Becoming a Better Real Estate Agent: 8 Success Strategies

Becoming a better real estate agent isn’t easy, but there are eight success mindsets the best real estate professionals among us employ to create consistently greater income year after year, a life with great friends and family relationships, good health, happiness, and decades of career satisfaction.

These qualities, which all good real estate agents share, are either growing or slowing your real estate business right now – and you are likely not even aware of them.

The eight success mindsets of the best real estate professionals among us do not require any specialized training or expensive workshops to learn. All you have to do is be open to the possibility that there is a way forward that will allow you to experience everything you were promised when you earned your real estate license.

1. Purpose
2. Relationship
3. Value Creation
4. Unique Ability
5. Collaboration
6. Opportunity
7. Lifelong Improvement
8. Professionalism

How to Score Your Real Estate Career Mindset

Each of the eight mindsets discussed exists on a continuum.

Stage one of the continuum is characterized by scarcity and a transactional attitude. Those who find themselves in stage one of any given mindset are generally competing for a limited amount of business and focused on their next closing. These are The Deal Makers.

In stage two, we find real estate agents who have yet to find their way forward in the business and are getting nowhere fast. The real estate licensees in stage two are failing and are generally miserable. However, they are still open to new ideas and fresh perspectives. They have yet to lose all hope. I call those in stage two The Disillusioned.

In stage three, we find real estate professionals who have achieved a certain level of success and will do anything necessary to maintain that success. They worked incredibly hard to get where they are and they will not let anyone interfere with their status in the industry. They will continue to put their heads down and work as hard as they can for as long as they can. These are The Die Hards.

In stage four, we find the Realtors who have taken a transformational approach to the eight success mindsets and their careers. They have discovered that investing in relationships has an infinitely greater return than focusing on the next transaction. They work exclusively with people who know, like, and appreciate them.

They are in the business for the long term and their overall life satisfaction is off the charts. They are The New Professionals.

As you complete the scorecard, you may see yourself at different stages relative to each mindset. For instance, you may identify with The Deal Makers in the Opportunity Mindset, see yourself as Disillusioned in the Collaboration Mindset, and a New Professional in the Relationship Mindset.

This is entirely normal.

As you work through the scorecard, think about where you are today in each mindset and write down any thoughts that come to mind in the margins. Then, work through the scorecard a second time and think about where you would like to see yourself in the future. 

I understand you are busy and this is a lot to ask. However, personal growth and transformation is a process that deserves at least an hour or two of your time. It can, but generally does not, happen in an instant. It takes thought and intention. It requires thinking about your thinking.

Download the Eight Success Mindsets of the NEW Real Estate Professional Scorecard here!

#1 Purpose

If you’re going to go far as a professional Realtor, you have to be solid in your purpose. It’s the key to your “why.” As in, “Why did you become a real estate agent?” 

How do you know you’ve found your true purpose?

You find great joy and satisfaction in helping people you care about – and who care about you – achieve their home ownership goals.

Not every Realtor currently operates from this mindset – and they don’t have a true sense of purpose guiding the decisions they make and the relationships they cultivate in their professional life. In fact, I see most Realtors in one of the following four stages. Sometimes, you’ve got to work your way through them to get to stage four, which is where you want to be if you’re in the right line of work. 

Unfortunately, some people never get to stage four… and that means you’re probably experiencing some level of dissatisfaction with your career and/or your life. I’m not saying you can’t be a Realtor if you’re not at stage four, but if you don’t feel compelled by a greater sense of purpose, work is always going to feel like… well, work. 

Where would you score yourself? 

Stage 1: Real Estate Is Your Job, Not Your Calling

You are always looking for shortcuts to success that will put money in your pocket right now. 

You can’t just think of real estate as a job; it is a profession that people dedicate their whole lives to doing, like a doctor or lawyer. It’s no different than any other profession though the barriers to entry are lower than those for physicians or attorneys at law. The most successful among us understand this and use it to their advantage.

However, more so than other professions, real estate is entrepreneurial. While many doctors and lawyers own practices, many more work for a paycheck at hospitals or large law firms at the direction of a manager or partner. Licensed real estate agents and brokers as a rule are not employees. They are independent contractors who get paid solely based on the value they provide.

For those in stage one of the Purpose mindset, adding value means getting deals closed. Earning a paycheck is of paramount concern. They see real estate as their job. They have no special affinity for real estate itself. It is simply a means to an end. Building a business, practice, and following that will sustain them for years to come is a secondary concern at best.

This is not to say many of the deal makers among us are not financially successful. Many indeed are. Their motivations are simply different from the other Realtors profiled here. For some deal makers, the motivation comes from the thrill of the hunt or the thrill of the kill. There is a rush and sense of conquest when closing a big deal.

For most of the deal makers, the rewards they value are extrinsic. They come from outside themselves. They are 100% tangible and material. They are financial. Often the deal makers are salespeople in the worst sense of the word. This subset of deal makers gets by on their charm and their ability to light up a room. They trade on their personality and charisma. Others bully their clients into submission with a hard sell. They pride themselves on being able to talk someone into buying something they would not otherwise buy.

Stage 2: Your Entrepreneurship Dreams Aren’t Coming True

You got into real estate because you are an entrepreneur at heart and want more out of life than a W2 job allows. The reality has not lived up to the promise.

