16 Smart Business Tweaks to Sell More Homes in 2026

Tampa-based Kseniya Korneva, a sales associate with The Korneva Home Group at The Real Brokerage, didn’t overhaul her business to close 60 transactions last year. She built a system to capture and respond to social media leads faster.

Using Manychat, an Instagram DM automation tool that instantly messages new followers and anyone who comments specific keywords on her posts, her sales grew by 55%.

“It’s been awesome,” Korneva says. “At least 39 of my 2025 sales came directly from social media—and a big chunk from Instagram.”

Manychat starts the conversation by answering basic questions and gives prospects the option to request her relocation and seller guides. To receive them, they enter an email address. Once they do, her virtual assistant manages follow-up in her CRM, then hands viable leads off to her.

A former civil engineer, Korneva says she “loved the idea of marketing” even though she grew up in a family of scientists.

Her social media audience is sizable. On Instagram, her @kseniya.tamparealtor account has 30,000 followers. She splits her TikTok content between@tampahousetours (3,172 followers) and @kseniyakorneva (26,000 followers). Her Korneva Home Group YouTube channel (@Kseniya.TampaRealtor) has about 3,000 followers and covers topics from Tampa Bay home tours and neighborhood spotlights to buyer and seller tips and local market updates.

“I do a lot of house tour videos, which is primarily how I do the business,” she adds. “I also do videos at local restaurants and small businesses.”

If Korneva had to give one practical business tweak an agent could implement this year to sell more homes, it would be to do social media. “I cannot scream it more from the rooftops,” she says. “One video can reach thousands while you sleep. But calling and door-knocking would take you months.”

“This year is going to be a new discovery of the market,” says Tim Harris, co-founder of Tim and Julie Harris Real Estate Coaching (timandjulieharris.com). “It’s incredibly exciting, and we’re going to see the market reach what will feel very much like the start of a long-term recovery.”

Ready to level up your sales this year? We talked to top-performing agents and real estate coaches who shared their best advice:

Marketing

1. Stay Top of Mind

Bruce R. Brunk, a former software developer from Virginia who now leads the four-person Citrus County Dream Team of Keller Williams Realty, stays in front of his sphere via consistent contact, including a 12-page monthly newspaper mailed to about 3,000 people. “It includes a mix of market stats, fun articles and a crossword puzzle,” he says. His wife, Michelle, who is also a licensed agent, serves as the team’s director of lead generation and manages their marketing efforts. “We try to provide seminars twice a year,” Brunk says. Recent topics have included estate planning and dementia support. “More than a dozen houses we’ve listed and sold came from those two seminars over the past two years,” he adds.

Try this: Pick one “stay-in-touch” item you can repeat (a newsletter, postcard or email) and stick with it for six months.

2. Show Up Locally

Robin Raiff, broker-associate at The Keyes Company in Sebastian and head of the Robin Raiff Team, says the simplest marketing move is also the most overlooked. “Be visible and get in front of people,” she says. “I was used to a 9-to-5 [job] where you did certain things and got paid. In this business, you’ve got to sell yourself. You cannot do this from your laptop at home. Get in front of as many people as possible and be authentic,” she says.

She’s also learned to be what she calls “the source of the source.” She has chaired the Sebastian Chamber for three years and serves on the executive board of the Senior Resource Association. She also teaches Code of Ethics classes to new licensees and serves on various Florida Realtors® committees. Her community involvement and leadership roles keep her front and center long before someone needs an agent. “It’s not just about putting a sign in a yard,” she says. “People say, ‘Robin, I see your name everywhere, I know who you are.’”

Try this: Choose one local group to show up for each month (a chamber event, committee or nonprofit meeting) and go consistently.

3. Zig When Others Zag

Real estate coach Darryl Davis, founder of The POWER Program®, says opportunity often exists in overlooked places. “I’m not ‘anti’ social media, but it’s noisy,” he says. “We’re competing with other agents and corporations for consumers’ attention.” He compares it to a Warren Buffett rule of thumb for investing: ‘When people are greedy, be afraid, but when people are afraid, be greedy.’ “That means you should buy when people are selling and prices go down,” Davis says. “I took that concept and made it simple: When everybody’s zigging, you zag.” If other agents are striving to be the next TikTok star, he argues, that’s when it’s time to focus on the mailbox with flyers, postcards and other print marketing. “In my Wednesday webinars, I ask [participants], ‘How many of you have a competing agent who consistently shows up in your mailbox?’” he says. “Most say zero or one. That proves my point.”

