Enhanced Transcribe:
Hey folks, Dr Ro, hope you’re well.
I wanted to tackle a subject around you going out in your property business when it comes to meeting sellers and potentially going into a negotiation.
Literally in the last 48 hours I went to look at a property we’re buying a bigger project, not like a typical buy to let this would be like a hotel type model, but this applies to any situation.
So whether you’re looking at a bigger project like that or going in to look at your first baby to buy property or maybe going out to meet somebody and you want to start that process of getting to know them before you actually put an offer in, there are several aspects to this.
People get very nervous about the idea of going into estate agent sitting down with a vendor or this feeling like they look stupid or they can’t get the communication right, they have a bit of a block going on in their heads.
So they arrive there and maybe they’ve forgotten what they were supposed to ask or frustrated because they didn’t ask the right questions and didn’t get the message across, and that creates tension so that the next time that person goes to see for example, a vendor of a property they carry the same fears with them but it’s magnified more.
Oddly enough, this can perpetuate and it can get worse, not better unless you’re prepared. If you’re going out to look at properties let me give you four things to consider. It doesn’t really matter whether you know the vendors or not. If you do, you can kind of move through this quite quickly. If you don’t, it’s really important you do this.
Either way, no matter what the circumstances, you’ve got to follow a structured approach to this instead of jumping in looking at the property and starting a negotiation. The first thing is just to relax, the easy way to do that is to breathe.
Smoking, although it’s not good for your health for a lot of people who are stressed, it’s not just the cigarette smoker going into them, it actually forces them to breathe down into the lungs, so you can actually do this yourself. You can literally just centre yourself, take a deep breath through your nose and out through your mouth. You don’t do this directly in front of a vendor you want to do this, ideally walking down the path before you get there, or if you’re in the house and walking around and you know you’ve got to get to a point have that face-to-face conversation go into that space of feeling relaxed allow that to happen first because our goal is to create rapport.
Second thing, focus on them rather than you. If you have a conversation don’t make it about you make it about them. I met a lovely couple yesterday who are selling a property and we sat down. It was just a case of getting to know them, understanding who they were, the background, the history to them and the property.
People really like to do business with people they like, but take a photograph and show it to somebody one of the first things they do is they look at the photograph to see if they’re on that phone, it’s human nature.
If you take that into a conversational piece you make the conversation about them and just understanding their background and who they are you also get a sense of what personality type they are. When I do my communications program we talk about communication styles, archetypal deliveries styles, personality types of the person you’re dealing with.
Asking questions, giving them the chance to open up and be themselves gives a really strong sense of who that person is so shift the focus away from you on to them and then continue to build the rapport. I wouldn’t get too hung up talking about the property itself to get a sense of how to get synchronicity with them, how can you get into a flow? If they talk about something that you’re familiar with, magnify that go into a flow with it and talk about your experiences.
They want to know who they’re selling to as well.
A lot of people are very polite when you go into the house and you’re selling a property they don’t necessarily want to ask personal questions. If you make it your business to communicate in a way that opens up to you it gives people permission. We mirror each other and match each other. We get a rhythm and that’s the whole point of rapport, so if you want to create the rapport of flow you have to flow yourself.
Maybe think about if they mention something that’s similar to a situation that you’ve experienced in the past or experience you’ve had maybe share that whether it’s a painful one, pleasurable one or a fun one depending on the personality of course, then bring that out because the minute you do that, they go tell me more about that and that shows an interest in you and now you’ve got this rapport going.
As opposed to how big is the house, what’s the square metre, how long have you lived here? That’s all functionality in the communication you’ve got to get into that rapport first. It’s a bit like when you meet someone at a pub and you catch up for the first time and then finally, once you feel you’ve got the rhythm now you can start to shift the focus. As they’re starting to talk, maybe bring the conversation back in and around the property itself.
So, for example, they may say we love to travel and when we get back it’s just so great. We’ve had some really good summers here as well at which point you can say what is it about the area you love most when you have your summers here?
Now you bring it into the house and then you start to ask questions and you might say things like I want to get a measure of the size of the rooms, do you know the dimensions of the rooms specifically and they may do.
If not, you could ask the question would you mind as we go through if I’m able to just measure to get some dimensions to talk to builders and you bring it more down into the house and then you get into specifics start shifting the focus towards maybe their sense of urgency.
Do they want to sell quickly, slowly, personal circumstances, et cetera. But you can’t get to that until you’ve gone through these four stages.
Practice it, do it with anybody you meet for the first time as you go into properties the focus needs to be towards ultimately talking to them about whatever you want to negotiate with them.
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