It’s the beginning of a new chapter—another year, a brand-new on-ramp to endless possibilities for your career.
But are you ready to take your business to the next level?
If you’ve been in business for even as little as three or four years, your skillset may need to be tuned up. There are most likely multiple areas where we can all use a little improvement—but what if there were three specific areas for you to consider?
The challenge is to decide where you want to up your game. Will it be “reskilling,” “upskilling,” or a completely different competency: “new-skilling?”
Veteran agents will struggle more with letting go of what has “always worked in the past” to fine-tune and embrace changing the way they’ve always done things. But while we’ve settled into the scripts, dialogues and technology of yesterday, things keep changing. Consumers are getting trained every day for more seamless, electronic and frictionless experiences for buying anything from toothpaste to cars and even real estate.
In a brilliant 27-minute YouTube video, VC specialist Alex Rampell demonstrates how the consumer is being trained to expect less stressful experiences. Rampell uses the present real estate transaction process as an example of an experience that is quite in need of a makeover. In order to keep up with how the consumer defines service, it will take more than regular industry training to advance the skillset of an entire industry for this rapidly changing world.
Top agents understand that as technology “trains” consumers, we are tasked with upping our service model in response. Here are a few suggestions to kick up your game in 2020.
Upskill or Reskill?
In the real estate world, upskilling means transitioning your present skillset to higher expertise within a specific segment of real estate. Sellers now have multiple options to sell their home without an agent, unless you can offer them a more direct and less stressful experience. If you’ve used the same listing presentation, it’s time to up your game with fresher, cutting-edge differentiation to engage a seller with simpler and more effective outcomes. Research new platforms and reporting that focus on hyperlocal trends and traffic that may not be available using an online service that is more general in its offerings.
Reskilling With Buyers
If you have dealt primarily with buyers, up your skills by focusing on areas like negotiation training and communication competencies to deal with different behavioral styles as a way to reskill what you have always done. Engaging buyers with new and different technology platforms provides clear differentiation in helping them through the transaction process.
New Skills
New skills offer an avenue to provide expert information by providing services that have previously been scarce or non-existent. An agent in Texas organized easier access to rental information for transferees moving to his city. He found a specific niche, made it a simpler and less stressful experience, and is now the new, hot resource for those transferees that turned from renters to buyers.
There may be multiple avenues to consider how you will benefit from reskilling, upskilling or learning a new and different skill to serve clients that sets you apart from the crowd. The goal is to gain results in a specific, service-oriented way that makes you the master of your marketplace.
Terri Murphy is a communication engagement specialist, author, speaker, consultant and master coach with Workman Success. She is the author of five books, a TED Talk speaker and co-radio host on KWAMtheVoice.com. For more information, please visit TerriMurphy.com or email Terri@TerriMurphy.com.
