Today I’m revisiting a topic I’ve already touched on to give you a clearer picture of its importance. Here’s why you need systems in place.

This topic may seem familiar, and with good reason; I recently made a video about the importance of having systems in place versus just wingin’ it, but today I’m going a little bit deeper. 

A few weeks back, I was at a Tom Ferry event called Sales Edge. It’s designed to train you on how to become a better salesperson. It was a nice mix of agents—seasoned veterans, emerging agents, and newbies all under one roof. 

A lot of newer agents were coming up to me and asking about where and how to start, which is understandable considering that this industry can be so complex. Unless you pick one or two areas to focus on, you’ll likely end up spinning your wheels. The theme of my responses was this: Do you have systems in place?

At this event, they really pushed the value of prospecting more. The more conversations you have, the more opportunities you create. The group of people you don’t know is always larger than the group that already trusts you, and knowing how to balance your time between both is key. Solidify your existing relationships, but be sure to establish new ones. 

“You need to be prospecting, even when you’re busy.”

That being said, the more phone calls you make, the more networking mixers you go to, the more emails and texts you send, etc., the more you’ll receive an influx of people to help. Assisting one or two people isn’t too hard, but if you’re dealing with five or more people in a month, you’ll simply run out time, especially if you’re a solo agent. 

The best way for a real estate agent to make money is to meet new people and have conversations, but ironically, the first thing agents stop doing once they get busy is having those conversations! So often, you see a real estate rollercoaster: Successful prospecting gives an agent a lot of business, but once they close and satisfy those few clients, they return to their prospect well to find it completely dry. 

You need to be prospecting, even when you’re busy. To do this, you need systems in place. A system doesn’t have to be something elaborate—you don’t even have to use technology. It could be as low-level as a piece of paper with a checklist on it (or a Google Doc, or Excel Spreadsheet). Simple software like Trello can go a long way, too. 

Essentially, a system is a checklist you can create for a given process that will allow you to perfectly replicate that process so you can improve each time you go through it. For example, you’ll want a system in place for escrow; what are the 80 things that have to happen from the minute you open escrow to the minute you close? If you don’t have these steps written down, you’ll spend too much time thinking, and not enough time prospecting. A system takes the ‘thinking’ out of the equation, allowing you to efficiently slice through any real estate process.  

If you have any questions about how to implement a system in your business, please reach out to me via phone or email. I’m happy to hear from you.