As you are building your business and your professional network, it is important to take some time out every once in awhile to re-evaluate your personal brand. The goal of this is to see if there are areas where you can improve your marketing strategies and take your career to the next level.
As a Real Estate Agent, I am sure that you know how important it is to create and maintain both your professional image and your personal brand. In any type of sales environment, your chances of achieving lasting success are dependent on the strength of your relationships with your existing clients, potential clients and other professionals in your field. You current and past clients are an amazing source of new client leads and referrals. Nurturing those business relationships can ensure that the next time they need to get some advice about the Real Estate market or are in need of someone to help them buy or sell a property, you will be the person they will come to. Your network of other professionals in your area and industry can help you find new properties that are just about to go on the market and can even help you get things like home inspections and appraisals completed in a more timely manner. Cultivating and maintaining the goodwill of your fellow Realtors can make the process of buying or selling a property so much easier.
So how can you re-evaluate your brand to be sure that you are doing all that you can to succeed?
Here are a few tips to help you take stock of where you are:
- Think about your base client- Looking over your client list, who is your average client? Are they middle aged couples wanting to downsize? Maybe business owners looking for a new office space? Or, how about young families looking for their first home? Odds are good that you probably work with many different types of clients who all have varying needs. But, if you look again, you may see that there are more of one type than the other. Select your top two or three client types, either the ones you work with the most or the client demographic that you would like to increase, and then write down a brief summary of what type of people they are.
- Analyze your target group- For a few minutes, think about the clients you selected. Who are they?What are their needs? What is it that they need or want from you that you may not be giving them? What can you do to better meet or exceed their needs and expectations?
- Ask the hard questions- Take a look at the clients in your demographic with whom you have worked in the recent past. Select a few and ask them how they would rate you in a business context. Ask them if there were needs they had that you didn't meet. I know, this can be uncomfortable. When doing something like this, it is human nature to gravitate toward clients we are fairly certain will give us a glowing recommendation. Try not to do that. Your goal here isn't to stroke your ego or get a good review. The goal is to find out what the average client in your selected demographic thinks about your professionalism, your skills and your level of service. Trust me, you will learn some invaluable information if you resist the urge to play this one safe. If it is easier, you can always type up a survey and mail it to your clients rather than asking them directly.
- Go through the feedback and find out what it is that makes you successful- Any constructive criticism you received in the feedback should be taken as just that. Room for improvement and ideas about where to start. But for now, try to find out what it is that makes you special, compelling and a successful agent. Look at what your average client said that you got right. The idea here is that if you can get this thing (whatever it may be for you) right the majority of the time, then that is the true essence of what sets you apart in your field and it is the best thing you have to offer.
- Now that you know what that essence is, you can use it to your advantage- For example, if the majority of people you asked said that you were extremely patient and flexible, you will now know that you are an agent who is good at taking the time to assess situations. You are willing to let the clients take as long as they need to be sure that they make the best choices for them. The ability to place a client's need to move at the pace that is comfortable for them should be above your need to make the sale happen and close on the property is important. So, knowing that, you can do more of it and have happier clients.
- Specialize in a specific niche- Although you may deal with many different types of transactions, when you market yourself, it may be a good idea to specialize. At least in your marketing. If we continue with the previous example, you may want to market yourself as an agent who is able to invest the time and energy to find out what a client needs really are and that makes you much more likely to be able to meet them. By selling yourself as a patient, client focused agent, you now have a target audience and a client type that you can market to. Because you are basing your claims on actual feedback from past clients, you can be confident that you have the ability to live up to your marketing.
Finding the way to set yourself apart from your competitors is the key here. Once you have a clear idea of your strengths, you can play them up and make them even more of an asset. If you liked this technique, you can even take it a step farther and come up with a tag line that gets your point across quickly. Using the example, it could be something as simple as “ Jane Smith, Taking the time to make sure you get what you need” or “Jane Smith, the patient agent.” This little advertising blurb could become your email signature and have a very visible place on your social networking accounts. If you come up with a very catchy tag line, you can even put it on any direct mail campaigns and so on.
How do you keep your personal brand strong? Let me know in the comments.
Are you looking for a new job in Real Estate? Take a look at RealEstateJobSite.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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