Humor and other real estate superpowers
Realtor Notebook
By Teresa Boardman, Wednesday, August 20, 2008.
Recently, I have been reading some articles written mainly by people who provide coaching to the real estate industry about the types of skills that are needed to succeed as a Realtor.
Some of the skills are soft skills like communication and negotiation. Everyone seems to agree that technical skills are a must-have and that it helps to know how to write. Some are hard skills like money management and understanding numbers. Some are learned in school and others are learned through experience in the greatest school of them all: life.
As I look at what it takes to do my job, I see a couple of things that none of these articles have addressed. Maybe they are soft skills or maybe they are not skills at all, but ways of coping.
The skills or strengths that I use in my job as a Realtor are most often a sense of humor, flexibility and creativity -- pretty much in that order.
Humor is a great way to diffuse a tense situation. It is also a great way to tick people off if it is used at the wrong time. There is some skill in knowing when to lighten the situation with humor and when to shut up. I hit the mark more often than not, but not always. People are afraid to use humor in business and I understand why. When it works it is almost magical, when it fails to work it can be very bad.
Flexibility is as essential as humor. Last night I had to be extra flexible when I was asked to show some houses on short notice. I don't enjoy eating meals in my car, but I am flexible and have learned not to order anything that has sesame seeds on it or any kind of special sauce.
When I went to show houses and discovered that my car would not start, I had to be even more flexible. The car I borrowed has a manual transmission. I am a little rusty, but it wasn't a problem. The greater challenge was in shifting and eating while driving in rush-hour traffic, and resisting the urge to answer my phone.
A sense of humor and flexibility work much better with a little creativity. Creativity can be very helpful in determining when and how to use humor in figuring out how to be flexible on a day when there isn't much room for flexibility.
Creativity comes in handy for marketing homes. There are cookie-cutter marketing approaches that can be used over and over again, but the best marketing is unique to the home and creative. Flexibility and humor also fit in with marketing and marketing plans.
It takes an enormous amount of creativity to write a blog post every day, as I have done for almost three years. It takes some writing skills, but it is creativity that drives the blog, and the blog drives my business. Humor works there, too, but I am inflexible when it comes to posting each day.
Negotiating skills are very important, but it takes some creativity when the buyer and seller are $500 dollars apart and won't budge. In that case it really helps if the other agent also has a sense of humor, because usually at that point my clients lose theirs.
Real estate is very much a people business. When it comes to writing contracts there isn't much room for creativity, flexibility or humor, but when it comes to dealing with the people the contracts are being written for the opportunities to use all three are almost unlimited.
Teresa Boardman is a broker in St. Paul, Minn., and founder of the St. Paul Real Estate blog.
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Submitted by Mike Simonsen on August 21, 2008 - 3:29am.
I am always funny, he said stoically.
Submitted by Scott Farrell on August 21, 2008 - 3:32am.
Excellent article!. Everyone is dealing with tension throughout our industy even in markets that still have some movement. Agents need to think inside, outside the box and try find ways to make life bearable.
Submitted by David Pannell on August 21, 2008 - 3:45am.
Creativity is a huge part to this industry. I came from a Law enforcement career were it felt like I was a robot. Wear this, arrest this type of person, and do this type of paperwork.
So this is a much better way in my mind to make a living. Everyday I can look for a way to improve my services and expand the ones I have.
Great article
David Pannell
www.davidpannellhomes.com
Submitted by Chris Adams on August 21, 2008 - 3:52am.
Theresa,
I am sending you a can of Scotchguard so you can enjoy eating a Big Mac with impunity even if you want to answer your phone in traffic as you downshift.
Blog on,
steve
Steven Stearns
www.obeo.com
http://obeoman.blogspot.com
262-325-8687
Submitted by RK Ruthman on August 21, 2008 - 3:57am.
Service with a smile is easy for me to do because I love what I do. I have been in real estate for 15 years and I have never gone to work, (and believe me, going above and beyond ---is where the fun is. "Getting it right" and
"Getting Referrals".
I do write serious contract, but I know how to be creative, and flexible to get the job done. ---And I serve those up with a smile, too.
Submitted by Lenn Harley on August 21, 2008 - 4:05am.
Not much humor in a real estate contract??
I've seen quite a few contract in the past couple of years that had me in stitches.
Lenn Harley
Broker
Homefinders.com
http://www.homefinders.com
Submitted by Mott Marvin Kornicki on August 21, 2008 - 6:08am.
Great article! I've lost most of my sense of humor lately- I can remember when infusing humor made the day go by much more pleasantly. Of course,there is a place and time for everything.
We all need a good laugh sometimes!
Mott Marvin Kornicki, Broker
www.WaterwayRealty.com
305.935.3533 Main Line
Submitted by Carson Coots on August 21, 2008 - 8:20am.
you should use a handshake buzzer when you first meet a client, and then if you later sit down to sign a contract, use a whoopie cushion. That would be really funny.
Submitted by SCOTT EINBINDER on August 21, 2008 - 9:09am.
I think it was Patch Adams that showed you can merge humor and medicine without compromising quality. In fact you can improve it. Humor is a tough thing to teach, if not impossible, but leaderhsip can show their agents how to "lighten up" a little. Although we are in a serious business that involves thousands of dollars and countless hours, I have found humor is a humanizer. I once attended a closing where the seller, buyer, both agents, and both attorneys hated each other the entire transaction. All showed up never thinking it would close and all threatened litigation. The loan officer walked in with a set of knives and handed it to each person and said "lets settle it the old fashion way" The room cracked up, the tension broke, and the deal settled in an hour.
We could use a litte more humor in our business! It is certainly true that we have no lack of material....nice article Teresa! scott@scotteinbinder.com
Submitted by Robin Taylor Roth, PhD, CMQ/OE on August 22, 2008 - 9:14am.
Another good article, Teresa. I love the way you make us think about our own skills!
You indicated that humour does not always work. One has to be particularly careful, when working with clients from a different cultural background: what is humourous to you may be insulting to them.
Perhaps the safest form of humour is of the self-deprecating variety. If you can laugh at yourself, you will help to put your clients at ease and, sometimes, take themselves a little less seriously.
Good examples of flexibility - in fact, they show a combination of flexibility with creativity: you had to think of new ways to accomplish the goal. I hate to think what would happen, if I had to go back to a manual-shift car!
Not every sales agent will be updating their blog daily; that's a significant personal challenge. Those who update their blog two or three times a week can rely more easily on finding inspiration in market and economic news stories. In those cases, they can fairly easily discuss the relevance of the latest news to their own marketplace. Consumers who have subscribed to their blog WILL be interested in that kind of information.
By the way, if you are concerned that your writing skills are not up to snuff (when do I use a semi-colon, when a colon, when a dash?), I recommend a series of humourous books by Karen Elizabeth Gordon. Titles such as "The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed" and "The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed" make polishing your writing skills fun. Available through Amazon.com, of course.
Robin Taylor Roth
Senior Director, eLearning
Franchise Sales & Service
Century 21 Canada Limited Partnership
Submitted by Bruno Pisano on September 11, 2008 - 11:24pm.
What is a good book on Humor for Real Estate?