No matter where you are in your career, from brand new to an agent with 1,000 homes under your belt, these skills are the ones that will help you reach the next level.
As a new agent, you’ll find that you’re able to secure that first transaction with these skills. If you’re an experienced agent used to closing 100 transactions a year, implementing these skills will help you double that!
Let’s take a look at the three most important skills for any real estate agent to master:
- Communication
- Negotiation
- Persistence
1. Communication
You probably already know how crucial good communication is, especially in real estate. It is literally the lifeblood of your business! It will help you:
- Reach the masses by becoming a better marketer.
- Speak with clients well and convert more leads into clients.
- Speak with real estate agents well to build a team and get offers accepted.
In fact, effective communication can even help you shorten the learning curve. You’ll be able to get more results with less prospecting if you can communicate effectively from the start.
Plus, understanding how to convey your points in a conversation will help you drive more referral business and create better relationships with future clients.
If you want to learn more about communicating effectively, check out How Highly Effective People Speak. This book, written by public speaking coach Peter Andrei, offers tons of tips and tricks to help you use psychology to communicate effectively.
You’ll learn how to convince people to support you using body language, how to ace interviews with clients, and how to implement various tactics to ensure your communication practices are getting you the results you need.
Communication is hard, but, like many hard things, it’s worth it! If you put in the effort, you’re certain to create a bigger and more successful business. Plus, good communication is sure to help you in your personal life as well!
2. Negotiation
Even if you know how to communicate on a basic level, you’re not going to get far in real estate if you don’t know how to negotiate a good deal. It’s a seller’s market right now, but no matter where the market is at, it’s going to be crowded. You’ll have to know how to negotiate in order to get ANY offer accepted for your clients!
Plus, if you really think about it, you’re in a negotiation every single time you speak with a lead. You have to win their business, which means you have to convince them that you’re worth working with! And when you do land a client, you have to negotiate for the commission you want, regardless of whether you’re on the listing or selling side.
Ultimately, negotiation is key to performing well as a real estate agent. If you’d like more tips on how to negotiate well and successfully, check out Never Split the Difference.
3. Persistence
No matter how skilled you are at your job, at communication, and at negotiation, you’re still going into a hard business when you join real estate. Any job in sales is challenging, but being a real estate agent and a business owner just makes your job even more challenging.
As a real estate agent, you’re battling against about 2 million other active licensed real estate agents to get your next deal and make the money you need. If you want to use this job to provide for yourself and your family, you have to wake up every single day with the driven, tough mindset that will enable you to complete your tasks and earn your income.
Realize from the beginning that you will get far more “Nos” than “Yeses” in this business. You have to be prepared for that and also be prepared to keep going no matter how many people tell you “no.”
You’ve probably heard that over 90% of new real estate agents fail within their first three years. That’s why this skill is so essential—if you can’t push through, you’ll join that statistic and fail before you’ve had the chance to really build the business you need.
If you develop persistence and press on in the job, you’ll outlast about 90% of other agents who started at the same time as you. You’ll also have the strength to go up against the hundreds of agents joining real estate every day. Check out Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins.
So, there you have it. You need three main skills to succeed in real estate today:
- Communication
- Negotiation
- Persistence
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in real estate—if you can develop these skills, you will succeed!