Creating A Brokerage Team That Works

As an experienced real estate broker, you already know it can be challenging to strike a balance between profitable camaraderie among your agents and loyalty to your mission. Many agents prefer to maintain a strong sense of independence and work on their own, but you can foster a more productive work environment if you can inspire them to work together with you at the helm. This may seem like a case of easier said than done, but with the right vision, this cultural shift pays big dividends in lead generation, customer service and recruiting.

The Benefits of Uniting Your Team

 

At Weichert, we coach our affiliates on cultivating a supportive and cohesive team strategy within a brokerage, which allows agents to work independently, as well as together constructively with you as their leader. Hosting weekly sales meetings, planning brokerage community events that involve your agents and having regular awards and recognition are three easy ways to engage agents with the brokerage. This kind of team strategy can bring about many productive benefits.

Capitalize on Agents’ Strengths: Consumers expect a lot from agents and working together as a team allows each agent to leverage one another’s strengths to put their best foot forward in the overall sales process. This typically will deliver a result that thrills the client and creates a positive impression of your brokerage.

Collaboration: When you bring your agents together to brainstorm, your agents can develop creative solutions to everyday marketing and sales challenges and spark unique ideas to help your brokerage stand out from the competition.

Avoid Agent Burnout: Agents can take vacations or get assistance from team members when needed which will help them avoid costly burnout. Working together as a team will allow your agents to attain that desirable work-life balance that inspired many of them to become agents in the first place and increase their loyalty to you.

Improved Customer Service: As a broker, it is your job to both generate leads for your team and ensure those leads are properly nurtured. Getting agents onboard with following a consistent selling and marketing strategy will ensure clients get a consistent level of service and experience.

Start from The Ground Up – Recruiting

When recruiting agents and administrative staff, make sure that they are aligned with your brokerage’s vision and values, are able to contribute something valuable as a team member and are an overall good fit with the team. At Weichert, we encourage our Affiliates to adopt our Core Values and recruit agents with similar values. It is crucial that you set clear expectations about your company culture from the very beginning to avoid costly turnover. Building an agent team that is all rowing in the same direction will not only make for a stronger brokerage, but will also act as a magnet to attract more similar members.

Generate Leads as A Group

Just because every agent in your brokerage is working to generate leads for themselves doesn’t mean that they can’t feed off one another to be more effective during the lead generation process. Getting everyone together to door knock or make calls or strategize on the marketing of a home, is a powerful way of getting agents motivated and excited to do the activities that lead to productivity. To add an element of fun, consider hosting a competition among those that participate. Awarding prizes for the agents that produce the best results during these power-hour sessions helps to drive productivity even further.

Creating a team that really gels inside your brokerage is a challenging, but rewarding, activity. If like Weichert, you believe that creation of a good team and a good culture is central to your success, then we encourage you to learn more about the benefits of becoming an Affiliate.

Please contact us or visit www.weichertfranchise.com.

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/creating-a-brokerage-team-that-works/

5 Ways To Leverage Your Network

One could argue that as a real estate broker, you are only as good as the people you surround yourself with. That being said, it is not only important that you build a strong brokerage filled with talented and motivated agents, but you need to cultivate a larger network filled with respected professionals with a wide variety of knowledge in diverse business areas. While most brokers have accumulated a good set of contacts over the years, it is important that you know how to leverage that network to get the most out of it in terms of leads, referrals, and insight. With some careful planning and a well-rounded strategy in place, you can easily squeeze a remarkable amount of value out of the network you have already built. Here are some proven methods of doing just that from the experts at Weichert.

Collaborate to Create Content

Everyone knows that in the digital era of real estate, content remains king. Rather than making all of your content completely about your brokerage, you can expand your reach by including appropriate network partners in your content. Partner with other local professionals, charities, small business owners, and complementary real estate professionals (ie. Lawyers, title companies, home inspection, etc.) to create hyperlocal infotainment style content that helps both businesses to grow, showcase expertise and capitalize on one another’s following. For example, you could partner with your preferred home inspection company to create a blog post about the top 3 things to look for in a home inspection. Or create a post on the best local restaurants for “date night” and partner with the owners or managers of those restaurants to build the content. Typically, those businesses that you partner with will be more than happy to promote your content on their own websites and social media, resulting in greater brand reach, and awareness.

Pay It Forward

Being generous with referrals helps to grow your own referral business exponentially. Have you ever had someone do a favor for you or send you a referral without being prompted to? Didn’t you notice how compelled you felt to pay back that favor? If you take the lead by sending referrals to people in your network that you trust and believe in, you can bet that they will be likely to return the favor. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled on social media platforms like Facebook which will make it easy for you to tag and refer the other business owners in your network. This rule of reciprocity is powerful and will help you to stand out in any networking group you belong to.

