Tag Archives: tips

11.07.17
by

SEO for New Real Estate Agents

More than ever potential home buyers are starting and continuing their house hunt online.

According to the Real Estate in a Digital Age 2017 Report, more than 75% of home buyers use the internet in their home search (including nearly 100% of Millennials).

As a new agent, if you want to reach these many potential clients online, you need to optimize your website to get the most traffic you can.

Follow these steps to improve your SEO.

SEO for new real estate agents

1. Utilize local keyword phrases

Most home buyers start their research with local keyword phrases like “Fort Myers real estate.”

Although over time you may expand your business to include multiple regions, when you build your website at the start of your career, you’ll want to focus on a single area.

Once you’ve established yourself as a market expert in the first area, you can then expand to target other surrounding areas.

To optimize your website, blog, and articles you should choose search phrases like the following:

  • Fort Myers real estate
  • Fort myers realtor
  • Fort Myers real estate agent
  • Fort Myers homes for sale

The more targeted and specific your website can be, the better.

As a new agent your goal is to capture local internet traffic, not traffic from all over the state or region.

At the start, avoid key phrases such as “Florida real state agent,” since you’ll be too small to compete for that kind of keyword.

Make your website a resource for potential home buyers with relevant blogs, articles, images, and videos that all provide value and are keyword optimized.

2. Write blog posts about premium homes

Although you may list dozens or even hundreds of listings at a time, you will certainly have a select few properties that you really want to sell.

Writing a blog post about one of those properties could do wonders for securing more prospects.

For this kind of blog post, the optimized keyword would be the property’s address. Be sure to include the address in the following places:

  • The meta descriptions
  • The file names of the photos
  • The alt tags on the photos (which you can usually edit once you have uploaded the photo into your blog/website)
  • URL
  • Title

Create about 200-350 words of unique writing that describes the home features using the best practices for home listings along with the standard description.

Note: for other blog posts not targeted for a specific property, there is no perfect number of words. However, longer content tends to be more helpful for users, and will therefore be rewarded more in Google’s search rankings.

You will also want to get as many backlinks from trusted websites as you can.

3. Off page SEO

You can establish authority in Google’s algorithm by submitting your website and business info to directories such as the Better Business Bureau, Yellowbook.com, Local.com, YP.com, and more.

Also, be sure to claim your business on Google (don’t forget about Yahoo and Bing, which both receive more traffic than most people realize).

By claiming your business, Google will see you as a trusted website, meaning they’ll put your site in front of more potential clients.

Get on the following sites:

  • Trulia
  • Zillow
  • Redfin.
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest (with images of your listings)
  • Youtube (with video tours of listings, which can be huge for gaining traffic)
  • Instagram (with quality images of homes)

Your website doesn’t have to be perfect: the main point is getting started. Creating quality content consistently is the best and most efficient way to be found.

Perhaps you don’t have any skills with video creation but you enjoy writing—then write incredible content. Maybe you have excellent photos—utilize them. Anything you can do to create valuable content will help you sell homes.

About Larson Educational Services:

Utilizing 40 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online. We are an approved Florida Real Estate School (License #ZH1002299), Florida CAM School (License #PRE31), Florida Insurance School (License # 370501) and NMLS Approved Course Provider.

Larson Educational Services

13040 Livingston Rd. #12,

Naples, Florida

34105

239-344-7510

LarsonEd.com

10.10.17
by

How to Choose a Real Estate Brokerage [VIDEO]

To learn more about LarsonEd’s Florida real estate and Florida insurance courses, visit LarsonEd.com or give us a call at 239-344-7510.

About Larson Educational Services:

Utilizing 40 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online. We are an approved Florida Real Estate School (License #ZH1002299), Florida CAM School (License #PRE31), Florida Insurance School (License # 370501) and NMLS Approved Course Provider.

Larson Educational Services

13040 Livingston Rd. #12,

Naples, Florida

34105

239-344-7510

LarsonEd.com

04.13.17
by

5 Tips for Health Insurance Client Retention-Part 2

Health insurance client retention

When too many of your clients are cancelling their health insurance policies, you start to feel the impact at all levels of your business—lost clients could increase administrative costs and you could also see issues with debt management if you’ve already budgeted certain commissions that are no longer coming in.

And acquiring new clients is not cheap.

