Today, I’m sharing tips from my latest conversation with Brian Gubernick, Chief Real Estate Officer for PLACE, on how realtors can reset mid-year, fix what is off, and finish strong.
A lot of real estate agents get to this point in the year feeling very busy, but not nearly as productive as they want to be. That does not mean they are lazy. It does not mean they are not doing good things. The question is: are they doing the right things, and why are those things not paying off?
When an agent does a mid-year check-in, of course they look at units, volume, and gross closed commission. But if you really want to know whether you are on track to hit the goals you set for the year, you have to look beyond that.
Brian made a point I think a lot of people need to hear: if you are having some pain right now, you should probably be having that pain. He does not use the market as an excuse, and I agree with that. We do not want to give ourselves an out. But we are in a weird real estate world right now.
The truth is, if you had asked most of us in December where we thought the market would be by now, many of us would have predicted a much stronger spring. Brian said he thought March, April, and May would be gangbusters. He did not see war in the cards. He did not see gas prices and mortgage rates where they are. He thought mortgage rates would dip below 6 in the first half of the year, and that was based on solid data.
So if you are sitting here mid-year feeling a little off from what you expected, you are not crazy. In fact, if you are not feeling a little off, you may be the outlier.
Stop judging your future by lag measures
Yes, you need to look at the lag measures.
Those are your closings, units, volume, and revenue. But those numbers are trailing indicators. They tell you what happened three to six months ago. What you close today is not the result of what you did yesterday. It is the result of what you were doing months ago.
So if you really want to analyze your year, you need to look at your real estate lead measures.
What are the activities you are doing to procure business? What does your sales pipeline look like? How many nurtures do you have in your CRM? How many people are you actively working, nurturing, and following up with? How many are moving from nurture to hot, and from hot to appointment?
Brian talked about looking at conversion from nurture to hot, hot to appointment set, appointment set to appointment gone on, and appointment gone on to listing taken or buyer agreement. Then asking one very honest question:
If my conversion rates play out the way they traditionally have over my career, do I have enough in my funnel to get me where I want to go based on my annual objectives?
And the odds are, many people are going to find that they are off.
If that is the case, then we have to increase the real estate lead measures in order to get the lag results. There is no silver bullet here. You may have to work harder and smarter.
If your closings or your revenue are off, you may have to double the activities at the top of the funnel that lead to those results.
The path is in the math
As Brian said, the path is in the math.
If your real estate market is off 40 or 50 percent in units, then it makes logical sense that you may have to speak to or connect with 40 to 50 percent more people.
Many people have done a really great job with their past clients and sphere, and maybe in the last few years that fed them beautifully. But even if you are working that flawlessly, there may not be as much opportunity there at this moment.
I have lived through real estate markets like that. You may have too. There comes a point where you realize, I have to immediately expand my range, my reach, and my influence.
For me, at different points, that looked like broadening the territory I would work. It looked like adding new real estate lead generation levers. That is why here at Forward, we often say people need five or six real estate lead generation levers. If you rely on one or two, that may simply not be enough.
There are tools like Remine many people already have attached to their MLS that they do not even know they have, and they are not using them. Those tools can help you see who has owned their home for 20 years, who is over 65, who may be more likely to move, and where the opportunities are. That is a much better use of time than calling blindly and hoping.
Conversations are the universal metric
Real estate lead generation does not all have to be on the phone. It can be doing events where you bring in sponsors so it costs you nothing and invite your sphere. It can be maximizing open houses. It can be door knocking.
A man here in Orange County who sold his jewelry business and got into real estate focused on open houses. Open houses made sense to him because people walked in the door to him, just like what he was used to. He begged and borrowed open houses all over LA and Orange County, held the ones he could from 9 to 5, made his calls from those houses, and did it seven days a week. His first year, he did almost 300 open houses and sold 43 houses.
That was his method.
Brian’s method was different.
Mine was different too.
But the universal metric is conversations.
Now, not all conversations are the same. A conversation at an open house is usually warmer than a phone call because there is more intimacy. The more intimate the interaction, the higher the rate of success.
So one person may need six conversations a day through open houses to hit their goals. Another may need 26 conversations a day on the phone.
It cannot just be “thinking of you”
I also think this real estate market demands more from us in our conversations.
