As a real estate agent, you must have experienced frustrating situations such as a client backing out from buying or renting a property at the last moment. But what if you could use your emotional intelligence to not only understand their obstacle or fear but also to react in a manner that could ultimately help you achieve a successful outcome?
That’s the power of emotional intelligence – and you can learn how to tap into these skills to successfully navigate tricky situations in real estate.
Buying and selling real estate is an emotional journey and yes, this includes property investments too. Real estate is no place for transactional communication, yet far too many agents fall victim to this rote and impersonal style.
Relational communication is better and can give you a competitive advantage. Relational communication is simply getting to know your clients on a deeper and more meaningful level. This can be done by improving your emotional intelligence (EQ).
Studies have shown that emotional intelligence is “responsible for 58% of performance in all types of jobs” (Emotional Intelligence 2.0, page 20, copyright 2009 by TalentSmart). For many top brokers, emotional intelligence plays a huge role in their success, whether they are cognizant of this or not
What is Emotional Intelligence?
It is simply the ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others. It’s also your ability to use this understanding to manage your relationships and behaviour. Ultimately, real estate is a human-to-human transaction; having high emotional intelligence can make an agent more valuable to buyers and sellers alike.
There are four main aspects to emotional intelligence
What if you empathised with the very real emotions that can hold clients back, make them nervous and what if you were better able to handle your own emotional triggers?
Empathy
Empathy is part of social awareness; it’s your ability to step into someone else’s shoes and understand how they are feeling at that moment. To be empathetic, you need to forgo judgement and truly understand your client’s emotions. Buying a property is a HUGE deal for many people and emotions can run high. When you show empathy, you can improve your relational communication, build trust and soothe a client’s fears. It can also help you to leverage your client’s motivation, which is what compelled them to contact you in the first place. When a client shows hesitation, you can empathise with them with the following statements:
“I understand how you feel, and I felt the same way when I bought my house” “I have worked with many clients who felt this way too early on the buying journey”
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Self-Awareness
Successful people in all professions, including agents and brokers, are aware of their strengths and weaknesses. But the best agents are also aware of their emotional triggers and how poor management of this can lead to a sale falling through, losing a client or having a listing go to another agent.
For instance, a client saying they are going to hold off on buying can be an emotional trigger, especially if you have been counting on that sale. Saying, “why did you waste my time by having me show you properties if you were not ready?” Instead, a preferable response would be to listen to the client, acknowledge that you may be feeling frustration and count to five to calm yourself. Then he says, “I understand, tell me what’s got you concerned?” In the latter example, you are using empathy and you’re aware of your frustration, but you are not acting on that emotion in a negative fashion.
It’s important to understand your triggers as well as the emotions and behaviors that stem from them, regardless of your profession. By being self-aware, you also improve your ability to take criticism and feedback from clients while remaining calm and collected. This way, you can make better decisions that get you closer to yes. When you are not calm and collected, you run the risk of scrambling to prevent “fires” and backtracking from poor decision making
Knowing how your emotions impact others is part of self-awareness, but it’s so important that it deserves its own section. Your emotions are infectious and can have a positive or negative impact on your clients, often at a subconscious level.
Since real estate is such a big purchase, you must be completely present when interacting with a client. This includes shelving away any disruptive emotions when meeting with clients For example, you’ve had a fight with your partner the morning that you are showing a property.
- If the disagreement is running through your mind, it’s likely that you will be distracted while showing the property. Even worse, while the client is looking at a fabulous gourmet kitchen, you might be sending WhatsApp messages to your partner.
- A better approach would be to take a few minutes to acknowledge your feelings prior to the viewing and then shelve those emotions for the moment. Now, when your client is looking at the gourmet kitchen, you are present and engaged. You say to them, “Isn’t this a fantastic kitchen? Imagine cooking as a family, together, in this kitchen. I am excited for you just thinking about this!”
Emotional intelligence is about building and improving relationships through self-awareness, self-management and social awareness. Real estate is all about cultivating these relationships because that’s what results in customer retention, referrals and happy clients!
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