Your Ultimate Guide to Being a Top Real Estate Agent

Becoming a top real estate agent isn't always about having the best looking photo on your lawn sign or getting a secret resource to send you hundreds of leads every month. It isn't even about being born with the skill to negotiate great deals. Becoming a top real estate agent is, in fact, about acknowledging the requirements of the job and then equipping yourself with the right tools to excel at what you do.

It's not easy to become a top real estate agent.

But it's not impossible either.

What will make YOU stand out?

The way you manage your contacts. PERIOD. So how do you master this perfectly? Having the right tools or even the best tool at hand will certainly put your mind at ease.

The right tool will help you with organization, engaging and following up with your contacts and. most importantly. managing your contacts.

We have compiled a handy list that should help you with this.

Organization is your best friend

Real estate is a people business. So to drive results, you must focus on your people. The better organized you are with your contacts, the better able you are to convert those contacts into leads, then clients, then revenues, then repeat business, then greater profits.

Customer Relationship Management: It starts here

When you know your business revolves around people, your best foot forward is a simple yet powerful tool designed to help you manage those people: Customer Relationship Management (CRM). And there are excellent CRMs on the market designed specifically for real estate agents.

Without a CRM, you waste hours every week searching for contact information. Think of all the other far more productive, money-making activities you could be doing instead? In a business where it is your personal time and effort that will make you a top agent, you need to be thinking about everything you can do to make yourself more efficient.

Personal is always better

Today, people can sniff out your generic, template email message from a mile away. Don't do it. Of course, your CRM will have preset text and email messages set up and ready to go, but there are always ways to personalize so you're saving yourself time but also tailoring to your contact.

Go where the numbers are

On average, 63% of email marketing campaigns in the real estate industry receive positive engagement. In fact, real estate has the highest email open-rate of any industry sitting at just under 20%, and it delivers 30 to 40 times the ROI of most other forms of marketing (social media included!).

Having your own agent website is not an option, it's a necessity

Piggybacking onto your brokerage website simply won't do – and neither will having a dedicated page. In your industry, it's about the people. And one of the people in every single real estate transaction you're a part of is you. Consumers are not buying into the brokerage, they're buying into you. One of the best ways you can demonstrate that you are a professional, skilled and dedicated real estate agent is by creating a solid online presence. When the third most viewed page on a real estate agent's website is the "About" page, it's clear that consumers show interest in learning about you – so give them a chance to do just that.

Go Mobile

You don't have a 9-to-5 desk job. On the contrary, you're on the road, working all kinds of flexible hours in the day. As a result, you can't afford to be limited to a desktop computer or even a laptop. You need a way to respond to leads and clients in between meetings. The competitiveness of the real estate industry dictates the fact that the more responsive you can be, the better your chances of landing clients. Good CRMs have apps you can use right through your smartphone. This way, when someone pings you with a reminder or it's time to reach out to a contact, you don't need to wait hours before you're back at your computer. A well-structured CRM app makes it simple and fast to stay in touch with all your contacts no matter where you are.

Create a strong social media presence

Writing your own unique articles or finding the most original, high quality videos online to share with your followers on social media is incredibly time consuming. And yet, what better way to capitalize on the contacts you have in all your social media outlets than to post amazing content? A good CRM helps you automate your social media engagement so this doesn't become an added task on your plate. Requiring just a few minutes of your time for setup, the right real estate CRM can help you take your social media accounts from dormant to alive again!

Success is a path. Make sure you're on it.

While the list of tools for real estate agents is never ending, incorporating a CRM into your business is one of the smartest moves you can make. The way you manage and connect with your contacts will be a large determining factor in how quickly you make it to the top.

To view the original article, visit the IXACT Contact blog.