RealTalkers demonstrate the power of community day in and day out all year long. Three days ago a member of the community asked for help for rookie agents. The community is quick to respond. Some of those tips are printed below, and answers are still coming in. There is a "Comments" section below the article text that lets readers add their thoughts. We invite you to add your ideas. RealTown articles are organic; they grow with the community.

Q. What advice you would offer a new agent?"

1.  Find the best broker you can -- one who is accessible, and will train and mentor you.

2.  Read everything you can.

3.  Get a web presence started immediately.

4.  Most REALTORS and agents fail in the first couple years because they don't have enough success. So while going to seminars and launching a web presence are important, they are not going to help that person pay the bills. Rookies should contact their entire sphere of influence (all the people they know) and let them know repetitively that they are licensed and would appreciate their friends', acquaintances', and relatives' business.

5.  Establish a target market.

6.  Continuously "farm" that target market with high quality postcards or newsletters.

7.  Contact every for sale by owner and expired listing prospect in your market area.

8.  Dedicate a certain block of time each week to call sphere of influence contacts.

9.  Don't ever give up.

10. Don't sit by the phone and expect it to ring and you're going to make a million dollars.

11. Join an office that is got on-going training.

12. Mail out announcement cards.

13. Hold Open Houses for other agents' listings, on weekends ... choose houses in an area that you already know and can answer questions intelligently, don't choose a house only because it is expensive. The people that come to those Open Houses can be your next pool of buyers ... and maybe a listing prospect or two. You need to impress them with your intelligence.

14. Go to as many builder and REALTOR Open Houses at lunch time as you can. You need to acquire market knowledge. Years from now, you'll be telling people, "Oh yes, I went to the Grand Opening for that subdivision...." The next phone call you get, may be the perfect buyer for the house you saw yesterday. Know your market.

15. Determine your

(a) Immediate Business (within next 12 months); and

(b) 2) Long Term Business (longer than 1 year) Statistics show that 90% of all buyers and sellers start researching one to five years prior to making a move.

16. Work the FSBO market -- the key here is to approach them from a consulting base vs. a sales base. Less than 1% of the agents contacting FSBO's call more than four times -- if you are in the 1%, you have a terrific chance of converting those FSBO's to your listings. If nothing else, you can pick up a few buyers if you work them right.

17. Floor Duty -- if you have an office that has lots of incoming calls, this can lead to some good opportunities. Of course, it's a numbers game -- the more time you spend doing floor duty, the more people you will pick up as clients (and sometimes you will be bored!).

18. Have a contact management database that has one to five years worth of drip campaigns.

19. Have multiple web sites to target specific markets (buyers, sellers, fsbos, reports, etc.) with drip campaigns attached to those.