My wife belongs to our local businesswoman's association.  She's in the medical field.  She doesn't attend meetings religiously, but she shows up from time to time.  The makeup of the group doesn't vary much.  There are a smattering a small business owners.  There's a good dose of financial advisors.  But the bulk of the members at any given meeting invariably are...real estate agents.  

All very sharp and professional.  And friendly.  And the same. 

My wife always returns clutching a fat handful of business cards, and the mailing list keeps our mailbox full of refrigerator magnets and neighborhood updates.  There are 25,000 members of the Houston Association of Realtors, and it seems to me that they deal with this  ferocious competitive arena by collectively shouting louder and louder.  

Nationwide: 1.3 million members.  And that doesn't include real estate agents who aren't Realtors. 

So who will survive?  Having tenacious, unbreakable endurance helps - as does being in a situation where you don't really need to make much money.  Neither one of these options, you'll notice, are particularly attractive. 

But another breed of survivor is the agent who sees the trends and adapts. 

What does that mean? 

1)  It means using technology to do your legwork.  And that means creating a business model that allows you to minimize the amount of time you spend prospecting for customers (licking stamps, folding mailers, handing business cards to my wife) and maximize the amount of time you spend adding value to customers.  

I know that many of you are already taking steps - simply by the fact that you're on ActiveRain reading blogs and writing your own.  Geno Petro made an excellent comment rently in his blog, stating "I strive to have 80% of my business come from people I do not know and have never met because everyone I do know is either a Realtor, or becoming a Realtor, or dating/marrying into a family where someone (other than me) is a Realtor. Several of my past clients have even become Realtors. In other words, the future for me does not lie solely in referral business even though I still receive them on a monthly basis. "

2)  It means establishing yourself as the subject matter expert.  Do you spend your time meeting people?  Or do you spend your time building your reputation.  There's a big differente.  

3)  It means finding your niche.  The middle of the market is getting crowded - 1.3 million Realtors nationwide - but the niches won't go away.  The niche I talk about regularly is real estate investors (I'm an investor and I use a Realtor® - I go back to her again and again).  But there are many others. What niche are you focusing on - and is it generating a font of return business that keeps coming back?