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REALTOR® Emeritus | Hiring Personnel Advanced: Beyond Job Descriptions: Job Matching for Real Estate Sales | | |||
|  Assessing Personnel Needs Advanced-Beyond Job Descriptions: Job Matching for Real Estate Sales Recruitment Planning Advanced: What Top Performers Want from You Recruiting Salespeople Advanced: Tips for Recruiting the Seasoned Professional Recruiting Support Personnel Advanced: The Family and Medical Leave Act The Interviewing Process Advanced: Behavioral Interviewing Tips for Selecting a Psychological Test Structuring Compensation Advanced: Compensation Tips for Management Personnel | The difference between winners and losers is usually less about how hard they work than about how successfully they've matched their core personality traits to the work they do, says Dr. Herbert Greenberg, CEO of Caliper Inc. in Princeton, N.J., and noted author and management consultant. "Most of the qualifications that employers look at on a resume—education, experience—are very poor predictors of job success," says Greeberg. Much more important is thoroughly understanding the personality factors needed in the job and then matching those to the correct candidate. Perhaps the most critical trait for success in real estate sales is ego drive, the desire to get the customer to say "yes," says Greenberg. Without this ability, the salesperson can't convert the inquiry call into an appointment, an appointment into a listing, or a listing into a sale. "A person with a strong ego drive wants to make the sale even if no commission is involved," notes Greenberg. Of perhaps equal importance is empathy, the ability to read another's reactions and adjust to different client expectations and needs. A real estate salesperson has to hear not only the buyer's first statement, but respond to the reactions and subtexts that help identify the prospective client's less apparent or even unacknowledged needs. All the ego drive in the world won't close the sale without the ability to really understand the needs and motives of a prospect. Without empathy, a salesperson will end up directing the customer to the wrong properties. "Think of ego drive as the power, but empathy as the guidance mechanism that directs that force," says Greenberg. The third key factor in the triad of real estate sales success is ego strength, the ability to take rejection. How much weight a broker should attach to each of these qualities depends upon the precise nature of the position and the business, says Greenberg. If the company depends on cold calling to generate a significant share of its leads, real estate salespeople with very high ego strength are critical. Otherwise, they'll never be able to take the huge number of "no's" they receive on the phone. If the majority of the company's business is attracted by advertising or promotion, ego-drive, the ability to covert a prospect to the next step, is perhaps the most critical, says Greenberg. "When salespeople lack the ability to convert callers who phone or walk in, you've wasted all the advertising money you spent to get them to call," he adds. Selecting salespeople with the appropriate qualities is especially critical because most core traits needed for sales are not teachable, says Greenberg. "You can enhance people's ability to empathize by teaching them how to read body language or improve their closing skills with various techniques, but you can't turn a person with a weak ego drive into a successful salesperson." Some secondary traits needed for sales success, such as time management, can be taught or augmented with management support, Greenberg says. Recruiting Planning > | |