Need more tips for improving your skills and upping your real estate game? We’re all about helping real estate professionals reach greater success, which is why we dedicated the July/August issue of REALTOR® Magazine to lists upon lists of helpful ideas for improving your client relationships, avoiding ethical dilemmas, spreading your brand on social media, and more. To add to that, REALTOR® Magazine hosted a Facebook Live event on Monday (watch it above), and we called in five Chicago-area practitioners to play a little game of musical chairs — or as we called it, “musical tips.” The person left standing had to offer their best tips on a range of real estate topics. We had plenty of laughs, and with more than 6,000 viewers tuning in to share their own tips, we got plenty of interesting ideas!

Here are 10 of the best tips we gleaned from the five participants of our Facebook Live event.

On Growing Your Referral Network:

“Use social media to your advantage. People give me testimonials and tag me in posts.” Moses Hall, Ani Real Estate

“After doing a deal, we do things like ‘coffee is for closers,’ so our cooperating agents get Starbucks.” Catherine Holbrook, Americorp Real Estate

“Do everything you can do, do it consistently for a period of time, and naturally, your sphere of influence will grow.” Mo Dadkhah, Main Street Real Estate Group

On Engaging With Open House Visitors:

“I try to pay attention to details, so if I see someone wearing a

[Chicago] Bears hat, obviously they’re a Bears fan. So I try to gauge conversation in something their interested in, and hopefully they will open up a little bit.” —Hall

“People are more eager to work with you when you leave them alone for a little bit and give them their space.” —Holbrook

“A lot of people have unread emails, but not a lot of people have unread text messages. I ask people if I can get their phone number to say, ‘Hey, thanks for coming to the open house. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.’ This creates more interaction than an email.” —Dadkhah

On Pricing a Listing Correctly:

“I tell sellers if we have been in the market for two weeks and there are no showings, it’s overpriced. Or if we have had 10 showings and no offers, it’s overpriced.” Stephany Oliveros, CIPS, CHI Properties

“I am a firm believer that you can list at whatever you want to list at, as long as it makes pretty good sense. But you might not get that appraised; so why not list the number that would appraise?” Lindsey Schendel, Newman Realty

“I think in this market, if something has been listed for more than two weeks, it’s time to have a conversation with your client to renegotiate price. I coach agents to take a market analysis and send it every 15 days to their client, just to keep them educated on what’s happening with the market. If you ask them to reduce the price, I think you need to give them some evidence as to why. So if you’re doing everything you can with your marketing, and you list it at the same price as a neighbor and it’s not selling, I think you should make adjustments to the price so you can sell it.” —Dadkhah

On Market Comps:

“I do include currently listed properties, but I cushion it. If a property is currently listed at a specific price, it might still be over market value, so I wouldn’t advise my seller to look at that price. They may say, ‘My neighbor listed at this,’ but that’s direct competition. … I try to study the demographics of the area and the type of buyer, so when I’m working with an investor, we can strategize and know what to expect with specific offers.” —Hall

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