We’re deep into an era in Real Estate where many of us are opting for quantity over quality when it comes to building relationships, or in a different perspective on it, generating leads. More and more, the approach is being taken to ways of generating huge quantities of leads, following up with them in a systemic way, and resting assured that statistically some of them will become clients, because they like our professionalism, our brand, or the way we were there at the right time.
But I think there is something we’re loosing that is really cool. In my first inside sales job, I was given 10 pieces of paper with names, phone numbers, and a little context on who these folks were. Over the next week, I had amazing 30 minute conversations with them, where we talked about their passions, fears, interests, and finally why their curiosity had been piqued about our business. 8 of them became clients. That’s an 80% conversion rate, it was awesome.
The ability to consistently form strong, authentic connections with people comes from practical empathy , the ability to see the world from someone else’s perspective without judgment.
There are so many understandable reasons to aim for large numbers of leads, rather than strong connections with each of them.
- It can seem much more efficient
- It can seem like if you’re not the type of person who connects with everybody, you never will be
- New lead generating technology is exciting and we don’t want to fall behind the times.
I believe lead generating technology has a strong and respectable place in Real Estate, but wouldn’t it be great to have both? The quality and the quantity?
The thing we need to remember is that we can take control of our people skills. We can learn, practice, and master practical empathy. Because it’s inherently there.
Leading psychological work is indicating that we are all capable of feeling empathy, but it’s buried beneath the chaos of busyness, stress, and our own experience. All this noise is interrupting our ability to perceive people, influence them, be influenced, judge character, and find curiosity for everyone around us. Where the noise comes from is different for everyone, but it seems to be a phenomenally wise thing to engage with and figure out.
If we can start unraveling the chaos and noise, we can form stronger relationships, give them better experiences, and start to do the important work of facilitating the deep needs of our clients, instead of just finding them properties.