When I first became a real estate agent, there was something very important I neglected to think about before getting into the business: social skills. While I knew that having basic manners and such was a good start and envisioned a lot of hand shaking and “nice to meet yous” I never thought about whether it would be necessary to learn how to improve social skills, since it seemed like the same basic things.

But, as I soon learned, being successful in real estate depends highly on the relationships you have with other people. And if you’re not a social person who can chat with complete strangers or would rather be on an island all by yourself away from everyone else, chances are it can be really tough to figure out how to succeed in real estate.

Beyond the basic business etiquette of talking to people face to face, there are other ways of communication that are taking the world by storm, such as social networking sites like Facebook or even the ease of use of text messaging. Agents taking advantage of these less confrontational methods of communicating with others are seeing a much higher return that the others who do not.

Today social skills are more important than ever. If you don’t feel comfortable talking with others, it’s going to be very difficult for them to feel confident enough to work with you. When I think of the top agents in any office, they all have the same main things in common: they aren’t afraid to talk to people. You probably know if your social skills aren’t quite where you’d like them to be yet – but there is good news – just about anyone can improve their social skills with a little practice!

Here’s some ideas on things you can do:

Get Out More: The more you get out, the more opportunities will be presented to you to practice your social skills. Whether it’s out to dinner with your friends, taking a class somewhere, or going to a business function, these are all places to help you develop better communication skills and overcoming shyness.

Rehearse: You might feel a little stupid standing in front of a mirror and talking to yourself, but this is another way to practice what to say and how to say it.

Make the Most Online: You absolutely must get involved in whatever the latest and greatest social networking site is, because it helps you socialize with people online, even if your social skills aren’t perfect.

Seek Help: There’s a number of good resources for teaching you better social skills, such as taking classes at your local community college, reading self help books at your local library, or even hiring a coach.

Social skills are undeniably important in real estate – what advice do you have for anyone looking to improve their social skills?

It’s something just about every real estate agent encounters at one point or another, and for some agents something that is more the norm than the odd rarity – the house or property that just won’t sell. Your sellers start getting exasperated, you keep dropping prices, you wait for weeks and don’t even get so much as a phone call. What’s going on?

Well, if you’re desperate, you’re ready to try anything, right? I haven’t read this, but it comes with a 100% Money Back Guarantee: How to Sell a House in 21 Days.

I’ve seen a big transition in real estate sales over the past years, especially with a housing slump and technology moving quickly in the realm of the internet – and the most noticeable thing to me that is different from today’s market than when I first started in real estate is you can’t just list a house in the MLS and expect it to sell like you used to be able to.

All the time I hear agents say “I’ve tried everything to sell this house” – but usually there is always something they are missing, whether from not thinking it as important or from sheer laziness. So, if you’re stuck sitting on listings that just won’t sell, I’ve decided to create this checklist to help you make sure you really did try just about all of it!

Call Your SOI: Agents anymore hate picking up the phone. But it’s something that is pretty easy to do and really makes a big difference over the non personal twitter messages and emails. Call up everybody on your list of friends, family, leads, and aquaintances that you haven’t talked to in the last month – it’s a good habit to start to get more business anyway – and you never know if they might know someone interested in your property. Ask your sellers if they have anyone they’d like you to call, too. More Cold Calling Tips Here

Post a Virtual Tour: Most sites now that buyers go online to search houses show virtual tours. And as more and more houses and properties start showing these, the more people are wanting to see them – and ignoring those listings without them. You don’t need a video camera or expensive equipment – they are plenty of virtual tour software companies out there that can use your photos.

Take New Photos: If you are showing pictures of a house covered in snow in June, or have pictures of a house that has green grass and flowers everywhere in the dead of winter, chances are people are going to just automatically assume the listing is old and therefore must be something “wrong” with it. In addition to making sure the pictures are recent, try shooting from different angles and make sure the lighting is good.

