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2. Watch
What You Say to Your Clients and
Prospects
When an agent is struggling or is not as successful as they would like
to be in real estate there is a good
chance that the agent is lacking in
interpersonal skills. Solid
interpersonal skills are necessary to
consistently do business with the most
desirable clients in your territory.
Agents who are lacking in these skills
can be out there pursuing business with
prospects while for the most part being
completely unconscious about what they
are saying and doing with these people
that is actually hurting their chances
of doing business with them.
Sometimes an agent can feel that he or she is doing a great job with a
prospect but the subtle mistakes that the
agent makes can cause the prospect to
hire another agent for the assignment
instead. And after this happens the
agent who loses out on the assignment
will often have no idea what it was that
had the prospect select their
competition over them.
As a simple example here let’s say that an agent is talking to a
property owner about listing their
property. In discussing how thoroughly
the agent intends to protect the
owner’s best interests in a transaction
the agent might say something like,
“Mr. Jacobsen, I want you to know how
thorough I will be at protecting your
best interests in the sale of your
property. I want you to know right now
that I would never do anything that
would cause you to end up in a
lawsuit.”
The agent’s choice of words in this situation has caused the owner to
now think of the possibility of a
lawsuit when this was not in the
owner’s mind at all just a few minutes
ago. Even though the agent’s intention
was to assure the owner that he would
not end up in a lawsuit if he selected
the agent to list the property, the
agent’s choice of words here has
produced the opposite effect.
As another example of this if someone were asked to not think of a red
Corvette what’s the first thing that
the person will begin to think of? That's
right, the red Corvette! Your mind has
to first identify exactly what a red
Corvette is before it then tries not to
think of it. This happens with
everything we say in our conversations
with other people each and everyday. So
in its simplest form we need to become
more aware of the language we are
utilizing with our clients and
prospects. Each and every word that we
choose has its own meaning attached to
it which will cause our clients and
prospects to think and feel different
thoughts and emotions.
If right now if you're using some words in your presentations with your
clients and prospects that cause them to
think about undesirable things and feel
undesirable emotions, you are probably
at times pushing these people away from
wanting to do business with you. And up
until now this may have been completely
outside of the your conscious awareness,
too.
Imagine for a moment the owner of a property interviewing an agent as a
potential candidate to list their
property with. The agent is making their
presentation and utilizes the following
words throughout the presentation:
Harm, damage, litigation, break-in, liability, dangerous, steal,
thieves, bad credit, bad reputation,
undesirable, flake, bankrupt
Now having just read those words did you
notice how they affected you? When most
people read these words they begin to
feel the negative, undesirable
states associated with them. They do so
either with these words
individually or with the
combination of all of these words put
together. Keeping this in mind the state
that
these words tend to induce would
probably not be a state conducive to an
owner giving the listing on their
property to you as an agent. People
don’t want to list their properties
with agents who cause them to experience
negative, undesirable states.
This is exactly what happens in many
real estate sales situations. Agents say
words and phrases without recognizing
the impact that they are having on their
clients and prospects. So you need to
make sure to utilize words that will have your clients and
prospects associate great, positive
feelings to you being their real estate
agent.
Every
single word in the English language has
its own characteristics that cause
people to associate certain thoughts,
beliefs, and feelings with it. Make sure
when you are talking with your clients
and prospects that you choose words that
have them associate positive thoughts
and feelings to you being their real
estate agent. In the end it is the sum total of
everything you present to them that has
them feel like working with you....or
with your competition instead.
So
make sure that the words you utilize
when talking with your clients and
prospects have them feeling good about
you and wanting to choose you over any
other agent in your territory!
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