One of the concerns I hear frequently is agents wondering when they are going to start seeing commissions.

What’s interesting is that this is most commonly asked when it comes to online lead generation but is not asked when it comes to door knocking or attending community events or spending money to “get my name out there.”

It should be asked for every single thing you do for your real estate business.

Check it out: (video above)

The key to the answer is knowing that there is a journey to the closing table and that journey requires steps, every single day.

When you step outside of the idea that you can just jump into someone’s life at the right moment, and into the idea that your client is on a customer journey, this changes everything.

To get to the closing table requires consistently moving people along their customer journey.

I talk about this more in the video. Check it out.

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TRANSCRIPT:

This is Christina with Leads and Leverage and today I’m going to answer that proverbial question “When am I going to get my online leads to the closing table? When am I going to start getting commissions? When am I going to start seeing commissions?”

So here’s the thing, as an industry, real estate industry, we’re used to vendors who sell us leads. We’re used to that. We’re used to paying a certain amount every month for a certain number of leads or some sort of guarantee at the same time most of us realize we hope, but we hope it’s the opposite, but we realize in reality that guess what? Most of the leads that we’re getting we think they’re junk leads.

And in a lot of ways they’re junk leads because we’re not moving them through the customer journey. We’re just getting these leads and assuming these leads are like “Okay, I don’t want to sell my house now or okay I want to buy a house now” but really that’s not where these leads are. So we’re used to paying vendors and really not getting much. We get some leads, we don’t really turn them into anything.

Because first of all, we don’t understand what the next logical step is as agents and we’re not helping these leads along. But second, because quite frankly these vendors aren’t just out there kind of almost like harvesting these leads. They do all these different kinds of things to get them in and then they just dump them on us and we don’t know what to do with them.

So the proverbial question is “When I’m doing online lead generation or any lead generation, let’s just go with any lead generation, when am I going to start seeing commissions?” All right in real estate first of all what you do today is going to result in what happens to you 100 days from now. That is real estate it’s 100 days. So if you are working with a buyer, you’re out showing property,  or you are working with a buyer today then guess what you’re gonna have a closing in 100 days for the most part. Obviously conversion rates are different. It’s about a hundred days from when you’re working with somebody to an actual closing.

No closing times aren’t that long. But that’s how long it takes to show several properties or maybe go through several listing appointments or get the Helms ready, etc. And then get it under get it into the listing. If it’s a listing. Then get it under contract, get an offer, etc. It’s about 100 days. So what are you doing today, right now, that’s going to benefit you in a hundred days that’s first of all.

Second of all, the average length of time it takes to actually get a commission from a new lead whether it’s an online lead and in person lead or whatever is anywhere from two weeks to sixty four months. I know! That’s a really big range and yes I’m including in person leads because what we do as agents, we completely forget how many people we actually talked to and meet. And then we’d remember that “Oh I got this one referral and that was just a one-on-one. So I had 100% conversion rate”. No, that’s not the way it worked. You probably talked to 20 or 30 other people in general conversation and they weren’t ready yet.

So here’s the thing, anywhere from two weeks to sixty four months. Why those numbers? Because that’s our spread. That’s our spread with almost 4,000 transactions over the last 20 years. That is our spread, that’s how long - short and long it’s taken to first get in contact with somebody whether it was just via email to the closing. The first closing with that person, it’s been anywhere from two weeks to sixty four months. 64 months has been our longest, 5 years 4 months has been our longest so far.

So that’s first of all, there’s your answer for when am I going to start seeing commissions? Second of all, you’re building a system. What I’m teaching you to do with Leads and Leverage is to build a system. A system that moves people from the very first piece of contact you could possibly have with them all the way to the closing table. Usually what we do for most of us, we get some leads in and we’ll follow up with them for a little bit but then we just kind of leave them because we decide they’re either junk or they’re never gonna do anything.

Or you know we get caught up in immediacy, “Oh let’s work with this person there right now.” “I’m busy with this person right now.” “So let’s work with this person right now or these people right now.” Here’s what happens. I know this has happened to you, because that’s happened to me. Okay, here’s what happens, three months down the road the person that said “Nah, I’m not ready right now.” You find out that they just made an offer on a property. Six months down the road a friend of yours “Oh! we thought you’d be really excited, we just bought our first house.” You’re like dude, what happened? Well I can help you with this.

