Getting FUB’d Up with Bridget: Better Ways to Use Your Follow Up Boss Contact Information
Watch our latest webinar that teaches you how to get the most out of the information you’re adding to your Follow Up Boss account!
Real Estate Agent
🤫 Want an Easy Button for Better Sales Meetings?
Putting together a sales meeting twice a month or even weekly can be a challenge! Including a brief training is something that will really help your team get a lot of value from the session together, but it often takes time to research and prepare.
Set aside the time within your meeting for this training, and then let us do the heavy lifting! Use our Follow Up Boss Playlist for agents to supply you with a short training video to watch as a group and discuss during your meeting.
Choose one video from the playlist to cover each meeting and revisit often as we will be continually adding to this to help support you in your quest for building the perfect real estate team.
You might also want to check out our full list of offerings for more in-depth training sessions.
🛳️ Guide to Nailing Your Onboarding
Onboarding your new agents smoothly is not only a key piece of your recruiting puzzle, it’s crucial to create a healthy, growing team or brokerage.
This process is the agent’s first impression of how the organization works and you want to do everything you can for it to go smoothly to show them what a professional, organized, and committed-to-their-success place this is.
In a lot of cases, those new agents are scared. They’ve left salaried positions with benefits or a brokerage that they know inside-and-out and have taken a leap of faith to try something new. Especially those who are new to a commission-only pay structure, this can be a really intimidating thing.
The goal with onboarding is to have them land with you confidently on their feet. If they were to show up on that first day and you say, “Oh, great! Uhh…I didn’t know that you were starting today! Uh…here’s some information for you to read, here’s the wifi password, and here’s some things to read that I just slapped together just now,” that’s going to cause your new rockstar agent to have some immediate job-change remorse. Worse, if mistakes happen down the line, they will say, “I knew it from the first day that this was a bad decision!”
So how do you accomplish this soft yet ready-to-go landing for your new agents? Give yourself a runway of time to prepare. 48 business hours should be sufficient, depending on your process. This way, you and anyone else assisting you with onboarding has plenty of time to get everything prepared before they walk in the door. Agents are READY. TO. GO. and they will become frustrated in having to wait on their basic needs to work.
Create an onboarding checklist to ensure that each item you have identified that an agent needs when they begin is prepared for them. Similar to the results of having a transaction or closing checklist for your clients, you want the process of working with you to be the same for your agents: consistent, thorough, and positive.
Use our guide below (make a copy and save it to edit,) and add every single thing that you do when you onboard someone new. Yes, even the small stuff. As you grow and bring on multiple people at once it will be harder and harder to remember each detail.
Once you’re done, save another copy and name it “Exit Checklist” and update it so that you are turning off and performing all the tasks needed when an agent leaves and nothing is missed on that end as well.
This is all about consistency. If you need to do something to onboard or exit one agent, you will likely need to do it for all of them. Building systems around the regular actions that you take means that nothing will be forgotten, the organization is working efficiently, and there are fewer items to remember and decisions to be made around recurring events, freeing you up to spend time and energy on the business building activities instead.
Guide to Creating a Team Business Plan
If you’re going to run your team (or brokerage!) and get results, you need a plan. Setting aside time to think about and map out our businesses is something that we all need to do more often rather than getting stuck doing the work and caught up in the weeds of everyday happenings.
Blocking off time regularly with no distractions to think about ways to improve your business is a great first step, but creating a clear actionable plan is the key to seeing results.
Watch our guide to creating a team (or brokerage!) business plan and use the accompanying workbook to make a plan that you can execute and take your business to the next level.
Strategies for the Never-Ending Fight Against Spam
Effective communication is key in any business, but especially so in real estate as this element can make or break your transactions and growth. Email remains a primary channel for connecting with clients, colleagues, and prospects however, the constant battle against spam filters can hinder the delivery of crucial messages. By understanding the nuances of spam filters and implementing proactive measures, you can ensure messages reach the intended recipients, fostering stronger relationships and enhancing your overall success.