A career in real estate promises a lot of things. Mostly it promises freedom. Freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, and most of all, freedom of purpose. The reality is these freedoms are out of reach for many Realtors today. For many, the promise of a career in real estate has not lived up to the hype. Being a successful entrepreneur in any profession requires discipline. It’s not enough to simply free oneself from the imposition of a schedule by an employer. The successful entrepreneur has to impose a schedule on themselves. Freedom of time is the freedom to spend and invest time at your discretion. It is not just the freedom to waste time.

In real estate, you are free to learn all there is to know about the profession and make it your own. The resources to do so are all readily available. You are also free not to take advantage of these resources. As an independent contractor, nobody can make you do anything you don’t want to do. You are free.

The Disillusioned in stage two generally have yet to settle on a clear purpose for their business. Being without purpose drains their energy and passion. Being without purpose creates fear and anxiety. Without a clear purpose, it’s almost impossible to sort through the myriad of possibilities and settle on a path that will take you where you want to go.

One way to gain clarity of purpose is to answer this question. Is your purpose to help others realize their real estate goals and dreams, or is your purpose to enrich yourself using real estate as your method to do so? Either path is valid depending on where you see yourself along the purpose mindset continuum. Clarifying your purpose will narrow down your options and help you move forward.

Stage 3: You’re Overworked and Can’t Wait to Retire

You’ve paid your dues and worked like crazy to get to where you are today. You are good at what you do and look forward to the day you have enough money to retire and move on. It takes a tremendous amount of work and commitment to succeed in this business. 

Working harder than the competition works – but only for a while. There comes a point in everyone’s career when they realize they simply can’t work any harder – or longer – than they already are. They eventually realize that what got them where they are today will not get them where they want to be tomorrow.

Worse, for those who score themselves in stage three, what got them where they are today will not keep them where they are. While core values and purpose must remain constant to succeed in the long term, tactics, and capabilities must adapt to dynamic market realities. Unless one embraces this fact of life, the business will always feel like it is getting harder and harder to navigate, and retirement will continue to become more and more attractive.

Stage 4: You’ve Found Your True Purpose

You find great joy and satisfaction in helping people you care about – and who care about you – achieve their home ownership goals. The truly successful among us find joy in the daily practice of their profession. It’s not about the status for them. The money and the lifestyle they choose to lead are a natural byproduct of helping others. It is never the end in and of itself. 

They find satisfaction in doing the work, but as professionals, they know the value they provide and expect to be compensated accordingly.

Do you have a passion for real estate and see the value in working by referral? Take our Values We Share survey to see how your goals align with ROOST’s vision.

#2 Relationships 

Of course, you want to make money at your job. I would encourage you to approach the business of real estate from less of a transactional lens and think more about the long-term relationships you can build – and how those relationships can benefit you down the road. If you approach each sale as an individual transaction (one and done), that’s all it will ever be, but if you foster a relationship with your buyers, sellers, and other people, you may be able to do business with them on multiple occasions, or even get referrals from them to make new sales. 

Here’s when you know you’ve mastered this mindset:

You know that relationships are infinitely more valuable than any series of transactions. Relationships are the currency that fuels your business. 

Stage 1: You’re Here to Make Deals, Not Friends

You’re not interested in making friends. You’re interested in getting deals done. After all, that’s what you get paid for, right?

The Deal Makers in stage one do not prioritize relationships with their clients. They simply don’t feel the need to or are not naturally inclined to do so. Many sales professionals believe maintaining an emotional distance from their clients, while keeping their eye on the prize, is the mark of professionalism. The prize here is, naturally, a commission check. 

Having said that, getting so close to a client that objectivity is lost is not professional behavior either. We often see this with The Disillusioned in stage 2 of the relationship mindset.

Some sales professionals do not take the time to listen to their clients because they know what is best for them. Instead of asking questions and seeking to understand their clients’ unique motivations and aspirations, they pay lip service to their needs and forge ahead with their plans and priorities.

Becoming friends with a client is never the objective of the best among us. Doing the job the

client hired them to do, and in so doing earning future referrals from that client, is what professionals do. 

Remember: A ‘friendly’ relationship that is not rooted in a positive and profitable outcome is not a productive business relationship at all. 

Stage 2: It’s Too Much Work to Impress People You Don’t Care About

You are sick and tired of working with people you don’t like to impress people you don’t

care about. You know there’s a better way.

It’s been said that we become the average of the people we hang out with the most. I believe this is true. If we feel forced to work with people who do not appreciate or value what we bring to the table, we slowly learn to devalue ourselves and what we do. Conversely, if we work with people who value and appreciate us, we gain confidence and motivation to provide increasingly higher levels of service and satisfaction.

Many Realtors feel they have to work with anyone who raises their hand because of the pressure they feel to make their next mortgage payment. Working with people who do not appreciate or value us is draining and saps our will to succeed.

Some of The Disillusioned in stage two have traded real jobs for jobs working for Zillow or Realtor.com. Realtors racing to answer lead notifications at any time of the day or night may think they are independent contractors but are independent contractors in the legal sense of the term only. In reality, they are captive salespeople without the pay, benefits, or legal protections being an employee provides. To make matters worse, they are paying hundreds and often

thousands of dollars a month for the privilege.

Ask yourself: Who do you want to be a hero to?

Who are your favorite clients and why? How did you meet them? How can you meet more clients like them? Chances are, your favorite clients have relationships with people you would love to work with because they are just like them.

The best agents among us build long-lasting, profitable careers one relationship at a time. Start with your favorite people, stay in touch, earn their referrals, and provide the best service and expertise possible. If you want to accelerate the process, find a broker with a proven system to help you build a referral-based practice by promoting yourself, and your connection-making activities.

