Which gets better results? Hard work or smart systems?

Hard work is a wonderful thing. It’s almost universally applauded. In our industry, for example, real estate agents who work endless hours chasing down real estate leads, are often admired. “Way to go for it!” we say.

But hard work, as necessary and effective as it is sometimes, comes with a price.

First, there’s the obvious burnout, especially if you’re not getting good results from all that slogging. And second, sometimes you can get so busy that you forget to put smart real estate marketing systems in place to do the heavy lifting for you.

While hard work can pay off, a hard-working system can multiply your results.

Say, for example, you currently get leads from your real estate agent website via a contact form. Those enquiries go to your email inbox. You then have to take those real estate agent leads and record them somewhere for follow-up. And there may be more follow-up you need to schedule over the next few weeks or months before you — fingers crossed — get that listing.

Now, imagine if most those tasks were handled by a smart real estate marketing system that:

• Captures leads from your website,
• Automatically puts them into your real estate CRM,
• Let’s you set up prompts that alert you to appointments and follow-up dates,
• Gives you the option, at the push of a button, to nurture long-term prospects using “done for you” email and/or real estate direct mail.

That’s a lot of hard work you’re not doing because the system is doing most of it for you. The hours you save can be used to schedule more listing appointments, sell more properties, and rapidly build your business and income in other ways.

So, when it comes to growing your business, think systems not hard work.

A smart real estate marketing system can automate such activities as website lead capture, reaching out to new prospects, nurturing hot prospects and your geographic farm, staying in touch with past clients (for more referral and repeat business) and more. It can also enable you to manage your business all in one place — keeping you organized and saving you countless hours each month.

Let’s face it. These days effective real estate marketing requires dozens of moving parts. Keeping those gears moving on your own, manually, is exhausting. As bestselling marketing author, John Jantsch, puts it, “…for me a system is how you save time, energy and money.”

So, by all means, work hard. But do so with a smart system. You’re much more likely to reach your goal of converting more leads and referrals if you do.