5 key skills for young guns in real estate

I recently wrote an article on the inherent challenges around keeping talent in our organisations and/or the industry and challenged the way in which we’re broadcasting knowledge so that new people coming in can feel less dictated to and more collaborated with.

It’s not like the original concepts are incorrect. In fact (before a number of you start to hop around in protest that “the basics” are the best!), a lot of the original sales theories that strategies have been built on still stand true, but the way in which we get our new and younger starters to connect with it all has to evolve to fit today’s workforce. The functionality needs to be balanced with the prevalent need to feel more human, or less like a number at least, and I would argue that the basics are really the easy bit of our job so I’m not sure that this is where we’re losing people.

If you are relatively new to the industry, chances are that the basics that you are shown would have made you think, “How are these guys making money with something that appears to be so easy?!”. But then, you quickly become frustrated because these basics aren’t providing you with the stacks of income that you’re hoping for, as well as making you blend in with your competitors in a sea of cold prospecting.

This is where we need to increase our awareness on the stuff that we need now as operators, according to the way in which our people and clients are thinking and feeling about the process of selling a home. Business owners need to focus on it with their staff, and new agents need to focus on it with their clients. Attention in the following five areas will go a long way towards rectifying some of the early challenges, or at least create some kind of human attachment to the industry which would be way more difficult to walk away from.

1) Forge your identity on the ‘basic’ foundations

You can’t avoid the basics that are getting preached at you because they do genuinely work in theory, so they are necessary along with a good amount of hard work. What you need to do is spend a short amount of time taking these basics and interpreting them into a language/style/pattern that works with who you are. This does not mean reinventing the wheel!

No need to think too much initially about making wild changes to practices, after all, it’s difficult to challenge tried-and-tested ways of earning business if you’ve not experienced the industry for yourself for a period of time. But to feel like you have an ownership of them and to have them feel more authentic, educate yourself on why the set practises work and work with your leader to put it all into a language that suits YOU so that you don’t feel like such a fraud in the beginning!

2) Find internal sources of motivation

There is a lot of repetition in this industry… A LOT! There’s only so much of it that you’ll be able to get through if your intellectual diet consists of motivational videos on YouTube and fancy quotes on Instagram, so we need to be able to tap into that energy that picks you up when you’re feeling defeated, deflated or just plain lazy! A psychological study was done on this, called “Self-Determination Theory” (SDT), and it speaks to three critical needs for us to be motivated without the need for external stimuli like videos, being autonomy, competence and relatedness.

The competence part is obvious – find out what you need to do and the best way to do it, and practise! The hook required to nail the other two comes down to “why” you’re doing any of this and making sure that every action you take is contributing towards that. Getting lost in the task will cause you to lose any drive at all, but keeping some personal goals with you to read regularly is really important.

3) Nail the process quickly, so that you can focus on the people

If you want this gig to bring you regular levels of success, you are going to need solid processes, otherwise you’ll be riding the industry like a roller-coaster! So focusing on getting the processes absolutely clear in your mind first is absolutely necessary. The other key reason why it’s necessary is that if you can spend less time worrying about your processes (e.g. what you need to go through in a listing presentation), then you can spend more time focusing on the people that you are hoping to serve! It is quite important that we do that, considering these people are going to be paying our fees, hopefully!

4) Less conversation, more action

As said by the great man, Elvis, a little less conversation and a little more action is what is generally required in our job! We are great at talking about what we need to do (me included, sometimes!), but sometimes we can talk about plans too much in fear of them not working.

The reality here is that we can pontificate as much as we want over a new email design, a fancy flyer or video profile, but whether it’s any good is completely subjective, i.e. you can think it’s amazing, but it’s not your opinion that matters as much as that of the customers you’re trying to attract! So a bit of thought to try and tune into your customer is great, and make sure it’s neatly done (and on brand!), but after that … just keep trying!

5) Master ‘emotional intelligence’

Sounds complicated, and it is at times, but to begin with, all you need to do is ask yourself one question whenever you’re about to go interact with a customer – ‘How would this make the customer feel?’

We often do things with the sense that we think it’ll work, and the way that we educate in this industry really doesn’t help, but you’ll find that if you can consider how your actions could make your customer feel before you crack on, then having an understanding or a sense of that will allow you to perhaps act and talk in a way that will resonate more frequently with these customers.

I often highlight why things don’t work very quickly by asking agents, ‘“Well, how do you think they feel about that?!”, to which I see a look of realisation that what they said was always going to upset their customers, but they went into it blindly believing that the standard textbook for the industry was correct for every human we interact with. Assessing everyone’s perspectives will help you to generate early wins, because you’ll be showing customers that you are actually paying attention to their needs, which helps when competitors are likely to be just spouting what they’ve been told to say!

These five key areas will not only help new people in the industry to get some earlier wins, but they will also help them to feel way more like the humans that they are, and a lot less like the robots they’re trying to avoid! They’ll help to create all of the clichéd buzz words like consistency, authenticity and integrity, but it’ll get done in a way that suits agents more individually without drifting away from the fundamentals which are as relevant today as they have ever been.

Or we can keep treating new people like programmable robots and wonder why we’re all struggling to stay relevant as humans … which isn’t working for them or our business!

Andy Reid is an auctioneer, podcast host, coach and speaker.