This time of year really gets you thinking about the future. What will the next 12 months look like? Will I be a better version of myself one year from now? (Or can I at least avoid becoming a worse version of myself?)

And for real estate agents, the big question is: Will my business survive the coming year? Better yet: Will my business grow? Will I sell more homes, increase my profits, and build up my team?

When we look into the future, there’s so much uncertainty. It’s scary. But the best way to counteract that fear is to recognize what we can control—and let the rest go.

So, in terms of your real estate business, what can you control? What steps can you take to ensure that you will see more success in the coming weeks, months, and years?

5 Steps To Ensure Long-Lasting Success For Your Real Estate Business

1) Lead with your “why.”

Why are you in the real estate business? What is it about this work that pulls at your heart? This is something you need to identify, because it’s a valuable key for connecting with people and building long-lasting relationships. As Realvolve CEO Dave Crumby puts it, “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

Consider this story Dave once shared:

“One night at a sushi restaurant, I had the pleasure of engaging in a conversation with the chef, Yasu. Within five hours of meeting him, I knew how he came to live in Denver, how he and his brothers built a very successful business, and how much charitable endeavors meant to him personally. Yasu could have given me a coupon to sell me more sushi, but instead he sold me on Yasu.”

“When you lead with ‘why,’” Dave wrote, “you reveal something about yourself and inspire others to reciprocate. Your business is built on you.”

2) Create a team culture that makes people want to stay.

Build a dedicated team that wants to work hard for you because they share your values and your “why.”

“We want to find people with sparkle,” said Kris McCullough of KSA Real Estate Group. “We’re looking for somebody who’s coachable and has something unique about them. We want to ensure that they fit within our culture.”

Provide your team with training and development tools, and have regularly scheduled one-on-ones and team huddles. Take care of your team, and they’ll be in it for the long haul.

Read more about building a successful real estate team over on our sister blog at Firepoint.

3) Build—and constantly improve—a killer process.

Long term success is achieved by repeating the same tasks over and over again for an extended period of time. If you had a long term goal of weight loss, for instance, you would eat healthy meals and exercise and abstain from junk food, and you would do that over and over again for 30 days. And at the end of those 30 days, you would have lost weight.

The same idea works for building a successful and sustainable real estate business. You identify those healthy habits that are proven to make your business grow, and you do them over and over again.

Those repeating steps are your process. And actually, within your real estate business, you have quite a few processes: a process for lead generation, a process for managing listings, a process for generating referrals, and so on.

These processes are complex, so it’s important to have them documented (ideally, in a cloud-based CRM platform like Realvolve). When you have your entire process mapped out in a CRM, it’s very easy to go in and make tweaks for improvement.

4) Invest in a tech stack. 

Your “tech stack” is the collection of digital tools, platforms, and apps that you use to do business. For real estate teams, a CRM (customer relationship management) is a necessity for managing a database. And, depending on which CRM you use, you might not need much else in your tech stack. Robust CRMs typically include tools for client relationship management, lead management, and transaction management.

CRMs will also typically allow for third-party integration, so everything you need to run your business can be accessed on a single platform. Some of Realvolve’s most used integrations include BombBomb, Jotform, Calendly, QuickBooks, Docusign, Zoom, and Google Workspace apps.

5) Take advantage of automation—so you can focus on your most important work.

Once you’ve taken the time to learn it, technology really does make everything easier. So make sure you learn how to use the automation tools in your tech stack. In Realvolve, for example, you can create automated workflows that, once activated, will perform a series of actions, basically carrying out your process for you. It will send emails and text messages for you; it will handle data entry for new leads; it will provide you with a daily list of which prospects are due for follow-up calls; it will tell you what documents to send to which clients (or it might even send those over for you, depending on how you have it programmed). It’s magic for your real estate business.

There are two big benefits to using automation. First of all, when you automate tasks, you ensure that everything happens exactly how and when it should. Nothing slips through the cracks.

The other big benefit is that automation gives you back so much time. Time that can be spent on your most high-value work: talking with people, whether face-to-face or on the phone, and nurturing those relationships. You have more time to call prospects and learn about their needs. You have more time to answer your seller client’s questions and ease their worries. You have more time to catch up with past clients and ask for referrals. You have more time to go out into the community and meet new people and build up your sphere. 

There are some things technology can do better, and there are some things a living, breathing person can do better. Let your automation tech handle the tedious, time-consuming tasks so you can step away from the computer, get face-to-face with your people, and build a strong future for your real estate business.

Is your real estate business built to last?

The most successful real estate professionals—the ones who don’t fear the future, because they’re prepared for it—have five things in common. They have a passion for their work, and they share that passion with everyone they meet. They’ve built a team that feels like a family (and not the dysfunctional kind). They have a killer process that they continue to tweak and improve. They’ve invested in technology and they know how to use it. And, as a result, they’ve enabled themselves to spend all of their time on the most valuable kind work.

Are you worried about the future of your real estate business? Let’s talk. I know we can get you set up for long-lasting success.