Wherever You Go, There You Are

It’s always fun to hobnob with your peers. This past week I attended the International Luxury Real Estate Conference held by luxuryrealestate.com in Boston. I was delighted to have been asked to present on “Negotiating” and as part of a panel discussing Social Media (my topic was blogging!) Most of all, however, listening to colleagues from across the world defining our role in the transaction fascinates me.

I like to say to my agents that ours is a relationship business disguised as a transaction business. Time and again during the conference, I heard that perception, in one articulation or another, echoed back to me by the country’s most successful professionals. I delighted in listening to agents talk about the homes they had urged their clients NOT to buy, or the prices they had urged them not to ask, or to pay. We are client advocates, and building a reputation as a client advocate remains the surest way to create longevity in our business. Every year thousands of people in the New York metropolitan area receive real estate licenses. Very few succeed. The ones who will go on to build long and successful careers have a few things in common: they really know their market, they listen with a finely attuned ear, and they build and maintain an ever-widening circle of relationships within their communities and beyond.

I do not mean to suggest that skillfully managing the transactional side of the business lacks importance. Clearly we have to make the deals, and in New York, dealmaking requires a number of skills. First and foremost, we must advise our clients about all aspects of the marketplace and how best to manage the variables so as to achieve their goals.  Second, we must make certain their properties are showing to best advantage before the sales process begins: painting, editing furniture or doing a complete staging. Third, we must become expert on the property and the neighborhood so we know how to show it: the high points to introduce early on, the best flow pattern for walking through, the irrelevancies to avoid (I for one try to avoid opening closets for people on the first walk through!)  Fourth, we must negotiate with finesse rather than blunt force (although capable of being forceful when necessary) to both maintain the relationships with all the principals and their agents AND obtain for our client the best possible deal. And finally, we must manage the transaction after the deal has been inked, often including organizing and submitting documents to a Board of Directors or Managers.

If agents are smart and attuned enough, transactional skills can be learned. Building relationships cannot. Either we have a fundamental sense of how to connect with other people or we do not. Most people know if we are faking it. One of the great things about the successful practitioners of our business, very much on display at the conference, is the high level of social skills and empathy. High end sales is no business for narcissists. We bring our considerable skill sets to bear on the needs and desires of others, frequently perceiving their hidden goals as keenly, or perhaps more keenly, than they do. Our mandate tunes expectations into possibilities, then converts those possibilities into realities.  That is the ordinary alchemy of successful agents’ lives.