You’ve completed the process of becoming a real estate agent in Texas and now you’re ready to hit the ground running. Or maybe you’ve been working in real estate for a few years and you haven’t seen the level of success you desire. No matter where you’re at in your real estate career, understanding how to succeed as a real estate agent in Texas will help lead you to a better place.
Understand Your Business
The first step to becoming a successful real estate agent in Texas is understanding your business. Do you know what business you’re in? If you answered this question in your head with something like “I am in the real estate business” you’re wrong. You are in the Lead Generation Business!
Yes, you help your clients buy and sell real estate, but you need clients to be a successful agent. It’s easy to make excuses about the real estate market being down or not favoring the type of agent you are, but successful real estate agents don’t worry about the state of the market because they are in the business of generating leads.
No matter the current market, if you generate enough leads, you will remain successful as a real estate agent in Texas. You have two choices when it comes to lead generation: learn how to generate leads yourself, or pay someone to do it for you.
The first step to becoming a successful real estate agent in Texas is understanding your business. Do you know what business you’re in? If you answered this question in your head with something like “I am in the real estate business” you’re wrong. You are in the Lead Generation Business!
Yes, you help your clients buy and sell real estate, but you need clients to be a successful agent. It’s easy to make excuses about the real estate market being down or not favoring the type of agent you are, but successful real estate agents don’t worry about the state of the market because they are in the business of generating leads.
No matter the current market, if you generate enough leads, you will remain successful as a real estate agent in Texas. You have two choices when it comes to lead generation: learn how to generate leads yourself, or pay someone to do it for you.
Generating Leads Through Networking / Prospecting
Networking and prospecting may include:
- Making regular phone calls every day to family, friends, and others asking for business
- Handing out business cards to everybody you encounter
- Attending community events and showing your face anywhere you’re allowed to go
- Sitting at open houses every weekend
If this doesn’t sound like fun or you’ve done it and it’s not what you prefer, the other option is to pay for leads through advertising and marketing.
Buying Leads
If you have the money to invest and you don’t want to network/prospect, you can use advertising and marketing to your advantage. There are many ways to gain leads through online advertising, sending out postcards through the mail and other forms of advertising. However, you will need a large enough budget to support your marketing efforts for at least six months as most advertising methods require repeat exposure to generate good leads.
Marketing is a bit of trial and error, which means you have to be willing to make mistakes. Some methods may not work as well as others and it can take some time and money to figure out which type of advertising is best for your marketing budget.
There are also a lot of companies online that you can pay a monthly fee for leads but there may be restrictions for the areas available to buy leads for. Care must be taken in choosing the right company to buy leads from as this market has become oversaturated and you may end up being the 20th agent to contact the lead who is no longer interested in hearing from anyone. Some companies have higher quality leads and don’t charge a monthly fee but will take part of the commission for any transactions you close with the leads.
Working for a Solid Texas Real Estate Broker
Another option, if you don’t really want to network/prospect every moment of every day and you don’t have a large budget for advertising or buying leads is to choose the right Texas real estate broker to work for. While your broker may not simply hand you leads, they should be able to coach you and train you on the best methods for lead generation. Some brokerages promise to provide you leads but be aware that these may be low quality online leads that many other agents have already contacted or the broker may have “cherry-picked” the best leads and distributed the rest to their agents.
We suggest working with a brokerage that provides tools to make lead generation much easier. The right tools make a huge difference and joining the right Texas real estate agent sponsorship plan will help ensure you have the right tools for lead generation.
Converting Leads into Commission Checks
You’re certainly in the lead generation business as a real estate agent in Texas, but to be successful, you cannot simply generate leads. You have to be able to take the leads you generate and turn them into commission checks.
Some agents become very proficient at lead generation, but the buyers on their list never buy and the listing appointments never seem to turn into listings. Lead conversion matters as you won’t be cashing commission checks without making sales. The reality is different approaches work for different agents in different areas. There is no “sure thing” that works for everyone. It will take testing, refining, and repeating to find the best approach for you.
Executing Deals
The final step in becoming a successful real estate agent in Texas is executing the deals. While generating and converting leads offer the foundation for your success, actually executing deals is the final step towards your success.
As a real estate agent, you have to know the process of executing contracts inside and out. You must be able to complete the deal and see it through the transaction phase, also known as the “contract to close” period.
If you want to know how to succeed as a real estate agent in Texas, you need to know how to execute the deal. This process will require you to become competent in communications and problem-solving. You will need to be patient, compassionate, and develop an intuition when it comes to the possible issues you may encounter along the way.
Both buyers and sellers are entering into what will likely be the largest transaction of their life. They will bring plenty of anxiety, worry, frustration, distrust, anger, second thoughts, and misgivings to the table for you to deal with. This is rather normal, but as a Texas real estate agent, you’ve basically signed up to be their peacekeeper, problem solver, and facilitator. Your job may not be fun at all times, but it can be very rewarding if you learn this very important part of being a successful real estate agent in Texas.
The failure rate in the real estate industry is rather high. This is due to a misunderstanding of what it really takes to be a successful real estate agent in Texas or any other state. Whether you’ve found some success and you crave more or you’ve been spinning your wheels for years and you’re finally ready to take your real estate career seriously, the help of a successful broker in Texas can go a long way.
