The foundation of building client trust is one of the most important of any sales-driven industry. Especially for real estate agents.
Not only is real estate sales driven, but it's also highly personal, sometimes emotional, and involves large sums of money. So, needless to say, trust is paramount.
Would You Trust Yourself?
Take a minute and really think about if your business strategies, marketing tactics, and best practices would lead you to trust yourself if you weren't, well, you. This can be a hard pill to swallow but is the essential first step for building client trust.
Rapport is one thing, having easy conversations is a great first foundational block in building trust. But, the actual trust is much more than that. Your clients need to think you're both credible and trustworthy.
In order to meet expectations and not break trust, agents need to be sure that they are really hearing their clients. More so, are agents helping their clients by educating them on the current market and housing trends? And finally, are agents helping manage realistic expectations? Broken expectations are the number one breaker of trust in sales-driven relationships, so get ahead of it.
Access, Transparency, and Credibility
While we advocate strongly for balance and taking breaks and even vacations, it's also important, as any agent knows, to be accessible. Especially in the middle of a transaction, clients never want to feel like their agent is hard to get ahold of. The "they aren't calling me back" nagging thoughts are often the first erosions of trust in a relationship.
Building client trust requires communication that is time sensitive and transparent. Clients want to feel like they are in the know because their agent is an expert. Nobody wants to be left in the dark when it comes to one of the biggest purchases of their lives. The same goes for selling a beloved family home or investment.
We can't talk about trust without talking more about credibility. Being a market expert, knowing the details of every listing - those are the components of one's professionalism that deem them credible. With more and more people becoming real estate agents, it's vital that agents keep on the pulse and on the knowledge.
In short, not only are you good at your job but you have a moral compass as a human. Clients want to know that you get it. That you have their back. So do you?
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