In today’s highly competitive real estate market, agents are always looking for ways to raise themselves above the pack. Here are five suggestions of things you can do to distinguish yourself as one of the best:
1. Listen. Sounds pretty easy right? You ask the client what he / she wants, and you deliver. It is easy. But you’d be surprised how many agents don’t really take the time to listen. They hear, but somehow the information never gets assimilated. Many agents will tell you that’s why women make better agents (generally speaking) than men; they listen better and are more inclined to give clients EXACTLY what they want.
2. Remember who butters your bread. Successful agents work off a pool of referrals from happy clients (past and present). There’s an old saw that a person who is happy will tell one person. One who is unhappy will tell 20 people. Or more accurately, people are 20 times more likely to tell someone about a bad experience than they are to tell a good one. When you find someone who refers friends to you regularly, do something nice for them to say thank you. I’m aware of an agent in Phoenix who bought a school teacher a new ski boat, after the teacher had referred several very lucrative deals his way. I guess it’s safe to assume the teacher is still referring.
3. Get your name out there. Whether it’s in a blog, on your business card, on a sign in the front yard, at a party, in the supermarket, wherever. The thing is, when people think real estate, you want them to think of you. Some little snippet of a real estate topic should occur in any conversation you have with anyone.
4. Don’t judge a book by its cover. I have a very wealthy partner who was working on his garden. His wife wanted to go look at new Mercedes convertibles. Because of the timing, he didn’t change his dirty clothes, he just went to the dealership. The salesman basically blew him off, telling him he should try the Volkswagen dealership down the street. He went down the street all right. He went to a sister Mercedes dealership and bought the Mercedes convertible (cash on the barrel head) and then drove back to the first dealership to show the original salesman the commission he had walked away from for wrongfully pre-judging. There’s a lesson there for all of us.
5. Do sweat the details. It’s said the devil is in the details. I believe that. Once there is a signed agreement you are 80 % of the way there, with 80% still to go. What you do in the mean time will go a long way to getting future referrals. If everything is slick and clean with no undue challenges, you’ll see those referrals. If you get lazy on the details the whole process will seem like a failure. Be sure to dot all the “I’s” and cross all the “T’s” if you want to be successful.
Of course this list could be much longer. It probably should be. You can’t do JUST these five things and distinguish yourself from your peers. By the same token, you can’t ignore these five things and still be successful. Add your favorite things to this list in the comments section and we’ll let you help finish the list.
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