5 Quick Sales Tips for Introverted Real Estate Agents
How To Sell Real Estate If You Are an Introvert
For years real estate agents had this image of being loud, over the top, sales people. Many new real estate agent are concerned that they will not be able to succeed unless they are extroverted. This is not the case! There are many benefits to selling real estate as an introvert. In fact, many of the best modern salespeople have introverted tendencies. Yes, introverts still need to build their communication skills and go to events that are not the most comfortable, but extroverts also need to learn how to ask the right questions, slow down their speech, allow prospects to talk.
In this real estate agent training podcast, you will learn 5 quick tips you can implement right away if you are an introverted real estate agent.
Feel free to download the Rev Real Estate School Prospecting Workbook that you can use to build your prospecting in your own way! All you need to do is get 50 points by the end of the day or 250 points by the end of the week.
Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Rev Real Estate School. The podcast with quick tips and actionable advice to help you sell more real estate in today's world. And now your host Michael Montgomery.
[00:00:11] Hello and welcome back to Rev Real Estate School. I'm your host Michael Montgomery. Today we're talking about strategies that you can use if you're introverted in real estate. Now first off oftentimes when I'm hearing from somebody who says that they are introverted they look at this as a downside in real estate. That's the way they frame it. They say, "oh you know what the only thing is is I'm a little bit too introverted for real estate or for sales for that matter." And a lot of that stems from just having an image in your own head of what a salesperson does or how they interact. And if you're looking back and you're looking at previous years of what sales people are and how they interact it oftentimes we thought of this obnoxious loud mouth almost intrusive type salesperson. This is how it was implied when he'd watch TV shows or movies or things like that and it would be so much more of a push sort of mentality. So you're trying to push the sale on to the customer or you're pitching you're persuading them. These sort of words and the salesperson was thought of as somebody who's loud extroverted outgoing. But here's the thing that was a different world that was when the customer didn't come to you already having a lot of the answers as a buyer.
[00:01:29] Oftentimes the buyer has already looked at a number of different properties online. They may already be preapproved for a loan. We're not necessarily in the same position where we're pitching and we're persuading anymore because the buyer has already selected us usually before we even meet with them. So coming across as more obnoxious loud and forceful doesn't in fact work in today's world not nearly as much.
[00:01:55] Most modern sales professionals they identify with customers needs. They listen to what they really need and they really try to help them through the process. And these are some of the most successful salespeople nowadays. So when you're starting to think of what it's like to be a sales person you do not necessarily need to be extroverted. In fact I am not extroverted at all. What you do need is you do need to know communication skills and you do need to know how you can leverage your talents to best help you in real estate. We're going to jump into that today if you are introverted but the very first thing is you need to let go of the fact that you need to be an extroverted person. You need to be loud. You need to always be pushy to be in real estate. This in fact does not serve you well and both extroverts and introverts have areas that they need to work on in order to best connect with the consumer. If you are introverted then you may have to work on your communication skills to really start to become more comfortable in having conversations with the consumer.
[00:03:00] However if you identify yourself as more of an extrovert then you may have to even tone it back and you may have to think about how are you going to ask more questions how are you going to engage the consumer a little bit more. And so depending on where you fit you will probably need to adjust depending on the type of person that you're dealing with on the other side. With that in mind let's jump into five quick tips that you can implement if you do see yourself more as an introvert.
[00:03:26] Number one is you need to maximize your prospecting efforts to avoid burnout. So what do I mean by this. If you are more on the introverted side chances are you're not going to love such activities as cold calling, or even door knocking. These sort of activities going to trade shows even going to big loud parties. If you are introverted you're not going to enjoy this and it's going to lead to potential burnout or you're not going to enjoy your day to day life of your job. So if you're more introverted than you do want to be more focused on activities that will give you more energy and not be as exhausting. Now this isn't a get out of jail free card where you no longer have to cold call you no longer have to use the phone because you're introverted. It's not necessarily like that but instead why aren't we choosing activities that will make you feel more energy that will make you enjoy your career more. So some examples of this is you should be focusing more on going out for lunches one on one coffees, drinks these sort of things right. Maybe you're focused more on texting your clients versus calling all of them just because you're more on the introverted side. This is a lot more comfortable for you. Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't get out of your comfort zone once in a while and do some things that make you uncomfortable. But we also want to honor who we are as people. And there's no right or wrong way to sell real estate. So if you are not the type of person that wants to go to a really loud party but you have no problem sitting down with a close friend and having a coffee then definitely tailor more of your interactions towards the coffee meetings and away from the parties. That's not to say you can get away with never going to parties and not learning how to interact at parties and to sell yourself at a party. But you want to tailor more of your prospecting efforts towards your personality type. If you haven't downloaded our prospecting worksheet I'll link it up in the show notes. Very very beneficial for something like this because our prospecting worksheet works in the way that if you're more interested in having lunch meetings and coffee meetings then you should get the same amount of credit for something like that as you do if you're cold calling. So there's no right or wrong way. So again we'll link that up in the show notes so that you can see how we go about doing our prospecting and you can straight up choose how you want to build your business.
[00:05:37] Tip number two if you are more on the introverted side chances are you will benefit from learning some communication skills. So I recommend the book The Science of People by Vanessa Van Edwards. Very very powerful book that teaches you all about networking and also how to build your communication skills. I'd also recommend going to Toastmasters. It's not going to be super comfortable but you do have to learn how to communicate and if you're more introverted it may not come as naturally to you. But communication is a skill and a skill can be learned. Yes some people may be born with a little bit more natural tendency just as others are born with other natural tendencies. But it is a skill that can be learned and if you work towards it you can probably put yourself in the top 5 percent of people is when it comes to communication. If you put the work in so learn communication skills very important. Tip number three start putting off activities you dread so no matter what. Whether you like it or not you will have to call people you will have to go to parties you will have to go to networking events. It's just part of real estate and you will grow to like these things too. I know they will suck some energy from you off the start but you will have to get out of your comfort zone and do certain things that aren't always comfortable. Just like if you're very extroverted sometimes you're just going to have to tone it down and ask more questions which is probably less comfortable than you doing more of the talking. We just have to do these things. So something that I find with introverts is they can put off the activities that they dread. So making their phone calls doing their prospect avoiding networking events in these sort of things we can't put off activities that we dread just because we don't like doing them. We can tailor our business in a way that suits our personality but we still have to do the activities that we don't necessarily like to do. And by doing these activities we will get better and we will start to produce at a higher level.
[00:07:26] Next is gameify those things that you don't necessarily want to do. So for instance if you don't love going to networking events then gameify that and what I mean by gameify is set a goal for yourself that you're going to meet two people at the networking event. When you set a game into it you set a goal associated with it it becomes a lot more enjoyable and you're not going to get out of networking if you are in real estate but you can learn to like it and you can learn to like it through game of fighting the process. So when I first got started with networking my whole thing was I just want to go to a networking event and meet one person that I could follow up with. The next day or the next week and from there I learned to really enjoy the whole networking process but it all stemmed from just the game of going there to meet one person. Of course there's times where I would meet one person those times where I meet many people and then I would slowly start to increase that as time would go on I become more comfortable with networking and becoming more comfortable with my business. So the whole idea behind this is that your feelings will follow the actions so you're not ever going to feel like running out and networking if you are an introvert I get it you're not going to want to run out the door and network at every single possible time of day it's just not going to happen. So instead of trying to wait for those feelings to come for you to then act turn that all around because that's not the way that it works your feelings will come after the action. So you have to put your foot forward. You have to go into these situations that aren't necessarily comfortable and then the feelings of being comfortable with it will come after the fact.
[00:09:02] Finally tip number five stop looking at being an introvert as a negative. This is a huge positive. You're going to be a great listener you're going to be able to listen to prospects you're going to be able to ask the right questions you're going to be able to connect with them so that they can feel heard. These are things that have been lost in the sales industry in previous years. Customers did not feel heard. Consumers did not feel heard. They just felt like their agent or their sales rep was just in it for the commission and that's one of the issues with our industry still to this day. So if you're able to really leverage the fact that you are an introvert and you're able to listen to them and hear what their issues are and help them through the process then you are becoming the new modern sales professional. So this is a huge plus and that's the way it should be looked at.
[00:09:50] Thank you very much for listening to this episode I really appreciate it. Remember you can reach out to me anytime you can reach out to me of course by email or you can also find me on Instagram at @the.michael.montgomery thank you so much and we'll see you in the next lesson.
[00:10:05] This episode of Rev Real Estate School has come to a close. Thank you for tuning in. We will see you back here for the next lesson.
Sources:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225371