In a past blog – “You MUST Become The Ambassador!”, I touched on the “P” part of the C.P.R. approach I teach. I explained how important it is to become the ambassador in your community. Doing this helps you elevate your positioning so you can become the go-to agent in your community. In today’s blog I’m going to dive into the other part of the”P”. How to become the expert!
Become the expert!
One of the easiest and quickest ways to build trust and connect with your community is to learn to position yourself as the expert. Some agents get terrified when they hear this, especially newer agents, as they sometimes feel they aren’t actually an expert in real estate so they could never become the community expert.
The great news is you don’t ever have to have sold a home before to position yourself as the expert. Sometimes it just takes a little mindset shift and a bit of understanding how to position yourself correctly.
So how can you set yourself up to become the expert?
Market Expert
You can do this in so many different ways but one of the easiest ways is to become a market expert. Understanding the real estate market in your area is a key part of positioning and can help elevate your excerpt status quickly. If you want to truly master your farm, you will want to ensure you learn the ins and outs on pricing and market trends. The good news is that you can do this without ever selling a single home first, but it’s going to take time and consistency. If you aren’t already, you should be studying the daily hot sheets in your farm, and outside your farm.
You need to get comfortable knowing what’s happening in your market and learn it better than everyone else. The other good news is that most agents never spend this kind of time and attention to learn the market. The even better news is that 99% of agents will never do this in a specific geographic area, so it’s quite easy to stand out.
If you have sales experience, it will obviously help you get a stronger understanding of the market. The more business you do in your farm, the easier it gets to master this.
Marketing Expert
Another great way to position yourself as an expert is through marketing. The mistake that most agents make is that they become an expert at marketing THEMSELVES! While it is important to learn to promote yourself, you must learn to become a master at marketing your listings and showing your farm that you do it better than anyone else. When you put your promoting your listings ahead of promoting yourself, you can build a solid reputation as an agent who knows how to market homes and cares about the clients needs, and not their own.
In my own real estate business, I decided early on to take a listing first marketing approach and won many listings because of this. So many agents go into a listing appointment and talk about how they advertise themselves, or worse, they don’t even have a marketing plan at all. This lack of listing first marketing approach leaves the clients feeling that the agent is only trying to promote themselves or isn’t out to sell their home, they are just looking for more clients.
You must have a well-balanced and robust marketing plan that emphasizes marketing your listings above and beyond just listing it on your local MLS. It will help you win more listings, attract more buyers and generate more leads. This will further compound you as the expert in your farm and help you close even more deals.
Community Expert
This strategy is generally the most over looked way to become an expert as so many agents are focused on just promoting themselves and real estate. The agents who put the community first tend to have a much more robust business and build the strongest relationships. When you put the community first, you will be first in their minds.
So how do you become the community expert? You focus on local businesses, events and things to do in the community. You support causes you care about and that benefit the community. You share educational information for people looking to move to the area. You highlight the movers and shakers. You share the best places to eat and go for drinks. You highlight the local amenities that would attract people to your community.
Basically, you share your love for the community with the community you serve and those who might be interested in being part of it.
By becoming the community expert you further your role as the ambassador which furthers your role as the expert. People will trust you because they know that you care about the community. They know you know who’s who and what’s what in the area you serve. And you will raise your expert status in the community in no time.
Relationship Expert
Like we talk about in the C.P.R., the key to growth in your business is creating and strengthening relationships. Many agents have built incredible business based solely on the relationships they have made over the years. You may be one of them, or know an agent who has never sold a home in their life, had no real real estate experience, but they crush it right out of the gate.
This is usually because they know how to build and foster strong relationships. When you learn to do this in your farm, compounded with other strategies, you can quickly become a connector and heighten your positioning as an expert with just the relationships you build.
Product Expert
Similar to the market expert, learning to become the product expert can help you quickly position yourself as a trusted advisor in the community. When I talk about “product expert”, I’m talking about your inventory, builders, floor plans and models.
When you know your product you can answer questions confidently, you know whats available, and whats not. You know what areas have what product, and what areas don’t. You are able walk into a listing appointment confidently knowing that you can tell the home owner who built the home, when it was built, what model it is and what other homes are similar to it.
Many agents never take the time to learn this, and it shows up when they are asked about it, or they just don’t know. This knowledge breeds confidence, builds trust and will help you convert more deals.
Conclusion
These are just a few ways you can establish yourself as an expert in your community. For some agents, they may want to focus on one at a time till they get their groove, others may be able to overlap some of their strategies to elevate their expertise status quicker. There is no right or wrong, the key is that you start.
Put away your past perceptions of what you think it takes to succeed in farming and start to think about how you can elevate your perception in the community. When you shift from self-promotion, to community promotion, you will not only reach more people, but you will also find more opportunities then you ever imagined.
So what are you waiting for? Go get started. And be sure to share your favorite strategies for positioning in the comments.
Happy Farming!
Ryan Smith – Founder/Creator
Launch Your Farm
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