Michael is a Co-Founder of Renzo Real Estate. His sharp sales skills and marketing expertise have been an asset to his clients over his years of selling real estate in Calgary. Michael enjoys teaching and showing new agents the ropes and is always willing to share his knowledge with others. See what Michael and Sam have got to say on how to become a top-producing Real Estate agent.
Getting a Client Base
All new agents, in the beginning, go through a phase where they doubt themselves and wonder if they are cut out for the sales business. Many fail to sell homes and some make a dew sales because they do not have structure for their business. However, Michael believes such a period of time is not just bad. Agents learn a lot from this time.
Definition of Success for Agents
Most agents compare themselves in terms of success to criteria that may not necessarily be true. Michael believes that in order to measure your success you should not do so on a dollar basis, follower count, or a big database. The right way to measure your success includes comparing yourself to a year before. What you did last year and where you are now. You cannot compare yourself to other agents since different agents come from different backgrounds and go through different journeys.
Important Aspects of Marketing
Here are the three aspects of marketing defined by Michael:
Content Creator
Being a content creator is an underrated aspect of being an agent. Agents want to get seller leads and buyer leads right off the bat but in order to get there they need to go through other steps and being a content creator is definitely one of the steps. However, there are many ways to create content that most agents get lost during the process. Michael believes agents need to narrow down their social media to three and focus on them.
Behind the Scenes
One of the most Googled terms for Real Estate is a day with agents. Most agents think people do not care about their life and who they are and how they live their life but that could not be further from the truth. Sam also believes even when using automation systems for social media like that of roomvu, agents still need to show up in front of the camera and talk to their audience so that they allow their audience to get to know them on a personal level.
Consistency
Many agents take a long time to post content out there and waste time. However, consistency on social media is key to success. And by pondering on a piece of content for a long time you just kill all those chances you have. In order to make it on social media first, you need to make sure that you have an omnipresence on different platforms consistently. In fact, agents should know that people barely pay attention to details and they should let their guards down and just post.
Being Concise
The attention span of people is growing shorter and shorter every day. People do not care that much about longer videos and ads and in fact, most get bored soon. So agents need to practice being concise and getting their message out there on social media soon as possible. Michael believes that in order to master the art of being concise agents can go to Tiktok and put it on15 seconds. TikTok is a blue ocean for Real Estate and is a great opportunity for agents to make the most of it while it is not used by all agents.
Time on Money for Your SOI
Most agents spend a lot of time chasing leads on social media but they fail to spend time and money on their SOI (Sphere of Influence). However, agents need to pay attention to their SOI by having a consistent system and following it on a day-to-day basis. But many agents drop their efforts on their system due to the fact that not all leads turn to clients.
Handling Your Database
Some agents buy a database and then start sending listings to those people forgetting the fact that they may not even be interested in the listings we send them. They did not even ask for these listings. Sam believes we are in the education system and when we approach our contracts we have to give them something that helps them, educates them, and adds value. Michael tends to move his database to his SOI. He doesn’t consider them as leads before moving them into his SOI.
When you run ads on Facebook for 50 bucks and you get two leads but none become a client you should not get disappointed. Of course, they won’t buy from you because they do not know anything about you. You have to move them to your SOi and start creating value and over time allow them to get to know you as the go-to guy. The goal is to nurture them through different tools like drip email to get a response, And when you get that response now it is time to create a one-to-one conversation.
Social Media VA
Micheal believes posting every day on social media is hard. Most times agents have no idea what to post and how to post it. On the other hand, the mere task of posting takes a lot of time. In this case, Social media VAs like that of roomvu helps agents with the heavy lifting. Sam adds that the system agents use has to have videos because people respond to videos. Sam believes creating the video content and adding a personal touch is key to success on social media for Real Estate.
Business Plan
When creating a business plan agents need to see what their goals are and reverse-engineer that goal into a weekly action plan and that is about systematizing that goal. And that goal should be taken from your previous year’s performance. Without a business plan, you are just doing random things which are not going anywhere.
Strike Harder When the Market is Down
Now that the market is going down a lot of agents are not sure about the feature and automatically tend to cut down on their marketing expenses which are not recommended. Michael believes that in these turbulent times in Real Estate when it comes to investing you have to be analytical and data-driven. You need to think of ROI, the lifetime value of customers, etc. True businesses go nowhere without spending on marketing. You need to invest in many things as a test and see what works. and When you find that you double down on that.
Sam believes when the market goes down it is a classic mistake agent make as they expect to make some easy money. But in order to stay in the business, you have to have a long-term outlook. You should not burn that bridge behind you for the time the market comes back up. You need to make sure you stay on top of your audience’s mind when the market comes back up.