Would you agree what you say and how you say it really has an impact on any agents effectiveness in real estate sales? Effective communication is a critical component of mastering success in business and in life. By mastering the art of communication, you’ll increase every level of performance in your life. I’ve often said if you just communicate, you can get by. But if you communicate skillfully, you can work miracles—miracles in your family relationships, your business relationships and your friendships. Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity and the emotions to affect other people. What a unique opportunity to touch others with something small but powerful—our words.
Now before we get to the fundamentals of effective communication, there’s some groundwork to be laid. You see, preparation is the key to good communication. You’ve got to make deliberate, consistent effort to keep putting into your head, and putting into your heart and soul, valuable information from your business experiences or from others in the industries experiences. You can’t speak of that which you don’t know. You can’t relate what you don’t have. You can’t give out what hasn’t come in. So the first key to good communication is a consistent way to gather information, knowledge, experiences and then remember it, store it and have it available so you can use it. Preparation is the key. Now to prepare for good communication...
4 Secrets To Effective Communication in Real Estate
- Interest - Sharpen your curiosity and your interest in life, people and real estate. Those are the big subjects: life, people and real estate . What about life? The questions you might have about life and the mysteries of life. What about people and the human behavior? What about real estate and the ins and outs of the business?People ask me, when you speak and travel are the people there the same all over?” And the answer is “yes.” Everywhere you go around the world, from South Africa to Northern Ireland, people are the same. What they want is the same. They would like to be employed. They’d like to have something to do. They’d like to have a way to earn their way. They’d like to make a good living. They’d like to supply incredible values for their family, and plan for the future—not only for the next generation but the next generation after. They’d like to make a contribution to the community and to their country. They’d like to be valuable in more than one respect. They’d like to be good parents. They’d like to leave a legacy.The list is the same whether you go to Siberia or Australia. It doesn’t make any difference. We all have those kinds of ambitions. In some countries, of course, the opportunity to do so is a lot better than in other countries that are struggling with just survival, let alone succeeding. You should sharpen your interest and keep a journal of your impressions when you visit another region.
If you go to Australia they have estate property auctions and call themselves estate agents. They’ve got all these unique real estate words. So when you go to Australia, when you go to other countries, you pick up on this because it’s interesting. It’s interesting conversation, and if you know a little about this, it’s fascinating. The key is to just sharpen your interest in life and people, and region and country, and nation and ceremonies, and style and expressions.
You just pick up all of that flavor and the style and the language and the idiosyncrasies of where you go. You pick all that up as preparation so your conversation will be more interesting to someone else. And you can flavor it with the color of your experiences of where you’ve been and what you’ve seen and what you’ve heard.
- Fascination - Go from interested to fascinated. Interested people want to know, Does it work? Fascinated people want to know, How does it work? What goes on below the surface? I can see that it works, but what makes it work?Every day I drive my teenage son Jude I smile as he mentions how fascinating it is to him all the interconnecting over passes and mergers in morning rush hour and how they are all strategically created to intersect and move all the people smoothly and safely and he revels in how it all works and not in what he knows. Kids have this extraordinary ability to ask these questions. They can ask a hundred an hour. It’s amazing. It’s because they want to know. Their minds are just zinging all the time.Questions about what’s happening and what’s going on and how does it work and why is it this way and how come it works like this? That’s so valuable in preparing to store in your mental bank and your bank of experiences more and more information, more and more experiences, colored and flavored by your own emotional content so when you get ready to speak, you have something valuable to say.
Day by, let life fascinate you. Let life interest you. Substitute fascination in place of frustration. I used to be frustrated, now I’m fascinated. I’m telling you now, it doesn’t work every time. Nothing works every time. But every time you can get it to work, let something fascinate you instead of frustrate you. Be curious how life works. That’s how you gather more from your life experiences and prepare for good communication.
- Sensitivity - The next word, and this is an important word in preparing for communication, is sensitivity. Try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Try to feel what they feel. Try to hurt like they hurt. Have sympathy and compassion.Being in real estate for more than two decades we quickly forget the emotional impact our business has on people’s lives and we almost become desensitized and insensitive to our clients feelings, fears and emotions when buying and selling. We should all as agents buy and sell every year just to remember the stress, anxiety and emotions that are affected in our business for all our clients.Sensitivity is trying to understand where someone might be at the moment. The reason they’re angry may not be obvious. Maybe the IRS just knocked on their door a couple days ago. That’s why they’re upset. You can’t just go by what’s obvious because there might be some reasons behind the reasons.
So you’ve got to learn to be a little more sympathetic, a little more understanding. This is vitally important. Sometimes it’s difficult, unless you are like that person, to sympathize or to have sensitivity. But here’s what you must do: You must try. People know when you try. I go to Mexico and try to speak a little Spanish. I listen to my Rosetta Stone to brush up on my Spanish . If you try to understand, try to speak a few words, it goes such a long way in identifying with people, in building a bridge of understanding and getting something started toward good communications.
- Knowledge - So we’ve got interest, we’ve got fascination, and we’ve got sensitivity. Here’s one more word: knowledge. You just have to know. Collect knowledge in your journal, from your ongoing education. Fill up your mental and spiritual and emotional bank so it becomes like an unending reservoir to draw from. That begins to help you prepare.Do your research. Gather up stories. Learn scripts and dialogs. Keep the flow of knowledge going into your journal, as well as into your head and into your heart. Become a student of real estate, life, business and take courses. Find a coach or mentor and ask as many questions as possible to gather all the knowledge and insight you can.If you want to grow your income it starts by growing yourself. Take the time to learn the business at your desk, training room or classroom and not by trial and error out in the field at your clients expense. Being an avid golfer I have to practice on the range and the short game area and not on the course.
So there you have a few secrets to becoming a more effective communicator. We are story tellers. We are advisors. We are counsellors. We are relational. All these things are parts that make us an engaging, fascinating communicator and become more attractive and valuable to our clients and this industry.
Strength and courage,
Wade
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