How Innovation Will Save Your Career

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By Margaret Kelly

RISMEDIA, Jan. 9, 2008-Don’t you just love the market we’re in? I know, I know. It’s tough out there. Less successful agents are dropping out of the business and leaving the industry lean and mean. That’s the way it should be. This is a wonderful opportunity to grow, learn and innovate in ways you simply don’t have time to do during a booming market.

Innovation is what separates an everyday business from an extraordinary one. Although many well-known, historic innovations tend to be dramatic or abrupt, it doesn’t take drama to be a great innovator. All you need is the ability to look at your business with fresh eyes.

Take, for example, the agent who is steamrolling her competition using online tools and a sense of humor. Her popular blog is funny and informative, focusing on the local real estate market and industry news. Her Facebook page is complete with her listings, a list of questions and answers, and her business contact information. Her combined use of these free or inexpensive tools, online networking and traditional marketing has propelled her to near the top of her market. Her social media skills are regularly rewarded as potential customers contact her with introductions like, “I read your blog. I love it! I wondered if I could meet with you to list my house.”

This is just one example of a real estate professional innovating to create more business for herself. She isn’t spending a lot of money. She isn’t rushing to list overpriced properties. She simply educated herself, and then used what she learned to improve her bottom line. Now that’s innovation.

Can you say you’re doing the same?

In today’s market, where only the tough survive, you can use slow times to further your education and improve your professional skills. Try your hand at online social media like the agent I mentioned. Or explore ways to increase business. For example, if you are fortunate enough to have an assistant, make it his/her job to generate and cultivate online leads. You could earn a designation or network at conferences you might have skipped during more hectic times. Streamlining your operations with new ideas and technology will poise you to capture more business when the market picks up.

Innovating can make a dramatic difference to your bottom line. Your new idea can be a radical-or incremental-change to products, processes or solutions. Critical to a growing business, innovation takes imaginative perspective and time, two items that can be in short supply during booming real estate markets. Use the time you have today wisely. You’ll be glad you did tomorrow.

Margaret Kelly, CRB, is chief executive officer of RE/MAX International. She joined RE/MAX as a financial analyst in 1987.

For more information, visit www.remax.com.

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com.

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