Here’s the part that's happening. You’re not staying connected through the journey. YOU’RE NOT STAYING CONNECTED THROUGH THE WHOLE JOURNEY and so then what we do is we start sending out these junk newsletters. These things that are pre-canned crap to touch people. To stay in touch with people and really they realize that you’re not really staying in touch with them. There’s no YOU in anything that you’re staying in touch with. It’s just a pre-written newsletter or a pre-written email.

So when you’re building your system, okay, your commissions are anywhere from two weeks out to sixty four months out. However you have to daily be lead generating and daily be lead converting and I am NOT talking about “Well I took 10 phone calls today and I’m so busy I don’t have time to send that email out or send my email out or write my email or write my blog post or do my video. I don’t have time for that.” Then guess what you’re not going to see commissions from those leads, ever!

Any online leads, you have to learn and you have to take the time to do actual lead generation and lead conversion. And this is the part that as real estate agents were just like “but I just want to sell houses” but here’s where we forget we’re a business owner. And in order to actually do that, sell houses or say we own a starbucks, sell coffee or say we own a Mcdonalds, sell burgers. In order to do that we have to constantly be lead generating and lead converting.

We need to constantly be not getting our name out there but bringing people into our fold, into our database and then we need to constantly be talking with this database and building relationships with this database. That’s how you build a business and that’s how you stay in business. And that’s how you keep growing. And as real estate agents we kind of don’t do that we get caught up in the people who are just right there immediacy and we stop doing what’s actually the most important to our business, which is building our business. We’re just in the maintain mode.

And so it’s really to get commissions you really got to remember that there’s a lot of self-management involved in this and there’s a lot of stepping outside the industry norm. Now remember, the industry norm is what most agents are doing which is why most agents average less than 30,000 a year in real estate sales and why most agents quit the business in two years. So if you’re struggling through all of this and you’re just not sure when commissions are going to come it’s because you have not developed or maybe you haven’t learned or maybe to understand the idea that you have to consistently, every single day be building your business.

You need to be working on your business every single day for a dedicated portion of the day. So for example, you need to be answering questions whether it’s on video or blog or email for your consumers. What’s their next logical step in the journey? This is a perfect example of that, I got this question “when do I get to start seeing commissions.” So this question, it’s a legitimate question, it’s a valuable question but it’s not a black-and-white answer. There’s no guarantee especially if there is not daily, daily, daily, daily consistency.

This is huge and I mean it doesn’t matter how busy you get. If you’re not making your number one priority, the piece that “Hey I’ve got a lead generate and then I’ve got a lead convert today and then I need to do everything else” if that’s not your priority everything else is always going to overwhelm you and overcome your business.

And you’re always going to be struggling you’re always going to be in that feast versus famine kind of mode. Super busy, maybe January, February, March, April, May, June. July and starving come fall and winter and then stressed out and wondering what the heck are you going to do to get it back up again and restarting constantly. So you have to remember it’s really in order to see commissions from anything, you have to consistently be building it.

And so inside Leads and Leverage one of the things that I’m doing is teaching you how to build an entire system. How to build that consistency into your business, into your daily actions, into your daily schedule. So that you’re constantly realizing that “Oh gosh, blogging is important” or “Oh gosh, videos are important” or “Oh gosh, emails are important” or “All goodness, I need to make sure the stuff’s going out on my Facebook business page and I need to make sure my page like..” So all of these things that we get overwhelmed with, you need to build it so that it's layering on each other and it’s consistently moving people through that customer journey. So that you do have closings coming out the other end.

Alright, so I hope that answered the question. and I know that it sounded kind of well two weeks to sixty four months, and the reason that we had that’s that those people all the time it’s because of the consistency, is because we built in the consistency. So that’s what I want to help you through this whole thing. Anyway I hope that answered your question. If you want a clarification on anything or you want to ask another question, please let me know. Give me a thumbs up, like, comment, share whatever it is. So that I can help you build that consistent, always improving, always growing real estate business.

Have a great day!