No one wants their inbox junked up and major email providers are putting in place efforts to help protect us from spam. Still, if you don’t approach your marketing in a strategic, meaningful way, you’ll end up right alongside that nice Prince who can’t seem to find anybody to take his millions off his hands.
Here are some strategies you can implement to prevent your emails from landing in the dreaded spam folder:
💌 Establish Credibility
Building trust with clients and the public is the foundation of a secure business. When your emails consistently end up in spam folders, it can erode the credibility you’ve worked hard to establish. By taking preventive measures, you ensure that your messages are seen by the right people at the right time.
💌 Authenticate your Custom Domain to Improve Email Deliverability
Our besties at Follow Up Boss have created a way for you to authenticate your domain so that you can set your marketing emails up for the best chance of landing in the hands of future business. Use this link and follow the steps to further protect your efforts!
💌 Understand Spam Filters
Before diving into prevention strategies, it’s essential to understand how spam filters operate. These filters use complex algorithms to analyze various aspects of an email, such as content, sender reputation, and engagement metrics. By staying informed about these factors, real estate professionals can tailor their communication to align with spam filter criteria. Research the filters that you encounter during your everyday business to learn more about how they work and how you can structure your messaging to not get flagged.
💌 Craft Relevant Content
One of the primary triggers for spam filters is irrelevant or suspicious content. Focus on writing emails that are informative, personalized, and directly related to your recipient’s interests. Avoiding excessive use of promotional language and ensuring the content adds value can significantly reduce the chances of triggering spam filters.
💌 Maintain a Healthy Sender Reputation
Your sender reputation plays a crucial role in email deliverability and consistently sending emails that are marked as spam will harm your reputation. To maintain a positive sender reputation, regularly clean your email list, promptly handle unsubscribe requests, and encourage recipients to mark your emails as ‘not spam’ if they find them valuable.
💌 Use Authentication Protocols
Implementing email authentication protocols like SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) adds an extra layer of security to your emails. This helps verify your legitimacy, making it less likely for spam filters to flag.
💌 Encourage Engagement
Spam filters often take user engagement into account. You can encourage recipients to interact with your emails by including clear calls-to-action, relevant links, and interactive content. Higher engagement rates signal to spam filters that your emails are desired and legitimate.
💌 Regularly Monitor Deliverability Metrics
Regularly monitor key deliverability metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates. Analyzing these metrics provides insights into the effectiveness of your email campaigns and allows for adjustments to be made to improve deliverability.
The Missing Element of Your Recruiting Strategy
It’s retention. How’s that for cutting right to the chase?
I’ve heard my entire real estate career that agents only stay at a brokerage for an average of three years. And while that is certainly true in some cases, I have had the pleasure to work closely with and see under the hood of brokerages all over the US and Canada and I’m here to tell you…it definitely doesn’t have to be that way.
Retaining your existing agents is not only a heck of a lot easier than recruiting, it saves you money and time as well. And aren’t they really one in the same? According to the website edume.com (I don’t know, it looked legit…) the average cost per hire is around $4,000 between the actual cost, HR time, and training efforts. That’s also not including the cost of your recruiting efforts per hire. A lack of effort on your part to retain, nurture, and grow this investment would be just poor business sense.
Your success as a team hinges on your ability to acquire top talent but also to retain it. A stable, committed team will boost productivity across the entire organization while also enhancing the reputation and profitability of the entire team and brokerage. Retaining experienced agents ensures that your client relationships have continuity, as clients often seek the guidance of familiar faces when it comes to large transactions like buying or selling a home. Longer-term relationships build trust, which also generates repeat business and referrals.
When agents work together for an extended period of time, they develop a deep understanding of each other’s strengths to work as a team and create a synergy that significantly impacts your overall team performance. They’ll know that Mike may not be the best at social media, but he’s going to win at the listing table every. single. time. and he’s willing to coach you up before your appointment. And they will know to go to Amber because she’s the social media guru and loves to give you tips on how to grow your audience.
Now, retention isn’t easy. It takes a lot of effort to maintain a long-term relationship and you can’t be everything to everyone. Yes, despite your best efforts, life will take some agents elsewhere or out of the industry completely. But by giving taking care of your people a good honest try, you will be well on your way to developing a team that wants to stick around and grow together.