Read More: The Number One Trait to Look for in a Real Estate Broker

Stage 3: You’ve Got All The Work You Need

You are fortunate to not have to worry about looking for business anymore. Customers come to you and you have all the work you need.

If you find yourself in stage three, congratulations! You are reaping the rewards of your years of hard work and professionalism. 

The danger here is complacency. In good times and lean ones, we must always be connecting with current and future clients. Just as importantly, we must continuously upgrade and refine our skills and abilities to service their evolving needs. 

If you want to be the best, you have to always strive for that next level of excellence. Stage three is a great place to land, but if you’re not fully satisfied, you’ve got a little more growing to do. That’s where stage four comes in. 

Stage 4: Relationships Are the Currency That Fuels Your Business

As we previously discussed, this stage is the goal for the best Realtors in our midst. You know you got here when relationships are the center of everything you do in this business – and they’re the reason why you’ve achieved such heights of success. 

One of the great joys of being in business for yourself is the freedom to decide who you will work with as clients, and who you will surround yourself with professionally. The Professionals among us only work with people who are worthy of their talents and attention. They are very clear on the value they provide and they offer it only to those who not only appreciate it but are willing to pay for it.

The friends, family, and past clients who refer new clients to the professional do so because they know the value of the person they are referring. They can describe exactly what their friend, coworker, or family member can expect from the professional should they choose to work with them. On the flip side, the professional knows that these newly referred clients will be as great to work with as the people who referred them are.

This professional is also just as discerning about the people they choose to be on their team. Their relationships with their team members are just as important, if not more important, to their long-term success and overall happiness as their client relationships are.

Professionals in stage four surround themselves with people who share their values and commitment to their clients. These relationships include sales and administrative team members, lenders, title professionals, and perhaps most importantly, the brokerage she chooses to associate with. 

Make a client-centric approach the core of your business, focus on cultivating and fostering them, and watch your career grow beyond your wildest expectations. 

#3 Value Creation

How do you add value? 

Think about it for a second. What do you bring to the table that sets you apart from your competitors and gives you that edge? Maybe you’re a fantastic negotiator or tend to sell homes for 10% more than other agents. Maybe you’re deeply embedded in a community and know all the best areas in the neighborhood. Whatever it is, leverage it to your advantage. 

The best Realtors among us consistently look for ways to differentiate themselves in the market by adding greater value to their client relationships year after year.

Of course, getting here isn’t always easy; it requires some self-reflection and critical thinking. However, I’m confident that, if you’re determined to succeed, you have what it takes to reach stage four and bring a ton of value to the market with your unique skillset. 

First, you need to know where you’re at today – and how to get out of it. 

Stage 1: You’re Happy Just Making the Numbers Work 

Listen, people in this stage do their jobs and do them well. However, making the numbers work is all that matters for many people. 

Some agents ask, “What’s in it for me?” The professionals ask, “What’s in it for them?”. The professional begins with the end in mind. They are clear on what is most important to the client

about the transaction and they work backward from there. Everything they do is in service to the client and doing everything they can to give them what they desire. For the Deal Maker in stage one, closing the transaction comes first. That is the job and they learn to do it very well. They take each opportunity as it comes and do whatever is necessary to get to the closing table. 

In this stage, getting paid is the primary objective.

A strength of the Deal Makers is their ability to set clear financial goals and meet them. Deal Makers also tend to know their numbers. They understand that what gets measured improves, and their tracking abilities are second to none. I coach every Realtor I work with to cultivate this skill for themselves – but staying in this stage isn’t always going to offer the most potential, depending on your goals. 

Stage 2: There’s More to Real Estate Than Banquets and Making Money

Sure, it feels good to be a $1,000,000 producer and a top salesperson. But if you feel like there’s more to the business, and something is falling short with you being able to fully embrace the profession, you might be in this stage. 

The Disillusioned agents in stage two are not just surrounded by customers and clients they don’t want to work with, they are often surrounded by agents they don’t want to work with either. There is a significant subset of Realtors among us whose sole motivation is to be the top salesperson in their office or local market at any cost. It is the competition and the recognition from the local board of Realtors that drives them.

If this is the office culture you find yourself in, and you don’t share it, it will be a constant battle to maintain a productive value-creation mindset. 

Before you can add value, people have to know who you are and what you do. It’s impossible to show someone how much you care and how much you can help if they have no idea you exist.

No matter how well-known the brokerage you choose to associate with is, your name and reputation are the things that matter most. If you are seen in your local market as just another agent, find a broker dedicated to helping you expand your brand as aggressively as they do their company brand. 

Stage 3: Your Business is Solid But You’re Still Missing the Mark

You’ve been trading on your reputation as a hard worker for years. You know your business better than anyone else. Your clients are lucky to have you. 

The Die Hards in stage three know the value they create for their clients and are confident in their ability to deliver. They know their businesses inside and out. They know what’s best for the people they work with. They have established personal policies, procedures, and disciplines

that other agents envy. 

From the perspective of their peers, they have it all figured out. Here’s the thing though, value creation is a moving target. What buyers and sellers considered valuable a few short years ago is taken for granted now. What Generation Z buyers and sellers want from their Realtors today is not even close to what their Millennial cousins are looking for. What either cohort expects is light years away from what their Boomer parents and grandparents expected.

We have to meet our clients where they are. Anything less is perceived as arrogant or worse, inauthentic. Without a conscious and considered effort to understand the needs and desires of your clients you will not deliver the experience you think you are. Eventually, your reputation as a professional, and your business will suffer.

