Real estate is not for the faint of heart. To succeed in this industry, you must be able to soldier on in the face of rejection, uncertainty, and daunting competition.
In this blog post, we’ll look at 4 common fears of real estate agents and explore ways to overcome those fears.
1) Fear of rejection.
This is often the first thing to come to mind when realtors are asked to share their biggest fear, especially for those agents who are new to the industry. It’s a scary thing to put yourself out there—to go door-knocking or cold-calling. What if someone gets mad? What if I’m bugging them? What if they yell right in my face?
The solution: Accept that rejection is a normal part of the process.
It’s inevitable that you’re going to experience rejection. Even the greatest salesperson in the world hears “no” more often than “yes.” Remember that the expected success rate of cold calling is around 1%. That means you’re going to have to call 100 people to get one “yes.” Rejection is a normal part of doing your job, and after you’ve done it long enough, you’ll get used to it.
Some other tips for reducing the stress of rejection:
- Make sure you’re not holding onto false beliefs. If you find yourself thinking, The last 10 prospects I talked to said ‘no,’ which means I’m a failure and I’ll never win a client, replace that false belief with a realistic positive thought: Just because the last 10 prospects said ‘no’ doesn’t mean the 11th won’t say ‘yes.’
- Follow a script, and practice it until it sounds natural. Check out these cold-calling scripts from The Close.
- Establish a routine. Block out an hour of time each day for cold-calling, and stick with the habit. Use your real estate CRM to auto-generate a daily call list. Bonus points if your software has a built-in dialer, like Firepoint’s Rapid FireDialer, that automatically calls each contact, one after the other, forcing you to keep on going—and giving you literally zero time to stress over the possibility of rejection.
Related: How Real Estate Agents Can Overcome Fear of Rejection
2) Fear of an empty sales pipeline.
You know all too well that one profitable month doesn’t guarantee next month’s success. Once you complete all of your open transactions and get those one-time commission checks, those deals are done. If you haven’t been working on generating new clients, you’re about to come face-to-face with an empty sales pipeline.
The solution: Stay on top of your lead generation and prospecting.
It can be hard to juggle everything that needs to get done in a day, so make sure you have a good CRM to help you manage and automate tasks.
Most of your lead gen work can be automated through a CRM like Realvolve—drip email campaigns, forms on your website, integration that pulls in leads from Zillow, etc.—so you can have more time for prospecting. Carve out at least an hour every day to call qualified prospects and fill up your pipeline for next month.
Related: How To Convert More Leads With A Real Estate Lead Management System
3) Fear of iBuyers.
It’s not ideal, having to compete with tech giants. And it’s totally valid to worry about Opendoor or Zillow Offers stealing some of your clients. Right now, iBuyers account for only 1% of all real estate transactions, but it’s reasonable to assume that number will grow in the future.
The solution: Focus on building meaningful relationships with people.
Most people will always choose to work with someone they know and trust, rather than selling their home to a large technology company. So your top priority should be to develop meaningful relationships with people. Everything else should be automated in your CRM or delegated to an assistant. Make sure you’re focusing the majority of your time and energy on doing what those tech giants can’t do:
- Be an active member of your community. Volunteer for a cause close to your heart. Attend events that interest you. Meet new people every chance you get. Grow your sphere, and do it with authenticity.
- Get on the phone every day to nurture your relationships with prospects, current clients, and past clients. Ask questions and LISTEN. Understand their needs even better than they do.
- Become an expert on your local market. Become an expert on your neighborhoods. Gather all the intel you need to be able to find the perfect home to fit a client’s needs.
- Prioritize repeat and referral business. Stay in touch with past clients and continue to provide value long after close. Don’t be afraid to ask for referrals.
And while you’re at it, find ways to work with those tech companies and their lead gen services. If your clients and competitors are on Zillow, you better be there, too.
Once that’s taken care of, you can go above and beyond by providing exceptional service and establishing meaningful, trusting, human relationships.
Related: The Value of Listening (Advice From One Agent To Another)
4) Fear of leaning too heavily on technology.
Realtors who understand the importance of meaningful relationships often fear an over-reliance on technology. Do drip emails and text message campaigns make me sound robotic? Am I ruining my process by automating it? Am I losing that human touch that makes me so unique?
The solution: Understand how to incorporate the human touch into your automation.
Your CRM doesn’t have to turn you into a cold, soulless robot. While automation allows us to work faster and more efficiently, there are also ways to add little personal touches.
Take emails, for instance. In your CRM, you can create an email template that can be used over and over again. To make it more personalized, you can include data fields, so it will pull in information like the client’s name, the property address, and important upcoming deadlines.
To add even more personalization, you can set up this email so that you have to review it and click “send” yourself (rather than it sending automatically when the time comes). You get the benefit of using a pre-written template, but you also get the opportunity to add a quick personal note—Hope your son is enjoying his first week back at school! Or, It was great running into you at the library the other day!
This is just one example of how you can enjoy the perks of technology while still incorporating a human touch.
In fact, when used correctly, technology can actually allow you to be more human. That’s because the ability to automate certain tasks can be a HUGE time saver, freeing up more room in your schedule for those “human” activities like phone calls, property showings, and meeting up with past clients to continue nurturing your relationships.
Related: The DOs and DON’Ts of Building Real Estate Relationships in the Digital Age
Facing your fears as a realtor is easier than you think
You can overcome fear of rejection by recognizing it for what it is—a natural part of the sales process. You can eliminate the fear of an empty pipeline by taking proactive steps to keep it full. The threat of iBuyers isn’t so intimidating when you realize a technology company can never match your ability to listen, empathize, and hold the client’s hand throughout a transaction. And to overcome a fear of too much technology, you just have to learn how to wield its power.
It turns out these “fears” aren’t so scary, after all.
