How A Real Estate Phone Answering Service Can Put $$,$$$.$$ In Your Pocket (without you lifting a finger)

Why Most Real Estate Agents & Investors Are Losing $10,000+ A MONTH In Potential Sales

Meta Description: There’s nothing worse than missing a chance to earn more for less. Find out the reason why most real estate agents are dropping the ball, and how you can succeed where they failed.

Being a real estate agent is a one of a kind albeit challenging job. It is a job that is uniquely setup to encourage the cultivation of creativity, development of a strong will, and requires superior organization.

Competition for real estate agents is ever increasing, with the availability of online tools and the capability of agents to reach markets they never have been able to before weeding out those that can’t adapt.

Now is one of the best times for real estate agents to either take their place amongst the upper echelon or to fail miserably. The abundance of tools at every agent’s disposal is a matter of their ability to have a vision for what they intend to accomplish.

For some, it’s about building their network so that referrals and their ledger builds, so offers come easy. For others, it’s a matter of breaking down their script or a template for converting leads to become more efficient. In any case, wherever you are in your career, there is always an opportunity to optimize and earn more.

In this article, I will touch on why many real estate agents and their teams don’t ever break beyond their limitations, and why it’s important to make the most out of the tools at your disposal.

>> Update: Clever Leverage readers can now get a free trial of Pat Live (the most recommended real estate answering service by over 1,000 Bigger Pockets users)

Being a Real Estate Agent

The early days of being a real estate agents are completely different from agent to agent. Some, take to the streets, knocking on doors in high turn over neighborhoods seeking to establish a connection with the locals to become the go-to agent for brokering deals.

Others, tap their network and attempt to use their capital to get the necessities out the way such as a website, business cards, and potentially an office to work out of. Regardless of approach, the intent is the same, to get established and build the best foundation possible for getting consistent leads and handling them as successfully as possible.

Many agents don’t know the difference between what qualifies as an essential task. Some spend time chattering the day away with anyone who will listen, looking for any opportunity to get their services spread by word of mouth, since it used to be the most successful way to get leads for a low price.

As agents get established, the difficulty becomes handling which leads are smooth, profitable deals, and which are likely just to collect dust and take up more time than the money is worth. Being able to differentiate between which contracts are worth it and which aren’t is one of the fundamental ways an agent can know if they will succeed or fail in the real estate game.

Cost Of The Real Estate Game In 2018 And Beyond (we know how competitive it is getting too!)

Real estate is an expensive business the better off you are. There are staffing concerns, meetings (time cost), advertising and marketing budgets to be considered, and a myriad of other things that take up time and money away from what should be directly spent on the main mission, making more money.

More than a third of real estate agents spend at minimum a few thousand dollars a year on real estate marketing. This is the bread and butter of where a majority of a successful agent’s income comes from. The problem, however, lies in how well optimized a real estate firm or business is.

Many spend so much time focusing on how to get leads that when they come, between trying to follow up, nurture relationships, and convert as well as fulfill the contract, it can be impossible to handle every lead effectively.

Smaller Agents vs. Firms vs. Hands Off Investors

Small time agents or the ones starting out have a learning curve. It’s up to them to decide which things are essential and which aren’t. With limited time, limited resources, and limited experience, it’s likely that the shortest path would be just to try and work hard to get referrals. It makes sense, the more people you know, the easier it must be.

In reality, having a brand and carefully cultivating one is the fastest route to establishing your business as a separate entity that runs on its own. The ultimate goal of building a business is for it to work as a machine that is continuously improving and making more money from the resources at its disposal.

Organized firms don’t spend their money the same way that smaller teams do. The only way to make the most out of your time and your team’s time is to remove tasks that don’t directly lead to more revenue or a solidification of your brand.

This can mean:

Little time spent answering prospect calls
Ensuring that inbound calls are screened based on criteria
Keeping note taking and scheduling to a minimum, instead opting to outsource. Etc. Etc.

With limited hours of the day, using your time to handle things a secretary could don’t make sense. If your firm or team is small to medium-sized, it only makes sense to find a solution that is cost-effective.

Why You Need A Call Answering Service

A call answering service is a simple yet effective move for increasing the stability, growth opportunity, and overall function of your business. Call answering services such as PatLive aren’t like the stereotypical third world country call centers. PatLive hosts a state of the art team that is avidly trained in how to deliver the best customer service and inbound call handling processes with world-class ease.

Their project managers ensure that every call is answered in as little as 15-20 seconds.
All of their agents are American, based in Florida, and thus are native English speakers.
They offer the most flexible service, being able to end your service at any time.

Real estate agents can’t and shouldn’t spend their time doing anything other than specialized work. Spending hours everyday handling calls mean that you can’t be proactive in increasing your lead flow.

One of the most popular methods for using a call answering service efficiently is to combine it with direct mailing. Reaching out to whole neighborhoods or areas with well-designed graphics and an appropriate call to action at the least means your name gets around.

In many cases, this can lead to inbound calls that your call agents can convert for you at a fraction of the price an untrained secretary could.

Let’s do the math: if the average commission for an agent ranges from $2,000-$20,000, and you are spending a fraction of that to get the leads in the first place, why you want to lose those leads on the backend. If even 1 or 2 convert more because of the attention that having a call answering service offers, then the low cost of round the clock support is a worthwhile investment. While other services are cheaper, PatLive is the optimum blend of quality with reliability at an affordable price.

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Conclusion

In the end, having a call answering service isn’t a luxury it’s a necessity. The cost is easily outweighed by the amount of money saved and the opportunity to lead more potential buyers or sellers down your sales funnel to increase revenue.

The only reason to not invest in a call answering service is that you don’t foresee there ever being enough volume to justify it. In most cases, it’s essential to set up the infrastructure for your business so you can spend time on growth.

Without the structure set up, the business will be like a box kept together with glue; it will fall apart because it wasn’t organized to be able to handle more than a bit of pressure. When leads start flowing, meetings run long, and time is short, it’s better to have someone that can handle the smaller aspects so you can focus on what matters.

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