What are the most significant obstacles to achieving your real estate goals this year?
There are three distinct hurdles facing all real estate professionals in 2016. From the complete beginner to highly accomplished CEOs, all will need to champion these same factors in order to hit their objectives. Unfortunately, many are focusing on the wrong items, and are trying to solve the wrong problems. All of the small metrics and to-dos must come after owning what I am about to discuss later in this article. Win at these and marketing conversions will increase, more deals will be done, processes will flow more smoothly and transactions will be more profitable. Some may even be surprised at how effortlessly they can breakthrough their goals for the year, if they score well in these areas:
1. Trust
A recent LinkedIn post from the Harvard Business Review reminds us that there are two things prospects are instantly working towards. The first is trust. Whether it is in person, online, or over the phone; unless real estate professionals and businesses can build instant trust they are in trouble. You could argue that trust is the only thing that matters.
What builds trust? This can involve design, authority signals, how people find you, the domain name you use, the phone number, and sometimes even the email address you use. It can involve the words you use in print, and even body language. Some of this may require some time and additional learning, but it is critical to get a head start on it. For the well-established, trust must be maintained and grown. It is too precious to burn by spamming and overloading connections with junk content. For some, real trust will only come over time with seven or more interactions.
What makes you distrustful of others? What gives you a sense of trust about an individual professional or brand?
2. Respect
The second most important factor for real estate investors centers around respect. Do prospective clients, investors, and business partners respect you? Not as in paying lip service to keep their jobs, but do they really respect you and your business? This is more about who you are and what you stand for.
Do people respect your values, your expertise, your opinion, advice, and time? Do they want what you have? Factors involved here may be what you wear, your brand colors, your reputation, and the way you speak. It doesn’t matter whether you are fresh out of the gate and haven’t completed a single deal yet, or if you are about to break onto Forbes’ richest list; there is always room to move up here. Note that it isn’t just about having wealth. Would Mark Zuckerberg now have the respect he does from the very top if he hadn’t joined the giving pledge?
Who do you need to be to gain and maintain respect?
3. Service
Following up, setting the right expectations, and just going above and beyond will help you provide a service that is worth experiencing. In doing so, cultivate, empower, and inspire referrals. Note that this doesn’t necessarily get easier as you gain more business volume. In fact, it can become far more difficult. Everything will come crashing down if you don’t have a scaleable system which maintains the service people expect.
There are three keys to winning in 2016. Start with establishing and growing trust, commit to constantly building respect, and follow through with incredible service. Perform well in these areas and the results will come with ease.
