Successful Agents Make Real Estate Simple

As I think back over most of the easiest and most successful transactions of my sales career I realize that in almost all of them ease and success seem unalterably linked. In discussing real estate with many of my agent friends across the U.S. and Canada most have had the same experience.  Clients relax and communicate more clearly when they understand the process, the choices available to them and are working with trusted professionals when buying and selling.  Problems occur when the transaction becomes too complex and stress from a fear of mistakes set in and too often become a self-fulfilling prophecy.   So why, you may ask, does this happen?  Let’s look at some possibilities.

In many cases these problems may trace back to the process of selecting an agent in the first place. During my early years in the real estate business I and most were taught that to win a client’s business we had to create value usually done by expressing why a client might need our services.  While this can be a positive approach in and of itself the approach taken by some agents was to offer a long list of everything that must be done to buy or sell a home and the potentially bad outcomes if a step were missed or handled incorrectly.  Even though this may have created and still does when used create business opportunities it also creates stress and makes things more difficult than they necessary.

Another approach that creates the same issue(s) is using a fear of loss to encourage a client to do anything.  I have heard agents say things like:

…..these great rates (prices etc.) won’t to last so you need to act now.

…..this house will sell fast so you need to increase your offer.

…..if you don’t hire an agent (usually translated me) you will likely make costly mistakes.

Client actions can also result in problems when buyers and sellers enter the market without adequate self-education and preparation to do so. This creates a situation where, due to the timeline, agent selection occurs under more pressure than would have been the case if the buyer or seller had started earlier allowing an adequate time for education and resource evaluation. I recommend that this process be started 6 – 12 months before when you want to buy or sell.

While all the discussions summarized above are legitimate and helpful at the right time I am saying that when done incorrectly they end up making everything more difficult for agent and client alike and often the added stress leads to less than optimum decisions.  My experience has told me that the main problem is that these comments are often problematic when initiated with a client before the agent has earned the trust necessary for these often complex and difficult discussions to be perceived in a positive light by the clients they are seeking to assist.  When presented before trust is built these types of discussions end up producing pressure, and all too often, doubt. When presented in a context of trust they produce confidence and the openness necessary to realize and reach common goals.

I think the following key steps will help these discussions to produce the positive results that the agents intends.

1. Try to find non-business interests that you have in common with the prospective client and during first contact work them carefully into the discussion. Remember – People like to work with people they like and people like people who are like them in some way(s)!
2. When first meeting a client ask questions about their goals and time frames and listen to their answers instead of trying to influence their actions.
3. When prospective clients ask questions (i.e. what commission do you charge? For how long am I committed? etc.) assume that they are questions and answer accordingly.  Too often agents answer questions as if they were  really objections and create an objection where there was not one. You need to let the client tell you when it is an objection.
4. Try to find some ways to make the process easy in their mind before discussing the difficult items that require professional assistance. This creates a sense that you want to inform and not just influence. It also lets the client relax knowing that this is a very doable process.
5. When covering a difficult item just present it initially without qualification and let them express why it would be difficult. An example would be asking husband and wife sellers considering doing a for sale by owner (when you know they both work) if someone will be available to let buyers in the home when an agent brings them by the home.  You may be tempted to go on to stress that if they are not home a qualified ready-to-act buyer may be missed and a lockbox solves the problem but it is better if you let this settle in and let them say they work and this will be a problem.  Then you can ask them how they would address this situation and lead them through questions to the conclusion that it is a need and have them as the question as to how you will help.
6. Simplify the process and decisions during it.  One technique that my team and I used with buyers was to ask that once they have seen 3 homes they eliminate the least desirable one and continue to do that for the rest of the tour. This enabled them to de-clutter the process by only having their top two options at the end of the day. We explained that the gut decision made when the homes are fresh in their mind are much better than trying to remember and decide later.  We also promised to keep the listing they liked but rejected until they made an offer.  Amazingly few ever asked to see these options again and those who did usually asked for a specific property because of a feature that they wanted to add to their ultimate choice.

In summary, connect with your prospective clients on a personal level, listen to what they want to do and how and when they want to do it, let a question be a question until it becomes and objection and raise potential pitfalls as open-ended questions and give the prospect time, early in the relationship, to realize the scope of the problem and ask for answers. Once a trust relationship is built you can offer potential problems, their consequences and solutions but early on that will likely backfire making everything harder.

You must allow your clients the time to build trust before you try to become their trusted advisor for such an important transaction.  You and they will relax and the enjoyment of working together will be increased!

 

When Failure = Success

This may seem a curious headline to many who read it.  After all, no one wants to fail, almost no one celebrates failure (except in pee wee sports today where everyone gets an award) and everything we read and see on TV, online and in print encourages us that if we do what they are telling us we will lose weight, get six-pack abs or become independently wealthy.

