Boston real estate agents beware! With 2024 quickly approaching, this is the best time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t in 2023. It’s been quite a year with high interest rates and lower inventory levels in both sales and rentals. There have been many real estate agents who have left our industry because they lacked the leads and offers they needed to make a living. There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “In times of prosperity, you put it in your pocket.” In difficult times, you put it in your heart and then discover who you are.” When the real estate market is difficult, it is often a time of self-reflection and course correction. It is also a time to make commitments to yourself that will propel you in a powerful new direction.
You may also want to ask yourself what technologies, new ideas, or adjustments you could make to continue your rise to becoming a top real estate agent in Boston. If you haven’t achieved all of your real estate goals, what has stopped you from reaching your true potential? For example, were you able to sell or list as many houses as you wanted? Did you rent as many apartments as you wanted? Have you explored the real estate market to see if there are better technology or platform solutions that could take you to the next level? If you can’t do it, you need to find out why. If you haven’t set goals, you’ve missed by default.
Luckily, the New Year is the perfect time to start fresh with better habits. Asking yourself motivating questions often produces outstanding results. That’s why New Year’s resolutions are so popular. If you set goals that require growth, you’ll be on your way to becoming an incredible real estate agent in Boston. It takes hard work to be successful in this industry. You may want to make it less difficult for yourself by requiring an agent to do more for you.
INCREASE YOUR ONLINE VISIBILITY.
The standard “location, location, location” no longer only applies to brick-and-mortar retail. Your online location is crucial to your relevance. The most successful brokers appear on the first page of Google. The top performing brokers invest in great websites and develop proprietary listing syndication technologies that give you a head start in marketing. This means more leads and listings for you and less time trying to market yourself, which is incredibly time consuming.
The best agents who make the most money usually work in offices with the strongest online presence. Organic page rank is important. You can tell the health and well-being of a real estate company by its domain authority on search engines and social media platforms. It is also important to know that your brokerage firm devotes significant resources to marketing. It’s a huge advantage to work in an office where the phones are ringing with investors, buyers, sellers and tenants calling!
Look for strong local businesses that have the highest domain authority for many keywords and review the content on their blogs. Compelling local content creates a strong trust factor with a brand that helps close transactions.
Check out where their real estate content is featured
It is important to look for experienced local leaders in the Greater Boston real estate market who have been vetted by the local and national media. Media appearances and unique real estate content not only provide more exposure for agents, but also confirm that you are among the best experts in your field.
For the New Year, resolve to search Google for various top real estate keywords. Think about how customers and the outside world also conduct their Google searches for competing keywords like “Boston apartments” and “Boston real estate.” You should also try a variety of smaller local neighborhood keywords to see if you notice any patterns. You may want to consider a real estate company based on total site visits in a year. You may also want to add up the amount of web traffic received and then divide that by the number of agents.
All other things being equal, if a company has a thousand agents across multiple companies, compared to a hundred agents with the same amount of web traffic, you could have ten times fewer leads for you. Let’s face it: if you’re not on the first page of Google, you’ll never get a decent amount of leads. This means significantly more hours just for acquisition. This is incredibly time consuming and doesn’t often bring you income. Remember: Spending all your time pitching prospects means you’re not showing and closing. Ask your real estate company if they can guarantee you X number of leads per week in 2024.
Ask real estate companies what they invest in your success
It could be a wise decision to consider working for a real estate agency that invests significant funds in providing a comprehensive online omnipresence. It takes incredibly hard work and a lot of time to get to the first page of Google. Creating the first page on Google is not easy to do within ten years. It takes an incredible amount of effort and expertise to rank well and generate leads. This is why you almost always see the giant national tech monopolies dominating the front page of Google.
Increased online visibility will have a huge impact on your bottom line well into 2024. The less time you have to spend in front of a computer creating marketing or advertisements, the more time you can spend on the phone arranging showings and completing transactions. The best real estate agents in Boston work for companies that provide their agents with the best marketing presence through dominant web presences. Finding a top-notch real estate company with the highest number of clients is always a win for your wallet! It’s time to ask tough questions. Will your broker invest money to help you get leads, or will they funnel the profits to a company in a faraway location?
SET NUMERIC GOALS.
Vague goals are not real goals. Setting ambiguous goals is the first step to lying to yourself about your professional growth. However, it’s also not worth setting arbitrary numerical goals that don’t challenge you. For example, you can set a goal of 5 calls per day. Technically that’s a numerical goal, but any successful agent can tell you that 5 calls a day doesn’t pay the bills. Each agent could make five warm or cold calls in 30 minutes or less. A good manager can help you set challenging, yet realistic career goals.
You also want to have as many property owner phone numbers as possible available to you. The more notes you have about a property owner or investor in your database, the more frequently you can communicate with them. The daily research for new phone numbers is also an extremely time-consuming task. Spending too much time researching means your closing skills become rusty because you don’t show and close enough. However, if you work for a company that has built up a huge database through over twenty years of real business relationships with landlords, it can be extremely lucrative. Landlords like to work with proven raw materials that they know, like and trust.
The saying applies here: work smarter AND harder.
Smart operates in one place with the largest landlord and investor database that has accurate phone numbers and emails. Working harder means making more calls in the most effective way. When you combine smarter and harder, you become unstoppable. Ask yourself how much work you put in this year and how much you earned. Use this as a benchmark for essentials. Talk to successful agents and brokers and ask them about their goals – find out what they all have in common. So why not follow proven paths to success?
It is said that it takes 21 days for a new habit to form and 66 days for that habit to become automatic. It’s a relatively short effort that will help you develop good sales habits that you can use for a lifetime. If you made 50 new listing calls per week in 2023, set a goal to make 100 instead. Remember that you can achieve much more with these additional dials. If you really want to make the most of these calls, only count calls where you reach someone and build a relationship.
Building relationships takes time, but that first call is crucial. Studies show that people are more likely to call companies back if they have had previous contact with them. Name recognition is also important, so look for market leaders. This will undoubtedly improve the ratio of callbacks you receive over time. With a powerful website full of real-time rental data, you’ll also look like you work in a powerful office.
Take the steps to be more successful in 2024!
In summary, the above New Year’s resolutions provide valuable guidance for Boston real estate agents looking to increase their success. By incorporating these resolutions into your professional life, you will lay the foundation for significant business growth. Now is the time to explore all available options and embark on this transformative journey.
As we say goodbye to 2023 over the next few weeks, we want to express our commitment to your success. Stay tuned for part two where we’ll dive deeper into additional strategies and solutions tailored specifically for Boston real estate agents. Our New Year’s resolution is to provide you with a wealth of listings, leads, and rental opportunities so you can maximize your revenue in the most time-efficient way possible. If you are interested in joining the Boston Pads team, visit our real estate careers page. We look forward to the opportunity to get to know you and work with you!