It cannot just be, “How are you doing? I’m thinking of you.”
That is nice. But it is not enough.
We have to really own our power as the market expert. That does not mean pretending we can predict the real estate market. We cannot. Consumers want to time the real estate market, and they want us to tell them exactly what is going to happen, but the truth is, we do not know. We only know what is happening today.
What we can do is show up as their real estate advisor.
We can say:
- Do you have questions?
- Here is what is going on in your real estate market.
- What are your real estate-related plans for the future?
- How can I help you?
When you use tools like AreaPro that help you understand the market better and explain it better, you become smarter in the conversation. You provide more value. That helps your conversion rate at each step of the funnel.
If your conversion goes up, the number you need at the top can come down.
Whatever your current skill level is, do not rest there.
If you can take 75 percent of the listings you go on, why would you not strive for 98.2 percent?
Why would any athlete or performer say, “I’m good enough”?
Get better.
That is one of the fastest ways to reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to earn what you deserve.
Busy is not the same as productive
This is where I think a lot of agents get stuck.
They feel like they are working 24/7. Their family says they are always working. They are always grabbing the phone. But there is a difference between time at work and income-producing work.
Some people are slammed all the time, but they cannot point to the output. Their calendar is full of meetings, content creation, organizing systems, attending events, and doing all kinds of things that feel like work but do not actually create customers.
Sometimes people spend more time optimizing the process than doing the thing the process is supposed to support.
That is not production.
So maybe what you need is your own production ramp-up plan.
Not for the rest of the year. That can feel too big.
Maybe just for the next 45 days.
What am I going to change about my routine?
How many conversations am I going to have?
How much time am I going to practice scripts?
Then watch what happens.
Because in 45 days, you can significantly shift your pipeline and shift your business.
Protect your calendar. Learn to say no.
This is one of the biggest differences I see in top producers.
They protect their calendar.
They are purposeful.
They have learned to say no.
That does not mean neglect your family. It means managing expectations. It means get very honest about your priorities.
If saying no is hard for you, one tactic I often share is this: say, “I need 24 hours to review my schedule.”
Then stop and ask yourself:
- Does this matter to me?
- Is it urgent?
- Do I really need to do this?
- Or am I saying yes because I am capable, likable, or available?
You have to have a filter.
That filter should be your goal.
Does this pull me toward where I want to go, or does it hold me back?
The heart of this business is still human
Technology will keep changing. AI will keep changing things. The real estate industry will keep changing.
Years ago, when consumers first got access to online search, people predicted real estate agents would disappear. That did not happen.
Will technology change some things for better and some for worse? Of course.
But the heart of this business is still conversations.
It is still connection.
It is not about being pushy. It is about being passionate about helping people build wealth through real estate and helping them see opportunities they did not see before.
That is the joy of the job.
The only way we lose that is if we allow technology to get between us and the relationship.
If we protect our relationships, give value, bring energy, and have integrity, then nothing gets between us and that client.
Which brings me to what Brian said may be the biggest mistake agents are making right now:
Follow-up.
Because of technology and efficiency, people start automating too much. If we really believe in relationships, then there are certain touchpoints and certain follow-up moments that cannot be automated.
That is where you get to be human.
That is where you build the relationship.
So if you are course-correcting your business, yes, look at your lead measures. But also look hard at the follow-up you have been neglecting.
Who did you promise to call that you have not called?
Whose door did you promise to knock on that you have not knocked on?
Who is sitting in your database waiting for you to act like they matter?
There is so much opportunity sitting right there.
And yet two of the most common things we hear are:
“I get a lot of business from people I know, but I do not call them or work them the way I should.”
And, “I have severe problems with my lead follow-up.”
If that is you, then that is what needs to be corrected.
Find your “why”
Motivation fades fast.
Purpose does not.
So when the work feels hard, come back to the reason you do it. What will these goals do for your life? For your family? For your future? That is what helps you do uncomfortable things and get through the hard days.
Over time, you get used to being uncomfortable.
Most people avoid that feeling.
But growth is usually on the other side of it.
So I will leave you with the challenge Brian gave:
Get weirder.
If you look in the mirror and there is nothing different about how you approach real estate lead generation, relationships, your calendar, and your yeses and no’s, then you are doing what everybody else is doing.
