The Road To Success Isn’t Always So Smooth
It’s probably safe to say that we all expect things will change sometime — especially in the real estate market. Yet knowing it’ll happen eventually and being prepared to take action to not only survive, but thrive (so you can sell more houses) when it does are two totally different things. That’s why knowing how to sell real estate in a shift market is such a challenge; you knew it would happen, but how do you prepare for something that is, by nature, unpredictable?
A Mindset Shift Precedes The Actions That Sell More Houses
The first (and arguably most important) step of learning how to sell real estate in a shift market (or, presently, how to sell real estate during COVID-19) is taking control of your mindset.
More specifically, top agents sell more houses only after taking intentional steps to develop a kind of dual-use mindset, first focusing on productivity and second on agility.
What Is A Productivity Mindset & How Can It Help You Sell Real Estate In A Shift Market?
A “productivity mindset” is a high-energy, highly positive, action-focused mindset where you aim to make the best possible use of your available resources (including time, energy, finances, etc.). For successful real estate agents, especially, a productivity mindset is characterised by:
- Developing routines that work;
- Having a clear vision for what you want to accomplish (that is more detailed than just to “sell more houses”); and
- Being mindful of staying focused on the task-at-hand while intentionally noting positive progress towards goal achievement.
Together, these mental changes support successful real estate agents’ efforts to stay motivated despite the increasingly challenging conditions that define a shift market.
What Is An Agility Mindset & How Can It Help You Sell Real Estate During COVID-19?
Similarly, an “agility mindset” helps real estate agents find out how to sell real estate in a shift market by finding innovative, collaborative ways to sell more houses. Being an industry leader in a dynamic market requires developing a thirst for discovery that contrasts traditional certainty-first focuses; success requires approaching selling real estate in a shift market as a space to create a new future and develop leaner, more effective, value-additive processes rather than a space to fight to preserve protocols just because they worked well before.
Consequently, successful real estate agents who figure out how to sell real estate during COVID-19 and other wildly unpredictable time periods play to win (by whatever means necessary), instead of playing not to lose.
The First Action To Follow Is: Taking Ownership Of Lead Generation
You can’t sell more houses if you don’t have the listings to sell or the ability to drive potential buyers towards them.
When it comes to figuring out how to sell real estate in a shift market, finding the motivation, persistence, and creativity to own your own (new) lead generation process is challenging enough. When it comes to figuring out how to sell real estate during COVID-19, when most traditional lead generation avenues are inaccessible due to social distancing protocols, the challenges — and the stakes — are even greater.
What Does It Mean To “Take Ownership” Of Lead Generation & How Can It Help You Sell More Houses?
“Taking ownership” means to take hold yourself accountable for the outcomes of your lead generation efforts. Rather than blaming market conditions for low buyer interest or buyers’ hesitancy to purchase, for example, you have to accept responsibility for what you are (and aren’t) doing to attract/repel good leads that are motivated to buy/sell real estate during COVID-19 (or any other shift market catalyst).
What It All Leads To: Maximizing Your Lead Conversion Rate
The second action shift of successful real estate agents — even (and especially) when it comes to learning how to sell real estate in a shift market — is to take ownership over buyer conversion rates.
Many real estate agents already understand that conversion is a process of moving buyers through the sales funnel by accounting for and anticipating their needs and causes of hesitation at different points in the sale. There’s so much more to it than just “show the house, get an offer.” And buyers’ behaviors during a shift market are different, so when the shift comes from a huge outside-market catalyst (like the housing market crash or COVID-19), successful real estate agents understand that their responsibilities and most-effective actions at different moments of the purchasing process shift, too.
As a reminder: a “shift market” in real estate, as outlined in SHIFT: How Top Real Estate Agents Tackle Tough Times, is a market where the supply and demand for real estate have become imbalanced. That is, there is either more supply than demand or more demand than supply, and the market is in the process of healing and re-balancing itself (usually through rapid, short-term changes in property value in local markets). Shift markets are inherently tough to navigate — and survive— as a real estate agent because they create power imbalances between buyers and sellers that make continuing with business-as-usual impossible. Top agents find ways to shift with the market. This is how.
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