Dry spells happen to even the best agents

Key Takeaways

• The toughest dry spells are often at the beginning of your career, as you build your business.
• Real estate clients start talking about buying or selling a home seven or eight months before they act, on average — so patience is a must.
• Analyze your real estate business and treat it like any other business startup — prepare for lean times the first few years.

Heidi is a real estate agent from my office who works really hard. Her first year as an agent, she worked diligently, took my advice and recommendations, and made a good go of it.

She followed a lot of leads that didn’t pan out. She started a newsletter that she sent to her sphere of contacts. She tried new ways to land a listing or close a sale, but those efforts failed to produce a closing.

Six months in, she didn’t have a single sale, and she started to stress. I met with her and helped her regroup. I gave her more suggestions, and off she went.

She got to nine months without a sale, and she started freaking out. She said she would have to start looking for another job. I told her I understood, but it seemed like she was doing all the right things — if she’d just hang in there, I told her, things would work out eventually.

Eleven months and still no paycheck. She had many clients, just nothing materializing yet.

But then she got to month twelve, and she had eight closings in one month. She was a top sales agent in the office that month — but it took her a year to get that ball rolling.

Her sales continued, and compared to that first year when she made nothing, her second year was astonishing.

That’s a common scenario for any business startup. It takes a while before the income starts rolling in. When you’re out there working leads, it’s a long process.

A lot of real estate clients start talking about buying or selling a home seven or eight months before they act, on average. Owners of higher-end homes start planning one, two, or three years out. So patience is a must.

It’s difficult to predict how long it’s going to be until you get paid. And even when you’re established and have some decent years, suddenly you can hit an extremely painful dry spell.

Here is my advice: I encourage you to analyze your business and treat it like a business. A lot of people get their real estate license and don’t realize that they are actually purchasing a business. You need to prepare for a real estate business the way you would for any other startup, instead of thinking that once you get your license, success will just happen.