Here are some suggestions to consider as you work to improve your agent retention efforts:
👩🏫 Invest in Professional Development
Provide ongoing training and development opportunities to keep your team engaged and motivated. Encourage them to grow and expand their skill set, stay updated on industry trends, and pursue certifications that can help them grow their book of business.
😊 Establish a Positive Work Environment
Foster a positive and inclusive workplace culture where agents feel valued and supported. Establish regular team-building activities, open communication channels, and recognition of achievements and things done right to contribute to a sense of belonging.
🏃♂️ Competitive Compensation and Incentives
Your compensation structure should be competitive within the industry and consider implementing performance-based incentives to reward your top performers as well. If you create an environment where it’s easy to sell a lot of houses but your agents HAVE to sell a lot of houses in order to make a decent living, retention will remain a challenge for your organization. Recognizing and appreciating your team’s hard work help them to feel acknowledged and motivated to continue delivering exceptional results for both the team and your clients. Take care to show them this appreciation year-round, not just at the end-of-year awards ceremony!
🏡 Flexible Work Arrangements
Life-work balance isn’t a myth and by leading with flexibility to allow agents to perform their duties well at work and at home will make it easier for people to stay and not have to leave for family reasons. Offering flexible work arrangements and staying in tune to the needs of your team will demonstrate that you understand and respect their individual circumstances and responsibilities outside of real estate.
👔 Help Your Team Identify Career Pathways
Assist your agents in creating a business plan for this year and a five year plan so that they have a clear understanding of their advancement opportunities both within the team and as a real estate professional. This gives your team a sense of direction and purpose which motivates them to stay committed to their roles. Taking the time to know and understand the motivation and goals of your agents will help you support them in reaching those goals. Not everyone wants to create their own team or brokerage, for some making a great living and having more time with their family is the driver.
📚 Provide Training and Support Systems
None of this works if the internal systems of your business are not strong and in place. Strong onboarding, training systems, support during transactions, mentorship opportunities, SOPs for how to work leads, hold open houses and all other real estate activities are all things that you should have in place and easily accessible to your agents. Reviewing these resources regularly at your team meetings and pouring into your folks to teach them everything you can will also result in higher retention rates.
Other companies are recruiting your people as you read this, making a concerted effort to retain or re-recruit your own agents will create an environment and culture so strong and nurturing that they won’t even entertain the conversation. You can do it, just get started and chip away at the things you need to do and the systems you need to create. Keep going, continuity is the secret to success!
Delegate Your Way to a Stronger Real Estate Team
“It’s faster if I just do it myself,” I thought rationalizing that, by the time I sat someone else down and taught them step-by-step how to do this, I could have that task and many others completed. Not making the time to delegate is a misstep on the path to developing as a leader and one that I still find myself struggling with. Learning to delegate effectively is a skill that can propel your business forward but is also something that many of us could improve upon. Looking back in my career I wonder how much farther I could have grown the companies I worked for if I had dropped this bad habit.
The perception that there isn’t enough time is a common reason why people fail to delegate. Wanting to retain control, thinking your way is the best way, and believing that if others help with the work we won’t be viewed as the hardest worker in the land are others.
Delegating is a key aspect to effective leadership and in this dynamic and fast-paced world of real estate that we operate in, learning to work together and run a team is a move that can propel an organization to new heights. It’s not just about lightening the workload, it’s ensuring that each person is operating at their highest and best use of their knowledge and skill set.
As a leader in real estate you can wear an enormous amount of hats: marketing, sales, finance, recruiting, admin, lead generation, customer service…and that’s not even including production! Strengthening your delegation muscles will allow you to not only grow your organization, but work in such a way that your people can not only help more clients each and every year, they will gain that ever-elusive life-work balance by having everyone responsible for their set area of focus.
Here are some tips to help you delegate more effectively:
❤️ Know Your Team
Understand the strengths, skills, and preferences of each member of your team. Tailor your delegation based on individual capabilities to ensure the tasks align with their expertise. This not only enhances efficiency but also boosts team morale as members feel valued for their unique contributions.