Stage 4: You’ve Got Multiple Ways of Adding Value for Your Clients

Joe Polish, founder of the Genius Network, divides the world into two camps: the givers, and the takers. 

The Professionals are natural givers. They give their clients freely of their time, wisdom, and expertise. They give the same freely to their fellow agents who share their desire to improve their client experiences and enhance the value of their relationships over time. In this way, The Professionals become leaders among their peers. 

Professionals add value before, during, and after a transaction is completed. Not only that, but they also deliberately keep constant unobtrusive contact with the members of their database. This can be done in the form of calls, notes, social media contacts, and monthly items of value mailed to your homes to keep them top of mind. 

They painstakingly educate and motivate clients to act on their timelines. When the client is ready, The Professional is there.

During the sale, the professional adds value as an expert, counselor, and coach. The Professional never shows up without their team. They introduce their clients to their trusted lending, title, and home inspection partners early on in the process. This individual makes sure all questions are answered promptly, and if they do not know the answer, they say so, find the answer, and get right back to the client. It’s not rocket science but it is not ordinary behavior either.

The Professional shows up on time, does what they promise, finishes what they start, and says please and thank you. They are present and in the moment when they are with their clients. For example, they turn off their cell phones when one-on-one with a client. This is differentiating behavior among Realtors.

After the closing, a professional continues to stay in touch and provide advice and counsel just as they did before the start of the transaction. In this way, professional Realtors guarantee repeat business for themselves in the future, and a constant stream of incoming referrals on which to build their practice.

A great broker-agent relationship can help you realize all the ways you can add value for your clients. If you’ve been considering a switch, learn more about what we do for ROOST agents on day one with our Quick Start Game Plan.

#4 Unique Abilities

While somewhat in league with the concept of adding value by putting your strengths forward and acting like a consummate professional, your unique abilities are also something to work on as you grow in your real estate career. 

Adding value is more about the business itself, the sales aspect, and what you can do for a client, but your unique abilities are about you. Who are you? What do you offer? What are you better than everyone else at doing? 

When you’ve mastered how to leverage your unique abilities, you’re conducting business from this mindset:

You know that your mix of skill, talent, experience, ambition, motivation, and capability is special. You leverage that without apology.

Now, if you’re still trying to figure out what skills you should be leveraging and how they can benefit your business goals, you might be stuck in one of the first three stages. 

Stage 1: You Need to Retain More Long-Term Clients

Deal Makers have a lot of skills, but if this sounds familiar, you may struggle to find long-term clients. As we know, long-term clients – and the people they can refer to you – are incredibly valuable to a professional Realtor. 

If you’re in this stage, you are outstanding at negotiating transactions and getting customers to the closing table. After that, it’s on to the next deal.

There are some basic skills every real estate agent must possess if they expect to earn a living in this business, which include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Negotiating
• Pricing
• Crafting purchase offers
• Navigating inspections
• Working with lenders and title professionals

Often, those who find themselves in stage one of the unique ability mindset become experts at these skills and stop. These skills end up being the extent of what they bring to the market.

While I am not discounting these skills, they are not unique, and there is nothing about these skills that will set one Realtor apart from another.

Truly, these are basic expectations every buyer and seller has for their Realtor. Let’s face it, if you are not skilled in these basic areas, then you don’t deserve to have a real estate license.

Of course, there is also the question of outcome. The Deal Maker approaches each transaction with a win/lose attitude. The only outcome that matters is if their client closes and they get paid. There is little to no consideration for what would constitute a win/win outcome that could potentially produce a better outcome for all. 

Stage 2: No Matter What You Do, You Can’t Win

Does this sound familiar?

You sense that you’re fighting the same losing battle as everyone else. Everyone’s playing the same game. You want a new game.

Many Realtors who score themselves in stage two, find themselves caught in situations they did not create and from which they cannot escape. They are caught playing a game they can never win. The privilege and responsibility of being an entrepreneur is to create your own game, your own rules, and your own criteria for winning.

What does winning look like for the most successful among us? They win by connecting daily with current and future clients so they always have someone to practice their profession for. They keep score by tracking what they do and comparing it to their commitments to themselves. 

It’s important to note that there is a difference between tracking activities and tracking outcomes. Units closed and commission checks cashed are outcomes. Keeping track of the value of outcomes is no great skill. It’s simply how we pay our bills.

Tracking the activities that went into creating those outcomes is a great, rare, and underrated skill. If you ask me, it’s what separates the best from the rest.

I coach the agents I work with to set a Personal Connection Standard for themselves. To get started, I ask them to decide how many contacts they will make with current and future clients over a given period. Contacts include telephone calls to members of their database, personal notes to members of their database, text and social media messages, personal appearances with a small gift, and most importantly, additions to their database.

A Personal Connection Standard might be 5 calls, 3 notes, 2 stop-bys, and 2 additions to your database every week. Now, winning the week means you make 5 calls, write 3 notes, make 2 stop-bys, and add 2 people to your database. 

Read More: 3 Fun Ways to Build Your Database That Actually Work

If you do this, the natural outcome will be referrals from the people who already know, like, and trust you, to people who will be eager to work with you. That’s how you start winning. 

Stage 3: You’ve Become a Commodity

You believe Realtors are all the same and the only way to stand out is to outwork and out-hustle the competition.

If you find yourself in stage three and truly believe you have nothing unique to offer your clients, then you have allowed yourself to become a commodity. Your only hope is to cut your commissions to bring them in line with the experience you are providing. If you can’t trade on quality and value, then you have to become the low-cost provider. My advice is to cut early and deep if you intend to win the race to the bottom. 

