Top producing agents get leads at no upfront cost from our Opcity partnership, some take advantage of our Lead Catcher program, and some buy leads on their own from big home search portals.
But make no mistake, top producing agents do not rely on a single paid channel, they diversify their strategy and generate their own leads organically - agents tell me leads they generate on their own are higher quality, more qualified, and have a far lower effective cost per lead.
Top producing agents are leveraging social media, many are active on Facebook, and some are even starting to dabble in video for real estate. You absolutely need to pick your spots and exploit the massive distribution capabilities of social media platforms, yet if you're savvy, you know you don't own or control major social media platforms and your audience can be taken away from you in an instant.
That’s why, alongside social media channels, top-producing agents have their own website they own and control aligned to their niche and use it to gather leads and build an email list so they can always connect with their audience.
After all the work with agents and real estate marketing tech providers, I released the Stuart St James real estate tech stack to help agents own and control their brand and generate leads. The stack is optionally available to Stuart St James agents at exclusive prices you can't get on your own.
Leaning into this real estate agent tech stack stuff is not necessarily for everyone, yet if you want to "run a business like a business", it's worth a look.
The reality is, the posture of your brokerage towards technology and automation not only influences your efficiency but your overall experience too - learning what modern tools a brokerage uses and/or provides signals whether the brokerage is committed to helping agents grow and scale their businesses.
It was more than 15 years ago, but I still remember it like it was yesterday.
I had just closed my first real estate deal.
I hustled by doing an open house on a Coldwell Banker colleague’s listing. During the open house, I met a buyer who I represented in the eventual purchase of the condo, and I picked up the listing of the buyer’s existing condo too!
I then "double-ended" the listing, crazy, but I’ll save that story for another time.
Anyway, my first deal had just wrapped and I was super excited about my commission.
Unfortunately, it was really difficult to actually get paid. I felt Coldwell Banker was not in my corner, at all.
Have you ever had the feeling someone is making something far harder and more complex than it needs to be?
I sure felt that way.
What that meant was my commission was transferred at a snail’s pace and I had no transparent visibility to what was happening. Not to mention Coldwell Banker kept more than 40% of my deal!
Yet, I’m super thankful for Coldwell Banker’s inefficient, bloated, and antiquated processes because they’ve driven my passion for technology and efficiency through automation and modern tools at Stuart St James, which has led to a better agent experience. We even have a super-efficient deal-closing platform that’s entirely online.
There is massive untapped potential for modern virtual real estate brokers to lean into innovative real estate industry vertical partnerships that create win-win-win scenarios for real estate agents, brokerages, and real estate industry service providers. Is your brokerage out in front here?
I didn’t have the foresight as a new real estate agent to think far enough down the road about these things, yet clearly, they’re important. At the very least, if technology is important to you, which it should be, assess a brokerage’s posture toward technology, innovation, and automation. It should be fairly obvious whether a real estate brokerage is a forerunner in helping you to become a modern hyper-local data-driven real estate agent, or if the brokerage is a Luddite, or laggard at best, and is comfortable with the status quo and using lame tools and technology that often do more for the brokerage’s brand than your own as an agent.