🗣️Clearly Define Responsibilities
Provide clear and specific instructions when assigning tasks. Clearly articulate the goals, expectations, and deadlines associated with each delegated responsibility. This helps eliminate ambiguity and ensures that your team members have a solid understanding of their roles and a clear path to success
📐Set Realistic Expectations
Be mindful of the workload you delegate to avoid overwhelming your team members. Set realistic expectations considering their existing commitments and capabilities. This prevents burnout and maintains a healthy life-work balance within the team.
🙋Encourage Open Communication
Foster an environment where team members feel comfortable expressing concerns or seeking clarification. Effective delegation involves a two-way communication channel, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Encourage questions and provide constructive feedback to enhance understanding.
📚Provide Adequate Resources
Ensure that the team has the necessary resources, tools, and information to complete delegated tasks successfully. Lack of resources can hinder progress and lead to frustration. Empower your team by removing obstacles and facilitating their success.
👔 Delegate Authority, Not Just Tasks
Empower team members by delegating not only tasks but also the authority to make decisions within their assigned responsibilities. This cultivates a sense of ownership and accountability, motivating individuals to take initiative and demonstrate leadership in their roles. If you can’t trust the person to make the right decision on their own, then find someone else or retain that responsibility until you have someone who can. Consistently overruling someone’s decisions that they were tasked with can be demoralizing for the people you depend on.
☎️ Follow Up Regularly
Schedule regular check-ins to monitor progress, provide support, and address any challenges or questions. Effective delegation involves ongoing communication to ensure the team remains aligned with goals and timelines. Adjustments can be made if needed, preventing potential issues from escalating.
👩🏫 Provide Training and Development Opportunities
Invest in the professional growth of your team members by offering training opportunities related to their delegated responsibilities. This not only enhances their skills but also increases their confidence and effectiveness in handling delegated tasks.
🏆 Acknowledge and Reward Success
Recognize and celebrate the achievements of your team members. Positive reinforcement boosts morale and encourages a culture of excellence. Acknowledge the contributions of individuals who have completed delegated tasks, fostering a sense of accomplishment and motivation.
🧘♀️Learn from Experience
Assess what worked well and identify areas for improvement and act accordingly. This ongoing self-evaluation helps refine your delegation skills and adapt to the evolving needs of your team and the real estate industry. Regularly evaluating your own decisions will help you grow as a leader and further develop others on your team.
Using Follow Up Boss to Hold Your Team Accountable
Your Follow Up Boss account can be used for so much more than connecting with your leads. Its capability to collect information and provide insights on what is working and what isn’t along with WHO is working and who isn’t will help you to hold your team accountable as well as make decisions to lead your business in the right direction.
Watch the recording of our webinar below to learn more about these easy-to-use tools that are already in your database that will help you make accountability a part of your business and cultivate a culture of production and success!
1. Aligning your team around using Follow Up Boss Properly
2. Leaderboard
3. Agent Goals
4. Smart Lists
5. Filtering your database
6. Call recordings
7. Lead Routing
8. Reporting
9. Plans for each type of contact
10. Automations
⏳ 10 Ways to Find More Time in Your Week
If your to-do list has items that have carried over for weeks…or months (you know who you are!) then it’s time to give your schedule a good overhaul. In our fast-paced industry, effective time management isn’t a skill, it’s an absolute necessity, and we often feel like there’s not enough time to get things done. Juggling meetings, admin work, showings, marketing, and networking events on top of your responsibilities at home, family, and social life can seem impossible and overwhelming. Use our guide to find more time in your week and take back control of your schedule!
🚨 Prioritize
Identify and schedule the high-priority items that contribute directly to your business goals. It can wait if it isn’t a big lever in moving the needle forward for you. Schedule and knock out your most important and urgent items first like prospecting, following up with potential clients, working with active buyers, and promoting your active listings. By making sure these items are done first, it ensures that you are propelling your business forward even on days when the whirlwind takes you off course as the day goes on. Using time blocks is a great tool here to reserve those AM hours for the most important items.