Stage 4: Your Unique Skills Bring You Business

You know that your mix of skill, talent, experience, ambition, motivation, and capability is special. You leverage that without apology.

All of us have a unique ability, something we are better at than anyone else. Dan Sullivan, founder of The Strategic Coach, defines unique ability as the essence of what you love to do and do best.

It’s your own set of natural talents and the passion that fuels you to contribute in the ways that most motivate you. The professional in stage four recognizes, celebrates, and invests in her unique ability. Furthermore, the professional knows that when she combines the unique abilities of every member of her team, she creates an experience for her clients that is far greater than her contribution alone would be.

Enduring success is achieved when she finds a broker who understands how to collaborate with her. The broker’s job on the agent’s unique ability team is to promote the agent’s connection activities, enhance the agent’s practice, support the agent’s unique business, and coach the agent to greater professional growth. This is the key to a profitable and productive agent-broker relationship.

#5 Collaboration

Nobody is an island. You simply cannot do this work alone… even if you think it’s an independent career. Sure, in some ways, your success or failure depends on how hard you’re willing to hustle, grind, and do the work. However, you have to have a team – and a team mentality. Collaboration is going to open up a lot of doors for you. 

It’s okay to do some things for yourself; you should be confident in your business practices and run them in a manner that works for you. 

But, to truly master a professional real estate agent’s collaborative mindset, you need to achieve the following:

You make your own rules and set personal standards for success. Plus, you actively surround yourself with people you support and who support you in return.

Professionals who haven’t reached this stage yet are likely going to find themselves in one of the following three stages. 

Stage 1: You Love Going It Alone (And Other People Slow You Down)

You became an independent contractor for independence. You love going it alone, and you have little tolerance for other people who just slow you down.

The Deal Makers in stage one of the collaboration mindset are rugged individualists. They are independent to the extreme. For example, they do not take partners or form exclusive business relationships. Instead, they are opportunistic and choose to patronize ancillary service providers that stroke their egos and offer personal premiums or informal inducements. They are transactional.

As a rule, the Deal Makers are not team players. They don’t employ assistants, they are not great referral partners, and have little use for the brokerages who hold their licenses. The Deal Makers love a free lunch and will respond by throwing their host a bone when they get the chance. Their mantra is, “If it weren’t for the people, real estate would be a great business.”

Deal Makers also see themselves in competition with their fellow agents. They believe there is only so much business to go around so they do what they must to get their share. Sales awards are important to the deal makers because it is how they keep score. Collaboration is not one of the mindsets they value. 

While this might get you somewhere for a while, I believe that relationships are the core of being a true success in real estate. Your definition of success might be more monetary, but I think money comes with a steady stream of clients and all the referrals you could ever want. 

One deal doesn’t always get you a new deal – but a relationship will continue to pay over and over. 

Stage 2: Being Independent Gives You Agency – But It’s Lonely

Being in business for yourself is lonely. Self-employed people, in any given year, make up roughly 10% of the workforce in the United States according to The Bureau of Labor and Statistics. The other 90% are employees working at the direction of someone else.

While your fellow members of the local board of Realtors can provide a certain amount of camaraderie and managed cooperation within the association, your success as a professional, individual practitioner, and business owner is up to you – and you alone.

The Disillusioned agents in stage two are often shocked and dismayed to find that being a real estate professional is nothing like having a real job. There is no security or safety net in being an independent contractor. There is only opportunity. 

Most who find themselves in stage two find this fact too overwhelming to bear. The rest learn to

embrace the opportunity and thrive.

Stage 3: You’re Happier When People Stay Out of Your Way

I get it. Maybe you’ve had a successful career entirely on your own and find that you do better when other people stay out of your way. If this sounds like you, you’re probably in stage three. 

The number one reason successful agents in stage three max out and go stale is that they are unable to embrace help and assistance even though they have more work than they can handle. Most great salespeople are not natural managers or administrators. Those who recognize this fact and learn to collaborate with people who are, grow and thrive in all areas of their life for years and years.

There is a trend in our industry for agents to form teams as a marketing gimmick. They believe that the title of ‘team leader’ lends an air of credibility to their reputations. Even newer agents with no established books of business are marketing themselves as team leaders.

Why would real estate agents with more than enough time and capacity to handle their workload want to recruit team members to a team? 

The only explanation I can come up with is they hope to share financially in whatever business their team members bring in. Their motivation is to leverage another agent’s connections for personal gain.

I am all for teams when the team leader has more incoming work than they can handle on their own. At a certain level of productivity, the only way to maintain an excellent level of service is to learn to delegate tasks that fall outside the scope of your unique ability to another licensee or unlicensed assistant.

Transitioning from a rugged individualist to a team leader is not easy. There will be ups and downs during the process. Change like this is hard. It often takes months or years of trial and error. If this is where you are, don’t give up. The ultimate rewards for you – and your clients – are real – and worth the effort.

Stage 4: You Make Your Own Rules AND Lean On Others

The successful professional in stage four of the collaboration mindset does not conform to anyone’s expectations but her own. She is not in the business to win a sales award. She does not see the business as a popularity contest. She is not out for status or fame. The work she does is never about her. Everything she does is in service to the wishes of her clients. The successful professional competes with nobody. Her competition is with her past performance and progress toward her personal goals and objectives. Arbitrary Realtor sales awards are meaningless to her. The score she keeps is with herself.

