If you are like me, you got into the real estate business because the opportunity to earn a six-figure living as a real estate agent was better than most other jobs.
But six figures will not just fall into your lap.
There's a lot of work to be done before the rewards of this business become direct deposits in your checking account.
Like any other business, your earnings will be in direct proportion to the number of people you serve using the skills you have mastered.
In the real estate business, serving people includes basic things like answering the phone, returning missed calls, answering emails, showing homes to prospective buyers, presenting offers, etc.
Pretty basic stuff...but not worth six figures.
If you plan to hit the big numbers this business offers, you are going to need to work with a lot of clients and become an expert at a lot of skills.
Here are 9 of those skills:
1) PEOPLE SKILLS: Skills that will enable you to get along with other people, communicate ideas effectively, resolve conflicts and achieve the overall target business goal. People skills are essential for sales, marketing, and customer service, but are also important when it comes to managing the transaction when things do not go as planned.
2) COMMUNICATION SKILLS: Your ability to convey information to clients, customers, and vendors, effectively and efficiently. It is imperative that you master verbal, written, email, text, and voice message skills to facilitate the sharing of information between the parties in a real estate transaction.
3) NEGOTIATION SKILLS: Entire books and seminars are produced on this topic so I will not try to over-simplify such a complex subject in a single paragraph. In its simplest form, negotiation skills involve two or more people finding an acceptable solution to a shared problem. Successful negotiators (YOU) control the process by counseling clients to make rational decisions and (hopefully) coming away with a result everyone is satisfied with – including any and all compromises made along the way. Just know that it won’t always be pretty. But your job is to make it happen and have everyone smiling on closing day. I will spend a fair amount of time on the topic in our online mastermind area.
4) PROBLEM-SOLVING: The ability to resolve difficult and unexpected situations in a real estate transaction by calmly identifying solutions. Better known as Crisis Management. This is where a large percentage of agents fall on their faces. They avoid conflict rather than embrace it as an opportunity to prove their unique skills and overall value to the transaction process. R.A.R.E Agents love problem-solving.
5) TECHNOLOGY SKILLS: For better or worse, technology has changed the way real estate is transacted, and there is no doubt that the industry has benefited from improved efficiencies. If you remember the days prior to online listings, IDX websites, RPR, Photoshop, hi-definition virtual tours, and electronic signatures on PDF forms, you understand just how much things have changed. Paperless transactions are the norm. Buckle up, there are a lot more changes to come.
6) MARKETING SKILLS: (online and offline). Print publications, digital photography, aerial drone video, targeted Facebook ad boosts, Instagram, Twitter, broadcast robocalls (I hate these), email autoresponders (I love these), CRMs with artificial intelligence (I really love these), segmented email lists and direct response messages are just the tip of the attention-seeking iceberg.
7) CONTRACT KNOWLEDGE: The contract process varies from state to state. If you are fortunate to live in a state where your local Association of Realtors provides you with a boilerplate, fill-in-the-blank PDF form, consider yourself immensely blessed. If the process in your state involves attorneys, I will keep you on my nightly prayer list. Regardless, you must become a student of the documents required in your area to complete a real estate transaction. This is not optional. It’s the baseline. Slackers will not be tolerated in the RARE Agent community.
8) LEADERSHIP SKILLS: The strengths and abilities an agent must demonstrate to oversee the transaction processes. Leadership skills are an essential component in positioning the parties of a transaction to make thoughtful decisions about the overall goals and properly allocate resources to achieve them. Examples of valuable leadership skills include the ability to delegate, communicate and inspire team members to execute the vision and mission. Other leadership skills include honesty, confidence, commitment, and creativity.
9) TEAM BUILDING: A broad-brush collective term for various types of activities used to define roles within multi-member, collaborative workgroups. While teams are typically thought of as other members of your office/staff, RARE Agents understand that their “team” includes vendor partners such as lenders, title officers, attorneys, home inspectors, handymen, contractor trades, and virtually anyone they may call on to assist during the course of closing a real estate transaction. I once heard a RARE Agent say, “It takes a small army to close a real estate transaction”.
Continuing education, never-ending self-improvement and forever raising the bar of core competency are passions of all RARE Agents.
There is no other way.
Keep moving forward.
