Are you an agent in the real estate industry looking for some tips to improve your business?

For my first post at businessDEPOT [and I’m sure there will be many], I thought it would be a good time to share some great insights from my ongoing video series over on my LinkedIn [where I keep my followers up to date on all the latest news and strategies that the best agents are using].

Earlier this year I caught up with Alex Jordan and was fortunate enough to tap into his wisdom for some top tips for real estate professionals. Alex brings with him an ocean of experience and was named the #1 Agent in Queensland at the REA Excellence Awards this year.

I took the opportunity to find out what he would do if he was starting off fresh, with no connections, no profile, but retaining all the knowledge he has right now. Here’s what he had to say:

Dean:

Hi everyone, it’s Dean. Now I’ve got Alex. We’re at Paddington of McGrath. I wanted to ask him, with all the knowledge that he’s had and success he’s had now — if he was to start real estate again from day one now, with the young legs, the knowledge he has now, what are three things that you would?

Alex:

Three things? Okay. I’ll try.

Dean:

You can have four. You can have two.

Alex:

Okay. Put me in a new area. You’ve moved me to Sydney. I’m working in Edgecliff, as an example. No one knows who I am.

Dean:

Head office at McGrath.

Alex:

We just moved. We’ve moved actually. No one knows me-

Dean:

Pyrmont, yeah, sorry.

Alex:

Pyrmont, well done. No one knows who I am. I’ve got to build profile. How do I do that quickly? Because real estate is not just a skill based business. It’s profile based.

Alex:

There’s a lot of highly skilled agents that are underperforming. So when you look at their skill levels, these people should be writing two, three, four million. But they’re not, and it’s based on their profile. And that’s influenced by their activities.

Alex:

So the first thing I would do is put together a printed market report. I would invest in a quality printed report that is informative to the audience. Not about me, more about the area, what are the stats?

Dean:

Not about him, about them. And what’s important to them.

Alex:

Yeah. And if I can do something that’s of quality and deliver with that to the area, straight away I’ve built profile. I’ve built a level of credibility that’s beyond my experience in that area. And I’ve got to expand on that now.

Alex:

And the way I do that is I want to be the communicator of intelligent information on a consistent basis. So they need to hear from me, whether it’s in the social space. Whether it’s in as a letterbox drop. Whether it’s a text, a call, there’s got to be a consistent approach to communication that’s relevant to them. Not about me.

Alex:

That’s interesting to them. So if I can build that and I think you can, these days. There’s so much information for agents today, compared to when we started. I started in 99. We didn’t have realestate.com.

Alex:

We didn’t have much access to detail. Now an agent can really become educated within a few months. So you’ve got to utilise that information. And if you’re going into a new area, you want to be a specialist. That’s number one. I would focus narrow.

Alex:

I would have a BDA or a farm area of less than 2000. That’s how I’d start. I’d try and dominate that patch. I’d build dominant market share. And then I’d expand. Rather than the traditional model, which is what I did for so long and struggled with, is to look after four suburbs, 20,000 properties, but not have a consistent approach and would get business here and there.

Alex:

But we never had consistency. Narrow that focus. Get consistent. And once you’ve built a business in that BDA or farm area, then start to expand. I found that to be a much more effective business model.

Dean:

So profiling, getting out there, having a core area and a huge word that you said many times was consistency, consistency, consistency. That would be?

Alex:

That would be the main focus if I’m in a new area, now that I have that information. That’s the way I would start.

Dean:

There’s some absolute gems. Now it’s a matter for you to go out and actually do it. Okay. Cheers.

stay up to date

To stay up to date with all the latest news in the real estate industry, feel free to follow me on LinkedIn. If you would like to discuss building, buying or selling a rent roll please do not hesitate to contact me via email or give me a ring on 0499 902 980.