Try Craigslist: More and more people are starting with Craigslist to look for a house in hopes of finding a deal or bargain. It’s easy to post a listing – just try to have a headline that stands out from the rest and be sure to link to your listing page online to that virtual tour and show pictures. It’s free, what the heck do you have to lose?

Use the Right Words: If your description in your ads looks like “3BR 2BA cer tile, carpet, lvl yd, close to schools etc” that’s not going to attract people as much as say, oh “Seller Concessions $2000″ and “Seller Paid Closing Costs” and “$3,000 Credit to Buyer” – which actually sometimes work better psychologically than the desperate “Price Reduced!”

Notify Other Agents: We all know other agents are the ones with buyers in most markets, so make sure they’re aware of your house. If your market is saturated with listings it is quite likely they may have not seen it. Have an agent open house (with some nice incentives to get them there!) or send out emails to your coworkers.

Triple Check the Price: Overpriced houses aren’t going to sell, we all know that’s the #1 rule. Forget about “but it has this that etc.” – take your sellers on a tour in that price range and ask them which house they’d buy first and which ones seem like the best value. That’s the most effective way to get them to sink into reality without seeming like you’re just bad at marketing.

Blast it all over the internet: Your listings should be everywhere online. Here’s a quick and easy test – type in your seller’s property address into search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Hopefully the first result is a link to your listing on either your own or your company’s website – with plenty more links to your listing from other sites like Realtor.com and others. If it doesn’t, then chances are you haven’t promoted it online enough. (See 43 Real Estate Listing Sites

Stage It: A house needs to be clean and it needs to be move-in ready. Ugly orange carpet from the 70′s, no matter how good of condition it may be in, is not “move-in ready”. You’ve seen the TV show Design to Sell, right? A bucket of paint might be all you need and a simple rearrangement of furniture. I know you can’t control your sellers, but again, take them on a tour and show them what else is available in their price range – it should be a good wake up call. If they’re struggling, suggest professional help – most areas have a wide array of home stagers, junk removal companies, professional organizers, etc. who can make it easier for you both.

Have an Open House: People do still go to open houses – if you know how to do it right. If you don’t market your open houses effectively though yes, you’re going to have no-shows and a boring three hours. (See Get More Traffic at Your Open Houses)

Get Feedback: You are doing your sellers a great injustice if you aren’t following up with every single person who views the home for feedback. You need to know if the wall paper is a turn off or the yard is too small or the street is too busy. Even if there are things you can’t change (ie: a busy street) you can do other things to make the home more attractive. For example, on a busy street, try to accentuate ample parking or if a yard seems too small try rearranging patio furniture or changing the fence. The more feedback you have, the better you are able to get a handle of why the house hasn’t sold yet – and DO something about that quickly.

Relist It: There’s no harm in relisting a house to show up again as a “new listing” – especially if you’ve made some major changes or improvements. A lot of agents won’t even realize it’s not really new, and it will also pop up for any agent who is automatically notified of new listings as a reminder that it’s available. This doesn’t always work, but at least it gets you a somewhat fresh start.

Network, Network, Network: The more people who are aware that a house is available for sale, the more likely someone is going to be interested in it. Make sure all of your networking buddies are aware of it – you never know if that mortgage broker you got coffee with last month might have someone interested in that price range.

Hit Up Relocation: There’s a very good chance your buyer won’t be from the same area you have the home listed in. Start hitting up relocation agents and share it with anybody in areas that often frequently transfer to your area. You might even want to consider getting in touch with HR departments to see if they have anyone moving into the area.

Document Everything You Do and Convince Your Sellers You are Awesome: The worst thing in the world is to put a lot of time, effort, work, and even money into trying to sell a house, watch it sit on the market forever, and then the listing expires and you lose it. You need to be in touch with your sellers on a regular basis, give them updates, show the “proof” of what you’ve done, and keep them hopeful and realistic.

