Understanding Your Client's Personality Type Redux

One of the great things about our real estate business is that so many different kinds of people can be successful using their own unique personality and approach. Of course our clients have their own personalities, too, and we can be most successful if we understand those personality types, whether we’re competing for a new listing or guiding our clients through finding the right home, negotiating the purchase agreement, counters, and the inspection response process.

Most folks recognize four broad personality types, and two of the most obvious ones are the Directorial/Competitive type and the Analytical/Methodical type. The Directorial type is used to taking the lead and being in charge, and they typically see the big picture and the bottom line. If we approach this person by working through all the details, we risk losing their attention, and possibly their respect.  This type may also need to feel they’ve come up with ideas on their own, so we need to gently guide them toward the position we recommend!

Conversely, with the Methodical type, if we start with the big picture and our bottom line recommendation, they may tune out and lose confidence since they need to have all the details first, so they can reach their own conclusions.

Of course there’s a lot more to it, but it can help if you make sure you know and understand each of your clients’ personality types, so you can better guide your clients through the process. 

So remember, it’s your job to herd those cats, especially those buyers who can’t seem to make up their minds. In a recent coaching session, an agent told me about a couple who hadn’t found a new house that suited them yet, even after their own house sold and they had to move an hour away to stay with family while they kept looking! It turned out one of the buyers was an engineer of some sort and insisted on finding the absolutely perfect home, and who said they were in no hurry! (I wonder what the in-laws thought!) It also turned out that they were looking at homes priced at about 60% of what they were qualified for (not an unwise financial decision) yet of course they were disappointed since they actually wanted a home with features and finishes that would cost just a bit more. Talk about a potential for showing a hundred homes and never writing an offer!

So, how deal with that personality type and those expectations? Well, let’s remember our basic training and go back to square one: grab that list of topics and questions for an initial consultation with a new buyer client. Step one, set a timing goal and remind these particular buyers that as we head toward cooler weather there will be fewer and fewer new listings becoming available. Are they eager to drive that extra hour in a foot of snow? Okay, let’s set a target date for them to move into their new home!

Next, what are their objectives? We’ve all given the speech about how no buyer, at any price, no matter how high, ever really finds the perfect home, so it’s time to refresh their memory and to insist they make the tough decisions on what they could compromise on or do without. Or raise their pricing range a tiny bit, at a cost of $30 to $40 a month, of course. And then those engineering types will likely be making any offer far too low, calculating triple the cost of replacing the blind in the powder room, so remember to give them tons of data so they can analyze and find that correct price—and if they don’t, you can treat it as a pure math problem with the market price as the answer! Engineers LOVE math problems and hate to be wrong! Do the math!

Anyway, it’s of course not that easy, but if you can stop, step back, and understand the way your client is thinking, hopefully you can use their own approach to open the door to decision making. That way, you’ll find greater success and enjoyment in your real estate career!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

Making Connection

We’ve written in past Playbooks about the importance of “Understanding Your Client’s Personality Type” and how that knowledge can help us tailor our approach to clients on an individual basis that best suits their manner of processing information and making decisions. In other words, that understanding will help us make a better connection with our clients—and potential clients—and that will help us build our business, as probably the vast majority of folks choose and continue to work with a broker based on how well they connect with that agent as a person.

Of course, that assumes the broker has a platform of experience, expertise, and market knowledge that’s a “given” in terms of the potential client’s assessment of them. In other words, remember that when competing against equally qualified agents, it may boil down to that personal connection rather than who has the shiniest presentation.

Along the lines of making connection, a recent article on Inman News struck me as having some great ideas to fine tune our approach to making that personal/professional connection. “Nonverbal Communications Is How Agents Really Win Listing Presentations” stresses that fact that, while we often focus on memorizing scripts to showcase that new presentation or sweat over the exact price to show on the CMA, it’s often the personal connection—based on noverbal communication—that can separate us from the pack.

The article quotes a successful agent, Cindy Stockhaus, and her suggestions for the art of creating a personal connection:

1.     Mirror and Match: Match your voice, your cadence of speech, and your body language to your client.  This will put them at ease and make them feel more connected to you.

2.     Listen: Hear what your client is truly saying and respond accordingly, rather than thinking about what you’re going to say next.

3.     Build Commonality: As you have them give you a tour of their home, try to create a common bond by finding shared interests based on decorating style, pictures, and passions. (Think sports, travel, kids, fashion, etc.)

4.     Be genuine: Bring yourself to the table.  People can tell if you’re faking it . . . and they want to do business with YOU, not who you think they want to do business with.

So, as you think about interacting with your clients and potential clients—whether for listings or as buyers—keep in mind some of these noverbal keys and make sure your connection with people as individuals is genuine. And guess what? When you’re genuine, you’ll enjoy your business even more!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

Getting Things Done Again

We’ve written about David Allen’s book Getting Things Done and have encouraged folks to grab a copy to see how that system can be a great help in managing not our time but our activities and our distractions. Oh, those distractions! 

Allen’s primary point is that we get things done best when we can focus on the task at hand, free from those distractions. Rather obvious, of course. But he goes on to clarify that by distractions, he doesn’t simply mean a ringing phone or a barking client, but rather all those nagging little voices in our minds, interrupting and reminding us—constantly, it seems—not to forget that we have to run a CMA for that presentation tomorrow or call the brick mason to ask about that chimney repair by next Tuesday or, yes, to take the dog to the vet on Saturday and get to little Sally’s soccer match by 6. 

In an earlier Playbook, we noted that Allen’s key is to make sure we have a fail-safe “bucket” to store all our obligations and actions and information—both for our business and our personal lives—and we noted how Evernote can be the perfect bucket. 

