Develop Interpersonal Skills for an Exceptional Career

Sales and marketing plans are an essential tool for every successful Realtor®, but exceptional Realtors® also make emotional connections with their clients. To stand out in a competitive field and to build a referral business, Realtors® need to dig deeper with their clients.

Realtors® need to understand their clients’ motivations and provide them with the kind of service that surprises them with the Realtor's® empathy for the rollercoaster experience of moving. That kind of exceptionalism requires self-awareness and perhaps time spent strengthening certain personality traits.

Who you are isn’t ubiquitous, sales plans are,” says Shari Levitan, author of Heart and Soul: 10 Universal Truths Every Salesperson Needs to Know, in Park City, Utah. “We’re living in a reputation-based world, so the more you can connect with people, the more successful you’ll be.”

Spread optimism
One essential trait for Realtors® is to feel confidence in the ability to solve any problem, says Frances Irizarry, a Realtor® with Avery-Hess, Realtors® in Centreville.
“You have to be optimistic, assess each situation and creatively go after a solution,” she says.

Levitan says optimism isn’t something most people are born with. “The default emotion is ‘flight or fight,’ so it takes a conscious effort to be optimistic and happy,” says Levitan.

“One essential trait for Realtors® is to feel confidence in the ability to solve any problem.”

“Practice ‘constructive delusion’ and recognize that we get what we look for. There was an NPR story on ‘This American Life’ that looked into the neuroscience of why some salespeople are more successful than others. Essentially it’s that the best salespeople see every glass as overflowing rather than half-full or half-empty.”

Cultivate curiosity
To cultivate that optimism about solving problems for clients, Realtors® need to understand their clients’ problems and motivations.

My personality is to be inquisitive and nosy,” says Rhonda Perry, a Realtor® with Century 21 New Millennium in Alexandria. “But I’m also a ‘Chatty Cathy’ so sometimes it’s hard for me to shut up and listen. Outgoing people tend to be drawn to real estate, but they need to learn to be quiet with their clients and other agents so they can learn from them.”

Perry worked with a relocation buyer last year who seemed somewhat disengaged with house hunting. Perry dug deeper until she learned that the buyer’s daughter was reluctant to move to Virginia because she loved her horseback riding lessons at home. Perry researched stables to find ones that offered the specific type of lessons the daughter wanted for her age group and narrowed the property search to nearby homes.

There’s a mechanical way to ask questions and a way to indicate genuine curiousity and interest in customers and the world around them, says Levitan. “Buyers and sellers will give you hints and clues that you can extract and use to show them that you’re really listening to them and that you want to be of service,” says Michelle Sagatov, a Realtor® with Washington Fine Properties in Arlington. “Agents need to train themselves not to talk so much about themselves. They need to pause and listen and pull the real story from their clients.”

Sagatov says it’s important not to rush through initial questions with clients and to notice when they perk up at a topic or ask a question. The Realtor® can then follow-up with deeper discussion instead of moving on to the next question on the list.
It’s a good idea to avoid ‘why’ questions, because that can put people on the defensive,” says Bernice Ross, CEO of RealEstateCoach.com in Austin, Texas. “Don’t ask, ‘why did you make a low offer?’ It’s better to ask ‘how’ and ‘what’ questions to find out what motivates your customers.”

David Adams, a Realtor® with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Reston, says he and his wife and business partner JoAnne Adams want to get to know their clients personally.

“We truly listen to them and take ourselves out of the equation,” says JoAnne Adams. “It’s what they want, not what you think they want.” David Adams says sitting down for an in-depth conversation about what’s important to the buyers and to their family members is a good place to start.

“We also listen closely when we’re looking at properties together and when they’re talking to each other in the car to really understand what they like and what they don’t want,” says David Adams.

Irizarry says agents should also be curious about trends in the market, new financing options, new developments and how to improve their business to provide the best service to customers.

Connect emotionally
Realtors® who have the ability to identify their clients’ goals and challenges and know how to create solutions to those challenges really set themselves apart, says Jon Wolford, a broker with McEnearney Associates in McLean.

People buy and sell to solve a problem or achieve a goal,” says Wolford. “Truly understanding those needs is critical. It takes life experience and field experience as a Realtor® to have the empathy and the vision to look at situations and find solutions.”
JoAnne Adams says building an emotional connection requires honesty and a cooperative mindset.

We try to avoid being too aggressive,” says JoAnne Adams. “It can be off-putting to clients and to other agents.” Getting to know sellers and what they love about their house and their neighborhood can not only deepen the connection with them, but it also helps sell their property, says JoAnne Adams.

