The Perfect Recipe to be a Great Real Estate Agent - Patrice SARDA

By Patrice SARDA

Are you thinking of being a real estate agent? Probably, you are already one and you want to improve your chances of success in the real estate industry. If so, it is important for you to know what it takes to be a good real estate agent. There are several factors contributing to success in real estate, like the following:

• Being a people-person – if you are not one naturally, then it would be a good idea to start learning how to be one.
• Partnering with fellow agents – it would not hurt your career if you can be friends/partners with other people in your line of work. Such collaboration can be beneficial to all parties.
• Using a publicist – even if you think that you can handle your own publicity, a professional can still do a better job.
• Maintaining connections with previous clients – your satisfied clients are the best people to provide you with free advertisement. Do not lose touch with them.
• Cultivating an online/virtual presence – in today’s highly social-media-dependent society, having and maintaining an online or virtual presence is essential. You have to keep in mind that most people are too busy to go physically hunting for properties. They usually prefer to browse the web first.
• Hosting open houses (lots of them) – you can never go wrong with open houses. They offer the most ideal means of presenting properties to potential buyers.
• Hiring real estate coach – it is essential for your success that you find a real and reliable one. A coach whose experience and knowledge in the industry has provided ultimately personal and professional success.

Key Characteristics of an Unbeaten Real Estate Agent

No one is born a real estate agent. One has to learn how to be one. It does not matter what background you come from (or how much education you have) you can be a successful real estate agent if you really got what it takes.

You can be a fresh university graduate and do extremely well, from the start. You can also be someone from a totally different field – like medicine or engineering – and make it into big-time real estate business. The thing is, if you know what you need to do and then you do it passionately and religiously, then you can be who or what you want to be.

Perseverance – Never give up

This is the first trait. A first No is not a forever No. If you can just keep that in your head, then you would never give in to disappointment. Thus, you would never surrender, rather you would persevere. The trick is to follow people – keep track of your leads. Prioritize your leads – like put them on A, B, C lists. The ones in the A list get the most attention as those are the ones that are most likely to make purchases. The ones in the B and C lists also get attention – getting follow up calls – but not as frequently as those in the A. The B people may purchase but probably over a longer period. Perseverance means knowing who to cultivate and recognizing who is ready to acquire a new property.

Patience – Good things take time

It is a virtue and if you do not have it, success in any field is not going to be a possibility. Being patient as a real estate agent means not making the mistake of being too eager to close a deal too soon. Even if you have the facts and the digits already laid down on the table, try to calm down and slow things down a bit. For instance, if you have a property seller that is asking for a specific amount and then you got a call from a buyer willing to pay for that amount for the kind of property being offered, it would be a good idea to stop yourself from running straight and close the deal. Why? Because things can turn against your favor and you may end up losing the buyer. The seller may think that if you have found a buyer that fast, then the asking price may be a bit too low. The result could be a raise in the asking price, something that you are sure the potential buyer would probably not go for. So, what will you end up with? A very complicated situation?

The best thing to do in such a situation is to convince the buyer to put an offer a bit lower than what he was willing to pay. That way, a kind of negotiation will go underway. It is a well-accepted fact that people like negotiating. If you instantly give them what they want, they’d probably back down and suspect that something’s not right. So, let them sweat a bit and then go for the kill. Once deal has been settled – probably a few thousand dollars less than what the seller wants – then both parties will feel that they have gotten the best benefits.

The only genius talent is inquisitiveness

Being curious is an effective characteristic for Real Estate agents. You need to have this, need to always ask questions and consider different means to market, package, prospect, sell, finance or underwrite your transactions. If you are inquisitive, you are continuously learning.

Have you ever noticed the initials SIOR, CCIM, CPA or MBA after the names of successful people? Those initials mean that those people never stopped to have themselves educated in their chosen fields. They continued to learn and investigate because they know that one can never know everything there is to know regarding any topic or subject.

So, be curious. Stay interested. Ask questions. Educate yourself continuously.

Discipline – A bridge between goal and accomplishment

Disciplining yourself is something that should have been in you from the start. You must have a full understanding that without discipline, you can never be successful. Being a real estate agent is doing a real job. This means you must dedicate at least 40 to 60 hours every week in doing this job. There is no room for laziness. Remember that making a sale today does not automatically mean that you will have the same luck next week. So, you have to be consistent with your schedule. Discipline yourself to get up and work even if you have recently closed one deal after another.

Disciplining yourself also means being at your desk at the same time every day and working even after office hours. Be productive at every chance you get. If you meet a potential client during a vacation, grab the chance.

You win on execution

To execute is to be able to focus on the task at hand and making sure of its in-time completion. It is just so easy for some people to get caught in focusing on urgent matters instead on more important things. Focusing to another project without ensuring completion of a previous one is not good. Such action will not give you much accomplishment. If you need to be busy, make sure you are busy doing something significant, make sure you have completed and accomplished something. Going from one project to another is not an effective way of gaining success as a real estate agent.

Patrice SARDA