Synopsis of EXP Realty Convention 2021
EXP Con 2021
Another convention is in the rear view mirror. This was our sixth time attending the annual EXP Realty Convention. Every year we come back with the feeling that we have been blasted with a fire hose full of business information. Many agents who have had the opportunity to attend a real estate convention feel that way….so many great ideas….so little time!
EXP Realty is the kind of company in which you find a lot of collaboration. We all want to increase our business and our skills, because that not only means more income for us personally, but it means more income for the company. And we are all part owners in the company. The better our company does, the better our stock does. We’re all happy to share our best tips. This sharing goes on every day in the cloud campus. The convention is another time to collaborate in person.
We’ve come to the realization that you can’t just take everything in. You have to choose a handful of things that you are going to implement in your business. We usually choose three things. That’s about all we can manage.
Top Three Takeaways from EXPCon 2021
We found so much encouragement and camaraderie amongst the attendees and the speakers! We found it hard to narrow it down to just three items to implement and expand on when we got home. I even have a secondary list to dive into after these three primary action steps.
- Do an audit of your business. Where has the majority of your business come from this year? Where are your leads coming from? Measure the value of each of your lead sources. Double down on the best.
This sounds like a no-brainer, but sometimes…well, lets be honest, most of the time…we get distracted by the next shiny object. There are so many vendors and advertisers that approach Realtors, with promises to increase their business and help with their processes. It is difficult to know what is going to work and what isn’t, until you try it. But after nearly 30 years of business, we have a good idea what has been working for us, and what didn’t pan out so well.
For our business, internet lead generation has been our number one source, after referrals and repeat clients. So, we decided to double up on our blogging efforts, and our advertising. We have a 14 year website history, which, as they say, has legs. We had slacked off over the last two years, but now feel like it’s time to put some energy back into it.
2. As far as our 30 year book of business, we had also slacked off on keeping in touch with past clients. We got a lot of good information about how to better use social media to keep in front of past clients, and how to find new buyers and sellers. This is by far the smartest approach to staying top of mind.
The best tips I heard were to friend or connect with your clients on the social media platforms they use….don’t forget to ask them about LinkedIn. Then put them on a list, so they are easy to find and communicate with. It is time consuming, yes, but worth the effort.
We had started this project several years ago, and then somehow it slipped past us. We have some catching up to do.
Pick a plan, any plan will work, as long as you stick with it. Go to your lists and make a daily plan to react, comment, message and in some way interact with people on social. Pick 2 or 3 times a day. This will help you NOT have to do the endless scrolling that we sometimes do to make sure we see and connect with as many people as we can.
My plan is to check my list of friends, past and present clients, and local people and groups twice a day. I make it a point to interact with each list as much as I can in 10 minutes. Then I put it down and come back to it in the evening. For me it has to be manageable.
3. The last take-away is to double down on video. Video is what gets seen over everything else. It doesn’t have to be long, deep or even smart. It just has to be interesting.
Of course, there were many, many things that we learned and were reminded of. Once we get on top of these top three, we will (hopefully) review our notes and tackle three more tips.
Here’s to a prosperous 2022!