She is happy to share her experiences and guiding principles with her fellow professionals in and outside the office but the truth is, what other Realtors do is of no consequence to her. She is always open to learning from the success of others but she in no way tries to copy another’s business plan.

The successful professionals among us interact with their fellow Realtors from a mindset of collaboration. They become leaders by default. They know better than most that real success means we succeed together, not at the expense of each other.

ROOST agents are collaborative and competitive. We know how to set ourselves apart and when a team mentality will bring us the listings we need. If you’re interested in starting a career with ROOST, learn more about what we offer here.

#6 Opportunity

As an independent contractor, opportunity means a lot. After all, if you don’t have clients coming to you – and you can’t find them on your own – you might struggle to get listings. Sure, your brokerage can help, and to some extent, they are obligated to help their agents. But, part of the draw of this profession is the ability to work independently. Therefore, you have to embrace opportunity when it knocks and be prepared to do the work to open doors for yourself. 

An agent who has mastered this mindset views opportunity this way:

You don’t wait for an opportunity to be handed to you. You actively look for opportunity in everything you do. You are grateful for every advantage you have and always have one eye on your bigger future.

You might not be at this stage yet, and that’s okay. There are three other stages most agents go through before they land here, and sometimes we never reach this benchmark. But if you’ve got your heart set on being the best agent you can be, opportunity is vital. 

Stage 1: You’ve Stopped Trying to Fight the Market

When times get tough, the agents in stage one think the best thing they can do is hunker down

and fight for their share. It’s just business.

For all of their bluster, the Deal Makers of stage one are rather passive when it comes to creating opportunities for themselves and their clients when times are harder. They are not natural market makers because they don’t pay attention to what their clients are telling them they want. Furthermore, they do not consciously create opportunity because they are so busy reacting to what is – or is not – right in front of them.

The Deal Makers tie success to general market conditions. For instance, if the market is good, they get their share, but if the market goes slack, they get their share of the smaller pie. They accept each opportunity as it does, or does not, come.

If business is bad, it’s somebody else’s fault. After all, it’s much easier to blame interest rates, inflation, or their broker, than it is to take personal responsibility for their situation. From the perspective of the agents they co-op with, a Deal Maker can be insufferably arrogant when

times are flush and downright miserable to be around when times get tough.

To get out of this stage, you need to take accountability and start seeking opportunities rather than waiting for them to come to you or fighting for a piece of a small pie when times are less than ideal. 

You’ve got to put in the work in good times and lean, and the key to that is developing relationships. With a healthy database, you’ll always have someone to call – and that person might be able to open new doors for you. 

Stage 2: You Love the Business, But It’s Consuming Your Life

If you’re in this stage, you know you need to set some boundaries but are afraid to turn

down anything that may turn into a sale.

Real estate can become all-consuming for both the successful and the not-so-successful. The common denominator for both is a lack of boundaries. The successful fail to set boundaries because they become addicted to their success and just can’t stop. The less successful fail to set boundaries because they can’t afford to miss any opportunity to make a sale. 

There are times when we have to take the business we’ve worked so hard to generate as it comes. There is rewarding work to be done with people we want to work with and we are not going to pass it up. I’ve yet to meet a successful real estate professional who cannot work hard and stay focused for extended periods. Working hard comes with the territory.

However, there comes a point where these agents simply cannot work any harder or any longer. The harder they try, the further behind they fall. The joy that characterized their work is slowly lost over time. They burn out and fade away.

Setting boundaries is the key. You are the breadwinner. You are the prize racehorse. You are the goose that lays the golden eggs. You have to schedule breaks and time off for rejuvenation and recreation before you need them. If you do not set boundaries to protect your physical and mental well-being early on in your career, you will struggle later. Count on it.

Stage 3: You’re Successful and Comfortable

Agents in this stage feel like they’ve had all the opportunities they will ever need and are

focused on holding on to what they have.

While this isn’t a bad place to be by any means, I would argue there is a difference between playing to win and playing not to lose. There is nothing wrong with playing a bit of defense and being deliberate about committing to achieving new goals. 

The problem with success for Die Hards in stage three is that it’s easy to come up with excuses not to try something new or exciting. It’s easy to start to believe that your best days are behind you and that your life right now is as good as it will ever be. 

But comfortable isn’t everything – and playing to win feels good. Don’t be afraid to push yourself a little further and see how far you can go when you stop holding yourself back. Take a risk. Start looking for opportunities and see if you find anything new and exciting. You might just surprise yourself. 

Stage 4: You Seek Opportunities and Focus on the Future

Professionals in stage four are constantly alert to the possibility of new opportunities. When a new opportunity presents itself, they grab it. 

This does not mean they wait for opportunities to come to them. With every connection they make with current and future clients, they are creating the possibility of new and greater opportunities.

One of the great skills of the most successful agents among us is their ability to bring the buyers and sellers in their database together to make their own markets. Many times, they have at least one and sometimes more than one prospective buyer for every listing they take. 

They don’t just rely on the multiple listing service to surface a buyer; they take matters into their own hands.

They are Market Makers.

Being a Market Maker is not about ‘double dipping’ a listing for the commission check. This is not about what’s in it for the agent. This is about doing the job their listing client hired them to do and at the same time helping a buyer get what they want. This orientation alone goes a long way toward explaining the professional’s ability to thrive year after year regardless of market conditions.

Opportunity is the catalyst for motivation.

Opportunity breeds excitement and passion.

