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Annette Ferrari, The Power of Professional Influence
There is far more to real estate than buying and selling, and Annette Ferrari trains industry professionals in influence, signals and emotional intelligence to ensure they make the most of their opportunities.
With a degree in psychology and 20 years as an agency principal, Ms Ferrari has the experience to go with the insights. She understands the concepts behind the six degrees of influence and how they can be used in real estate.
Start with communication
Right from listing a property through the sales process and follow up, real estate agents read signals and act – or react – accordingly. Listing starts with solid communication and, it is safe to say, an agent won’t get the listing without effective communication.
“When you list a property for sale, there’s a huge array of skills we have to use, and our delivery of a listing is just as important as the actual detail of the listing,” Ms Ferrari explained, adding the skills fell into two groups – hard and soft.
Skill Sets
The hard skills are technical, covering an agent’s area of expertise, qualifications, education, experience, ability and pricing. These skills are used in tandem with the soft skills, or people and communication skills.
“When you’re working face-to-face with someone, it’s the people skills that they actually see first, and it’s the people skills - those intangible personality specific skills - that actually win the client over,” she explained.
Trust
People want to work with an agent they can trust. While trust is intangible, it is an imperative ingredient in the influence mix. Ms Ferrari said trust fell into two components - competence and character.
“They must feel that you’re of good character, that you have their best interests at heart, that you are presenting two sides of the scenario - the pros, the cons, the advantages, the disadvantages - to the process that they’re about to go through,” she said. Competence comes from your ability to explain the sales process and what will be involved to them.
First Impressions
It is said so often that we only have one chance to make a first impression, but so many people don’t heed that advice. First impressions last, so factors as simple as being punctual, being physically present, looking professional and greeting vendors with a smile set the scene for your relationship to come. There is no second chance to make a first impression.
“First impressions are that you have energy about you. Energy could be how you speak to them. Energy could be your eyes. So already they can see with your energy that you have a passion for what you’re doing,” Ms Ferrari said.
Build Rapport
Establishing a rapport with a vendor is a crucial step in getting them to trust an agent and to want to work with them over any other agent. “People like to do business with people that they feel are like them. When they feel that they can link with you, connect with you, they will give you the business,” she explained.
Rapport is built by creating impact and being positively memorable. Nobody wants to be forgotten before they are even out the door. Leave a mark by creating visual, vocal and psychological impact through confidence, competence, credibility, vocabulary, authority and strength.
The third component, psychological impact, comes through having a true appreciation for what is going on in the world, such as best-selling books, latest films or sporting events. This means an agent can comment when the vendor makes a statement about something current. “People love to be around interesting people,” Ms Ferrari said.
Persuasion
The way to influence someone’s decision about whether they list or buy with one agent over their competitor is to shape their decisions. If they view the agent as a professional, the agent has a position of influence and there will be less conversations about listing price and vendor-paid marketing, and more acceptance of what the agent says, without question.
Ms Ferrari mentioned Dr Robert Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion here and said he spent years researching influence and discovered one of the key components to someone being influenced by another was likeability. She explained that agents could make themselves likeable through complimenting a vendor’s property or their ideas and suggestions.
The next factors are commitment and consistency, which translates to getting vendors to commit to the small yeses and staying consistent for the big yes at the end. Third is scarcity, which crops up often in sales with “selling fast” stickers. A sense of urgency can be created in a listing presentation by establishing a timeline, for example telling the vendor about an editorial opportunity coming up the next week.
Authority is the fourth component, and explains why people love to list with the principal of an agency. However other agents can stamp their authority through qualifications, awards, delivery, competency and certainty in what they are saying. The final two components are reciprocity and social proof. Social proof is easy because agents can show their recent sales, photos of happy clients or testimonials. Reciprocity is all about creating a sense of obligation, or having someone feel they are in a position where they can’t say no to the agent, such as seeing how much time went into their preparation. This sense is developed by presenting a comprehensive and detailed CMA, pre-listing kits or anything else that shows the agent has gone above and beyond other agents.
“They will be thinking, ‘Wow, look at the effort this guy has gone to. This is fantastic’. So it’s almost a case of how could they say no to you. And that’s reciprocity" Ms Ferrari explained.
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