Here is part 2 for our tips on how to choose clients who will stick around:

(Read part 1 here.)

3. Use Stories

People respond to stories. You can demonstrate the value of a certain policy or package by telling a story about how the policy has worked for an unnamed client in the past and the benefits it provided them.

Insurance consultant Keith Leech likes to use a 4-question process to further drive the point home in a prospects mind. You can use these questions yourself:

  1. “Who do you know who has suffered a heart attack, cancer, or stroke?”
  2. “Were they expecting it to happen?”
  3. “Did they suffer financially or emotionally?”
  4. “Would cash have helped?”

Everyone has been affected by heart attack, cancer, or stroke in one way or another. By relating your products to a personal experience of your client’s, they will better understand the immediacy of their health insurance needs.

4. Maintain Communication

To keep your clients on board with you, it’s important that they not only hear from you at renewal time or when a premium is late, but other times as well.

Show your clients appreciation and they will stick around. 

Remember: you and your client are business partners.

The best way to maintain contact is to create a repeatable communication schedule that you replicate for every client.

No, you don’t want to send any “Dear, client” emails. But when your client signs on with you, you may want to send yourself some Google alerts to remind you to ask them questions to head off common conversations you may have in the first 30 days of partnership.

“Did you receive your insurance cards?”

“Do you have any questions or concerns with your coverage so far?”

Make sure some of these are phone calls as well.

Don’t inundate them with phone calls and emails. However, you can use special insurance events as a good reason to contact them. For example, May is national disability insurance awareness month, September is national life insurance awareness month, and June 28 is national insurance awareness day.

Also, around the new year they may need to renew their policy. Your best practice is to see if they’ve had any life-changing events in the past year such as a wedding or a child. Find this out from your client and suggest some options to better suit their new needs.

5. Assume You’ll Be Their Agent for Life

Building a long-lasting relationship with your clients isn’t about selling products, per se; it’s about selling your services. It’s about being there when they need you.

A truly great health insurance agent will get referrals from parent to child.

As your relationship extends over the years, consider offering life insurance. Many people are under the misapprehension that life insurance is expensive. Like most people, they may simple have whatever plan they were offered through their job and have left it at that.

If you are always looking out for your clients needs in their interest, you’re sure to continue these long-lasting relationships.

(Read part 1 here.)

naples real estate school

Larson Educational Services

13040 Livingston Rd. #12,

Naples, Florida 34105

LarsonEd.com

239-344-7510

10.18.16
by

7 Tips for Masterful Negotiation Part 2–Florida Real Estate School

7 Tips for Masterful Negotiation Part 2

Florida Real Estate School

Think confidence, machismo, and stamina are the keys to winning a negotiation? Then your bargaining skills need a reboot. Over the past decade, a growing field of literature on the subject has come to the conclusion that checking your ego at the boardroom door is a must. Compromise and kindness are the new rules of negotiation. How does this gentler approach work? We’ve compiled a short list of pointers to get you started.

 

  1. Ditch the Dog Metaphors.

Negotiating: It’s two pit bulls locked in a room and one is going to be forced to roll over. Ick. That mentality is not only outdated, but will get you nowhere. That’s because, frankly, baring teeth and barking the loudest doesn’t have the power it might seem to when bargaining. When deal making gets tense, no one ever wants to back down. In Roger Fisher and William Ury’s negotiating text, “Getting to Yes,” the experts suggest that instead of viewing your counterpart as the adversary, you focus instead on the merits of the case and search for ways to achieve reciprocity. The idea is to “attack” the underlying issue, rather than the other negotiator.

Florida real estate school

This is how you look when you try to act tough during negotiations.

 

  1. When All Seems Lost, Gain Something Else.

If a negotiation is going nowhere, and taking up too much of your time and energy, you may want to walk away from it. Before you do, entrepreneur Janine Popick recommends that you stop and think: What else can my company or I get out of this situation? Might someone else give the negotiations a try? Or perhaps you can use the bad situation as an opportunity to train someone at your company on how to deal with toxic clients.

  1. Remember: You’re Already a Pro at This.

However much you think you negotiate, you’re probably underestimating your experience. That’s what bargaining manual Getting to Yes posits. “Everyone negotiates something every day,” the author wrote. And in Bargaining for Advantage, author G. Richard Shell agrees: “All of us negotiate many times a day.” Yes, your co-workers, children, spouse, and even fellow passengers on the train, help you refine your skills day in and day out.

