In real estate, it’s up to you to find lead generation opportunities, nurture your leads, and convert them into buyers and sellers. The fact that it’s all on you makes it hard to take a vacation. It makes it even harder to actually relax and know that your business isn’t coming to a grinding halt in your absence. However, with the right preparation, you can enjoy your vacation, and know that your business and clients will be just fine.
- Timing Your Vacation – While summer is the most popular vacation time, it’s also an extremely busy time in most real estate markets. If possible, consider planning your vacation when your market is likely to be slow. This varies from market to market, but during the winter holidays or while parents are caught in back-to-school chaos may be a good time to get away.
- Get Help – The obvious solution to vacationing when your business success is completely up to you is to get help. Ask a fellow real estate agent to be your vacation partner—they can look after your business while you’re away in exchange for you doing the same for them. If a vacation partner won’t work for you, consider hiring a temporary assistant.
- Give Advanced Warning – Once you know who will be handling your business while you’re away, give your existing clients plenty of warning by letting them know when you will be on vacation. Introduce them to your assistant or vacation partner in advance so they can get comfortable working with that person; this will make them less likely to feel the need to contact you directly while you’re on vacation.
- Enact an Email Strategy – Set up automated emails to keep in touch with your clients while you’re away. Drip email campaigns with homeowner tips, real estate trivia, or even a recipe of the month can help you keep in touch with your clients even when you’re out of the office.
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- Create an Email Plan – Consider sharing access to your email with your partner/assistant so they can respond to your incoming emails on your behalf. Gmail allows you to grant and revoke access without sharing your password under “Accounts and Import” in the Settings menu.
- Set Up Auto-Response Emails – Leads typically have the highest response rate right after they fill out a contact request form. Set up your email to immediately respond to any incoming messages with something like “Thank you for contacting me! I’m currently out of the office, but is putting together some information you will find useful and will send it over to you by the end of the day. Is there a good time can call you to go over everything?”
- Forward Your Office Phone – If you have a separate business number, forward it to ring to your vacation partner or assistant’s phone. This will help ensure your leads and clients are getting immediate assistance. If your cell phone is your primary business number, set up a vacation voicemail message and once a day check your voicemail and send any pressing issues over to your partner or assistant.
- Google Voice – Are you a one-person office or small team? One last option: Google Voice is a free service that offers a ton of great features you can use while on vacation. Google Voice transcribes voicemails and sends a summary to your Gmail account, and sends incoming calls to multiple numbers at the same time (you and your backup), plus it has dozens of other features.
With these tips, you’ll be able to really relax on your vacation so that when you get back, you’ll be ready to hit the ground running. Our new Automated Marketing program will automatically email you a pre-made single property website, Facebook post, e-postcard, flyer, and postcard for each new listing you send to Homes.com. All you have to do is click to download, making it easy to spend more time catching up with your clients!
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