up so that you can introduce yourself to the attendees and follow up with them when it’s over (more on that later), but ideally, this will be a marketing strategy that you can iterate on with future seminars on more topics. If word gets out that all you’re doing is asking people to list or buy with you, that strategy is going to be dead on arrival. Instead of telling your audience why they should hire you as an agent, focus on providing them with the best, most up-to-date, and relevant information that you possibly can around the topic. You want them to walk away from the seminar with their heads full of new facts and details about real estate because then you will become a reliable source of real estate information to everyone in the audience. If your follow-up process also prioritizes delivering timely, useful information to clients, when they are ready to buy or sell, you will be the first source they turn to for how to start the journey. Can you find a co-sponsor? One note: It is currently legal to offer educational seminars with co-sponsors, but check RESPA (the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act) to ensure you aren’t running afoul of laws around real estate co-marketing agreements. Generally speaking, a seminar is fine if it is co-sponsored by a real estate agent and another real estate entity (such as a mortgage broker, an insurance provider, or a title agency) when the costs are split equally between the sponsors, attendees are not required to do business with both sponsors if they think they want to do business with one, and both sponsors follow up with attendees in a legal and respectful manner. But if you plan to co-sponsor your seminar, please make sure you run your plan by someone qualified to check it for legal and regulatory pitfalls. Now that you have your audience and topic narrowed down, you can think about bringing a sponsor into the picture. You absolutely do not have to co-sponsor your seminar with anybody, but it can be beneficial for all parties to consider it. For example, let’s say you’re hosting a seminar for first-time homebuyers about how to save up for a down payment. A mortgage broker who can discuss loan programs with low-down-payment options could be a great addition to that seminar, providing attendees with even more information; that mortgage broker can also join forces with you by leveraging their own sphere of influence to bring in new attendees. Attendees get more reliable details about how to accomplish their goals, and you and your sponsor partner both get access to a new pool of leads. It is critical that a good co-sponsor is on the same page as you are as far as the content of the seminar goes. It’s not going to be good for you if you pack your part of the seminar full of useful knowledge, and your co-sponsor decides to spend the same amount of time on a sales pitch. One way to avoid this — and a good best practice no matter what — is to run through the talk in advance at least once with your co-sponsor so that there are no surprises. Are you comfortable putting together a talk? Your seminar doesn’t have to be as slick as a keynote presentation at a conference that costs thousands of dollars to attend, but you should still put enough effort into it that attendees feel it’s a professional, well-executed event. This means you’ll probably want to put together a slide deck or create some videos or provide some kind of visual supplement to the things you’ll be discussing. Fortunately, if you’re not comfortable using software to create a compelling presentation, and you have no interest in learning, this is something you can outsource pretty easily as far as the actual presentation goes … though you’ll still be on the hook for putting together the seminar as a whole. (Please, don’t just show up planning to wing it!) To get started, write down a list of everything you know about your topic, then see if you can group some of the items on that list and then arrange the groups into a series of points. Once you have your outline and an idea of where you’re going, the presentation should be relatively easy to produce. Are you comfortable actually talking? There is such a thing as an introverted real estate agent, and those agents might prefer to focus on other methods of generating leads besides seminars. Remember, in a seminar, you are going to be standing up in front of a group of strangers and attempting to convince them that you are competent, trustworthy, and a good businessperson. If you suffer from stage fright and know that your public speaking skills aren’t up to scratch, then it’s a good idea to address those things (Toastmasters?) before you launch a seminar as a lead-generation tactic. On the other hand, very few people feel completely at home while educating a room full of strangers. A modicum of stage fright is absolutely normal and human, so don’t procrastinate by trying to eliminate your stage fright entirely before you’ll commit to creating a seminar. What materials will you provide for attendees? It’s a good idea to offer some take-home materials for your seminar guests, both to help them remember what you said and to provide an easy way for them to find your contact information if they have questions (or want to reach out about hiring you!). You can create a handout or a packet of handouts, of course, but another easy way to distribute materials can be through USB flash drives that you provide for everyone. In addition to the materials and handouts, tell your attendees that you’ll send them a copy of your slide deck if they provide their email addresses for your follow-up process. If you have the time and your seminars are popular