Many real estate agents and brokers feel their business hits a lull during the holiday season, when people are more focused on priorities other than buying or selling a house. In addition to using this slower period to plan for the year ahead, you can use it as an opportunity to reconnect with your network and show them how much they mean to you. Here are some ways that you can build upon your relationships during the holidays to increase your brand value and plant seeds for the year ahead.
Host A Holiday Client Appreciation Party ‘Tis the season for parties! One of the best ways that you can get some face-to-face time with your team, clients, and referral partners is to host an annual client appreciation party during the holidays. While the main point of this event is for you to strengthen the relationships that empower your business, there are opportunities for you to market your brand as well. Set up a holiday photo booth with props and encourage guests to post their photos to social media with a branded hashtag. You could also hire a professional photographer to take fun candid’s of the party to use in your social media marketing. This shows the world how much you care about the people of your community; not just the houses they live in. Don’t forget to write a press release and publish photos on your social pages. Send A Personalized Holiday Card Holiday cards are a long-celebrated tradition. Although it may be easier to send out a standard card to everyone, your efforts will go a lot farther if you write a personal message in each one. It doesn’t have to belong, but it should reflect your appreciation for their contribution to your business. It also never hurts to share an inside joke or pleasant memory if you can. Again, this is not about directly soliciting business, but leveraging the law of reciprocity to your advantage. Write Holiday Themed Blog Posts Themed blog posts are often some of the most popular of the entire year. While helpful tips about how to make it through the holidays or holiday decorations are always popular, why not take a more hyperlocal approach? Offer a local holiday shopping guide profiling the mom-and-pop shops that make your neighborhood so great. Local restaurants and other businesses with holiday specials work, too. A list of the best holiday-themed events in your market will also be a big hit. Themed hyperlocal posts like these increase your SEO reach, position you as a local expert, and generate loads more traffic by being so shareable on social media. Don’t forget to include hyperlocal and holiday-themed hashtags to help expand your reach with every post a bit further. Give Back To Those That Need It Most Although you should be giving back to charity and your community throughout the year, the holidays are certainly one of the most heart-warming times to do it. There are countless ways that you can deepen your connection with the community while doing good. Food, coat, and toy drives at your office offer the opportunity to get some facetime with people that wish to join your cause. By having the collection point at your office, you can get priceless face to face time with your clients as well. You could also organize a team of caroling agents to visit homeless shelters and aging communities where holiday cheer could use a boost. For a more hands-on approach, consider gathering volunteers for Habitat for Humanity or local soup kitchens. Social media posts, blogs, and videos are a great way to show the positive impact of giving back during the holidays and showcase your dedication to the community. Host A Home Decorating Contest On the lighter side, you can start an annual home decorating contest. Encourage your network and social audience to submit their most festive rooms or exterior decorations for the chance to win a prize. Consider enlisting your networking group and/or other local small businesses to provide prizes and encourage them to promote the contest. To expand your reach further, consider making it a requirement that they like your page, share your post, or subscribe to your newsletter in order to enter. Announce the winners during a Facebook Live event and don’t forget to tag everyone involved in the contest for even more free exposure. At the Holidays, Keep it Real The holidays are a wonderful opportunity for you to take stock of your production, set new goals, and reconnect with the people that have enabled you to get where you are today. Although it is wise to continue marketing yourself during the final months of the year to keep your pipeline full, it is important to be tactful and lead with reciprocity. Strike a balance in your marketing strategy by investing the time in your relationships with the community and leveraging online channels to promote your dedication. At Weichert, we believe the real estate business is based on personal relationships and is the driving force behind all the tools and systems we develop and prescribe for our affiliates. If this sounds like it would be a fit with your brokerage, go to www.weichertfranchising.com to learn more about a franchise opportunity. Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/5-real-estate-marketing-ideas-for-the-holidays/
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As the year is winding down, you may want to consider reflecting on how far you have come in the last 12 months and where you would like to be at the end of the coming year. Many people will advise you that as a broker and a business owner, you should get in the habit of writing an annual business plan to set goals and measure your progress. Many brokers tend to “wing it” and don’t see the value in writing one. However, writing a business plan can be one of the best things you can do for your business. Follow these tips to create your own yearly business plan before year’s end and insure that next year is your most productive year yet.
