4 Ways You Can Make More Money in a Slow Market

On Thursday, one of my coaching students is offering webinar training on how you can generate FREE leads on Craigslist. He is definitely a master at Craigslist. In the webinar, you’ll learn:

–  The best time of day to post your advertisements
–  Sneaky tricks you can use to get more leads
–  How you can manage Craigslist in just minutes a day
– And you’ll receive his Craigslist “Cheatsheet.”

You can register for his Craigslist training at:

http://www.FreeAgentWebinars.com

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There are only 4 ways you can make more money in business.

1. Get more clients.
2. Sell the same clients additional homes.
3. Charge more for the services you provide.
4. Sell new products and services to your database.

That’s it.

The typical agent is typically strong in one area and it’s usually getting new clients. This works in a great real estate market. However, when the market slows down, it becomes more challenging to stay profitable. This because you’re forced to reduce the amount you invest into marketing. Less marketing means fewer clients. This turns into a  viscous cycle that repeats itself, until you end up with no new clients and no home sales.

One of the best ways to out this downward spiral in sales is to think about selling new products and services to your database.

Here are a few ideas for you:

1. If you work with sellers, consider starting a “Home Staging” business.

Home staging has never been more important to get listings sold. There are too many homes on the market and staging will make your listings stand out. This really is a win/win for you and your clients, because home staging will increase the likelihood that your seller’s homes will sell AND it will help diversify your business away from sales commissions.

Lets face it, we don’t get paid to list homes. We only get paid to sell home homes. Home staging offers you an opportunity to get paid on every listing, regardless if it sells or not.

This home staging income can be used as a marketing fund to advertise for new listings!

2. If you work with buyers, consider starting a painting and remodeling business.

The majority of buyers today are attracted to foreclosures. They want to save money when the buy.  Well, this presents a great opportunity for you to start a business that will help them fix up their new home. Most foreclosures need painting, flooring, landscaping and some need kitchen and bathroom renovations. You could start a business offering these services and operate as a general contractor. You could simply hire contractors to handle the work and manage the entire process for your clients. Or if you’re handy, you could handle some of the work yourself.

In fact, one of my former agents does this with his business. He helps buyers and investors find foreclosures and then he remodels the homes after they purchase them. He is super handy and can actually do a lot of the work himself. Believe it or not,  he is busier now than he has ever been and each client is worth a great deal to him. Based on our discussions, it sounds like the average remodeling job runs around $4,000. This is in addition to the commission earned on the sale.

What would your business look like, if you made an additional $4,000 with every sale?

3. If you work with investors, figure out a way to offer property management services.

Thankfully, the entrepreneur who bought my real estate brokerage started property management in the business. He now manages a significant number of homes and earns management fees each and every month. Turns out, property management is recession proof. The majority of investors DON’T want to manage their properties.

The reason I suggest property management is because you set your self up to receive recurring income. This is very powerful and can have a dramatic impact on your business. Imagine how things would be if you’re property management business generated $7,000 to $10,000 a month in management fees? Would you feel pressure to sell more homes?

Probably not!

The key to adding new products or services to your business is to be synergistic. You need to find a new service that works with your particular client niche. As an example, you wouldn’t start a home staging business if you worked with investors. This is because there is no synergy. You’d have to advertise two different businesses and build two different databases.

When you offer new services that your existing clients want, you become more profitable. You won’t have to invest in marketing for your new business. You’ll simply offer the services of your new business to your existing database.

If you’d like to make more money in your business, stop trying to simply get more clients and figure out a way to make every client you have more profitable.