Can we all just agree that there can be good and bad happening at the exact same time, caused by the same thing?
Yes, obviously.
Even in the midst of this unprecedented pandemic that we’re all enduring, there are some great things happening; some silver linings to be found amid all the negative, awful crap that we’re watching happen every day.
Columnist
For starters, when was the last time you’ve heard a fellow agent or lender fight the need to go paperless and virtual? It’s been a minute!
Right now, just about every single agent in existence is being forced to go virtual and paperless. Even those who fought using Docusign or Skyslope now don’t really have a choice if they want to keep getting business done. In short, the pandemic and the resulting stay at home orders dramatically sped up our entire industry’s adoption of paperless transactions, e-signing, teleconferencing, and even online notaries.
Awesome, right? It’s about damn time. I mean, isn’t it just bizarre when you’re accepting offers on a listing and some random buyers agent named Harold calls you to ask for your fax number to send an offer to? After all of this, I don’t think Harold will need your fax number.
Next, let’s talk about an agent’s ability to work remotely and virtually. Countless agents have not been able to go work out of their physical office for a month or more. But are they just withering and dying?
Sure, there may be one or two “Harolds” out there, but for the most part, agents are getting by just fine working from home.
That learning curve or the anticipated disruption to an agent’s daily routine prevented a ton of them from working virtually from home. They thought it would just set them back too much.
Well, for the last month or so, they’ve all been forced to rip the bandaid off and figure it out. Guess what? They figured it out!
I’ve talked with dozens of agents lately who are just now realizing that they don’t actually need to be paying rent at an office or desk fees for a cubicle at their brokerage. They’re realizing that they can still be productive at home or working virtually, and can save hundreds sometimes thousands each month by eliminating that overhead. That, my friends, is a great thing that may never have been discovered if they weren’t forced to work from home.
Lastly, the opportunity for more effective marketing and ads is just enormous. Think about it, there’s still a ton of uncertainty, so many agents have hit the pause button on their Facebook Ads, mailers, etc. They’re sitting on the sidelines until the future becomes more clear. Totally understandable! But for those real estate agents willing to double down on their ads and put their foot on the gas with their marketing, there’s a tremendous amount of market share that’s up for grabs. Or better yet, as my friend and Toronto real estate pro David Greenspan calls it, their “mindshare.”
The mindshare of the consumer is easier to grab now than at any time I can remember in the last 10 years. Not only are our real estate agent colleagues sitting on the sidelines, but consumers have increased their time on social media! I read one article that said that Facebook News Feed consumption had increased by 82% in just one month! Are you kidding me!?
Right now, there are more people using social media more often than ever, and we have fewer agents and advertisers to compete with to put content and ads into those news feeds? Need I say more?
We all have a choice to make. We can either focus on the bad, or focus on the good. I’m choosing the latter, and I’m also making the choice to take full advantage of these opportunities while they still exist. I’d urge you to do the same.
For any of you willing to really double down on marketing, recruiting, content production, learning new skills, building or improving systems, etc, you’ll be able to look back at the first half of 2020 as not just the most insane, surreal, stressful, trying part of your life, but also the time where you made a quantum leap in your business. The time you point back to years from now as the time that truly helped you jump up to a whole new level of life and business.
Either way, I think we’ll all look back at these times and wish we had done more. Even those who are taking massive action and growing will wish they did more.
But then there will be those, like Harold, who will look back at March and April 2020 and wish they had done something, anything, to grow, but chose not to out of fear. Let’s do our best to not be like Harold.