Attend Events With A Purpose

It’s easy to attend networking events and stick to people you may already know. While it is good to further develop the connections that you have already made, you should also push yourself to form new connections and look for opportunities to make additional connections within your existing network. Develop a good “elevator speech” about what you do that doesn’t make you sound like every other real estate professional in your market, clearly communicates who you target, and defines the value you provide. Also, make sure to ask the new people that you meet what type of referrals they are looking for so you can keep them in mind when looking for ways to pay it forward.

Look Outside Your Market

 

Social media is an excellent source of other real estate professionals and entrepreneurs that you can connect with to exchange ideas and solve challenges that arise as you grow. One easy way to connect with other like-minded professionals is to look for groups on Facebook and LinkedIn that focus around topics that can help you to grow, as well as, offer you the opportunity to share your own expertise. Additionally, there are plenty of real estate groups out there that can offer referrals and relocation business which can be profitable if you’re able to act quickly.

Leverage a Brand’s Internal Network

One of the best ways to take your networking options to the next level is to consider affiliation with a national brand like Weichert. While networking may not be the first thing you think of when considering joining a franchise, it can quickly become one of the major benefits of affiliation. A brand like Weichert for instance, brings with it the family-like camaraderie of other experienced brokers, trainers, and a huge infrastructure of coaching and lead generation that is part of the power of our internal network and our many real estate divisions. Our internal network can translate directly into sales opportunities through our international relocation company, our national lead generation network, our network of Referral Associates, online chat boards, as well as the relationships you develop directly with other Weichert brokers across the country through some of the many management conferences and events that Weichert facilitates.

At Weichert, we understand the power of networking because we’ve always taken a people-first approach to supporting every member of the team. To learn more about how Weichert brokers are empowered to develop and leverage our network go to www.weichertfranchise.com.

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/5-ways-to-leverage-your-network/

How To Turn Renters Into Homebuyers

Despite the myth that renters are not a valuable lead source, 46% of renters are actively considering a home purchase. If you are anything like most real estate brokers, you understand that with careful and strategic targeting, a great deal of those renters can be converted into long-term clients that will buy, sell, and refer your brokerage to their friends and family. In today’s post, the experts at Weichert are sharing their tips to help you turn those untouched renters into a cash cow for your real estate business.

Which Renters Are Ready To Buy

Randomly targeting renters will usually result in a poor return on your investment of time and energy, which is why many real estate agents have come to think of renters as a bad niche. Therefore, it is important that you invest the resources upfront to gather data about the demographics of the local community to find the highest concentration of potential buyers that are currently renting. Once you have the data revealing the right people to target you will be better able to reach and attract them both on and offline.

Lead With Education

One of the biggest reasons that people rent rather than buy is that they don’t think they are able to afford a home. The best way to combat this concern is through education. As a broker, you need to make sure your agents are up to speed on the very latest financing options. Then run marketing campaigns targeted specifically at renters all based around the idea that “Yes, You Too can Afford Your Own Home”. Flooding your real estate blog, newsletter, and social media platforms with information on financing and entry level inventory that educate renters on how to buy and how much they can afford is key.

If you want to connect with renters in an even more personal way, consider holding first-time-homebuyers’ workshops that explain the process of getting pre-approved, finding the right property, and the value of hiring a Realtor to protect their best interests. The more education you supply with the right renters, the faster your pipeline will fill with leads.

Be Patient & Consistent

While some of the renters you target may convert right away, many will take time. Be patient and remember that you must continue to remind them that you are there to take care of them when they are ready. Connect with them in as many ways that you can to help make this easier. For example, invite them to follow you on social media, invite them to attend any events that you host, drop-by when you are in the neighborhood, etc.. You may be surprised how many people won’t respond to your efforts until they are ready to buy so don’t assume their silence is a lack of interest.

You Need a System to Target Renters

Having a clear cut system for following up with renters, and the right tools to help you do so, will dramatically increase your success with this market. Make sure you have a schedule in place for regularly staying in touch with all of your renters, no matter how hot or cold they appear. Remember that when renters decide or discover that they are ready to buy a house, they will likely do it with the agent that is front-of-mind and that they feel most familiar with at that time.

One of the biggest reasons that Weichert brokers are so successful with the rental market is that they leverage proven processes for generating renter-to-homebuyer leads. It also doesn’t hurt to be able to leverage things like the Weichert Rental Network, a national service for relocation rentals for both individuals and corporate clients. Renters that come through our network, have a much higher likelihood of contacting your team when they decide to buy.

For more information about the full suite of tools and lead generation system that Weichert offers, go to https://www.weichertfranchise.com/

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/how-to-turn-renters-into-homebuyers/