Try this: If everyone’s chasing the same thing online, try one “offline” move this month. Mail a postcard, drop off flyers or send a handwritten note.

Lead Conversion

1. Put Follow-Up on Repeat

Brunk says the Citrus County Dream Team’s biggest gains in lead conversion came as a result of getting disciplined about how—and how often—to stay in touch with their database. They start with a daily 15-minute “stand-up power-up” meeting where they share an accomplishment and the day’s top goal. Their virtual assistant in the Philippines joins through Microsoft Teams to keep everyone on the same page.

Brunk says the database is segmented by relationship strength. Contacts are categorized as either advocates, A, B or C, and each group gets its own follow-up schedule. Advocates and A-level contacts get calls four times a year, plus monthly mail and ongoing emails. B-level contacts may already have a go-to agent. “It’s probably a family member who’s a Realtor®, so our approach is that we can be their backup,” he says. “With a 33% [annual] turnover in the industry, that isn’t a bad place to be.”

Try this: Sort your contacts into a few groups (closest people first), then set a simple schedule for when you’ll call or check in.

2. Track Dollars Wisely

Brunk’s team also pulled back from paid lead sources like Realtor.com and Zillow and refocused on people who already know them. “We track every dollar and where it comes from,” Brunk says, adding that it helps them know what to keep doing and what to eliminate. The system works best when the team stays focused on one market. “We’ve been very specific about geography,” he says. “As the Citrus Dream Team, our market includes all of Citrus County.” With few exceptions, they avoid other areas so they can stay the experts.

Try this: Write down your last 10 transactions and where they came from, then spend time on what brought real closings.

3. Act Fast

Tim Harris says the old way of doing business is now the new way of doing business. He urges agents to pick up the phone and start calling people again, and to lean back into open houses because “human-to-human contact is where it’s at.” “You [cannot] wait for people to come to you,” he says. “The waiting days are over. If you’re waiting, you’re cooked.” He believes the agent who responds first often wins the client. “Julie and I call it furiously fast lead follow-up,” he says. “Just pick up the phone and call people. Some agents have these silly rules like, ‘Well, if someone texted me, I can only text them back.’” His advice is to be “furiously fast” with lead follow-up and not to treat passive drip campaigns as a substitute for real contact.

Try this: When a new lead comes in, call right away—even if you follow up with a text afterwards.

4. Keep It Simple

Central Florida-based Amy Vastardis, sales associate and leader of the Vastardis Team at Coldwell Banker Realty, describes herself as “old school.” After 30 years in the business, she still relies on a physical file system and pairs it with a to-do list application. “It’s called Google Tasks, and it’s a checklist,” she says. Vastardis keeps every file organized in a cabinet by month. “As [the app] reminds me of tasks or who to follow up with, I go to my file cabinet beside my desk, grab the file, check it off and set my next task,” she says. She also uses her desk as a visual cue for urgency. “A really hot lead file stays on my desk,” she says. When she’s ready to move a transaction forward, she starts with what’s right there in front of her.

Try this: Keep one to-do list for follow-up and keep your hottest leads handy so you don’t lose track of them.

Time Management

1. Set Your Priorities

Davis says 2026 will reward “skilled agents,” and he says that starts with how they structure their day. If agents could fix just one thing in how they structure their day or workflow, it should be their priorities. He calls it the “Warren Buffett Top 3.”

Here’s how it works: Identify your top A, B and C tasks—the ones that, if completed, move your business forward in a meaningful way. “To touch any of the other to-dos, you’ve got to finish the top three,” Davis says. That focus, he adds, can solve the common frustration of working hard all week but still feeling unfulfilled. Davis believes the psychology is simple: Agents spend too much time on low-hanging fruit instead of what makes an impact, which keeps them busy yet unfulfilled.

Try this: Write your top three must-do tasks on a sticky note each morning, and don’t start any others until they’re done.

