A short advice video by Andrew Lamb (team leader of the Lamb Team at RE/MAX Gold) listing "10 things I wish I knew" upon first getting a real estate license. Lamb presents ten practical, experience-based recommendations for new agents—focus on revenue-generating activities (PLAN: prospecting, lead generation & follow-up, appointments, negotiation), prioritize a few marketing activities, use scripts and role-play, build vendor relationships, find a mentor, run the practice as a business (track numbers/monthly P&L), and avoid chasing every new platform or technology. The speaker also cites an industry-average annual agent income of about $28,000 (NAR) as a caution.
Questions this video answers
Andrew Lamb, team leader of the Lamb Team at RE/MAX Gold.
August 12, 2015.
About $28,000 per year.
Prospecting; Lead generation and follow-up; Appointments; Negotiation.
Chapters
Ten things I wish I knew when I first got my real estate license. Hey, Andrew Lamb here, team leader of the lamb team at Remax Gold. And today we're talking about 10 things I wish I knew when I first got my real estate license. So jumping straight into it. Number 10 is I wish I knew to focus my time on plan. That's an acronym for plan. It means prospecting, lead generation and follow up, appointments and negotiation. Those are the only things in real estate that ever make you money. So you want to focus every day in the morning on those four things. Number nine, truly understand that 20% of the activities you do every day lead to 80% of your results, meaning money in your pocket. Number eight, don't believe everything you hear, especially what other agents say they're doing that works for them. A lot of the time we, we hear about different ideas, different things that agents are doing, like farming or things they say that are working. But most agents don't track their results and they may think it's working, but truly they don't make any profit every year. The national association of Realtors says that the average agent makes about $28,000 a year. So you don't want to listen to every other agent out there. Number seven, master effective scripts and dialogues and don't be afraid to role play. Perfect practice makes perfect. So you want to make sure that you are not only saying what you need to say and practicing that with someone else before you go and talk to a live lead or other clients and make sure that you have it down patented. A lot of agents don't like scripts. They feel like it comes off as disconnected. Something like that. What you want to do is truly make it your own. But simply have a process, have a way of saying things, a way of explaining things every single time to every single client the same way so that you perfect it and it becomes kind of a habit, it becomes second nature and it's something that you internalize. Number six, develop vendor relationships and leverage those relationships like crazy. Some of the biggest referral sources, the best, are other business owners in town, whether that be lenders, title companies, you know, the handyman, the painter, the repairman. They know who's buying and selling in the area and they can refer you or at least let people know that you are the go to resource for real estate related information. Tip number five, forget farming and brand advertising. Brand marketing, it doesn't work. All you need to do is put out some kind of landing page or direct response marketing, get people to respond to an offer that actually brings value to them, that puts them first. Really, no one cares about who you are or why they should work with you, except for what's in it for them. So. So don't spend money on farming or branding yourself. Spend money on getting your information in front of someone and making an offer they can respond to. Number four is focus your activities and your money on just a few marketing activities. Go deep and not wide. So many agents end up doing 100 different things that produce very few results. So you want to make sure that you're investing a lot of your time and energy into just a few things that are going to work consistently rather than testing 100 things and never getting true consistency or true results from any single one of them. Number three is find a mentor. And whether that means driving an hour to meet with one of the top producers in the area and buying them a cup of coffee, or having lunch with them, or paying a coach for real estate related information and advice and, you know, something that's personalized to your business. Either way, find someone to learn from and copy their success. Real estate is not the newest industry out there. It's really a pretty simple business. You just need to find what's working from people who are doing things the right way and who can demonstrate not only results, but profit every single year. Tip number two is real estate as a practice is not a business. You are now a business owner. So it's not just like you can come into the office whenever you want and experience the results you want or get paid for simply putting time in and coming to the office. You truly are responsible for doing the activities that produce money and and following up and tracking everything. So track your results, track your numbers, have a profit loss statement every month, have a bookkeeper run your business like a business and you are sure to have success. And the number one tip I have for new licensees is do not chase squirrels. Do not get distracted by all of the phone calls you get from salespeople. Now from all of the Facebook ads you see targeting you as a real estate agent, saying that there's this great new technology to bring you seller leads or buyer leads. You don't need any of that. And honestly, if you keep jumping from platform, platform to platform or from product to product, it's a surefire way to waste all of your money and get no results. So what you really need to do, and this is going back a little bit through the list. Focus on just a few key things for marketing. Focus your effort on just a few key activities and you will see the greatest result. You don't need any of the latest technologies and truly you do need a contact management system but the best one out there is the one you stick with. There's so many that promise to do so much for you, but the people getting true results are those who have had the same CRM for the last five years and they know how to work every single feature and get everything out of that CRM. So those are the 10 things that I wish I knew when I was a new licensee. If you have any questions, if you're a new licensee and you're just new to real estate or you've been in it for maybe less than two years and you're just not getting the results you want, feel free to give me a call, drop me a line. It's completely confidential and and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have and help you out. Thanks and have a great day.