Don’t Take Crappy Listings: I had to add this one in here because of a recent discussion I had with some agents not too long ago. One agent was moaning and whining about how the house still hadn’t sold. I said, well of course not. You should have NEVER listed it in this condition. Don’t be desperate for a listing just because you want it and you hope it’ll sell. Be very clear that you want to sell their house fast and for the highest possible price – and that means only once it’s in good condition and has no major turn offs and is priced right will you list it. Your time and your money is valuable – don’t waste it trying to sell stuff you know when you step in the door isn’t going to sell. Sellers rarely change until their listing sits there for a year or expires. If they’re not willing to do what it takes in the beginning, don’t waste your time – try again after it expires after someone else agreed to list it overpriced and in bad condition.

Well, that’s my two cents, I’d love to hear yours in the comments section below – what do you do to get a house that won’t sell to finally get an offer?

And, if after you’ve done ALL of these things, you still haven’t sold the house, well, then you’re ready for Saint Joseph statues, witch craft, and How to Sell a House in 21 Days. (disclaimer: i do not in anyway shape or form endorse or recommend the book – but it does come with a 100% guarantee and the title is awfully appealing, isn’t it?)

Here are some tips for outsourcing effectively:

1. Identify Your Biggest Resource Wasters: Time, money, and other things you value are all resources in making you productive. If you’re losing time or money or something else important to you by doing certain tasks, then it’s time to either delegate that responsibility to someone else who can do it more efficiently or see if it’s an activity you should eliminate entirely.

2. Specifically Outline What You Need Accomplished: Hiring someone with the idea of “they’ll file all my paperwork” sounds good in theory, but the term “file all my paperwork” is simply too broad. Chances are you will overlook important tasks that need done or you will end up doing some of the work yourself. Instead, write a complete, very specific list of what the person you will be outsourcing to exactly what they will be doing. Your list instead of the generic “file my paperwork” might include “Make copies of entire folder, turn one into the office, place the other in the cabinet beside my desk.” The more specific of the duties you can identify, the easier it will be to continue with our next few tips.

3. Hire the Right Help: There are all types of choices on who you can hire to do the different things you need done. Doing step #2 is vital if you want to hire someone who is not only cost effective but reliable and qualified as well. For example, if you will need flyers designed or other similiar work, you need to make sure the person you are hiring has some design experience and is familiar with using various graphic design programs. At the same time, if you need help with someone who can take care of more real estate related duties such as sitting at open houses or fielding phone calls, then you will want to make sure you hire a licensed assistant to help facilitate those things.

4. Keep a Schedule: It’s easy to lose track of time when you are depending on someone else for work. Make sure you have a set schedule and deadlines and that the communication lines about these expectations are clear. There’s nothing worse than needing something done yesterday.

5. Track Your Progress: In order to know if you hiring someone to do different tasks for you is being effective, you will need to be able to track your progress in a measurable way. You can do this by monitoring your sales, comparing how much time you work each week, and the differences in your spending budget as well.

Outsourcing can be a great way to free up your time and make it so you can be more productive. Following these 5 simple tips will hopefully make it much easier for you.

Do you have any tips on how to outsource effectively? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

You may be wondering what reasons to outsource your work would justify the potential cost and risk from hiring someone else to do everything you normally would do. However, there are many benefits of delegating tasks to another person – especially if you are one of the many people who feels as if there simply are not enough hours in the day.

One of the most common mistakes agents make is to try and do everything themselves. Sure, you can do it alone – but often times it ends up costing you more in the long run than it would cost you to hire someone. Imagine if your primary role as an agent was to just stick a sign in the yard, wait for an offer, and show up at the closing table. That’s how easy it’s supposed to be, right? If you outsource properly, it can be.

Here’s 5 Reasons to Outsource Your Work:

1. Saves You Time: How much is your time worth to you? Is it worth it to you to pay someone $25 so you have the time to go to your kid’s sporting events or do something with your friends? Chances are, the answer is yes. Nobody can be everywhere and do everything at once all at the same. If your time is important to you – and it should be – then outsourcing is a great way to delegate those tasks that are the most time consuming and least rewarding.

