Hit the Ground Hard, After the Holidays

There is no denying that many real estate agents and brokers across the country experience the slowing season in Winter. While many will just accept this as being par for the course, in real estate, your drive to start off the new year with a bang can put you ahead of the game in 2020.

In between hanging those holiday decorations and doing all your shopping, you can use your extra time over the holidays to recalibrate, allowing your business to tear out of the starting gate in the new year.

Explain the Advantages of Buying A Home Now

One of the reasons that the spring season is so crazy in real estate is that people perceive it as the most convenient time to make a move. Conversely if more people understood the benefits of moving during the winter, they might be motivated to make the move now. Create blogs, videos, and podcast episodes to explain the advantages of moving during the less competitive winter season, such as lower costs and less competition to book moving companies. Share your best tips for moving in the colder months. Create this awareness all year round, but especially in the slower winter months.

Leverage New Year’s Resolutions

While many people focus on common new year’s resolutions like losing weight, there are plenty of people out there that resolve that this will be the year that they become a homeowner or move to the neighborhood of their dreams. With tax season right around the corner, remind people that their returns would be better spent on a down payment than something frivolous. Take advantage of this line of thinking while their motivations are still high by planning, promoting and hosting a first-time buyer seminars. Weichert, for example, supplies its affiliate offices with complete seminars in a box—including invitations, presentation deck and handouts–to host such events. This helps you connect with potential prospects early before they make the decision to act and engage with another brokerage.

Grab the Attention Of Sellers Early in the Year

Once the ground begins to thaw, it is a mad dash for agents to get their hands on all the shiny new listings. However, if you initiate relationships with people who are considering selling in the upcoming year now, you will already have your foot in the door when they are ready to list. Now is the best time of year to start holding seminars about how to sell a house. When marketing these seminars, be sure to tap into the common reasons why people may want to sell their house this year including an upgrade in lifestyle, a change in career, or even a change in their family needs. Weichert also supplies its affiliate offices with complete seminar kits to support hosting these types of events.

Focus on Your Existing Relationships

Once you have your buyer and/or seller seminars in place and operating like a well-oiled machine to attract new prospects, you can return your focus to your sphere. This is a great time to personally check in with everyone to see how their holidays were, what they are looking forward to in the year to come, and if there is anything you can do to help them. Remember, it is through the cultivation of your personal and professional relationships that you will attract your best clients. Having a good CRM system will allow you to do this efficiently.

Have a Great Post-Holiday Season, in Every Way!

Do you have the tools and systems in place to take advantage of the winter season and prepare you and your agent team for Spring? From farming materials, such as seminar kits to a powerful CRM to stay in touch with your sphere, an affiliation with Weichert can give you everything you need to compete. Sow the seeds for a great 2020. Make one of your new year’s resolutions to contact Weichert Franchising to find out more about how we can help you and your agents be more productive than ever.

Best wishes for a prosperous year ahead!

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/hit-the-ground-hard-after-the-holidays/

Build Your Business, Let Your Agents Sell Listings

Running a real estate brokerage is a rewarding business. You can do things your way from choosing a name and a location, training and mentoring a team, and driving your marketing.  You know you’ll never forget the excitement you felt when your sign was hung outside your brokerage for the first time. You made the transition from motivated sales associate to independent business owner and with that, comes a necessary shift in your thinking, and your actions.

The Salesperson Within

Most of the independent brokers we talk to were excellent sales associates. It’s why they made the move to being a broker. But a few years in, too many of them are still actively selling their own listings on a day to day basis. If this describes you, you have to know that you’re limiting your brokerage growth by continuing to actively sell. Before you hung your sign, the inner manager in you should have begun to change your focus from selling, to the process of managing. This means recruiting both experienced and promising new agents, and figuring out how to make them successful. Sure, it’s hard to break away from selling homes. After all, your sales prowess paid your bills all these years, but now it’s time to use your expertise to help other agents succeed and increase your bottom line. Salaried or contracted specialized administrative employees can help ease your work load and move you away from directly working with buyers and sellers to focusing on increasing agent transactions.

The Case for Letting Go

Many brokers mistakenly believe that they can’t stop selling or they won’t have the revenue to continue their operations or sustain their own income level. Inevitably this feeling is really due to another issue: you don’t believe your staff is able to do it as successfully as you. While this may even be true, if you want your brokerage to continue to succeed and grow, you need to invest in addressing that issue, not out meeting sellers to get listings. Train your agents to sell like you do, recruit new agents, and resist the temptation to slide back to old ways. Do that and everyone will reap the benefits and financial reward.

In fact, non-selling brokers typically earn more than those that continue to sell after opening their own brokerage. National Association of Realtors member profile for 2015 showed that managing brokers who solely took charge of their brokerage earned a median annual salary of $102,200 as opposed to $86,400 for brokers who also were in the field listing homes and/or working with buyers.

Handle Business Details

Think back to when you were working for another brokerage as a salesperson. How do you think everything ran so smoothly? Through the broker’s hard work on the various day-to-day activities of running the brokerage as a business. Or maybe it didn’t run smoothly, because the broker was too focused on their own selling or not invested in developing their agents.