 

Utilize these 7 tips to reach your own level of negotiation mastery.

 

About Larson Educational Services:

Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.

Brad Larson

Larson Educational Services

1400 Colonial Blvd. Suite 44

Fort Myers, FL 33907

info@LarsonEd.com

239-344-7510

www.LarsonEd.com

08.23.16
by

Real Estate Photography Tips!

Are you sick of your listing photos looking unprofessional? Can’t afford to pay for a photographer? Check out these simple real estate photography tips to help make your listings sparkle!

To sign up for classes, give us a call at 239-344-7510 or visit our website, LarsonEd.com.

About Larson Educational Services:

Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.

Brad Larson
Larson Educational Services
13040 Livingston Road #12
Naples, Florida
34105
239-344-7510
info@larsoned.com
LarsonEd.com

08.18.16
by

Real Estate Job Interview Tips Part 2

Whether you’re a new real estate professional or a broker, you can learn from the brokerage employment process. As a new agent, it helps to know what you can expect from the recruitment and hiring process to better prepare yourself. As a broker, you can improve your recruiting and hiring process to find the best new agents.

Read Part 1 Here!

In our last post, we started to outline some of the common elements of a good job interview. Let’s continue with that list.

Professional Assets

Take time to explain the job in detail and give the candidate the opportunity to sell himself or herself. Questions might include:

“What do you think are your major assets as an employee?”
“What strengths do others see in you?”
“What are your areas that need development?”

Closing

Conclude the interview with a summary and ask, “Do you have any further questions about the job, our company, or anything else we’ve discussed?” A good candidate will have questions prepared for the interviewer, which will allow the candidate to listen to the interviewer sell themselves to him or her.

Selecting a Candidate

Once the interview process is finished, the next step is choosing who to hire. The right person is the one whose knowledge, skills, abilities, goals, values, and expectations fit the job. The right fit for the organization is the one who is motivated, creative, flexible, and will work well in the company’s culture.

Converting all of this to an employment decision requires a quantifiable assessment according to certain established selection criteria. Criteria related to the job and the organization must be established and become the platform for evaluating and selecting a candidate.

Hiring

The person who hires is also the person who fires. The hiring person should be completely committed to the person who is finally selected. The hiring process generally consists of two steps:

  1. The offer and acceptance
  2. The formal employment paperwork.

Once you have followed through on these job interview guidelines, the company and candidate will have both found the right fit for the job. Follow these hiring guidelines to better prepare for your upcoming real estate job interview, no matter which side of the table you’ll be sitting on.

Read Part 1 Here!

To sign up for classes, give us a call at 239-344-7510 or visit our website, www.LarsonEd.com.

About Larson Educational Services:

Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.

Brad Larson
Larson Educational Services
13040 Livingston Road #12
Naples, Florida
34105
239-344-7510
info@larsoned.com
www.LarsonEd.com

08.11.16
by

Real Estate Job Interview Tips Part 1

Whether you’re a new real estate professional or a broker, you can learn from the brokerage employment process. As a new agent, it helps to know what you can expect from the recruitment and hiring process to better prepare yourself. As a broker, you can improve your recruiting and hiring process to find the best new agents.

Generally, the real estate employment process will consist of:

  1. Recruiting
  2. Prescreening
  3. Interviewing
  4. Selecting
  5. Hiring
  6. Recruiting

Any brokerage needs to be able to recruit from a position of strength, which is why company image is so important. Recruiting is the process of assembling a pool of candidates for consideration.

That means the company’s business reputation and its workplace environment play a vital role in attracting the best people in the pool, which gives management good candidates to consider. Recruiting, therefore, can begin internally or externally.

Prescreening

The prescreening process is meant to gather basic information in order to decide whether an applicant meets the position requirements. Prescreening is often done with an application, a resume, a brief face-to-face, and a phone call or videoconference conversation.

Sometimes a candidate will be required to answer a few questions that require written answers. This exercise is useful not only for analyzing the content of the answer, but also for evaluating the candidate’s communication skills.

