People choose to pursue careers as real estate agents for varying reasons. However, the top of these reasons is to earn a six-figure income and eventually become a millionaire real estate agent. For many, making their first million in the business seems like a pipe dream. For others, it means grinding for long torturous hours to achieve the daily, weekly, and even monthly goals.
While working hard is a primary factor in becoming successful as a real estate agent, there’s more to that. It also involves intentionally broadening your skills and knowledge in the field. You need to understand other areas directly related to the business, such as marketing. Once you hit your goals, you also have to scale higher to reach bigger targets.
Millionaire real estate agents realize that their success is entirely dependent on their daily habits. If you’re new to the business, or you want to scale it to achieve your first million, here are three major concepts that will help propel you to six-figure levels and beyond.
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Get Your First 100k Income.
How do you get to earning a million as a real estate agent? Well, first you must earn your first 100 thousand. This all comes down to prospecting. Many agents get into the real estate business and don’t realize how much work and output it actually takes to make your first 100k.
Getting to your first 100k income is not as easy as it may seem on paper. Statistics show that only 20% of all real estate agents earn above this figure. Agents who achieve six-figure incomes spend more time on technology and significantly boost their marketing efforts. Of course, you can’t stand out while doing the bare minimum.
The more you spend, the more you make money. For example, six-figure agents are more likely to invest in producing quality blog content or a YouTube channel to build a their personal brand in the community.. They realize that these brand building investments can bring in more business by referrals.
Also, you need to realize that building a six-figure business can’t be achieved in a day, week or month. Most of the successful agents have about five to ten years of experience in the field. This means that you need to have a lot of patience and tenacity. Think of it as a marathon, not a sprint.
So, what are the steps involved in making your first 100k in real estate income? First, you need to figure out which method you’ll use for prospecting. Some of the most common prospecting methods include:
- Door knocking: This is simply walking around local neighborhoods, knocking on doors, and meeting people to see if they have a need for your service or simply build relationships. While it may seem a bit outdated, it’s still a powerful strategy as it requires very little capital investment. You also have a chance to make a great first impression and leave a mark on someone new.
- Cold calling: As the name suggests, cold calling involves calling prospects who haven’t shown an active interest in your business. Many agents have written off this method as a dead strategy. They are wrong. If done right, cold calling expands your prospect reach, provides immediate feedback, and doesn’t require an already established network.
- Referrals: The real estate business is built around relationships. By serving your clients well, you ensure they are satisfied with your services. Further, you help them achieve their dreams. You can ask them to refer your business to their friends and family. Referrals can also come from other agents you’ve worked with in the past or even other agents out of state.
As a real estate business owner, you need to realize that no leads mean no sales. Any serious agent considers lead generation and prospecting a principal focus of their real estate business. This doesn’t change even when you are more established. Most top producers we have spoken with still believe in prospecting. In fact, your prospecting plate may become fuller as your business grows.
You have to spend more time on prospecting and less time on everything else. Become innovative and adopt new ways of reaching out to your clients. For example, being present on social media platforms is a remarkable way to educate your following and build relationships. If your followers want to buy real estate, you become the first person they think of.
Lead generation also involves the process of converting your prospects into clients. This is why you need a lead generation system . Your system should help you know what stage your potential prospects are at in the home buying process and when you need to follow up with them next so you do not miss out on the sale.
It also allows you to target your marketing efforts and focus on widening your audience. You have to go beyond just obtaining leads and actually converting the lead to a client. You also have to be consistent through your sales funnel so that you maintain a connection with the client and build the relationship. This means that you’ll be providing great value for your prospects because they might convert much later on.
Note that you don’t have to lose the client if the deal fails to sail through. Keep them in your network since you may rekindle the relationship on another deal in the future.
In addition, you need to come up with a strategy that is realistic, and you can follow. Make your mission to simply reach out with the goal of forming new relationships.
Your business plan should include a comprehensive blueprint for prospecting that will take you to 100k. Remember that the goal is not making 100k in gross commission income. Rather it’s making 100k in net profit per year.
Leverage
Once you get to 100k a year in real estate, you have to get to a point where you can start delegating and adding leverage into your business. Real estate is a business where you need to add leverage because you’re selling time. It’s a service business where you’re not selling a product, you are selling your time as a service. The amount of income you make is directly tied to your time.
This means that you need to delegate the things and tasks that don’t make you a lot of money. The first step in leveraging as a real estate agent is evaluating your business and seeing which things you can outsource first. You also need to know your daily activities and order them based on priority. Think about what you do daily, weekly, and monthly. See if you can let go of some of these tasks and delegate them to someone else.
