There is no crystal ball that agents can use to try and prepare for a future in real estate that will look so vastly different than it does today. The buyer commission lawsuit settlement has left an ever-moving target for what the landscape of real estate will look like moving forward. I have spent the last six weeks meeting with some of the nation's largest real estate brokerages and working with the product team at Delta to try and understand how we can best empower real estate brokerages and agents to continue to be successful in this new landscape we find ourselves in. Ultimately, my conclusion was that agents need to be ready to get back to the basics of truly looking at themselves as sales professionals. 

The agents and brokers who will be successful are the companies that successfully communicate their value proposition to their clients as well as educate their consumers on why real estate agents are such an important part of any home transaction. Making sure agents understand how to communicate that message effectively is going to be the difference between businesses that thrive and businesses that ultimately go extinct alongside the old way of doing business. 

Here are some tips to help you effectively communicate your value to consumers:

1. Understand Their Perspective

First, you have to look at a real estate brokerage from the general consumer's perspective. Home buyers and sellers have always believed that real estate in general is confusing, and the new regulations being put in place have only complicated the transaction process even further. There has been phenomenal research done by industry veterans like 1000 WATT

 (a real estate creative agency that regularly researches consumer behavior) which shows that the vast majority of people who had completed a home transaction in the last three years didn't even know how their agent got paid. 

2. Create High-Quality Content

Next, you must create high-quality content. Educating your clients with valuable content regularly — so that you have a sphere of influence that looks at you as more than just a "market expert" or someone who can show them a property — will elevate your reputation immensely. Don't just settle for tools you can find online that will post "new listing alerts" or "just sold" posts on your social media channels. You need to have an actual content strategy for your website and social media presence and leverage that content in your own sales prospecting efforts. 

Having high-quality content published on your website doesn't mean you need to spend a dozen hours writing every week either. There are great marketing partners out there, such as Delta Media Group®, that will curate content for your business and automatically publish it for you. The best strategy would then be to leverage the content that has been created into a true sales effort. Ensure that your customers are receiving your newsletters and are subscribed to your social channels, and make sure they understand that by following you they are going to get actual real estate information, not just be bombarded with posts and emails about new properties on the market. 

On that note, one of the easiest traps to fall into when times get tough is to cut your marketing budget. Time and time again I have had discussions with brokerages that are looking to scale back their budgets because of uncertainty in the economy or the market. Brokerages who cut their marketing budget are putting themselves into a death spiral for their business. If you cut the channels that get you in front of your clients, you become less visible in the marketplace. As you lose leads and brand identity in the marketplace your competition will snatch that up, putting you in a position that is extremely difficult to recover from. Always look to make cuts to services that aren't helping you grow your business, not the channels that are expanding your brand. 

3. Keep Your Site Up-to-Date

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) goes hand in hand with a good content strategy. Making sure your website has content about the new regulations and how your company is forward-thinking will help you gain visibility in your marketplace while your competition scales back. Your website is very likely going to become one of the most important tools for your business, so make sure it's kept up to date visually, and the information on your website is still relevant. It's easy to joke about seeing photos of agents who are 30 years older than the picture on their website, but it does highlight a common problem with many real estate websites — the content on the site is usually years old and has not been kept up to date. This should be a good opportunity to re-evaluate your website and ensure it's representative of your position in the market today. 

4. Use the Tools in Your CRM

I think the businesses that will thrive will truly need to engage with a proper CRM and conduct true sales prospecting activity every single day. I know top-producing agents who start their day by sitting down at their computer at 9 a.m. and spend the first three hours of the day blasting through phone calls to their clients. A good CRM will track your clients' activity and automatically build "hot lists" of clients you should be reaching out to. At Delta, we know our platform can tell you which customers have been active on your websites, engaging with your emails, and should be at the top of your list to check in on every single day. The agents who put in the work to leverage this type of tool will see far more success than those who simply wait for the next inbound lead to come in. 

The best tool is one that you actually use. Make sure your contacts are in your CRM. Make sure you've got a way of identifying the customers most likely to engage with you. If you do that, your prospecting outreach won't be a "cold call" but a more qualified check-in. Leverage the content on your website as a talking point to offer something of value to your customers. Get them enrolled in your newsletters and receive market updates from you. Drive that traffic to your website where you can then track what type of content they're viewing and further qualify your next outreach. 

All of these tools are available for real estate agents and brokerages in droves. Finding the self-discipline to actually use these tools daily will be the difference between success and stagnation. So while it's easy to get caught up in all of the ways that real estate is changing, I believe it's a great opportunity to get back into the cadence of running your day-to-day business as a true sales professional always should.