Opportunity is the basis of a business worth having and a life worth living. Opportunity ensures that the personal and professional futures of the most successful agents among us are always bigger than their pasts.

When you’re on the lookout for new opportunities, check out ROOST’s Real Estate Search. Click here to learn more.

#7 Lifelong Improvement

Are you a lifelong learner? If you’re passionate about what you do and have truly found your calling (see point 1: Purpose), then you should be excited to keep learning about what’s new, what’s happening, and what changes are on the horizon. 

Even when times are tough, an agent who is focused on lifelong improvement will find ways to better their situation and innovate. After all, that’s how you stay relevant, employed, and making money. 

I still get excited about the future of real estate, and I hope you do, too. However, there are usually a few struggle points agents experience before they reach stage four of this mindset and truly commit to lifelong improvement and learning. 

When you’ve dedicated yourself to lifelong learning, your mindset looks like this:

Your continued ability to achieve more and more over time is accelerated by coaching and education. You are always curious and never stop learning.

If you’re already at that point, congratulations! If you’re not, let’s look at the other three stages and talk about how you can commit yourself to this important aspect of being one of the top real estate agents in the industry. 

Stage 1: You’re Up to Date on All (Required) Continuing Education

At this stage, you’re still informed about a lot of things. For example, you may know everything there is to know about contracts, Dotloop, and the Internet. You get all the education you need. 

The Deal Makers of stage one are almost always technically proficient. They know how to get the most out of the tools they need to create and present contracts and get deals done. They may not know their clients as well as other agents, but they tend to be far better at making the tools of the trade work for them.

The Deal Maker is focused on the present and what is directly in front of them. They are not interested in forging new connections or building a business and team that will support them in the years to come. Training, self-improvement, and coaching are distractions with no immediate concrete benefit. Consequently, the only ‘training’ the deal maker is interested in is training that satisfies their state-mandated continuing education requirement.

The deal makers are also fluent in Realtor rules. They are intimately familiar with the Realtor Code of Ethics, especially the sections that specify Duties to Realtors®. The deal makers are often the quickest to file complaints with the local board when they feel slighted or wronged by a client represented by another Realtor. 

Stage 2: You Long For An Opportunity To Grow

The Disillusioned in stage two have essentially three choices. 

• Put their heads down, keep trying, and hope it gets better.
• Leave the profession for a fresh start somewhere else.
• Find a brokerage that will help them get where they want to go – on their terms.

Lifelong improvement means continuously realigning our capabilities with the needs of the market. It also means being open and receptive to new partnerships and collaborations that align with our evolving goals and vision for a future bigger than our past.

The best among us know that the most important business relationship they have is with their broker and brokerage. If your goals and the goals of your broker are aligned, all will

be well, if they are not, there will be friction. Maybe not while the market is hot, but inevitably when it cools.

The number one reason agents stay in a less-than-optimum brokerage situation is because the cost of switching is too great. In most states, listing contracts are signed with the brokerage, not the agent, and therefore stay with the brokerage if the agent leaves. 

For successful listing professionals, this is a major disincentive to making a move. For others, their reputations are so closely associated with their current firm they can’t conceive of starting fresh, even if they know it is the right thing to do. Interestingly, when given the opportunity, these agents will often refer other agents to the firm they wish they were with, instead of the brokerage they are with. 

If you’ve found a broker to go forward with, my advice is to sit down with them and create a comprehensive plan for reintroducing yourself to the market that kicks off the day you move your license. This will require an upfront commitment, a lot of planning, and a leap of faith for both parties. The outcome, however, will be a massive marketing splash that will give you and your career the boost you are looking for. 

Stage 3: You’ve Put In Your Time and Enjoy the Status You’ve Earned

Agents in this stage enjoy great status and respect in the community. If you ask them, they are doing fine, thank you very much.

If you are motivated by status and respect, and most of us are whether we care to admit it or not, then you must maintain and enhance the skills and abilities that got you here in the first place.

Status and respect, like closings and commission checks, are outcomes. They are the natural results of a personal commitment to lifelong improvement. Regardless of your motivation to succeed, without continuous improvement, your value to your community will eventually fade.

If you scored yourself in stage three, you may be doing just fine right now, but I urge you to guard against complacency. 

Stage 4: You’re Always Curious and Never Stop Learning

The professionals in stage four never stop learning and looking for ways to expand their capabilities and their business practices. They build on what they have learned and experienced their entire career. Their years of experience are cumulative and compounded in value over time, much like money in an investment account.

Less successful agents never seem to learn from their past experiences or successes. They may have the same chronological years of experience as a professional, but it is essentially the same year every year.

One reason for this is what I call the ‘shiny object syndrome.’ Real estate agents are notorious for falling for the latest fad or get-rich-quick scheme they run across. Instead of committing to a timeless set of behaviors and business standards, they jump from this new thing to that one, never sticking with anything long enough to get traction.

The most successful agents among us invest in themselves first. Their commitment to professional development goes well beyond completing the continuing education required to keep their state license in good standing. They set aside a substantial percentage of their annual income and devote it to developing and expanding their skills and talent.

The most successful among us invest in personal coaching to improve both their productivity and their business management capability. By continuously expanding and enhancing their natural skills and abilities they open up new market niches and opportunities for growth.

For the most successful professionals among us, education and personal coaching are nonnegotiable investments, not costs to be managed or minimized.

#8 Professionalism 

Embracing a professional mindset is instrumental to the success or failure of your career. This mindset is what separates the top agents from those who are just in it to make what they think is a quick buck. 