enough, eventually you might want to put together a guide or an ebook that you can offer to send attendees for free as a lead magnet. Do you have a space to host it? Your brokerage real estate office may be big enough to accommodate your seminar group, but if it’s not, or if you’re co-sponsoring the seminar, you might want to find an alternative venue. Library and hotel conference rooms are popular spots for agents to host seminars. Hotel conference rooms tend to offer more amenities, but libraries are free; make a decision based on the convenience of your attendees and your own budget for the seminar. Some companies might even ask you to come in and present to employees on topics like saving up for a down payment if your seminars are up to scratch, so once you’ve started working on this strategy, you may be able to pitch big employers in your area and ask if you can come in for a lunch-and-learn. What dates and times would be best? You might need to think more strategically about this than you imagined. If your audience is going to include a lot of buyers with small children, then evenings might not be easy; you may need to offer your seminar on a weekend during the day and perhaps provide child care. And if there are other events happening nearby that could conflict with your seminar, you’ll want to avoid scheduling your seminar at the same dates and times. If there are dueling times or dates, think about possibly scheduling a second one after the first. There’s no reason why you can’t try to accommodate everyone’s schedules who might be interested in hearing what you have to say. How will you market? There are infinite ways you can tell the community about your seminar, from fliers in different public spaces to social media campaigns to advertising in local news outlets and beyond. Again, this is a good time to consider your audience. Ask yourself where you can find them during the day and how you might use those spaces (digital and real) to your advantage. Potential first-time homebuyers might be lurking in the neighborhood Facebook groups or on Nextdoor, and as long as you’re clear that your seminar is primarily educational, most groups will allow you to advertise your seminar to the users. Coffeeshops and recreation centers or libraries with public bulletin boards can also be popular choices. If your CRM is in good shape and you have contact information and sales journey stages determined for your contacts, you can also use targeted email campaigns to let the people in your sphere know about your event. (And we know you know this is a good thing to do anyway for lead-generation purposes.) What’s your prep plan? Running through your seminar with an audience of loved ones to provide feedback is a good idea, but setting up for success at your seminar is about more than just feeling confident in your presentation. Will you have beverages available for your clients? Just iced bottled water, or will you also provide coffee and tea? Where will your attendees sit? Will you pass out the handout materials to them once you’re seated, or make them available on a table while attendees walk in? Will you provide pens for them to take notes? Will there be desks or tables for them to sit their drinks and materials? How will you capture contact information? Who will set the room up? Think about the experience you’re seeking for your attendees, from beginning to end, and then consider what you need to execute it and how long it might take. You could wind up spending several hours or even a full day preparing for and delivering your seminar, so make sure you accommodate for that time in the rest of your schedule. Do you have a plan for circling back with possible clients? There’s no sense in creating a seminar if you don’t know how you’re going to reconnect with the attendees after they leave. Your first priority should be to provide an educational, informational experience for them, but right behind it should be capturing an email address or phone number so that you can follow up with everybody who came. Remember to mention that you will email your slide deck and any supplemental materials you can offer to attendees if they write down their email address on the form. In addition to deciding how you’re going to collect all of this information — a paper form? signing in on an iPad? — you should prepare to create as many materials as you can to offer your attendees as a thank-you for their attendance. Most people won’t mind providing you with an email address if they know they’re going to get something in return, and you can then use their email address to follow up with more information about buying or selling when they’re ready. Will you do this regularly? It isn’t the best use of your time to offer the same seminar over and over again every month, but if you put together more than one seminar, you can start cycling through them once or twice a year, updating them every time. The hard work of creating the seminar will be complete, so you might as well iterate on what works; then you can also apply some of what you’ve learned and maybe incorporate some of the questions and requests from past attendees. You don’t have to offer seminars as a real estate agent, but it can be a wonderful lead-generation strategy and a good way to build your brand in your local community as a trusted expert advisor. If you do decide to create a seminar, think about how you can make it as useful as possible for your audience, then don’t forget to follow up. The more seminars you put together, the better they will all become, and the more people in your community will refer to you when they have a question about real estate.
Categories
Recent Posts
