What is the hardest part of being an agent?

Question

Hi all, I'm new to the industry and trying to learn more about what it's like as a real estate agent (any kind!), and would love to know what you think is the hardest part of the job. What is the biggest challenge you face in your day-to-day?

Thanks in advance!

Nicholas Smith · Answer

There was a lot of challenges when I first started my career in real estate. These challenges are a bit broader then any "day-to-day" challenges that I face anymore. As you gain experience and knowledge, everyday task are easier to deal with.

As with everything, I find the hardest thing is taking that first action. Making your first "cold-call", doing your first open house, writing your first offer, taking your first listing, putting together your first farm, etc... But once you take your first step, the next one becomes easier, and the next even more so. It comes to the point were you are not really experiencing day-to-day challenges anymore.

Another major broad challenge that I had in starting out in real estate is the financial aspect. In all essence, an agent is their own small business. You make your own schedule, get paid only when you make a sale, do you own marketing, are 1099 on your commissions, etc... That was a big wake up call when I started. Previous to working as a agent full-time, I had worked in the grocery industry for 10 years receiving a pay check. It was hard making the switch to thinking of myself as a small business. It wasn't until 2-3 years later that I actually sat down and made a business plan for my career. I made a big mistake in not doing that first thing.

Yes, you may experience the occasional challenge of dealing with a difficult client or colleague. You may not get the listing or make that sale. But these are less common occurrences then your normal daily activities.

Developing systems, schedules and itemized list has negated any day-to-day challenges that I might face and creates a great structure for my week. Systematizing your business will alleviate any day-today challenges that might occur.

These challenges are better thought of as opportunities. I have the opportunity to call a prospective client, I have an opportunity to get a listing, the opportunity to hold an open house, and I have the boundless opportunity to make as much as I can by working hard for myself and making decisions that effect my future.

Welcome to the wonderful world of real estate!

David Hunter · Answer

The hardest part, especially when you're new, is getting business!

Here's what our instructor told my real estate with 50 inspiring agents:  "Look around at everyone in this room.  80% of you won't be in this business 1 year from today.  Now, the 20% of you that do make it past the first year, 90% of you won't be in this business 2 years from today."

Guess what... that leaves, gulp, 1 out of the 50 in the real estate business.

Jake Thomas · Answer

If you are planning on quitting everything else and being an agent full-time then the hardest part would likely be surviving financially. It will take a while to start getting leads, then more time to start turning leads into listings or buyers, then a little longer till they actually close and you get paid. I sold my first house 4 months after I was licensed then I didn't close on another one until 3 months after that. You have to be prepared to not get paid for a long-time and have adequate savings to get you through those slow times.

Personally, I always think new agents should ease into this and work a full-time or even part-time job while being an agent. Some will say it's a disservice to your clients but I disagree, I have held my full-time job since I started and 2 months from now will be a full two years of being an agent and I am finally ready to switch over to going full-time Realtor.

The other difficult part is making those uncomfortable cold calls. No Realtor can survive in the beginning without making them so just get ready for them.

Good Luck.

Russell Brazil · Answer

In the early part of your career, generating business is the hardest challenge.

After you are established, the hardest challenge is communicating with your clients. No matter what you tell them, they hear what they want to hear, and do not hear what you are telling them.

Nicholas Smith · Answer

Tools that I use for keeping organized are pretty analogue (Folders, checklist, etc.) paired with couple of apps that I find very helpful such as Excel, DropBox (which I store all my work files onto) and OneNote. I use OneNote for a large swath of functions, from scanning business cards, clipping web articles to read later and keeping different projects in order. Some Realtors use Evernote very effectively in this matter also. Check out Stacey Harmon over at http://www.harmonenterprises.com/

Systematizing business will have different applications depending on how you run your business. For me, and what I have seen it work well in others, is to set out a scheduled work day, week, month and year.

Year

Mostly goals setting and budgeting. I helped one of our agents on this recently, and it looked something like this:

• Agent wanted to have a take home pay after splits of $250K (up 10% of last year).
• to accomplish this we looked at how many house he needed to sell that year in his farm to hit his goal.
• We then looked at his marketing plans for the year to help accomplish that goal

This will lead us to our monthly "system"

taking the goals he wanted to accomplish that year we further broke that down into what he needed to do each month and made a calendar.

• every two weeks he needed to send out some type of direct mail piece into his farm.
• Every week he wanted to send out an email blast through Constant Contact to his prospective clients
• every quarter he wanted to send out a larger "market update" direct mailer
• advertisement calendar for current listings

And then further breaking the month up to weeks and days

Monday

• contact prospective clients met over the weekend at open houses or events.
• Add prospects to Constant Contact
• Email current clients of updates from previous week (showings, open houses, market updates, etc...)

Tuesday

• Office meeting
• Order marketing material for direct mailers and print advertising
• Follow-up with prospective clients via phone call

Wednesday

• Broker Preview
• update prospects on any good home you might have seen on preview

Thursday

• follow up on task not yet completed through the week

Friday

• Prepare material for open houses
• contact any prospective clients informing them of your open house.

Sprinkled through out the week is the other floating items that need to pop-up during the week: lunch meetings, filing out paper work, listing presentations, follow-up on current escrows and the like. The above is a general brief look at what we put together, but hopefully it gives you some sense of what I mean. If you don't have routines in place, you will be constantly trying to "put out fires" and catch up on items you forgot to accomplish

It's amazing to me the amount of agents who do not have some sort of routine and system. In my experience, the producing agents stick to a routine schedule and structure.

*One note: you had asked about "tools and services" that will help you. Creating and marketing tools and services to Realtors is a huge business. I am always very cynical on the golden egg of an application that will 10X my productivity. As you can see, I stick to the basics. Others will be better at pointing you to tools and application that they use to better their productivity.

Good Luck! If you have any particular question you would like to ask, feel free to PM me anytime.

-Nick

Matthew Olszak · Answer

There are a lot of 'hard parts' when it comes to prospecting and developing new business. Apart from that, inside of the doing-business realm, I'd say the hardest part is delivering the news to a buyer that their offer wasn't accepted on a property they fell in love with. Investor or first-time home buyer, that's such a bummer of a conversation to have.

Melissa Kirchhoff · Answer

To latch on to what @Nicholas Smith was saying (which I agree completely and it's something I'm still working on, I wish before I had actually started RE I had developed a plan for) "The Million Dollar Real Estate Agent" or whatever the book is called is pretty much all about this system and exactly how to break it down and do it. If you feel like you'll need help in that, it's a good one. I listened to the book during my drive and it really breaks everything down into numbers and strips out the emotion and hope, which I think you'll need in order to actually be that one of 50...

For me, personally, the hardest part is the passive-ness. I love action. I love working hard and knowing that my hard work will pay off. This is great in some aspects, but when you can't get the bank to work with you on a buyer's loan or a decent house at the right price just isn't selling, it makes me crazy that I can't really do anything. Marketing, hustling, still nothing. It could make me rip my hair out. I like results and frankly, you don't control every aspect of everything in real estate. That's the hard part. For me anyway!

Niki Calderone · Answer

Thanks so much for the insight, everyone! Are there any tools or services you use to help you manage your work and stay organized? (Nicholas, you had mentioned that "systematizing your business will alleviate any day-to-day challenges that might occur.") I feel like this is an area I will be needing help!

What is the hardest part of being an agent?

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