Don’t Underestimate Your Clients

Attempting to gauge your clients is not always an easy task. You have no way of knowing their background, their aptitudes, or their attitudes, and each of these things can come into play when you are working with them to get the best deal possible and realize their dreams of owning a home.

While you have years of education, experience, and expertise under your belt that in all likelihood your clients do not possess, it is important to never underestimate them. Guide them when you can, but also respect the agency they have as human beings and citizens who have decided to engage in the real estate market.

Striking this balance can be more easily said than done. You need to come prepared for a wide spectrum of clientele, and you don’t want to get caught making assumptions that at best stall your progress and at worst cause offense to the people you are working with. Taking the time to come to an understanding must be balanced with making the necessary preparations for the situation you believe you are confronting.

There are many things you can do, however, to come to an understanding with your client as to how you can best serve them while also ensuring that they feel respected and that they have control over this important part of their life.

Ask questions

Be conscientious and make sure that you are not dominating the conversation. It is important to communicate what you have to offer as well as to clear up any misconceptions your clients may have, but these things can occur at many points throughout your client-provider relationship and do not all have to happen at once.

At the beginning, take the time to ask questions. The types of questions you ask will do a great job of communicating implicitly to your clients the level of respect that you have for them.

Open-ended questions do this in two ways. First of all, they give your client the freedom to respond in whatever way they see fit, and to have their own hand in directing the conversation. Secondly, these types of questions are less likely to come across as loaded with preconceived notions or assumptions.

Yes-or-no questions can make a client feel like they are backed into a corner, or even worse, like you have already formed an opinion of them and have expectations of them within a very short time of knowing them. Open-ended questions pay homage to the newness of your professional relationship and allow your clients to collaborate with you in crafting that relationship.

Work from clients’ personal histories

As much as you can, relate your suggestions, advice, and actions to your client as a person. Consider what they have, or have not, been through in the past that can be directly or indirectly related to the situation at hand.

Taking this approach can make a client feel like you have them specifically in mind, rather than that you are going through the motions or following a script. It is also comforting to treat the purchase or sale of a home like just another building block in their life, another step on their journey.

You are a companion to your client on their journey, not the other way around.