Top Real Estate Agents Possess These 4 Entrepreneurial Traits

It's something we hear again and again from agents: succeeding at real estate feels like running your own business.

Like other entrepreneurs, real estate agents have their hands in a variety of projects and processes, including building a brand, establishing market expertise and authority, finding new consumers, and converting leads to clients.

Whether you're early in your real estate journey or an experienced, accomplished agent, you've likely realized that to be an agent is in many respects to be an entrepreneur – you're responsible for organizing your own work-life and carry more acute professional rewards and risks.

Since agents are undoubtedly entrepreneurs, we identified four common entrepreneurial values and dissected how they relate to real estate. These four actions are standard behavior for successful entrepreneurs – and real estate agents:

1. Taking Initiative

Some professionals wait for opportunities to come to them. Top-performing agents know that in real estate, such an attitude will not result in success.

As an agent, you have to act and take charge in order to build a network, drum up leads, and convert them to clients.

From simple tasks such as taking and passing a licensing exam and opening social media profiles to more complicated decisions like choosing which brokerage to join, real estate agents have to demonstrate initiative to simply get into the business.

Make sure that your initiative remains high once your foot is in the door. As an agent, you mostly fill your own schedule, so block time to prospect for clients, learn your area, and host as many tours and showings as possible.

Even if you already have a thriving, consistent business, demonstrate initiative by educating yourself about the industry, attending professional networking and real estate events, and acting as a mentor to younger agents who are navigating the always-challenging first year of agent life.

The basic, foundational value that successful entrepreneurs and real estate agents share is a willingness to show the initiative necessary for a self-driven, self-directed career.

2. Adapting to Change

Think about the American real estate market in February 2020: Showings took place in person, agents prepared for a normal busy season, and consumers heard rumblings about an infectious virus spreading on the other side of the world.

We know what happened next: The COVID-19 pandemic began and supercharged the real estate market, changing how agents toured, listed, and sold homes.

Like other entrepreneurs, agents who succeeded through the pandemic were those who could adapt to changes such as virtual showings and a hotter-than-normal real estate market.

Being able to adapt to change is important for agents and entrepreneurs even when the change is not as explosive or jarring as a global pandemic. For example, the way that agents market properties has undergone a transformation in recent decades, and advertising through Google, Facebook, and Instagram is now generally more effective than advertising in print newspapers or magazines.

The next pandemic or digital transformation may not be around the corner, but changes in how people live and buy will make adaptability an essential entrepreneurial value for real estate agents.

3. Finding Creative Solutions

At its core, entrepreneurship is about developing new ideas and methods to approach business challenges and opportunities.

For agents, finding creative solutions to business situations is especially important, given the dynamic and ever-changing nature of real estate.

Creative real estate agents have a marked advantage in marketing, as they can brainstorm and develop new ways to reach consumers with innovative marketing collateral.

For example, agents may approach the challenge of marketing a property amid Covid concerns by advertising virtual tours and virtual open houses for their properties. Virtual tours can be made more effective with intentional, well-designed staging.

Creative agents in a competitive market may establish themselves as a regional real estate expert by advertising their services in local, community-based news outlets and forums or creating individualized hashtags to display on physical yard signs and digital advertising.

Business challenges are an expected part of entrepreneurship, and meeting the needs of home buyers and sellers is easier for agents who are able to find creative solutions.

4. Partnering with Experts

Talk to entrepreneurs and you'll hear a common quandary: You own your business and its results, and you want to manage every component of business operations. But there isn't enough individual expertise or time in the day to do everything well.

As a real estate agent, and especially as your business grows, you will likely face the same problem. Successful agents and entrepreneurs both overcome this issue by partnering with worthy experts.

The entrepreneurial value of partnership is essential for real estate agents. For example, many agents hire accounting professionals to help manage confusing and demanding tax filing. You may file your own personal taxes or possess basic accounting knowledge, but top agents often find their time and energy is preserved for clients when they hand this responsibility to experts.

Top agents often make a similar decision about marketing. You may be able to post advertisements on Google, Facebook and Instagram, but managing entire marketing campaigns demands a substantial amount of time.

Instead, agents can outsource marketing functions to services such as Homesnap Concierge, which provides an in-house marketing team and full-service marketing solutions. With Concierge, you'll receive direct, live phone calls from qualified leads, and will be able to spend your time and energy servicing clients while our team finds you new clients on Google.

To view the original article, visit the Homesnap blog.