As REALTORS®, our job is to move people. We move people from one home to another, from one situation to a different situation. And when we are successful at moving people, we get paid.
The old-school world of sales focused on one main objective: to move as many people as possible. This was achieved through sales techniques that, to say the least, were sometimes questionable. These tactics worked most of the time because buyers and sellers needed to make decisions based on limited information.
And then came the internet: now, buyers and sellers have all the information they need right at their fingertips. The advent of open, easily accessible information has given birth to new-school sales approaches that differ fundamentally from the ways of the past.
We REALTORS® are no longer purveyors and protectors of information. Instead, our value is tied with how we curate information and how we help buyers and sellers make the right decisions when things start to get complicated.
Our job has become a little more complex: we need to move people emotionally and intellectually before we can move them physically.
Daniel Pink, bestselling author of To Sell is Human, has redefined the old-school term of “ABC”. The mnemonic acronym ABC first became popular in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross , where it stood for “Always Be Closing”. Pink’s reinterpretation of ABC reflects the new context of sales: “Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity”.
- Attunement refers to the ability to build connection and rapport.
- Buoyancy means being able to stay afloat in a sea of rejection.
- Clarityinvolves being able to make sense of murky situations.
Pink’s new take on ABC aligns perfectly with our philosophy here at The Nature of Real Estate. We believe that in order to excel in the new world of real estate sales, we need to build the skills that move buyers and sellers emotionally and intellectually. Once we have achieved this,only then have we earned the right to move them physically.
Empathy. Communication. Curiosity. Listening. Rapport. These are the skills that will take a real estate professional to the top of the field in the new world of sales.