How to Stay Strategic: 3 Keys to Carry Your Real Estate Business through COVID-19 (and beyond)
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In times like these it’s especially hard to focus on the strategic decisions needed to keep your business running. Instead, you’re putting out fires, adjusting to a new way of working, and trying to help clients who are anxious and uncertain. We know that being strategic is harder during moments of crisis, but it’s also when it matters most.
The future of your business depends on it.
We’ve been helping clients navigate changing real estate landscapes, prioritize their time, and find opportunities in challenging markets for over a decade. We were a lifeline in the housing crisis, and we’ve seen clients battle their own market crises, and win, many times before.
There’s a proven formula for success: prioritizing your time based on your most dollar-productive activities, diversifying and growing your lead sources, and having the right system to leverage the value of your database.
Prioritize your time
Finding time to be strategic doesn’t mean just being more disciplined. It’s about understanding how you’re actually using your time and getting your to-do list clearly laid out. Now, identify which tasks you should be delegating, simplifying, or taking off of your plate. Once you’ve determined this, you’ll have the structure to focus on your most important work. Your revenue-generating work. The work that energizes you and moves your business forward.
Right now, for many agents, the struggle is real in the time department. Your “office” may very well be the kitchen in shared space with the kid’s schoolwork and lots of togetherness. Working remotely is difficult. Carving out dedicated time to check emails and answer calls can feel impossible. This puts us all in “fire drill” mode and leaves little time for prospecting new business or responding to leads. This means missing out on business.
Perhaps it’s the best time to consider offloading some of your less dollar-productive work, employing teams of experts to handle your digital marketing or your lead response and nurturing. This ensures nothing slips through the cracks, you’re building a strong future pipeline, and you’ll be poised to take advantage of pent-up demand when crisis-mode is over.
Things to consider:
Am I leveraging technology to help automate admin work?
Do I have strong, effective processes in place that are streamlining workflows?
Are there areas of my business that I should outsource to expert teams (lead follow-up, digital marketing, etc.)
Do I have the right software platform to manage my database and prioritize opportunities?
Lean into Lead Generation and Diversify your Lead Sources
Consumer demand has not gone away, it’s just delayed. You need to make sure you’re leveraging the tools to meet your clients where they are, and deliver value now. Our team has seen an impressive uptick in site requests for video chats. One of our clients garnered 6 new listings agreements in the past month. It’s time to lead into lead gen and find new sources to fill your funnel.
As virtual tours and video chatting have become critical to business normalcy in today’s climate, we’ve seen incredible results by providing site visitors with the option to search for properties with virtual tours, request a virtual tour via video chat, and filter properties to view all listings with virtual tours available. Agents can also highlight their properties with virtual tours in automated e-Alerts that are tailored to their prospects’ preferences.
Another win has been a new custom ad builder for social media marketing where they can promote a virtual tour of a listing, highlight and quickly share educational content from the experts at Keeping Current Matters, and even create social media ads that allow consumers to request a video chat for more information. These are huge opportunities to share your expertise, be a credible source of information, and help offer valuable content to your community.
Our own expert digital marketing team has adjusted social and search campaigns as well to promote listings with virtual tours and those with the option to “tour by video chat,” in order to optimize the campaigns they are managing for clients during this challenging time.
Future success is looking very virtual.
Create the Right Systems to Work your Database
You know that priorities deserve your time. You’re investing in lead generation. But without the right tools and systems, and the right processes built into your business, you won’t have the solid operational foundation to see the ROI and deliver a seamless customer experience.
Will your leads be responded to within 5 minutes?
Are behaviors tracked and opportunities served up automatically?
Will you be able to nurture each relationship for buyers and sellers who are further out in the game?
You have to invest in your database to realize the return.
We all have one thing in common right now: uncertainty. Part of being a business owner, a leader, is preparing for situations in your business where the future is uncertain. That’s why, now more than ever, the only way to alleviate uncertainty in your business is to have reliable systems.
The right technology and systems produce consistent, predictable results. Now is the time to get in control of your business.
Browse more helpful resources to keep your business moving forward.
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