Are you experiencing withdrawal symptoms because the homebuyer tax credit incentives have come and gone?
Think of this as your mid-year business planning session. You’ve got to keep the momentum going because you can’t always rely on “the next big thing” to boost your business.
Here are 5.5 things you can do right now to get back on track so your last quarter won’t stink.
1. Take a vacation—not just the three-day weekend kind, but a minimum of five days. Check your e-mail and voice mail only a couple of times a day. While on vacation, delegate only one hour a day to your business. Spend another hour thinking about the successes and mistakes you’ve made so far this year. Don’t come up with any solutions—that’ll come to you later.
Be sure to tell people you are on vacation and refer them to your back-up person or ask them to wait until you get back. Your clients and agents will understand. If they don’t respect that, get rid of them.
2. Update your database. I’m sure that you have a database—but consider expanding the data content to include their place of employment, birthdates, assets, etc with the info you normally have on the 1003 form. For example, if you add the name of employers, and do a query to see how many others you’ve done business with that work in the same place, you could introduce a corporate benefits program. Another way to update the info is to send (or e-mail) a financial fitness form. Mailing will confirm that they mailing address is still good; use the same test with e-mail addresses.
3. Network like there’s no tomorrow. If you’ve read the book “Who Moved My Cheese” you know what I’m talking about. Carve an hour of your day and write down 25 of the most influential people that you know. Get back in touch with them. Lunch? E-mail? Subscribe to their blogs.
4. Blog Your Guts Out. I’m sure that most of you already have a blog, or are on FaceBook, Twitter, etc. Spend 15 minutes posting info to your pages. Need help? Get free advice through
Okay, now go to your calendar and schedule one hour, three times a week to comment on other people’s blogs. You only need to comment on three or four blogs to get that network thing going—to connect with other movers and shakers in your community.
5. Carve Out a Niche. Pat Fitzgerald knows everything there is to know about VA loans. Tracey Rumsey can locate an FHA rule with her eyes closed. There are Gay/Lesbian mortgage companies. Some people work with only real estate investors (talk about a recession-proof niche). I knew everything there was to know about new construction financing—from the construction to the end financing.
What do you know or what niche do you specialize in? Just by marketing yourself as the expert within a certain niche, you’ll get “other” types of loans too, but you’ll make big bucks if you specialize.
5.5 Videos—It’s the next big thing, and if you’re not already doing videos, now is the time to learn all you can about this awesome marketing technique.
Don’t worry about content—there’s plenty of that available to you! You’ve just got to find to time to do it. What works best for me is to schedule time to record three or four videos at a time and release them on a weekly basis. Make it short, two minutes or less. Only talk about one thing. Create specific videos for your real estate agents and ones for your clients. You can get awesome content from
Karen Deis is president of