Spoiler alert: Absolutely nothing in real estate is a “quick buck” type of situation. You’ve got to be in this for the long haul if you want to stay on top. 

To reach a true professionalism mindset, you must align with the following:

You stay the course when others panic and falter. Tactics and market conditions may change but your commitment to your clients and your profession never wavers.

If you’re not there yet, you’re probably in one of the first three stages. As always, scoring yourself in a different stage doesn’t mean you can’t achieve the stage four mentality; you’ve just got to do some work to get there. 

Stage 1: Your Clients Don’t Trust You

Your clients trust the internet and HGTV more than they trust you. You could sum up the business with this statement: Buyers are liars and sellers are worse. 

The most important aspect of professionalism is respect. Respect for our profession, our clients, our fellow agents, and most of all ourselves. If real estate is simply a job or a means to an end, then respect may not be a consideration. For the best among us, however, respect is critical to our intrinsic motivation.

I will never forget the first time I heard the phrase ‘buyers are liars and sellers are worse’. I was just a few months in as a new Realtor and I received this as an unsolicited truth from the most successful agent in the office at the time. I was floored by the utter disrespect he had for the people he was supposed to be helping with the largest financial transactions of their lives.

I’m not sure what his motivation was for sharing this with me. I can only assume it was because he saw I was having some early success and was somehow threatened by it. He was the alpha in the office and wanted to make sure I knew it. Deal Makers in stage one of the professionalism

mindset can be like that – but you can break out of it by remembering that this is a business about helping people. It’s about respect. 

Stage 2: You’ll Go The Extra Mile… But You Don’t Know What Clients Expect

The Disillusioned in stage two of the professionalism mindset are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. The problem is they don’t know where to begin or what to do. They have yet to chart a path forward that is uniquely their own.

My advice to The Disillusioned is always the same: Prioritize relationships over transactions. 

Focus on making connections, enhancing your practice, tracking your business, and growing your capabilities. Do this and your outcomes will take care of themselves. The benefit of prioritizing relationships over transactions is that you get to know your clients.

The most successful among us know exactly what their buyers and sellers expect to experience working with them, and they deliver on that expectation. They know what their client’s goals and motivations are. They assume nothing and take nothing for granted. They work with their clients, not apart from them.

Professionals do not jump right in with new clients no matter who referred them. They have established policies and procedures to make sure they will work successfully together before they become invested.

For instance, before showing a new buyer client even a single property, they require a face-to-face meeting, either in person or on Zoom, where they work through their buyer presentation together. Professionals use the same template every time, refer to the document as needed with no sense of self-consciousness, make copious notes, and email a summary of the meeting afterward. They do the work they have to do upfront to eliminate friction, heartache, and disagreements later on. 

Stage 3: Your Definition of “Professionalism” Means 24/7 Availability

Getting the jump on a new lead before anyone else is the secret to your success. Your family understands that your business comes first. Professionals set boundaries between their personal lives and their business lives. 

One thing that saved me early on in my career was that I never worked on Friday evenings or Saturday afternoons. I was available Monday through Thursday evenings for appointments and Sundays for open houses. Holidays were off-limits too. The few times I broke this rule for what I thought were ‘sure things’ never panned out. I was fortunate to realize early on that if I was

going to succeed I had to be the professional my clients were willing to make an appointment for.

Sadly, many of the ‘successful’ in our business, including The Die-Hards who score themselves in stage three, never come to this realization.

Here is something else many Realtors miss: Your availability to customers should be different than your availability to clients and members of your database. 

Customers, defined here as people you do not know or who have not been referred to you, can contact you via your advertised office telephone line or email. Your clients should have preferred access. Clients get your cell phone number. 

Always being busy and on the phone is not the mark of success many think it is. The ability to be present in the moment, face to face with another human being, is. It is a superpower that most of us have lost. Cultivate that superpower and differentiate yourself from 99% of the competition.

I recently heard a story about a very successful entrepreneur, so devoted to being present, that she tells potential clients right up front that if they leave her a message, she will not call them back today, but will call them back tomorrow. That’s a gutsy move in my book. She backs it up by being great at what she does, being present, and returning every call and email received no later than the next business day. 

Stage 4: You Are A Consummate Professional 

The New Professionals do not concern themselves with the future of real estate and how the business will inevitably change. They concern themselves with what is going to stay the same.

They know that their ability to connect, educate, motivate, coach, and adapt to the changing market conditions will always be valuable and in demand. Technology will continue to streamline and even automate many of the administrative tasks inherent in our profession, but it will never displace the contributions of the true real estate professional.

What to Do Next

Whenever you’re ready, here are three more ways we can help you:

• Visit us at www.CareerWithROOST.com. This is a great way to find out if ROOST Real Estate Co. is the new way forward you’ve been looking for.

• Listen to Chris McAllister and Kristi Linebaugh of 90MinuteBooks.com discuss Eight Success Mindsets Of The NEW Real Estate Professional at www.8SuccessMindsetsAudio.com.

• Be a guest on the “Connect Practice Track & Grow” podcast. Chris’s favorite thing to do is uncover invisible opportunities and apply the Eight Collaboration Accelerators (www.CollaborationAccelerators.com) to all kinds of real estate practices. 

Being a real estate agent in today’s world is competitive, but if you want to be the best, you have to surround yourself with the best. Dedicate yourself to improving your mindset, embracing professionalism, and fostering those relationships with clients (and their friends!) to ensure you’ll have a long, successful career in this industry I love. And, if you need some help with your direction, I’d love to chat.