When Is The Best Time To Write Your Yearly Business Plan? In short, NOW! The best way to set yourself up for success in the year to come is to block off time to write your annual business plan well before the new year begins. Since many real estate agents and brokers have considerable downtime during the holidays, that is a great opportunity to focus on your plans and goals for the new year. Carve out enough time in November or December to look over the current year’s production and assemble a strategic plan for next year to get started off on the right foot when January 1st hits. What Should You Include In Your Yearly Business Plan? For a business plan to be useful, you really have to consider your goals, tactics, activities, and budget in some detail, and develop a reasonable plan that has these things working together. How much detail you get into is up to you, but err on the side of more detail if you can. At a minimum, a real estate broker needs to give some thought to the things below:
GOOD GOAL: “I will recruit 20 new agents next year of which at least 5 will have previous experience and one who has agent management experience. I will target 8 in the first half of the year and 12 in the second half of the year.”
Final Tips to Keep in Mind Business plans are not a one-size-fits-all tool. It is important that even if you use a pre-designed template that you customize it according to your individual goals, targets, and challenges. Think in terms of both your immediate goals, as well as how they fit into your big-picture goals. As an experienced real estate broker, you have a deep understanding of how important it is to treat your business like a business. By taking the time each year to write out a detailed plan and strategy of how you will tackle each benchmark on the path to success, you stand a much greater chance of getting there. Plan Your Business with a Partner At Weichert, we encourage all of our franchise owners to create a business plan each year. By writing down the plan, together with the coaching they get from their business consultants, Weichert affiliates have found this process to be truly valuable in sustaining growth. By implementing formal business plans, they are able to do more and focus their energy and resources on the right things. It’s just one of many proven strategies Weichert gives its owners to help them grow. We can help you with your business plan, but even better, we can give you the tools and processes to execute it. For more information about how Weichert empowers its affiliates to do more, go to www.weichertfranchise.com . Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/january-is-too-late-to-write-your-business-plan/ Franchise Success Spotlight: Weichert® Affiliate Ronda Bailey Cooper Weichert, Realtors® – Cooper Group Indy Ronda Bailey Cooper never set out to be a Weichert Broker. In fact, Ronda never set out to be any kind of broker at all… Indianapolis Indiana and its suburbs support a thriving and dynamic real estate market. Despite its misunderstood moniker as “Naptown”, the city and its roughly 1 million inhabitants, are anything but sleepy. Ronda Bailey Cooper grew up here and despite an occasional relocation, she is a proud Hoosier and Indiana is the place she has always called home. Ronda Bailey Cooper operates Weichert, Realtors® – Cooper Group Indy from almost the dead center of Indianapolis. Her clients are mostly suburban homebuyers and renters who work in or near the city. As Ronda reflects on the crooked line of fate and career that landed her on the doorstep of Weichert, she will tell you, “I never planned to be a broker–it just kind of happened!” The Jagged Path to Real Estate Broker Ronda’s working life started as a high-school teacher and sports coach for girls volleyball, softball and the cheerleading squad. In this mix, it was the coaching she really loved. The ability to mentor athletes and inspire a team to come together, compete, and achieve something important, hardly seemed like a job. What’s more she knew she was good at it. After many years as a teacher and then a day-care center operator, Ronda was casually introduced to people from Indiana’s largest home builder. After some thought, Ronda agreed to forgo the day care center for a job as a salesperson for the builder, selling houses under construction across the state. With her newly minted real estate agent license in hand, Ronda had precious little experience in the role of builder salesperson, but her energy, mature business skills and personality got her the job. Ronda set about the hard work of publicizing the developments, partnering with other real estate agents and brokers and sponsoring huge professional events. Over a 12 year career, Ronda rose to regional manager, and ultimately sales director for the entire company. In 2008 Ronda and her team were responsible for the sale of 1700 homes across the state. But the Recession hit. And in 2009, her company was out of business, and Ronda was out of a job. The recession hit builders across the country hard, and Ronda’s company was no exception. But she had developed more than a sales team there; she had developed a culture that was open, supportive, collaborative, and focused on winning. The culture changes extended throughout the company. In this job, she had become coach and mentor again and the thought of starting over was tough. It wasn’t long before Ronda accepted a job out of state, moving her family to Alabama to work for another builder who hoped Ronda could duplicate her success there. However, it soon became clear that their culture was very different than the one Ronda wanted to create and they were not really open to the kind of transformative change they thought they wanted. It taught Ronda how important a culture and the cultural fit is, and how if the fit isn’t there, it isn’t always possible to make it work. In 2012, when her daughter graduated, Ronda took the family back to Indianapolis and got her first traditional real estate agent job, hanging her hat with a tiny Mom & Pop brokerage who provided little more than morning coffee. To train herself in her new profession, Ronda created her own coaching and mentoring program by hiring and paying friends and professional contacts from all over town to