You need to be humble and really hear what your clients are saying,” says Irizarry. “They need to know you are receptive and actively listening to everything they say. I tell them ‘there’s no conversation we can’t have.’”

Ross suggests talking to customers about things beyond the real estate transaction such as what they like to do for fun.
The best way to build a relationship is to find commonality with someone such as a shared interest,” says Ross. “People naturally gravitate to those with whom they have a connection. You even see it at parties, where the people who love to cook gather in the kitchen, and the golfers talk to each other.”



Perry says listening closely to her clients helps her find ways to connect with them.“I worked with clients who were selling their house after 60 years and I could tell it was hard to disconnect from it emotionally,” says Perry. “I commissioned a painting of their house for them as a gift to give them at the closing.”

Connecting emotionally with your clients requires understanding, says Levitan. That means you are really listening to them wholeheartedly and paying attention not only to what they say but also to their body language and the things they are leaving unsaid,” she explains.

Levitan recommends writing down questions to ask customers that go beyond just qualifying them to buy a house. She recommends asking about where they have looked for homes before and what is happening in their lives now that makes them want to move. She suggests asking deeper questions such as “How would you feel about living in this neighborhood?” in addition to basic questions about how many bedrooms and bathrooms buyers want.

Earn trusted advisor status
Levitan says there are four essential traits required to build trust: empathy, integrity, reliability and competency. “Competency is more important than ever because customers know more than ever about real estate,” says Levitan. “You need to know your market to give value to your customers.”

She says Realtors® sometimes fail to be reliable, even with small things like answering emails and calls promptly and keeping up with paperwork.
“To build trust, you should under-promise and over-deliver so your customers are always getting more than they expect,” says Ross.

David Adams says he and his wife talk about their former careers and share testimonials about their honesty and integrity.

We also show sellers facts about comps so they can see from day one that we are telling the truth,” says JoAnne Adams.
Levitan says Realtors® can demonstrate their integrity by pointing out what’s right and what’s wrong with a property and by admitting when they are wrong about something.

Full disclosure and honesty are essential to building trust, even if that honesty sometimes costs you business, such as when you tell someone their house isn’t worth $1.5 million,” says Irizarry. “The losses don’t come near the gains when you’ve built a reputation for honesty.”
Trust develops with good communication between a Realtor® and client.

“Becoming an exceptional Realtor® is easier if you love what you do, since that enthusiasm is expressed to clients in numerous ways.”

It’s important to communicate to both buyers and sellers that you are their partner and that it’s ultimately their decision to set a price or make an offer,” says Sagatov. “With buyers, it helps to explain the process and be ready to explain how you are embedded in the marketplace in a way that can help them handle competition.” Customers need to believe that their interests are being represented.

Realtors® need to understand that it’s not about them – it’s about the buyers and the sellers,” says Wolford. “The more you understand that, the more you can focus on the client and their interests rather than your self-interest.”

Practice perseverance
Agents need to be patient and persistent to be successful, says Wolford.
“Sometimes people need time to let go of emotional attachments to a house or to do what’s necessary,” says Wolford.
    
Irizarry points out that every real estate transaction involves numerous people with different cultures, work ethics and personalities. “People kill transactions all the time, so it’s important to be very patient with everyone involved,” says Irizarry.
Realtors® also need to be patient with themselves.

“In real estate, successes and failures come in batches,” says Wolford. “Don’t pat yourself on the back too much or beat yourself up too much because only some of what happens is because of your actions.”
Becoming an exceptional Realtor® is easier if you love what you do, since that enthusiasm is expressed to clients in numerous ways.

“It’s not a job to us,” says David Adams. “We love to help people.”
            

        Questions to Ask Clients to Generate Deeper Understanding          

Bernice Ross, CEO of RealEstateCoach.com in Austin, Texas, recommends asking as many open-ended questions as possible to allow clients the opportunity to provide in-depth answers that can reveal their motivations and potential objections. Here are some examples:
•    Ask clients what they hope to achieve with their purchase or sale
•    Ask sellers why they chose their house initially
•    Ask sellers what they love about their house
•    Ask sellers about their experiences in the neighborhood
•    Ask buyers what is motivating them to move and how soon they are ready to move
•    Ask buyers where else they have looked for homes in the past and what they liked or disliked about those areas
•    Ask buyers where they spend their time at home
•    Ask buyers if they work at home or do crafts or play an instrument
•    Ask buyers what they do for fun.