My Video on Why Most Realtors Fail & How You Can Win!
If you’re thinking about becoming a Realtor, there’s something you should know. There is a deep dark secret kept by agents and brokers in the industry – and it is the biggest reason why most Realtors fail in their first years in real estate. However, I’m an eXp Realty agent and at eXp we shed light on all that is dark! We believe in the success of all our teammates, so let me make this clear for you!
All New Real Estate Agents Experience this Same Revelation
So you pass your real estate licensing exam thinking that’s the HARD part about real estate. You find the right brokerage (eXp Realty with the Lion League Team, obviously). You join your brokerage ready to rock and roll and start working with some clients! And on day one at your new brokerage with your new real estate license you ask: “so where are my clients?”
And back to you the world answers: “What do you mean? What clients?!”
What Brokers Provide to Real Estate Agents
The cold hard reality sets in: while you’re required to join a broker as a new real estate licensee in the United States, a broker’s role is to provide a LOT of things:
- Broker oversight
- Contract support
- Tools, like a CRM and website
- Mentorship
- Training, including on things like lead generation!
- Paperwork and transaction management systems
- Collaboration platforms
- Marketing materials
- Benefits like equity and additional income streams
The #1 Thing Brokerages Do NOT Provide to Realtors
But for the vast majority of brokerages, they’re job is NOT include handing you clients! But it is the expectation of new Realtors that the broker provides the leads. This is the reason why most Realtors fail! 🙁
While I’ve received many clients thanks to eXp Realty lead generation programs, tools, referral network, Express Offers and more, it is still true that at eXp and at most brokerages, YOU, the Realtor, the entrepreneur, are responsible for getting most of your real estate clients; for generating leads!
What it Means to be a 1099 Entrepreneur in Real Estate
When you join a brokerage, you join as a 1099 employee – an INDEPENDENT contractor! Did you see I capitalized the word independent? You are an entrepreneur now, that means that while you did attach yourself to a broker, the only person that is responsible for the success of YOUR business is YOU! It’s a great thing because you get to determine your success and your income, it’s one of the big reasons to becoming a Realtor in the first place.
But it also means that to avoid the trap of why most realtors fail, you have to work to generate your own leads and build your own business. A brokerage doesn’t know how much drive you have – which is why most choose not to carry time or money expenses to generate leads for you (though eXp does in different ways!). It is left up to you to dominate the most important aspect of your business: getting clients!
What About Joining a Local Team for Client Leads?
To solve the reason why most Realtors fail, some new real estate agents choose to join a local real estate team under a brokerage for leads. That’s typically the biggest perk (and sometimes the only perk) to joining a real estate team. Generally the team lead focuses on generating leads and distributing them out to the team’s Realtors.
This CAN be a good way to avoid the reason why more Realtors fail. However, there are two major drawbacks to joining a real estate team for leads:
Drawback #1 of Joining a Local Real Estate Team
Local real estate teams aren’t free. That’s because the team lead has to put time, effort, and money into generating leads for the team. So you will have to split usually at least half of your commission to the team AND THEN your broker will take their commission split on top of that. Keep in mind that you usually have to split commission like this EVEN IF its a client that you generated on your own.
For a transaction with a $10,000 commission, your team would typically take $5,000 immediately and you’d be left with $5,000 to split with your broker at your brokerage split.
Still, 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing – if you don’t want to lead generate or cannot dedicate enough time and effort to it, this could be a good deal for you! Partner with us for free and we will help you find a local team if that is right for you.
Drawback #2 of Joining a Local Real Estate Team
You will NEVER be able to build your scale, own, and build your own business if you need do not know how to generate client leads on your own. You’ll always be depending on others for your own success. You’ll never be able to scale your income up and create freedom by starting your own team if you can’t lead generate. This is the most important skill in real estate! So while you can avoid the reason why most realtors fail by joining a team, you can’t be ultimately successful without lead generation skills.
To Succeed, Stop Asking the Wrong Lead Generation Question
Don’t ask your sponsor, your mentor, your teammate, or another agent: “how do you lead generate?” That is a recipe for disaster and part of the reason why most realtors fail. You HAVE to find the lead generation strategy that works for YOU. Because if you don’t the lead generation strategy that the person you asked uses, then you will believe that you can never be successful – which couldn’t be further from the truth!
I thought that because my mentor enjoyed cold calling, that I had to cold call to get clients. Guess what: I don’t cold call and I’m a successful Realtor! Here is how I coach my team to be successful at lead generation as a brand new agent, for free.
How to Be Successful at Lead Generation as a New Realtor
In order to avoid the reason why most Realtors fail – not understanding that it is up to them to lead generate for clients – you need to discover which lead generation strategies are going to work for YOU.
Here is what I teach my team: to understand their personality types and how much time they have to lead generate. From there we can easily narrow down from 100+ different lead generation strategies down to a dozen or fewer. Then we coach and provide training on all these lead generation techniques until they find just 2-3 that really appeal to that agent!
From there, it is the Realtor’s job to try out those few lead generation strategies to find the 2-3 that they really enjoy working on. If you aren’t enjoying your work, you won’t do it for long – so it’s a useless lead generation strategy for you! It’s better to move on to something you like because then you will actually be included to spend time on it!
Once you find those 2-3 lead generation strategies you like doing, be consistent until one or all of them start working. Then pour gas on the fire! Keep pressing on those until you have so many clients that you need to start a team to serve them all! Do this and you will avoid the reason why most realtors fail!
Learn More About eXp Realty & Our Free Partnership Team!
If you are interested in joining the best brokerage for agent growth, compensation, and opportunity in the world, be sure to partner with the best sponsorship team in the world as well! We provide additional training, tools, coaching, partners, collaboration, masterminds, and resources for your success!
We believe in massive growth and financial freedom for all real estate agents! Live your dream real estate lifestyle with us.
For more eXp Realty details, check out our comprehensive About eXp Realty – Everything You Need to Know article.