I, for one, feel that in today’s market trial and error while still a market reality is increasingly an unacceptable strategy to many agents and it is more difficult than ever to keep efforts that are less than successful in the proper perspective as a necessary part of ultimate success. This treatise is supported by a few key changes that I have observed between now and my childhood and adolescence in the ’50’s and ’60’s. In many cases these must be recognized and neutralized to make success a possibility.  Among these key items are:

1. Blurring the link between awards and performance – I feel that this is linked at least in part to the trend towards giving every child an award instead of restricting them to those whose performance merits an award. While this is theoretically and may temporarily seem to bolster self-esteem in the short run it is a false sense of self-esteem. The proof is our drop in international academic performance against other societies that have not done so. It is also not how the real adult world works making the expectations created onerous as these children become adults.
2. Blurring the rules of conduct in schools and other group activities – We have become so ultra focused on individual rights that we have forgotten that young people are not necessarily ready for all the freedoms we impose on them. This results in a lack of discipline and focus as these young people progress into an adult world where success demands a different focus.
3. Insufficient Basic life skill training  for things like budgeting, money management (in people my age as well as the younger generations since) , and good basic writing, grammar and math skills.  The ability to do and find anything online has made these basics seem boring and worse, unnecessary. However, providing these tools without understanding the basics of when, why and how to use them would be like sending a soldier onto the battlefield with the best weapons and no training to use them effectively.
4. A hyper focus on success often without accurately or completely showing the long and sometimes trying journey to get there.  Every day I get e-mails from this or that system promising that if I send them some money and follow their system using their webinar coaching I can work at home and make more money that I ever thought possible.  The problem here is that many young people do not possess the experience to completely evaluate these offers so those offering the opportunity, and many are legitimate, make a lot of money from those who sign up and drop out fairly quickly. This also permeates many traditional bricks and mortar type businesses.
5. The belief that success is their right and follows fairly quickly if they try anything – this belief is reinforced by a world presented on TV where anything can be resolved in an hour, reality shows where success comes but outlasting, and at times, cheating or taking advantage of those around you.
6. A myriad of choices that make selecting the best ones much more difficult for young and old alike.
7. Ever-changing resources (i.e. online, social media etc. ) and skill requirements rendering previously successful strategies and organizations much less so and, in some cases (i.e. knocking on doors and travel agencies) largely obsolete.
8. Unrealistic expectations and goals.
9. Failure to recognize that failure and the ability to learn from persevere through it is part of achieving success.

Thomas Edison, for one example, is estimated to have tried 6,000 different filaments during a two year period that led ultimately to the electric light. When asked by a reporter, “How many times do you think you will fail before you invent the light?”  His reply embodied the attitude possessed by almost all successful people when he said, ” I have not failed I have succeeded in identifying ways not to invent it?”

During the last 30+ years that I have spent In my chosen field of real estate I have watched countless numbers of new agents of all ages enter with unrealistic and leave with unrealized expectations.  So what is the answer if a company wants to have successful existing agents and new agents who enter real estate, or for that matter any profession?  A few answers that I have found to work include:

1. Ask existing agents what issues they feel prevent their success?  Evaluate with these agent’s what basics are required to succeed in today’s marketplace with what and how they are currently working.
2. Discover their expectations to find out which are realistic and which need to be adjusted. Reinforce continuation of the realistic expectations and inquire, without commenting on the perceived lack of realism, as to why they believe what they believe.  Sometimes you may actually find out they are not so unrealistic but more often it will allow them to discover this on their own as your discussion develops.
3. Make sure they know the basics. This is true for any business in general and real estate in particular. Review the process and the requirement for every sales position that ultimately you must increase the number of  failures to increase the number of successes and that is OK. In fact it is normal.
4. Determine what skills an individual agent needs to master and which ones can be provided for them and to what degree to maintain future success (i.e. give a person a fish and feed them for a day teach them to fish and feed them for a lifetime.)
5. Have a variety of successful people both from outside and inside the company present things to reinforce what is being taught. Sometimes a recognized expert can lend credibility to and inspire toward a new behavior or idea but usually a more local and well know success story lends more relevance to just do it because it works locally.

All too often I have seen sales people quit just one or two efforts short of success. The approaches above are designed to develop the attitudes necessary to persevere through the process of trial and error that ultimately leads to trail and success. There is of course a lot more that is required to develop and maintain successful attitudes and trends like developing local training and mentoring resources but this basic approach will get things started in most cases.  Most truly successful companies operate on the theory that an individual office is only as successful as their least successful agents and then encourages their managers to operate on that premise. This prevents the office from committing error number 4 above and hyper focusing on their numbers at the expense of their continuing agent development.