2. Build Momentum Now

Tim Harris says agents are going to be busier this year than they have in quite a while. “Be OK not having any free time because you’re making up for lost time,” he says. He urges agents to build momentum now and ask themselves, “What are the activities I can do that are going to put me directly in a position to help somebody—and make money in the next 90 days or less? Those should be your only priorities for the next three or four months.”

Try this: Pick two money-making tasks you can do this week (calls, open houses, follow-up) and schedule them first.

Technology and Systems

1. Put AI to Work

Vastardis says ChatGPT has become one of her biggest time-savers, especially for listing remarks. Instead of spending hours writing copy from scratch, she uses the tool for a first draft and then rewrites it in her own voice. “The amount of time I’ve saved is unbelievable,” she says, adding that she may go back and forth five or six times to get it right, but still finishes in less than 30 minutes. She only works with sellers, while her husband, Alex, works with buyers. “I list about 60 homes a year, which is a lot to write remarks on.”

Try this: Use AI for a first draft, then tweak it until it sounds like you.

2. Track Closings

Brunk says his team uses Microsoft Excel to track where business actually comes from. Every time someone hires them, they ask how the client found them. Whether it came from a referral, an ad or somewhere else, they log that so they can review results later. The point, he says, is to track results, not activity. “Recently, we were able to look at exactly where our business came from, our actual gross commission income (GCI), not just leads,” he says. Brunk says lead volume can be misleading. “Sometimes you get 100 leads from one source and close two.” But when clients come from people who already know them, he says conversion is stronger. “If we receive 10, at least five close,” he adds.

Try this: Log every closed transaction in Excel, including where that client came from. Then focus on the sources that bring sales, not just leads.

3. Bring Photos In-House

Raiff learned about the Giraffe360 camera at a National Association of Realtors® conference and now uses it for listing photos. “I used to pay a fortune for professional photographs, but Giraffe allows the average person to take good pictures,” she says. Her daughter, also a licensed Realtor®, takes their photos, which saves time and money because they’re no longer waiting on a photographer. “Our daughter can take photos quickly, and they look as professional as someone you’re paying money,” she says.

Try this: If scheduling photos slows down your listings process, use a camera that lets you shoot quality photos on your schedule.

Mindset and Boundaries

1. Be a Thermostat

Davis tells his coaching clients that no matter what’s happening in the market, good or bad, they can “set the temperature” of their business by choosing to lead with intention instead of reacting to it. “The difference is a thermometer reacts to the environment outside of itself,” he says. “If a room is 70 degrees, the thermometer will tell you, but the thermostat sets the temperature of the room. You are a thermostat because you set the temperature of how your career looks vs. the market telling you what your temp is.”

Try this: When the market shifts, write down the one thing you can control today—and do that first.

2. Control the Clock

Early on, Korneva equated being busy with being productive. Now, she says growth has come from efficiency and limiting her availability. She avoids answering texts before 9 a.m., keeps her phone in “Do Not Disturb” mode during off hours and tries not to respond after 8 p.m. unless it’s truly urgent. “Most of the time it’s not,” she says. To protect that boundary, she’ll schedule texts to go out the next morning. She also maps out her week. Monday is her admin day at home to prepare for the week, do follow-up activities after weekend open houses and do marketing tasks. “If I immediately jump into a morning appointment, things get lost and emails back up,” she says. “I like to keep appointments to the afternoons.”

Try this: Set two “office hours” cutoffs (morning and evening), then schedule replies for the next day when it’s not urgent.

3. Stop Waiting

Tim Harris says one mindset shift that separates agents who grow from those who stall is letting go of the belief that you can’t be a successful listing agent. Too many agents, he says, assume they can only become listing-focused after today’s buyers turn into sellers or that they need to be dependent on a team to get there. Instead of putting time and money into buyer leads, he advises agents to pursue listings first. “If you want buyer leads, just take a listing,” he says.

Expired listings are a great place to start. “I always ask agents, ‘How many expireds were there in your market in the last six months?’” he says. “They don’t know.” Those homeowners already tried to sell, and many are motivated, which makes expireds a more direct path to listings than waiting for the market to deliver a lead.

Try this: Pull your MLS expireds from the last six months, then commit to contacting a set number each week. #

Leslie C. Stone is a Vero Beach-based freelance writer.