Why Millennial Real Estate Agents Will Want to Work With Your Brokerage

 

Millennials are now the largest portion of our population which means more and more of them are becoming agents, as well as buying or selling real estate. This generation is also now recognized as the most profitable in history. What are Millennial agents looking for? It’s the three T’s: transparency, team, and technology. Read on to learn what it takes to become the go-to real estate brokerage for every aspiring millennial agent in your market.

Transparency

One thing that Millennials are experts at is identifying a company or business with a negative culture or questionable company values. In general, the vast majority of Gen Y wants to associate with companies that are completely open, honest, and transparent. The more you can demonstrate that you and your brokerage operate with transparency, the more appealing it will be to Gen Y. Start by clearly highlighting and visiting your mission statement, slogan, and company values on your website, inside your offices, and through your social media. It is also very important that you are open and honest about the state of your brokerage. Sharing the good, bad, and ugly, along with your plans for the future is a powerful way of instilling trust and attracting motivated Millennials that hope to both make a living and make a difference.

Team

Another very important priority for Millennials is the culture of your brokerage’s team. Unlike the Boomer generation, Millennials are far more likely to seek greener pastures quickly if the culture support model and management style of your brokerage is not to their liking. They seek to align themselves with people that have high integrity and a moral approach to business, who balance their strengths and weaknesses, and who support their individual goals. They also place a great deal of value in professional development. If you currently hold team meetings, consider inviting prospective agents to attend a few to see first-hand how you interact with your team, educate them, and support them. Show them how you foster collaboration, motivate through leadership and encourage an environment of teamwork.

Technology

Finally, it is important to remember that Generation Y grew up surrounded by technology. More than any other generation, they have a steep expectation for tech-savvy tools and resources from their brokerage. Be upfront and forward about sharing all of your high-tech tools available to agents including websites, CRMs, content management systems, social media marketing, lead generation software, etc. The more that you can prove your brokerage will streamline their business, set them apart from the competition, and allow them to work on-the-go, the more Millennial agents you will attract to your team.

Remember the Three T’s

While the three T’s are vital to Millennial agents, they are also important elements for your other agents as well. Weichert embodied the three T’s long before there was a Gen Y. It is part of the core value system that Jim Weichert embraced to build a successful national real estate brand and continues today through the Weichert Family of Companies. We equally coach our affiliate offices to adopt and value the same philosophy. From an unwavering set of core values, people-first philosophy and dedication to providing the best technology and tools available to agents, it’s a winning formula all around.

For more information about how Weichert can bring the three T’s to your real estate brokerage, visit www.weichertfranchise.com.

January Is Too Late to Write Your Business Plan

As the year is winding down, you may want to consider reflecting on how far you have come in the last 12 months and where you would like to be at the end of the coming year. Many people will advise you that as a broker and a business owner, you should get in the habit of writing an annual business plan to set goals and measure your progress. Many brokers tend to “wing it” and don’t see the value in writing one. However, writing a business plan can be one of the best things you can do for your business. Follow these tips to create your own yearly business plan before year’s end and insure that next year is your most productive year yet.

When Is The Best Time To Write Your Yearly Business Plan?

In short, NOW! The best way to set yourself up for success in the year to come is to block off time to write your annual business plan well before the new year begins. Since many real estate agents and brokers have considerable downtime during the holidays, that is a great opportunity to focus on your plans and goals for the new year. Carve out enough time in November or December to look over the current year’s production and assemble a strategic plan for next year to get started off on the right foot when January 1st hits.

What Should You Include In Your Yearly Business Plan?

For a business plan to be useful, you really have to consider your goals, tactics, activities, and budget in some detail, and develop a reasonable plan that has these things working together. How much detail you get into is up to you, but err on the side of more detail if you can. At a minimum, a real estate broker needs to give some thought to the things below:

• Goals and objectives for your business in the coming year. These can include goals around your GCI targets, a number of transactions needed, number agents needed to hit those transaction goals, how many new recruits needed and more. Run each of your goals through the M.A.R.T. goals test (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound).
  

BAD GOAL: “I will recruit some new agents next year”

GOOD GOAL: “I will recruit 20 new agents next year of which at least 5 will have previous experience and one who has agent management experience. I will target 8 in the first half of the year and 12 in the second half of the year.”

• Target Market – While it might seem obvious who you are selling to, there is still tremendous benefit to drilling this down into specific client types and looking at market trends. What is the age range of your primary buyers? Are they working or retirees? Relocation Opportunities? College Town? Additionally, look at some analytical data:
• Average days on market for property of different price and type
• Typical listing commission rate
• Average price trend for a market you are interested in participating in
• Number of new listings in a particular sector month over month and this year versus last year
• SWOT Analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats. Knowing what your team can do better than the other guys is critical to defining where you will put your money and energy in the coming year and where your best opportunities for growth lie.
• Strategic Plan – What markets will you focus on? First time homebuyers? Relo clients? As you grow each year, this plan will change to reflect your new capabilities and market dynamics.
• Time Frame – Put yourself on the clock for your goals by breaking them down into manageable chunks of activity. If you make these elements small enough, they won’t seem so daunting and bit by bit they’ll get accomplished.
• Systems and Processes – This is really the “how” of your business plan. Your growth goals won’t happen by themselves; you will need to sponsor directed activities that are in line with your desired growth goals and strategy. Having some proven processes in place for training and marketing can be an important part of this. Need a real estate CRM? This is where you’ll budget for it and define how you will use and who will use it and what it will accomplish for you. Recruiting plan? Here is where you define the events you host and activities you’ll engage in to reach out to them.
  

