High-performing real estate agents excel at one key thing: forming strong connections and building trust with their clients. While many of these tenured agents are helped by the brand recognition they’ve built over time, the following tips will help you build connection and trust with your potential clients no matter how tenured you are.

Before we dive in: there are conversation techniques you can and should use to convert prospects. However if the right sales script was all it took to be successful in real estate…the industry would look very different. (I’m picturing a sea of robots calling potential buyers and sellers with perfectly formulated words.) Instead, these tricks take a step back and help you unlock your best qualities. Optimizing what you say is helpful once you look at how you relate to people and make them feel.

 

1. Cultivate your subject matter expertise

We throw around words like “authenticity” and “being genuine” a lot when talking about relationship marketing for real estate agents. In practice, to be authentic and genuine you need a baseline level of confidence in your skills as a Realtor. If you’re worried about not having the answers to what your client wants to talk about, this will come across in your mannerisms when you’re speaking.

Thankfully this is an easy fix. Getting there is a matter of knowing potential speaking points really well. First, get to know your local stats inside and out. You want to be able to give your potential customer a quick snapshot of what’s going on without any hesitation or fumbling for words.

 

Once you have that down pat, arm yourself with more generalized home trends and real estate knowledge. This means being prepared for:

• Seasonal questions

• Home financing,

• The overall economy and real estate industry, and

• Moving tips.

Reading up and thinking about these topics before talking to people means you’re armed for whatever they may throw at you. Being confident in your ability to answer questions allows you to relate to potential buyers and sellers in a conversational and authentic way. Curating a good set of industry blogs, podcasts, and videos will help you with this. Some useful ones include:

 

Zillow

Zillow’s blog is a great resource for keeping up to date with seasonal points of interest, and to help you speak to general design and aesthetic trends.

 

Housing Wire

While you might not be an economist, chances are you’ll talk about the economy as frequently as one. Housing wire is a great place to take a deep dive into the financial trends surrounding the real estate industry.

 

Investopedia

Speaking of not being an economist, there may be some jargon you need to learn when it comes to interpreting some of the trends you read about. Investopedia is a great place to translate finance-speak into terms you and your clients can relate to.

 

National Association of Realtor’s Blog

NAR is an important supplemental resource to your local market stats. They frequently post analysis on their recent research on their blog, which can give you cues on what to say to buyers and sellers.

 

Canadian Real Estate Association podcast

CREA regularly interviews thought leaders about brand-building, gaining client trust, and real estate trends. They have additional tips, and are a good listen for figuring out your own conversational style.

 

Take-away #1: Getting really familiar with all things real estate will keep you focused outward on your clients instead of focusing inward on what you need to say next. This builds a natural flow of conversation and puts clients at ease, opening up the opportunity to earn their business.

 

2. Practice, practice, practice

Translating the subject matter expertise you gain from industry blogs and statistics into conversation well takes practice.

 

Practicing specifics

There are certain topics you know will come up on a cold call or during a client meeting, such as industry statistics. For such topics:

• Create an elevator pitch style 1-minute summary and your interpretation of your local real estate market conditions

• Say it out loud several times

• Now condense your pitch into a few keywords to help you remember what you want to say when talking to someone

• Practice saying it to someone. Pitch your co-worker, family member, or a friend.

• With enough practice, you’ll only need to recall a few words to remember the industry stats and what you want to highlight about them to potential buyers and sellers

Bonus: you've just generated shareable content for your real estate business. Share this elevator pitch on your blog, Facebook page, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram - whatever platforms you use.

General practice

The 1-minute pitch trick works in limited situations. You also want to get comfortable speaking about general buyer and seller topics:

• Practice talking about the industry in low-stakes environments.

• Talk about industry statistics, buyer and seller trends, and the economy with those in your sphere of influence (family, friends, and network).

• This will give you insight into what style of talking works well for you and how to frame different topics.

Bonus: Reaching out to your network is the most effective way to get new real estate clients. You're getting better at connecting with prospects and generating word of mouth referral opportunities.

Take-away #2: The ability to relate to your clients and build lasting connections isn’t an inborn thing you either have or don’t. It’s a skill you can hone, and that you will get better at with deliberate practice.

 

3. Get into the right mindset

Group fitness classes blast catchy beats for good reason – listening to those uplifting rhythms puts you in a mindset where you can’t help but want to move. You can use this exact technique to get into a selling mindset. For instance the creator of the Ninja selling technique, Larry Kendall, recommends creating personal rituals to prime yourself before certain tasks such an open house. You see athletes do this all the time as well with their pre-game rituals.

 

This trick helps you set aside any doubts, calm your nerves, and cut out mental noise so you can bring your best to your real estate clients. What will work for you is something that is very individual. If you’re not sure where to get started, here are some things you can try:

• Music playlist

• Mindfully drinking your beverage of choice

• Sequence of light stretches

• Wearing a power suit (whatever makes you feel confident)

• Doing a breathing exercise

• Watching a motivational video

• Getting set up at your desk in a precise order before picking up the phone 

You get the idea. For this to work, you need to pick something that you only do before you cold-call or have a client meeting. You want to forge a strong connection between this routine, and the start of your task.

 

Take-away #3: Leverage your routine to psyche yourself up (or calm your nerves) and get into a performance zone before speaking with clients.  

  

Final Thoughts

Building lasting relationships with your real estate clients is the key to an expanding book of business, steady sales funnel, and career satisfaction. It's a time consuming process that requires a lot of footwork on your part. Use these high performance tricks to put your best foot forward when talking to clients and prospects.

RealOffice360 is built for agents wanting to get away from cold call grinding and build a fulfilling career instead. It is an unbelievably simple CRM, business tracker, and daily planner for real estate agents and Realtors®. Rather being just a data dump for client information, RealOffice360 helps you visually build your business plan, cultivate your real estate database towards your goals, and ultimately keeps you focused on what matters most: your clients and your deals. Get started for free - no credit card required!