What do you think are the 4 absolutely essential skills that every Realtor must have command of in order to succeed? I have my ideas, but I would like to hear yours. This whole “exercise” came about through a “career class” for high schoolers. The proposition put to the students was: you are about to be transported to another planet because Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid. You will be taken to another planet exactly like Earth, but without any inhabitants. You can take a maximum of 30 people. What will their ages be? Their sex? Their professions/skills? There will be wild animals there, so you’ll have to have some sort of a hunter… And somebody that would know how to make a gun. Carpenters, medical people, engineers, etc. The 1st student answered and said somebody who could grow pot! By the end of a full semesters assignment, the students realized what was really critical. Or what I will call the “absolutely essential skills”.
That same kind of thinking has guided me into recognizing the following critical skill sets.
NEGOTIATING To me this is a huge essential. Every single transaction we negotiate. Buyers and sellers do not do this every day and tend to get way too emotionally involved and often times lose perspective. This is certainly one of our most important skill sets. This is a skill that will use not only with buyers and sellers, but in buying our cars, buying supplies, buying your boat etc.
COMMUNICATION What is the single number 1 most often heard complaint from sellers? “We heard from our Realtor when he listed our house and never heard from him again until the listing was about to expire.” Remember that communication is two-way. You have to listen in order to understand. My daddy taught me years ago that we have 2 ears and one mouth and that we should use them in that proportion. Learning this skill will also help you in life; are any of you married? Have teenage kids?
GENERATING A LEAD None of these skills mean much, if we have no buyers or sellers with whom to work. As the leader of my Team, I often remind the team members that the very hardest part of real estate is generating the lead. And by that, I mean real leads that turn into transactions.
MARKET KNOWLEDGE It doesn’t make any difference if you are working with a buyer or a seller, you have to know the market and be able to communicate that to your clients. Knowing the comparable sales and properties currently available are absolutely vital to be in business. Let me share this illustration with you. If a woman walked into a dress shop and said to the clerk that she was looking for a black cocktail dress and the clerk responded “Well, I don’t know. Let’s walk around the store and see if we can find one.” That clerk had so little “market knowledge” she didn’t even know the direction to go look for the black dress. How many Realtors do you know who have no idea which subdivisions have homes in a certain price range? My answer to that would be, far too many.
Each of these skills have subsets under them of course. Marketing would be a subset under generating a lead. Communication might be broken down into buyers and sellers and the general public. Interview skills (Your ability to really drill down into the answers and continue to ask more questions so that you truly know what the buyer wants.) Negotiating could have one subset that specifically discusses various strategies. For instance, “split the difference” is a strategy that I see used far too often, but there are many other negotiating strategies as well. How about the “front porch strategy” and you ever use that for one of your clients?
My purpose is to get all of us thinking what really and truly are the basic skill sets. And then we need to hone those skills. There is no silver bullet or magic potion in this business. We should stop looking for that and simply implement the many things that we have heard and seen, but never put into practice. I would really be interested in hearing your thoughts about the skills that you think are essential.
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