But how do you decide what goes in the bucket—and where?

Allen’s GTD model has a great flowchart for dealing with what he accurately calls “stuff,” ie, all the things we’re bombarded with daily, hourly, even by the minute. Basically he suggests that we think of ourselves as an In Box and go through the following process as we receive “stuff:”

The First question: What is it? That sounds a bit trite, but he really means that we need to quickly grasp “what” is asking for our attention rather than doing what we so often do: simply putting something aside and thinking we’ll deal with it later! Allen makes the point that by not taking a few more seconds and determining the real “what,” we’ve just put that item back on top of the pile of things that will eventually fall into our In Box again . . . and again, wasting more and more of our time.

The Second Question: Is it Actionable? Wow, is this “stuff” something we need to do anything about? There can only be two answers here, YES or NO!  If NO, then ideally it should go right into the trash! But wait, what if it’s something we don’t need to take action on right now, but we might want to use it or do something about later?  No problem, as Allen suggests we create compartments in our bucket where we can save such items for future reference.  In the Evernote age, we can create a notebook or two for “Reference” items and maybe one for “Reading” where we can store that interesting article we noticed in Inman News but don’t have time to read at the moment it drops into our “In Box.”

If the answer is YES, it IS Actionable, we have a couple more considerations. One of Allen’s best moves is his suggestion that, if a “stuff” is Actionable AND it can be done in less than two minutes, DO IT RIGHT NOW! Don’t put it back on the pile of things that will have to again fall into your In Box!

If it will take more than two minutes, Allen recommends we need to make one more immediate decision: If we’re the best person to deal with the “stuff,” then we need to “Defer” it and add it to our project list of “Next Actions” or put it on our calendar if it’s a specific date. If we’re not the best person to deal with that particular “stuff,” we need to delegate it to someone else: a staff member, an assistant, and lender partner, a contractor, etc. and we need to make that delegation right away . . . if it can be delegated in less than two minutes!

There’s a lot more detail and some great examples in the book, of course, but the GTD system can really work and make your days and hours far more productive and far less stressful.  I bet you can download the book from Amazon to your Kindle in less than two minutes . . .

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

A Nice Helping of Great Stats, Please!

A recent Inman News article caught my eye and gave us some great nationwide real estate statistics we can all use in our business. Inman quoted the stats from the website Placester.com and I hope you find them of helpful as you position yourself as a trusted source of knowledge for your clients.

·      The role of the real estate market in the United States’ economy:

o   There are roughly 133,026,000 housing units in the country with a combined value of $25.7 trillion.

o   These housing units are worth more than the combined GDP of the entire European Union (at $18.1 trillion).

o   In 2013, there were 5.09 million home sales, up 9.1% from 2012.

o   Home prices nationwide are expected to increase by 4% on average in 2014.

o   Mortgage rates remain low: mortgage payments currently consume 15.6% of monthly family income, down from 23.5% in 2006.

·      The real estate industry at a glance:

o   The industry employs over 2 million people, including more than 430,000 agents and brokers, or about 1.4% of the working population.

o   4 out of 5 real estate brokerage firms have only a single office.

o   84% of real estate brokerage firms are independent, non franchised companies, 13% are independent franchises, and 3% are corporate subsidiaries.  (NOTE, this stat reflects the number of companies, not the number of agents!)

·      The housing supply:

o   1.86 million homes were available at the beginning of 2014.

o   Housing is currently at about a five month supply nationwide.

o   New construction starts are projected to increase by 25% in 2014.

·      Real Estate search:

o   92% of people now use the internet in their home search.

o   Between 2009 and 2013, real estate related Google searches increased by 253%

o   69% of home shoppers who take action on a real estate website begin by typing in a local term into a search engine.

o   On weekends, 59% of page views on real estate websites come from smartphones and tablets.

So dig in and chew up some of these stats so you can make use of them with your clients and prospects!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

It's Third Quarter, Do You Know Where Your Stats Are?

Yesterday, I read a piece in the Inman News talking about our industry’s frequent overuse in our marketing of several worn out phrases (and they weren’t talking about that old The Mamas & The Papas song!). For example, they chided us for touting a house as “Priced to Sell” since that’s really only telling something and the price alone should show us the price is aggressive!  Another phrase they noted was agents billing themselves as a “Top Agent.”  The writer said he wondered if there were any “bottom” agents anymore.  Again, that phrase is simply telling us something instead of showing it!  So, let’s get to work and see what we can show!

With that in mind, now that most folks have exhausted their store of fireworks, it’s time to recognize that we’ve already finished the first half of our business year!  The market has been pretty good so far and we even heard the term “seller’s market” tossed around now and then, and some weeks we got to enjoy that old fashioned stress from being busy with more activity than we can easily handle.  It’s great to get caught up in that transaction rush!

But the end of the second quarter is also a great time to make sure we take a look at our stats to see how we’re doing compared with our business plan, and to dig in and see what we can show our clients and prospects! 

It really pays to analyze the details of not only our sales volume and commission dollars, including listings sold and buyers closed, but to dig deeper into the numbers, including the percentage of your listings sold, price reductions achieved, your average days on the market, averages ratio of sale to list price, percent of listings won when competing, how your stats compare versus the competition, and any patterns to be seen.  And that’s just for starters!  Where did you succeed, and where can you improve?  Digging deep and understanding where you’ve been so far this year—and why—is crucial to keeping you on your plan so you can achieve your strongest year ever!  Your coaches are here to help you through the process of mastering your stats and congratulating you on your success and aiding in planning any course corrections.

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching