There are many different skills for you to master which will have you become the best real estate salesperson you can possibly be. Among these, canvassing prospects by phone, in-person, and by mail are all great ways for you to dig-up opportunities to both list and sell properties in your territory. Many old-school, highly-successful managers and agents will tell you that canvassing is the life blood of success in real estate sales. And the truth about this is that they are right-on when they say this to you.

However, there is another element in being the most successful agent you can possibly be that gets ignored for the most part when people talk about how to become highly successful in real estate sales. And that element is what you actually do with your prospects once you find them and begin working with them.

Anyone can dig-up prospects through canvassing. You just have to do the canvassing. However, what you do with your prospects after you've located them is crucial in influencing whether your prospects work with you or another agent when the time is now for them to list, buy, or lease property. Knowing this it is so important for you as an agent to continually work on improving your sales skills, your real estate presentations, and your interpersonal skills. Your ability to be outstanding in these areas is what will determine whether your prospects select you as the agent they will work with, or select one of your competitors instead.

So what do you do? In a nutshell you become an expert at building rapport with people. People want to do business with people who they feel are just like themselves. When people feel that you are very similar to them and also truly care about their best interests, you can write your ticket with them as far as having them want to work with you.

There was a very interesting study done by Dr. Ray Birdwhistle at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Birdwhistle initiated a study to determine how we as human beings communicate with each other. At the end of his study Dr. Birdwhistle and his researchers concluded that only 7% of communication between people has to do with the actual content of the words that are being said. The remaining 93% of our communication comes from everything else we are doing while we are saying the words. "Everything else" here refers to the tempo, pitch, volume, and timbre of our voice, as well as our communication through our body language.

When people are getting to know you as their potential real estate agent, they are sizing-up everything they observe you doing to determine if they want you to be their agent. While you may feel that you have great presentation skills, it's the opinions of your clients and prospects that are the ones that really count in terms of you improving your real estate business. So if you're making the exact same presentation with the exact same vocal delivery and body language to all of your prospects, you're missing out on a lot of business! While some people may love your presentation, others will find that they love another agent's presentation better. That's because the other agent talks more like the prospect talks, moves their body similar to how the prospect does, and gives the prospect a good gut-level feeling that they are, in fact, very similar to who the prospect is as a person.

Think about this for a moment. Haven't you had a salesperson make a presentation to you either on the phone or in-person where you literally cringed at the person's sales presentation? That's because the person was completely out of rapport with you. Had they spoken like you do and/or moved their body like you do you would have felt much more in rapport with them--even if the content of what they were actually saying wasn't the greatest.

If you're digging-up a lot of great prospects in your real estate business but find that they often decide to do business with other agents instead of you, it may be time to begin working on your rapport skills. Your prospects are about to make decisions that may be some of the most important financial decisions they will ever make in their entire lives. In deciding which agent to work with they need to know that this person is just like they are, and that this person is someone who they can trust.

The better that you can convey this message to your prospects and adapt your in-person presentations and phone conversations specifically to each individual prospect, the more successful you will be as a real estate agent.

Published: December 20, 2002

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