teach her the ins and outs of being a real estate agent. One day a friend called her with congratulations. Ronda asked her what for, and she said “for being a top 10 realtor,” as published from results pulled from the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors for the greater Indianapolis area. Ronda had no idea. She had closed 240 homes in just her first two years of being an agent, and the local industry was starting to notice. Agents reached out to her for mentoring. Brokerages tried to recruit her. Ronda decided that maybe it was time to make a career move. The Road to Weichert Ronda got her broker’s license and shortly after started her team with two agents, one a friend, and the other, her daughter. It was around that time that she had a preliminary discussion with Weichert, but she wasn’t really interested. “I had never been anything but independent, and I was really afraid of losing that.” Ronda persisted alone, growing her business slowly and being very careful about who she hired and who she kept. “For me it was all about attitude. I wanted agents that would be open to the culture, the coaching and mentoring I wanted to provide and who would work more as a team.” That meant both a careful screening process and being willing to let go of producers when they had a “bad” attitude. After two years, the agency grew to 6 people and was doing well, but Ronda was becoming aware that she didn’t know what she didn’t know, and her growth was being impacted because of it. “The technology stuff and the brand development were not really my forte. I’m more a people person.” As Ronda planned a trip to NY city to see her daughter, Weichert happened to call and she thought, “What the heck, they can pay for my visit and I’ll stop in to see them while I’m in the area.” While listening to Weichert at their corporate offices in Morris Plains, NJ, all the pieces started to fall into place. Recruiting process? Check. Plug & Play Technology Solutions? Check. Active one-on-one expert support? Check. New agent training process? Check. Branding and Marketing Solutions? Check. Still, Ronda wrestled with concerns over her independence. While she knew that Weichert was the only affiliation she would consider, it was almost a year and a half after these initial meetings that she finally came on board. It was her daughter who, after watching her struggle with the decision, finally said, “Mom c’mon! What are you waiting for!” In 2017 Ronda became Weichert Realtors® – Cooper Group Indy. The Weichert Experience “The human collateral I’ve had at Weichert since day 1, has been amazing”, remarks Ronda. “As a people person, the ability to take live trainings, attend our SAW sessions and management retreats, have been tremendously exciting.” What Ronda likes the most though is the culture of transparency and sharing that exists within the Weichert broker community. “There is simply no scarcity mentality or being secretive. I never want to be the smartest person in the room and with Weichert, I never am.” When it comes to tools, Ronda is using it all, from the Doors listing presentation methodology to the Weichert Fast Track training for new agents. The plug and play nature of much of these processes meant that she saw improvements on day one that have continued through her two years with Weichert. “With Weichert, it’s not about any one single tool or process, but the way they’ve made them all work together and complement each other is quite amazing.” Ronda has doubled the size of her team using Weichert methods and has seen a 15-20% year over year growth in sales since becoming an Affiliate. She still builds her team her way, though—slowly—with an emphasis on openness and cultural compatibility. “It turns out that Weichert has the same culture that I do when it comes to openness, sharing and teamwork,” observes Ronda. “Weichert delivered 100% on the promises it made to me all those years ago and continues to do so.” Weichert – A Culture of Support As a Weichert affiliate, you’ll have a dedicated real estate business consultant and regional service manager assisting with everything from business planning and coaching to recruiting and financial management, plus support to help you leverage the wide array of marketing and sales tools at your fingertips. You’ll have the opportunity to attend local broker councils and management trainings to network with colleagues, as well as regional rallies and exciting conventions, along with your agents, so that everyone on your team is rallied around a common goal. The support you get will enhance your skills to make you a better leader. Be our next success story. Call Weichert Franchising today or visit www.weichertfranchise.com. Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/the-accidental-broker/ When you’re considering purchasing a real estate franchise, brokers inevitably focus on the costs of the investment trying to understand if gains made by the relationship will ultimately outpace costs of the relationship. While each franchise is different, here are some of the key things you should expect from a real estate company offering a franchise opportunity.
With the Right Partner, Franchising Benefits Quickly Outpace Costs It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers when you’re looking at a franchise opportunity, but it’s important to never lose sight of what each franchise is really offering you in return for your hard-earned money. Pay close attention to the totality of each brands’ offering and remember that what’s cheapest isn’t always the best deal – the returns on your investment and the scope of training and support that is offered are what really counts. At Weichert, we believe in the power of the handshake, supported by advanced technology and proven processes. With Weichert you have both digital assets and expert real estate professionals that provide you training and coach you through your specific challenges every step of the way. If this sounds like a good fit for your business, we’re happy to chat with you in more detail visit https://www.weichertfranchise.com for more information. Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/youre-really-paying-invest-real-estate-franchise-2/ |
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