2. Build a Team: Real estate teams not surprisingly typically succeed and long surpass over other individual agents in the office and region. Is it because they’re that much better? Not at all. They simply have more time to get more clients, and more clients always equals more sales. When someone else is licking envelopes and writing blog posts, you have a lot more time for networking events, making phone calls, and more. Usually once a team is established, they can get many phone calls and business just on their reputation alone.

3. Strengthen Your Weaknesses: There’s a good chance that as a real estate agent you’re not an expert in web design. Maybe you are clueless when it comes to real estate video marketing. It’s okay to not be a technical expert. But by ignoring these types of powerful marketing tools, you could be losing a lot of business. When you hire a well qualified expert to take over on these things, you can strengthen your weaknesses. Whatever you couldn’t do on your own is now possible.

4. Make More Money: The saying “You’ve gotta spend money to make money” can really hold true in this situation. While you need to be careful that your outsourcing budget is being spent wisely, typically the less time you are wasting on mundane activities like filling out the blank forms on your office’s file folders, the more likely you’ll be able to spend time doing activities that actually generate revenue and sales. If you marketed an extra 10 hours per week, you would likely pick up at least one extra client per week, if not more. That extra client could equal several thousands of dollars, not to mention potential referrals for many years to come.

5. Gain a Competitive Edge: It’s quite likely that your competitors are NOT outsourcing. So many agents, even ones who are doing quite well, are afraid to take on the responsibility of hiring someone else to do their tasks. Being a few steps ahead of other agents in your area can truly make a difference on being successful and just being so-so.

These are just a few of the many reasons to outsource. I’m sure that many of you can add in reasons why you do or don’t outsource. If you’re not a subscriber already, subscribe by email and we’ll notify you of our upcoming post on how to outsource effectively.

Many companies are starting to implement and enforce a clean desk policy. Basically it is exactly what it sounds like – employees are expected to have a clean and neat tidy desk at all times.

While you would think having an organized work space would only make sense and seem natural to most people, unfortunately that is not always the case. I know several real estate agents who are constantly missing files and papers, have boxes piled to the ceilings, and so much stuff all over their desk there is no way possible they could ever actually sit there and work! Some agents even need two or three desks to hold all their clutter and disorganization.

Here are some of the main reasons companies and brokers are adopting these policies:

1. Increased Security: In most businesses, privacy and security are huge concerns. Real estate is obviously no exception. You may have client’s banking information, their personal contact info, and other things that should be kept confidential. When you have papers and files everywhere it is easy for things to get misplaced or get into the wrong hands. Sadly in some offices I have also seen agents go through other agent’s files if they are left out. You may have other things that could be potential security risks also – passwords, phone numbers, networking contacts, etc. Don’t trust anything you leave in plain sight on your desk to be safe!

2. Better Impressions: Imagine your clients walked into your office to see everything strewn about. How seriously are they going to take you when you now tell them they need to stage or clean out their home to get it sold? A clean desk will make you and your office appear more professional.

3. Improved Efficiency: Think about how much time you spend looking for things each day. 5-10 minutes here and there can amount to hours of lost and wasted time.

4. Reduce Paper: When you are forced to have a neat desk, there’s a good chance you will be less likely to print off things such as emails or other things you don’t really need. Less paper being used means less office costs and it’s better for the environment too!

If you decide to have a clean desk policy at your office, you should make sure that it can be enforced and that there will be consequences if someone does not follow it. You can also go for the positive reinforcement approach and regularly reward those who keep a clean desk. Even if your office has not required that you keep your work space clean and neat, it’s one you may want to start practicing on your own. You can never be too careful!

What are your thoughts on having a clean or messy desk and work space area? Is it reasonable for companies to practice these policies? Share your thoughts in the comments below.