🚫 Eliminate Unnecessary Meetings
Look, just because you’ve always had that meeting every Wednesday at 10 AM, doesn’t mean that you ALWAYS have to have it. Take an honest look at your recurring meetings and determine which ones can be shorter, less frequent, or (gasp!) just an email to communicate.
🗣️ Delegate
You can still be that hands-on, there-for-you-every-step agent and have help. When you go to the doctor the woman who is wearing the white coat performing the exam isn’t the same person checking you in, filing your paperwork, and collecting your co-pay and you don’t respect her any less, do you? Sort out which items absolutely need your voice and your brain and create a system to delegate the other items. If you aren’t in a position to hire someone to delegate to, team up with others to create a position and share the cost!
📱 Embrace Technology
Leverage your CRM software (cough, Follow Up Boss,) scheduling tools like Calendly, and task management apps to help you streamline your workflow and focus on building relationships and closing transactions. Ensure that your system is simple and there are no redundancies. For example, I didn’t realize that I was attempting to keep up with both a digital AND a paper calendar for a while (DOH!) and found time when I just committed to the digital one. Commit to one source of information and share it with those who also need that information.
📅 Set Realistic Goals and Deadlines
If you’re finding that you are pressed for time, STOP telling people that you can have that to them by tomorrow and painting yourself into a corner. If you are scrambling to get things done, change your auto-response to be “I’ll have that to you next week” or “I’ll have that to you in two weeks.” Your clients won’t balk at a clear timeline, even if it’s out of your comfort zone, and will let you know if they need something sooner.
🚧 Establish Boundaries
As a recovering people-pleaser, I appreciate how hard it is to say no. What if they stop inviting me to hang out?! What if they find another agent?! As difficult as it is to start saying no, it’s equally empowering to keep promises that you’ve made to yourself. Determine which boundaries are going to help you find more time and more ease in your week and stick to them. It’ll feel so good and they will still want to hang out with you, I promise.
📏 Use Some Rules to Help You Build a Practice
This helped me a lot and I use these regularly, first up is The Two Minute Rule is that if you can accomplish the task in two minutes or less, go ahead and do it. I love this because it sometimes took longer to pull up my to-do list and add the task and the date it was due than to actually knock out what needed to be done. The next one is always running through my head: Don’t Put It Down, Put It Away. Instead of putting something down on your catch-all counter or where it doesn’t belong, walk over to where it belongs and put it away so you don’t have to touch it twice.
🍑 Whole-A** One Thing
This one took a while for me to embrace because I just KNEW that I was being more productive by doing ten things at once. But by slowing down and giving things my full attention to complete them one at a time, I’m actually way more productive than I ever was and I feel so much better about my workday since my brain isn’t trying to do multiple things at once. I still catch myself doing three things simultaneously, but after about a year of practice those momentary lapses are brief and I get myself back on track quickly. Whole-A** one thing instead of half-a**ing multiples and see how your clients (and loved ones!) respond when they finally have your full attention.
🚬 Scrolling is the New Smoking
This probably should have been the first one on the list as it’s likely the most obvious. As much as I hate to say this because it means I need to take my own advice, but you can easily find hours and hours in your week if you ditch your scrolling habit. Take stock of exactly how long you are spending on social media each day vs how long you actually need to be on social media to promote your business and take measures to break your habit. Turn on the time limit and stick to it to use your newly found time to accomplish more of your important items with ease. This also helps you with whole-a**ing one thing at a time AND keeping those promises you make to yourself as you build firm boundaries.
🤔 Regularly Evaluate and Adjust
Overhauling your schedule is something that should be done regularly and I’d recommend at least twice a year to stay ahead of feeling rushed and overwhelmed. Set yourself a reminder and trim the fat regularly to stay in control of your schedule and time.
Last, some of these items may be harder to implement than others. Old habits can be difficult to change so give yourself some grace when you slip back into something you are attempting to stop. Progress isn’t a straight line, just get yourself back on track and do better moving forward.