So, what are some of the tasks that a real estate agent can easily outsource? They include:
- Administrative Tasks: Some real estate experts say that if you don’t have an assistant, you’re the assistant. You can find an excellent administrative assistant to handle tasks that are not high-dollar per hour task. This will free up your time, and you can then start to focus on creating more sales which translate to higher profit margins for your business. The money you pay the administrator is small compared to your profits you will make by focusing your time on sales. An administrative assistant’s role will be determined by what they’re licensed to do. However, common tasks include answering phone calls, replying to queries, and creating basic marketing material and scheduling appointments and getting paperwork signed.
- Marketing: Many real estate agents use basic marketing templates because most of their time is occupied. These email templates lack a personal touch and may fail to give the desired results. Your marketing emails need a personalized touch in the headlines, content, and call to action. This is why you should aim to hire a professional marketer to handle these tasks or visit our shop to get custom marketing already created for you. You need marketing that looks like you, sounds like you, and appeals to your audience.
- Transaction coordination: As a real estate agent, you can only handle a certain amount of transactions simultaneously. If you push yourself too much, the transaction details start to look fuzzy in your mind and you might even miss certain deal deadlines. Sometimes, the call might come in when you’re in a meeting with another client. This where a transaction coordinator saves the day. They are always in the background when you need them, and you don’t have to worry about mixing up details or not following up on due dates and deal deadlines. They’ll also remind you of appointments and schedule critical events on your calendar.
- Website Tasks: Most savvy real estate agents have websites for their businesses. However, their schedules may not allow them to keep these websites active. They may not be able to consistently add great content, implement SEO practices and boost user experience. Your website doesn’t have to look like an online business card. You can hire a professional web developer to redesign your website to become more visually appealing and boost your lead generation. After that, you can hire a web administrator to oversee the entire website activities and freelance writers to take care of the blog.
- Photography: Pictures speak a thousand words. In real estate, pictures can be so instrumental in raising clients’ interest. Your listing pictures can also tell the clients a lot about your business. Hiring a professional photographer is a vital investment for your business. They have better photography equipment and will take quality pictures for your listings. Some can also create quality videos for you. Besides, you save time as you won’t have to go through the editing process. This can really help you spend more time focusing on the things that bring in the money. Prospecting and marketing of course.
Once you delegate these tasks, you can become more involved in adding buyers’ and sellers’ agents. You can then delegate lead flow to those agents so that less of your time is attached to your income. This will get you from 100k a year, up to 500k and million-dollar mark. Just be careful because building a team comes with high monthly overhead cost and many people go broke in the process.
Investing
Once you’ve hit your annual income goals, it’s time to invest. This is the fun part! As a real estate agent, you know how vital creating passive income streams is. This can ultimately give you the financial freedom you have always been looking for. The goal here is to have multiple sources of income.
For example, you may start buying stocks that pay you dividends or start buying businesses that generate cash flow. Also, any wise agent would never forget the very field they’re experts in; real estate. You’re already experienced in looking for good deals and handling real estate transactions. So, why not invest in real estate?
Here are a few benefits you get for investing in real estate as an agent:
- Expert knowledge: Your experience and knowledge of the local housing market give you an upper hand over other investors. You understand all factors and trends in the market. While anyone can read unlimited books and online resources to gain real estate knowledge, nothing beats skills gained over the years. As an agent, you know which property types are most sought after by tenants within your location. You can put this to use and buy rental properties that will give you increase your monthly cashflow and passive income. You are also able to distinguish properties with the highest potential by being the local market expert.
- Network: As we’ve mentioned before, the real estate business is built around people and relationships. You need to know the right people when acting as an agent for your clients. This also helps you when investing. It grants you access to the best deals around as soon as they’re available. Besides, you’ll experience straightforward deal processes since you already know how this game works.
- Access to financing: Many real estate investors have hurdles funding their real estate investments. Your work as an agent involves helping your clients know the best financing options available to them. You can use this knowledge to access financing since you already know which options have the most suitable terms and rates. Through your real estate network, you also have alternative funding methods such as hard money lending.
Investing in real estate as an agent also means that you don’t have to hire an agent. You already have everything that’s needed in a real estate deal. You’ll save all the thousands that could have gone into facilitating agent’s fees and commissions. This is a way to boost your return on investment.
This allows you to have more cash and income coming in. With a high ROI on your investments, you can eventually live the kind of lifestyle you want.
Conclusion
Processing all this information at once may seem overwhelming. However, all you need is a plan. This will make your idea or dream look more achievable. Also, don’t be a perfectionist. While paying attention to detail may help, it also makes you susceptible to remain hung up on small details. Planning too much will not take you anywhere near your first million. Action will!