Relationships and Conversations
Both are highly integral to our job as real estate salespeople.
Mike Ferry calls real estate a contact sport. He’s right. We need to make contact with people if we want to find people that need to buy and sell real estate. I’m a Mike Ferry fan and was trained by him in the 1980’s and he still rocks.
Mike and I diverge on the next part. How many contacts do we need to make? Mike and his coaches at the Mike Ferry Organization typically expect their real estate clients to make 100 contacts per week. That’s a lot. It’s doable and if you do it consistently you will find good leads. Some will find incredible success with the Mike Ferry model. Many will burn out in a few weeks. If an action is in conflict with our values, it will be exhausting.
Many real estate agents will find it more natural and therefore more sustainable to make far fewer contacts but have better conversations and build high quality relationships. Done well this can garnish us just as many and perhaps more leads and they will be of higher quality. Interested?
Business relationships and sales conversations are different than their social counterparts in our daily lives. They are deliberate, focussed on the prospect/client and have specific intentions.
The art and science of having high quality business relationships and effective sales and negotiation conversations is a skill that can be learned and continually developed and is the underpinning to graceful sales excellence.
Here is a snapshot of the values approach to develop your skills.
1. Values that define who we are as we enter into relationships and conversations. We cannot separate who we are from who shows up in the relationship and in the conversation. (You can’t fake it!):
- Integrity
- Authenticity
- Creativity
- Curiosity
2. Values that lead us to perform at our highest potential within our relationships and conversations (best outcomes):
- Courage
- Continued learning
- Self-responsibility
3. Values that allow us to create and maintain meaningful and productive relationships:
- Appreciating uniqueness
- Collaboration
- Compassion