Interviewing

Candidates who make it through the prescreening process will move forward to a formal interview, the most important information-gathering part of the process. If the brokerage hasn’t found any suitable candidates to interview, then it’s better to go back to the recruiting process rather than waste everybody’s time with an interview with a candidate who doesn’t meet the qualifications.

real estate job interview tips

Best practices for interviews

A good interview will include some common elements that the interviewer will use to find the best candidate.

Introduction

The opening question can be used to put the candidate at ease with an icebreaker. For example, get the conversation going with an easy question such as, “How did you become interested in our company?”

Work Experience

Questions about previous work experience can reveal the candidate’s skills, motivations, initiative, and problem-solving ability. Questions might include:

“What have you done best in previous jobs?”
“How have you handled job-related problems in the past?”
“What are your major work accomplishments?”

Education

Questions about education can reveal the candidate’s level of accomplishment, professional interests, and potential for growth and development. Questions might include:

“What have you learned related to your desired career in real estate?”
“What made you choose to work in real estate?”
“How do you feel about getting additional education?”
“What do you want to learn next?”

Check back next time for part 2!

To sign up for classes, give us a call at 239-344-7510 or visit our website, www.LarsonEd.com.

About Larson Educational Services:

Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.

Brad Larson
Larson Educational Services
13040 Livingston Road #12
Naples, Florida
34105
239-344-7510
info@larsoned.com
www.LarsonEd.com

06.21.16
by

How Much Does Your Wasted Time Cost?–Florida Real Estate School

How Much Does Your Wasted Time Cost?

Florida Real Estate School

Let’s face it: you waste time. We all do it. You’ve set aside a morning or afternoon to get some real work done and before you know it you’re sitting on Netflix on a 6-episode binge of Gossip Girl. But what’s the true cost of wasted time when you’re a real estate agent (or any other self-employed person for that matter)? It’s important for you to ask yourself what your goals are related to time.

How many hours do you plan to devote to real estate?

How many hours do you want to spend NOT working?

 

Here’s a good way to judge the value of your time.

Florida real estate school

How much is your wasted time costing you?

After looking at this chart, how much does every hour wasted cost you? If you make $50,000 a year, for example, you just spent $150 watching those 6 episodes of Gossip Girl.

 

Be honest. How do you waste time? Consider how much time is spent in non-productive activities and consider replacing them with something productive instead.

Florida real estate school

Don’t be like this guy. Forget about the socks, just use your time wisely!

About Larson Educational Services:

Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.

 

Brad Larson

Larson Educational Services

1400 Colonial Blvd. Suite 44

Fort Myers, FL 33907

info@LarsonEd.com

239-344-7510

www.LarsonEd.com

06.07.16
by

Top 7 Time Management Tips–Florida Real Estate School LarsonEd

Top 7 Time Management Tips

Florida Real Estate School

In this age of constant distraction, it’s easier than ever to get off of task. Use these 7 simple time management tips to improve your focus.

 

  1. Assign blocks of time and deadlines for each task.

Make a realistic estimate. Expect the inevitable interruptions. Consider importance versus urgency.

 

  1. Set priorities

Some classify tasks as A, B or C priority. This helps clarify what is important and what is urgent.

 

  1. Create a daily “To-Do” list

This is a simple but not necessarily easy task. It’s the most significant difference between people who are successful in their careers and those who are not.

Florida real estate school

Make sure your daily goals are realistic.

  1. Schedule work days and days off

Consider the unusual aspects of a licensee’s schedule. What are the most active times? Make appropriate use of holidays as either break time or planning time.

 

  1. Schedule face-to-face time with a client, someone in your target market, or someone in your sphere of influence

Along with the globalisation of online communication comes a lack of face-to-face interactions. You’ll set yourself apart from your competition if you make time to meet with people in person.

 

  1. Schedule direct preparation time to:

Prepare a listing or buyer presentation, prepare a CMA, or prepare marketing materials.

Florida real estate school

Florida real estate school

  1. Schedule planning time to:

Develop, review and revise your marketing plan; perform market research and analysis; review your budget and financial status.
Use these simple time management tips to use your time more efficiently and improve your productivity.

 

About Larson Educational Services:

Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.

 

Brad Larson

Larson Educational Services

1400 Colonial Blvd. Suite 44

Fort Myers, FL 33907

info@LarsonEd.com

239-344-7510

www.LarsonEd.com