Similarly, your mindset should only be on overseeing business details, such as continuing to foster your business and your brand to help agents get a leg up on the competition and your brokerage keep its integrity and sorecuieputation, among a slew of other operational tasks. If you are overwhelmed with the sheer number of tasks involved in managing your own brokerage and need a roadmap, you can consider an affiliation with a national real estate brand like Weichert. Our affiliates have the advantage of a blueprint for running a successful real estate brokerage, complemented with many broker tools to help handle business operations, marketing, recruiting and training that points you to the activities you should be working on for success.

Build A Better Life

When your entire brokerage is run seamlessly as a business, you are making a better life, not just for you and your family, but for all your agents. A successful brokerage means you can confidently take the family on vacation, knowing that the systems and people you’ve put in place will handle affairs while you are away.

Weichert has helped hundreds of brokers build the business of their dreams, contact us today at 877-567-3350 or online at http://weichertfranchise.com.

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/build-business-let-agents-sell-listings-2/

Not All Real Estate Franchise Systems Are Built the Same

What To Look For if You are Considering Affiliation

Once you’ve made the decision in your mind that you are ready to move from being an independent brokerage to a member of a franchise, the next question is: “Which one?” With dozens of national real estate franchises to choose from, you need to look closely at which is the best fit for you and your agents and which will bring you the best processes and systems for growth.

In other words, in looking at each franchise you’ll need to ask, “What’s in it for me?”

How Does the Franchise Support Its Franchisees? 

Some real estate franchises offer little more than their brand name and access to marketing materials, and you are left to do everything else on your own.  When you consider an affiliation, you should make sure that your franchisor is not only offering a recognized brand name to leverage, but is providing an active and comprehensive plan for your business growth that has proven to be effective.
Will you be treated as a valued member of their franchise family? Will your new franchisor be there when you need assistance? Do they offer a proven methodology for recruiting and selling? Will joining give you a support network to alleviate that feeling of being all alone and give you a place to turn to for advice and guidance when you need it? Will your growth now be an ongoing collaborative effort between you and your franchisor that empowers you to make positive, productive decisions for your business?

When evaluating real estate franchise systems, ongoing training and support has to be a key component of a solid franchise business proposition. The industry doesn’t stand still, so neither can you or your agents. It is important to keep skills sharp to continue to compete. For instance, at Weichert, affiliates are taught a system for success. The tenants of this system are reinforced in the training and tools we provide brokers and their agents through multiple channels that are active and always a step ahead. It includes personal, expert consultation from our service team when you need it, online training for both brokers and agents, leadership seminars, regional trainings, webinars, Weichert University our 24/7 online training portal, and expert coaching for every aspect of your business. This practical, comprehensive and “hands-on” partnership brings continual insight and support to brokers and their agents, especially in the toughest times.

Technology and Tools

Will the franchises you are considering provide you the right technology and tools to help support your business and help your agents be productive?

Technology is changing so fast that it can be difficult for an independent broker or their agents to keep up. You should be able to look to your affiliate to furnish the latest, intuitive technology and tools and to provide a constant source of training and coaching around their use.

For example, just a few of the tools Weichert provides its affiliates include a CRM (Client Relationship Management system), paperless transaction management system, web-stores with customized marketing templates and a digital tool to help create a killer listing presentation. Our “Doors” listing presentation is unique in the industry and is constantly cited by our affiliates as key to their stellar close rates. Tools and training should be available to you and your entire team in a way that completely supports your growth objectives and go-to market strategy.

Weichert also invests in lead generation. It drives traffic to its national website which generates leads that are screened and passed to a live agent within minutes.  It’s a great supplement to an agent’s day-to-day sales activities.

At the end of the day, the more you can provide your agents, the more valued your brokerage will be in their eyes.

Recruiting Support

Recruiting agents may be the single most important part of getting to the next level of success with your brokerage. Too many brokers reach a plateau with their agent count and can’t seem to move past it.  Real Estate Franchises like Weichert not only provide you the advantage of a recognized brand name, but they provide you with a system of best practices and support tools to help you get and keep the people you need to be successful.  Once you get your recruits, Weichert also offers its Fast Track training to help you get them up and running fast.

Talk to Other Franchisees

When evaluating Franchise opportunities, by all means call other affiliated brokers in your area or even across the nation to discuss their experience with the company. Any Franchisor worth their salt will be more than happy to supply you with names and phone numbers of other owners to call. Get them to speak candidly about their experience both good and bad. Your goal is not to find the perfect franchise, but to find one that is perfect for you.

Carefully consider the culture of the franchises you are considering. A good fit shouldn’t require you to change everything you do and how you do it. After all you’ve already built a successful business. Instead a good franchisor should roll up their sleeves and get in the trench with you. They can show you better ways to do things and better tools to use, but you will bring a lifetime of knowledge about your market and your people. The best model for franchising is active collaboration.

Start your Conversations with Weichert.

Deciding to affiliate is a big deal, we get it. But if you do it right with a company like Weichert, your only regret should be that you didn’t make the move sooner.

Call us today at 877-567-3350 or visit http://www.weichertfranchise.com

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/not-all-real-estate-franchise-systems-are-built-the-same/