Final Tips to Keep in Mind

Business plans are not a one-size-fits-all tool. It is important that even if you use a pre-designed template that you customize it according to your individual goals, targets, and challenges. Think in terms of both your immediate goals, as well as how they fit into your big-picture goals.

As an experienced real estate broker, you have a deep understanding of how important it is to treat your business like a business. By taking the time each year to write out a detailed plan and strategy of how you will tackle each benchmark on the path to success, you stand a much greater chance of getting there.

Plan Your Business with a Partner

At Weichert, we encourage all of our franchise owners to create a business plan each year. By writing down the plan, together with the coaching they get from their business consultants, Weichert affiliates have found this process to be truly valuable in sustaining growth. By implementing formal business plans, they are able to do more and focus their energy and resources on the right things. It’s just one of many proven strategies Weichert gives its owners to help them grow. We can help you with your business plan, but even better, we can give you the tools and processes to execute it.

For more information about how Weichert empowers its affiliates to do more, go to www.weichertfranchise.com .

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/january-is-too-late-to-write-your-business-plan/

How to Use Experiential Marketing In Real Estate

Maybe you’ve heard of it and maybe you haven’t, but one of the latest buzz phrases in marketing is “experiential marketing”.  As the name suggests, experiential marketing is all about taking that face-to-face approach to the next level. This is done through the transformation of common events into standout experiences, which are then shareable on social media. So how can real estate brokers and agents use this to grow and market their business to a new generation of customers?

We’re all familiar with traditional marketing approaches like open houses or door knocking. These approaches are indeed personal and generate contact directly between you and potential prospects. Experiential marketing, however, takes that further by establishing more shareable experiences and more personal connections around your brokerage and your agents. In this way, people have an opportunity to get to know you and your brand in a less-salesy, more personal way. In the words of our founder Jim Weichert, “people buy you, before your products or services.”

For brokers and agents committed to a long-term career, experiential marketing can deliver both short and long-term results. Here’s a few ideas to get you started.

Creating Experiences for Your Clients & Partners

Almost any event you have sponsored in the past, such as an open house or seminar, can be upgraded to an experiential marketing event with a little extra work and thought. The experience you provide will vary, but the key is to make it fun, memorable, and shareable. Some events may not be tied to a specific home sale, but bringing visibility to your brand creates the opportunity for outreach in the future.

Educational Events

Most brokers have hosted educational events that allow you to showcase your real estate expertise in a more personal way than a blog post or postcard. Common events include first-time homebuyer classes, staging classes, and real estate investing classes. One way to make these events more experiential is to host them in more interesting places, like a local wine bar, or microbrewery, at an art gallery, or even inside a home you have listed. The key is to present a complete experience around the training, that is compelling enough to merit posting and sharing on social media. When creating these events, cost and creativity are your only limitations, but three words that help set the tone are: fun, food, and photo ops.

Events with Hyperlocal Focus

Events that allow you to mingle with local prospects and clients while indulging in local business are powerful for networking and making a positive impression. Some examples of hyperlocal events could include historic walking tours of your area, wine tasting tours, and “best of” restaurant tours. Organize a cleanup day at a local park and invite parents and kids. Rent an ice cream or food truck to coincide with a group door knocking event. Choose something you’re passionate about and that you feel your community will enjoy. Encourage people to take pictures and share their experiences on social media to get the maximum value out of your efforts.

Partner with Other Local Influencers

A way to host more compelling events and keep costs down is to partner with other local influencers or businesses. Host an event at the local animal shelter or pet adoption agency. If you’re marketing a 3 bedroom ranch in a family area, consider throwing a barbecue or partner with a local restaurant to cater an event for a local charity. An event catered by a beloved local hot dog shack will have just as much pull (maybe more) as a 4-star restaurant and give a sense of fun to the entire gathering. Or turn the tables and let your office be the host for a wine tasting, exhibit for local artists or holiday event like a pumpkin giveaway or trunk or treat.

Document the Journey as well as the Event

Don’t view the planning, brainstorming, and even the headaches of setting up your experience as things to hide. Instead use these as opportunities for photo ops to create content that will give you more mileage out of your event, such as pictures of the team setting up or your planning meetings. This way you can get a dozen or more pieces of content to publish across multiple channels for weeks, instead of just a single Instagram story published on the day of the event.

Remember that one of the key goals of experiential marketing is its ability to leverage the connections of all those involved by getting them to share on social media. Encourage all manner of photographs and selfies at your event and encourage attendees to post.

Staying Connected Online, Compliments the Experience

While these experiences and events are an opportunity for you to connect more deeply with your network offline, your social media strategy can enhance these connections even further. Post consistently in the lead-up to the event to build anticipation and use the phone and email to increase touch points as much as possible. At the event, have someone create content like live feeds and video that can be used later as well. Make sure your team will respond promptly to every comment and interaction on their social profiles.

It turns out that experiential marketing leverages some of the things that real estate professionals do best: being friendly and being organized.

Experiential marketing ties directly into the Weichert philosophy of the personal connection in real estate as first practiced by founder Jim Weichert, handing out business cards twice a day in a Chatham, NJ train station.

But the experience we most often create at Weichert, is one of success.

For more information on becoming a Weichert franchise, visit www.weichertfranchise.com.

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/how-to-use-experiential-marketing-in-real-estate/