From the Trenches: Advice for New Real Estate Agents

Now that you’ve become a licensed real estate agent, hung out your shingle and printed up your business cards, you might be sitting there wondering how on earth you’re going to get ahead in the real estate business. With so much to think about, where should you focus your time and efforts? Whether this is your first rodeo or you’ve been around the block a couple of times in other careers, there are some real estate fundamentals any newcomer to the industry should take to heart.

Here, from the trenches, is some solid advice for new real estate agents.

Understand the documents

You must have a complete and total understanding of real estate documents — even the ones you don’t prepare yourself. That includes contracts, HUD-1 forms, comparative market analyses, closing documents, title insurance forms and more. You need to familiarize yourself with each document type and understand its content and purpose, why it’s important, and when it comes into play during the buying or selling process.

Find a mentor

Real estate licensing school doesn’t teach you how to be a successful agent in this industry; it only shows you how to pass an exam. When they start out, many real estate rookies already have a good broker to work with, but sometimes they don’t. Find a mentor or coach who can give you industry tips and tricks, provide context for the answers to your questions, and help you carve out a path to a successful real estate career.

Be the boss

As a real estate agent, you must remember that you’re a business owner in every sense of the word. Being successful requires fundamental business skills: bookkeeping and financial management, strategic planning, sales and marketing and time management. You also need to keep continuing education in mind — not just completing the minimum requirements to maintain your license, but making it a daily priority to stay abreast of news and trends that influence the industry.

Learn to handle objections

Many new real estate agents don’t have extensive sales experience, so it’s important to figure out how to handle objections. Throughout your career, leads and clients will question your commission, your expertise and experience, your suggested home selling price, your marketing approach, your dedication to serving them, the hours you keep — the list goes on. You should master your standard responses to objections so that you can either walk away with the listing or give the potential client more reasons to consider you.

Be nice

Real estate is a relationship-based business, so you have to play nice with everybody — because you never know who will turn into client, colleague or partner. Build your sphere of influence (SOI) and work it constantly. Who’s in your SOI? Anybody and everybody you connect with on a personal and professional basis. Put your contacts and leads into email drip campaigns and send them helpful home information. Reconnect with past clients. Attend networking events. Seize opportunities to remind your SOI that you’re always looking for business. Don’t be content with the status quo — successful agents keep the funnel as full as possible.

You’ve taken the first steps as a new real estate agent and could use a little advice about getting ahead. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with the minutiae of day-to-day operations, but putting things in perspective really comes down to the basics. Like any career, succeeding in real estate requires in-depth knowledge about your industry, taking charge of your decisions and building support networks to help you along the path to success.