In her more than two decades working in the real estate industry, Wendy Forsythe has racked up professional experiences. The eXp Realty chief marketing officer has worked as a vice president, president, chief operating officer and more.
She was snatched up by eXp Realty in April 2024 after holding successive leadership positions at Fathom Holdings and Compass.
And after so many years in the industry, Forsythe has learned a lot about how to succeed in any market.
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Alongside other industry experts, Forsythe will speak at Inman Connect San Diego at the end of the month. In advance of the event, she took some time to check in with Inman, urging industry members to use professional imagery in their listings and telling team leaders to keep a “CEO-entrepreneur mentality.”
What follows is a version of Inman’s conversation with Forsythe that has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: It’s a tough market right now, and I think a lot of agents, especially newer agents, are trying to figure out the best way to get through this. So I was curious, what is the most common question agents ask you these days?
Wendy Forsythe: I think that certainly it is a challenging market, and I think that there are a couple of variations on the most common question I get.
For agents who are fortunate enough to have listings, the most common question is, how do I get my listing sold? I think for a lot of agents, this is the first time in a long time that they’re carrying listing inventory for an extended period of time. I think we got really used to listing and selling so quickly that agents weren’t carrying listings for months at a time; now we’re seeing extended days on market.
So agents are having to either relearn or, in some cases, learn for the first time, what it’s like to carry a listing for an extended period of time, and then what that means to service the seller, develop communications with the seller and manage expectations with the seller over the course of that listing period.
So I get a lot of questions from agents around, ‘How do I manage those sellers expectations? How do I develop a marketing strategy for sellers who are going to be dealing with an extended marketing period?’
What are some of the common pitfalls you see in agent marketing today are, especially in this environment?
Some of the classics still remain right, and they don’t change, and they don’t change regardless of market conditions. I’ll give you a classic: Not having professional photography.
Doesn’t matter what market conditions are, that is a classic pitfall that agents run into. Photos are the most important thing. We are visual. It is so, so important, like our phones, and the marketing that we do through social media, the marketing that we do through the portals is so important for real estate marketing.
So when we have that photography of those listings that we’re marketing, it’s got to be great. Across every price point, sellers expect it to be great. Buyers expect it to be great. So if it’s not really well-done, that is a classic pitfall that I see … and if you’re scrolling and you see a really bad image, then it sticks out like a sore thumb on a phone. That drives me crazy anytime I see it.
That reminds me of when I bought my house a couple of years ago — I saw it online first and completely disregarded it because the photos were terrible. Then I decided to tour it because it was in a good neighborhood, and my partner and I ended up buying it because it looked nothing like the listing photos.
You are proving my point.
Thinking more about the economic climate right now, what would you say is the biggest challenge for team leaders these days?
As a team leader, the biggest challenge is [knowing] your team’s agents and ensuring that they are productive, and they are hitting their financial goals, and therefore, your team is hitting their financial goals. So we work with our team leaders very closely in supporting their overall teams objectives. As a team leader, you’re running a business, and you’re running a brokerage within a brokerage. So having that CEO-entrepreneur mentality is critical.
Generally, within the industry, choosing to join a team, and particularly, a productive, proven team, is a great strategy, and is one that I recommend to anybody thinking of starting a real estate career. You want to join a proven team to learn the business.
So Inman Connect San Diego is coming up quickly here. What things are you excited about this year?
Yeah, so [I’m] excited about San Diego, excited about the venue change. It’s a beautiful location … much better than Vegas. There are definitely a lot of hot topics happening in the industry, so it will be interesting to just hear the chatter that happens around the event and on stage during the event. So [I’m] curious and looking forward to all of that.
Inman has always been an important part of my career, personally, in terms of growth and development. So I always encourage everyone to attend, to listen, to engage, to be there in the hallways, be there in the rooms, listening and networking. So, you know, just looking forward to engaging and absorbing and being part of the community.
