When things become uncertain in the real estate market or in your own life, protecting your real estate business is vital. You want to know what it will take to ensure your business continues to survive and can get through the difficult times while thriving during the good times.
There are several things you can do to ensure you can survive during uncertain times. Protecting your real estate business starts with staying calm and aware during difficult issues. It’s best to look to the future and get organized.
Sometimes, you can gain significant benefits by taking a step back from your business and looking at it from other angles. You can also use the following tips to help protect your real estate business during uncertain times.
Top 8 Tips to Protect Your Real Estate Business
1. Become a Local Expert
Whether you focus on luxury homes, specific neighborhoods, first-time sellers, or another niche, become a local expert in your niche. When the real estate market becomes uncertain, it’s the experts that will find it much easier to survive. If you’re already established as a local expert, clients will turn to you and you will have plenty of buyers and sellers to work with.
You can establish yourself as an expert in your local community by becoming very visible. Attend networking events, become the local expert online, and get your name/face out in front of the local community. With excellent blog content, SEO, social media marketing, and other online marketing services, you can establish your expertise in your local community.
2. Don’t Get Stuck in the Vacation Mindset
When business is slow, it can lead to a vacation mindset. This can set in when you don’t know what to do. During the beginning stages of COVID-19, many people had to fight the vacation mindset as they were stuck at home.
You might have more free time than you’re used to, which can be a good thing if you use it properly. However, if you let yourself get sucked into the vacation mindset, you might pour that cocktail earlier in the day than necessary or check out mentally before work for the day is done.
When you have more time than you know what to do with, it’s time to get innovative. Take over some of the marketing tasks you can handle to fill the time and save money if you were paying someone to handle them. For example, if you’re a decent writer, now is the time to take over your own blog writing.
Even if you’re still pretty busy, but you are now working from home instead of at the office, it can be a big adjustment. You’re still working and you’re not on a vacation, so make sure you continue to work hard to grow your business.
3. Gain Excellent Organization
During uncertain times, organization becomes more necessary than ever before. If you want to protect your real estate business, you need to get organized before you do anything else. You cannot afford for anything to slip through the cracks with a client, potential client, or any other task necessary to keep your business running.
Step back from your business and look at the systems you have in place. Make sure you have the right systems in place to organize your business. If you need to catch up on certain things, now is the time.
Make sure your physical files and your computer files are well organized, as well. There’s no need to be wasting time looking for files. With the right systems, you can find the right files quickly.
There will come a time when businesses will be booming again. Good organization and systems now will help when that time comes.
4. Remain Positive
Nobody wants to work with a negative or desperate real estate agent. You want to be the one that stays positive and provides a little light at the end of the tunnel for buyers, sellers, and other agents. While sales might be down right now, staying positive is a better way to attract new clients than becoming negative or desperate.
Your voice online, on social media, in person, and over the phone should be positive and upbeat. You might be dealing with uncertain times, but you’re not the only one. Typically, if the real estate market is uncertain, so are several other markets. Remain positive and you can be the light for others as they are struggling through uncertain times, too.
5. Reach Out to Post Clients
When you’re dealing with uncertain times and you want to protect your real estate business, you should take the extra time you have to reach out to past clients. These clients have a bond with you and maybe ready to buy or sell. They could also have referrals they can pass along to you.
Even if you reach out and hear nothing back, you will be at the front of their mind. If they hear of someone looking to buy or sell their home, they might send them your way.
Remember the tip about remaining positive, this is the time to use that tip, too. You want to reach out with a friendly tone and even offer to help if they need help with something. You can reach out over the phone, through cards in the mail, or through email.
6. Hustle
Whether you’re known as a local expert or you’re not, when you enter uncertain times as a real estate agent, it’s time to hustle. During good times, leads might be walking through your door, blowing up your phone, and filling your email box with little effort on your part. Those times are great, but when you need to protect your real estate business during uncertain times, you need to start hustling.
If it’s time to hustle, you need a plan. Wasted effort doesn’t pay the bills and doesn’t bring in new clients. Create a plan and figure out what you can do to reach new potential clients. Then, get to work!
7. Stay on Top of Real Estate News
Even during the worst times, people will be buying and selling homes. When times are uncertain, the competition turns from buyers and bidding wars to agents and experts. Staying informed is one of the ways you can establish yourself as an expert and make sure your clients know you’re on top of the real estate news.
Staying informed will help you show potential clients that you know what’s going on with the market and with other things in the world right now. For example, staying on top of what’s going on locally with COVID-19 can help you inform buyers and sellers of what to expect.
8. Consider More Education
During uncertain times, you might have more time on your hands than you know what to do. Using your time wisely can lead to success in the future. It might be the right time to gain new certifications and education for your local market and for real estate, in general.
Whether you take an actual course or you read articles you have had bookmarked for a while, now is the time to educate yourself. You can even learn a new skill for marketing your real estate business, such as SEO or social media marketing.
Use this time wisely and learn something new that can help to benefit your business. Staying busy will also help you cope with uncertain times as you try to protect your real estate business.
When uncertain times come along, you need to be prepared. Yes, you can have enough savings to get you through a few months or even a year, but what are you going to do make sure your real estate business survives so it can once again thrive?
