If anything, real estate is more about marketing yourself, your services, and the listings of your clients. But, rarely is the listing agent going to be standing there with the buyers doing a sales pitch ... very rarely. Excellent listing photography and the ability to buy or produce great text about a listing will go much farther than any personal one-on-one selling skills. True, you're selling yourself in a listing presentation, but that can be done with facts and figures, as well as technology and examples of your accomplishments, no arm-twisting necessary.
And, when it comes to working with buyers, you'll get farther doing extensive research to get them into the best-matched homes for their desires and needs. Hyping the features of every home you show them rarely does anything more than annoying them, as they don't want to feel "sold." But, I can tell this to you all I want, and it can't be better illustrated than in my own personal business.
- I don't network for business. - In this case I'm talking about personally interacting with people in organizations, mixing, mingling, shaking hands, and handing out business cards. I've probably handed out fewer than 10 cards in a year. True, I only work with buyers now, but when I did list, I had listings that came from my website, not personally glad-handing everyone in sight.
- I do no print advertising or direct mail, only the Web. - As I do a lot of writing, I spend most of my time when not with a real estate customer in my office doing articles like these. I've been referred to as the "hermit" Realtor.
- I've never made a cold call. - No other way to say it; I don't call anyone out of the blue for business.
- I don't do bulk blast emails. - Sorry, but it seems too much like cold calling to me. And, I HATE spam.
I'm not criticizing anyone who does any or all of the things I don't do. In fact, if I did do some of these things I'd probably triple my business. I just don't want to. But, I'm quite happy with my business volume. I just looked at brokerage and individual agent stats in my market, and I'm doing double the average volume of individuals in my MLS.
I'm not telling you this to brag, but to let you know that anyone can be a successful real estate professional without "sales" skills or experience. Don't let doubts about your abilities in sales slow you down in going after a career as a real estate agent.
