How to Stay Busy During the Fall Real Estate Slowdown
If almost all real estate agents have something in common, it’s that business tends to slow down in the fall. As the spring market comes to a close and parents send their kids to school, many agents find that they have a lot more room in their schedules than they once did. If you’re one of them, read on below to learn how to combat the fall real estate slowdown.
5 ways to ensure that you stay busy during the fall real estate slowdown
With the help of these tips, you should be able to stay busy while simultaneously moving your business forward.
1. Reevaluate your business goals.
For real estate agents, fall is the perfect time to review and reevaluate your business goals. Start by taking the time to take stock of where you are with your business and to envision where you want to be. Then, focus on creating SMART goals that will get you closer to where you ultimately want to be.
Remember, SMART goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Actionable
- Realistic
- Time-bound
Once you have your SMART goals written down, focus on breaking them down into actionable steps so that you know what specific actions you can take to start working on achieving your goals.
Then, the last step to this process is adding accountability to the mix. Accountability ensures that you don’t let your goals and action steps slide, even when you get busy. Ask a friend if it’s possible to check in regularly about your progress or consider hiring a business coach.
2. Reconnect with your network.
Fall is also a great time to reconnect with your network. As an agent, maintaining connections with your family and friends is a great way to inadvertently generate leads through referrals. With that in mind, if you’ve been so busy that you’ve let your connections fall by the wayside a little bit, now is a great time to start.
That said, there are several ways that you can go about tapping into your network. Some people recommend giving out pop-bys, or small gifts with a marketing slogan attached to them, other people recommend making phone calls or sending greeting cards.
What matters, here, is that you end up choosing the method that works for you. However, whichever one you pick, don’t forget to be brave and actually ask them for a referral.
3. Work on lead generation during the fall real estate slowdown.
Keep in mind, too, that referrals aren’t the only form of lead generation that you should be perusing. You should also be trying to connect with people in the community who may not be in your immediate circles. To that end, the fall slowdown is a good time to maximize your lead generation efforts.
In this case, your tactics should be a bit different than they were for your family and friends, but you still have plenty of options at your disposal. You could send a direct mailing postcard to neighborhoods in your farm area. Alternatively, you could also cold call or even invest in some door hangers.
Remember, where cold leads are concerned, volume is the key to success. Particularly if you’re cold calling or going door-to-door, you’re going to want to leave a lot of room in your schedule to devote to these activities. The more people you can connect with, the better chance you have of finding someone who is interested in buying or selling a home.
4. Spruce up your social media strategy.
Of course, these days, the internet is a treasure trove for drumming up new real estate business. To that end, if you’re not sure that you want to invest in paid leads through a company like Realtor.com or Zillow, you can always put your time into perfecting your social media strategy.
Perfecting a social media strategy is a big task, so do your best to break it down into actionable steps. Pick a topic like learning how to shoot YouTube videos or growing an Instagram following and focus on that for now. Read tutorials online and ask your colleagues for tips.
Once you’ve mastered one area of expertise, then you can feel free to move onto the next.
5. Take some time to educate yourself
As an agent, odds are you have a certain amount of continuing education requirements that you need to fulfill every couple of years. The fall slowdown is the perfect time to tackle those requirements. Sign up for a few classes and get them out of the way so that you won’t have to worry about them once your schedule picks up.
However, even if you’ve already taken care of those requirements, you can still invest some time into education. Think of a topic that you’ve been wanting to learn about for a while — perhaps something related to one of your goals — and do a deep dive. Invest some time in immersing yourself in the topic.
