Tips that Will Immediately Help You Win More Listings and Convert More Buyers

By Burke Smith, HSA Home Warranty Chief Communications Officer

Editor’s Note: This is part one of a two-part series.

How do you win more listings and convert more buyers? First, develop a brand identity, separate your personal from your professional life on Facebook and remember that real estate is still a personal, local business. It may sound simple, and it is, with the right tools!

As a successful real estate broker who made the transition from the broker side of the business to the affiliate side, I have gained a unique and objective perspective as to what really helps agents do more business and what really helps them waste time. In my role as Chief Communications Officer at HSA Home Warranty, I have had the pleasure of traveling around the country speaking to and training thousands of agents and brokers while assessing what they are doing both offline and online to help their businesses. Here are three quick and easy tips that will hopefully help guide you towards winning more listings and converting more buyers today.

1. Develop a brand identity. This is your #1 priority. What does your brand stand for in the marketplace? Regardless of what brokerage you may work for, when you become a real estate agent, your name is no longer just your name. Your name is a brand and it is the brand that customers will interact with the most. Here is a simple branding exercise: write down 3-5 things that you think your brand represents in the marketplace (and don’t just say LOYALTY, INTEGRITY & EXPERIENCE). Be more specific. What is your niche? Remember this phrase, “Own a niche to get rich.” Then ask friends, family and colleagues what they think your brand represents in the market. Compare their responses with yours. Of course, if all they know you as is a real estate agent, you are in trouble and you do not yet have a real brand identity or a well-defined niche.

2. Separate your personal from your professional life on Facebook. We all know that the overwhelming majority of people will use the web at some point during the home-buying or -selling process. If Facebook is the largest website on the planet, there is a good chance that your clients and prospective clients will search for you there or at least end up there after searching for your name online. What will they find? This is why you want to make sure you build a business page targeted toward “what you do and where you do it.”

3. Remember: real estate is still a personal and local business. Last I checked you can’t shake hands with a Facebook page. In fact, people don’t care if you have 1,500 friends on Facebook if you can’t sell their house. Concentrate on being the “hyper local” expert in your market, and you will be successful. Remember if everybody is on Facebook, Twitter, text, Google+, websites and email, then nobody is door knocking, farming, writing, calling, talking and living. The successful real estate professional of 2014 and beyond will combine as many of those things as possible. Everything you do offline, MUST have a call to action to drive people online. You can’t measure it, if you can’t track it!

Head to http://www.onlinehsa.com/mediacenter.aspx for more from Burke on building your real estate business.

Reprinted with permission from RISMedia. ©2014. All rights reserved.