What creates the ups and downs of the real estate business? You likely know this ‘rollercoaster’ as the expectation that your busiest, most lucrative periods will be followed by periods of struggle. Today I’ll be looking at what creates this common cycle for agents, as well as how to break free from it.
At first, when you have no business, you naturally freak out and put in tons of work to create the relationships necessary to generate business. Then, you start to freak out about having a lot of business to deal with, so much so that you ironically forget about the relationship-building process that gave you all that business in the first place!
“You should always be doing something to foster the relationships in your database”
The real estate sales cycle lasts three to four months, so any work you did in January, for example, won’t show up until April or May. That means if you don’t lead generate in January, then you’re not going to have as much business in April or May. Or, if you’ve successfully set yourself for a busy spring, but still fail to lead generate that spring, then your early fall will be rough.
You should always be doing something to foster the relationships in your database. One of the things that I did when I was brand-new and had no money was to make a box to hold cards with everyone’s name on them. I called them every three months and organized them accordingly.
What if you carved out one hour every day simply to move the lead generation machine forward, be it door-knocking, phone calls, or open houses? Even that small change could go a long way toward evening out the highs and the lows of your business cycle. Someday, with enough preparation, you’ll reach a point where your business is pretty steady and you know that, month to month, you won’t have to worry.
Of course, nothing is ever 100% predictable, and you will still have crazy months (e.g. our September 2019 was so unimaginably full of home sales that it was hard for us to focus on much else). That being said, constant lead generation will always make it easier to get back on track.
If you have any questions on how to build relationships consistently, reach out via phone or email. I’d be happy to chat about this topic with you in greater detail.
