How can Real Estate Agents build trust?

Trust in a brand – Brand marketing works extremely well & is important that your message remains clear and consistent to your brand. People will feel a sense of familiarity and trust with a well known brand.

The downside to this, is that to become a well known, household brand can be an extremely costly exercise.

Trust in a person – This is pretty much what you do on a day-to-day basis.

Trust-In-Person – Once people get to meet with you or speak with you and get to know you personally they will generally like & trust you, unless you’ve done something to betray their trust.

The time it takes to build the ongoing relationship with clients is one of the hardest things about real estate – yet communication is by far the greatest skill that will lead to an increased income for agents. It is no coincidence that the most successful real estate agents across the world are great at follow-up communications with clients, but once again this can mean a lot of time and hard work.

Trust online – Building a trusting relationship online is simple when you know how. The thing is, if you don’t know how, you may very well miss your chance with the client, because if they don’t like what they see, they are only a mouse click away from going somewhere else.

That’s why it’s important to identify before you start, what your client is looking for, so you can cater to their needs and create hooks or connection points with them. Understanding what your client wants and then showing them that you understand is one of the easiest ways to build a relationship online quickly and easily with your client.

Here are just a few quick tips for building trust online:

* Make sure you have your phone number and physical address clearly on your website and in your email communications, so your client knows they can contact you or drop in an see you offline if they need to

* Have a photo of yourself on your website and tell your clients a little about yourself personally, so they can relate to you more easily. People like to buy from people, so they like to know you are a real human being

* Be clear about what will happen next when a client clicks on a button on your site or enters their personal details into a ‘contact us’ form. This can be as simple as “simply enter your details below and a member of our team will give you a call within the next 24 hours”. It is particularly important to manage the client’s expctations online.

Just before I go, I’d like to share with you a quote I read recently from one of the best books I’ve read…Steven Covey’s son’s book, ‘The Speed of Trust – The One Thing That Changes Everything’.

In this book he talks about, the fact that if there is no trust, then the whole sales process gets slower and more expensive. Where trust exists the opposite is true.

Here’s an extract from Steven M. R. Covey’s book:
“Trust is something you can do something about – and probably much faster than you think! Once again, I affirm that nothing is as fast as the speed of trust. Nothing is as fulfilling as a relationship of trust. Nothing is as inspiring as an offering of trust. Nothing is as profitable as the economics of trust. Nothing has more influence than a reputation of trust.

Trust truly is the one thing that changes everything. And there has never been a more vital time for people to establish, restore, and extend trust at all levels than in today’s new global society.”

Can you think of any other ways you could build trust?

Building Trust

Trust is probably the most important ingredient in building a great business and is the foundation for creating a successful career in Real Estate…
…and it is even more crucial to your success when it comes to marketing over the internet.

Online you don’t have the luxury of being able to read a client or prospect’s non-verbal communication, such as body language or the tone of a voice, which you can rely on to help you read how a face-to-face conversation is going. In this way, Online is completely different.

Most agents realise that many consumers are wary of real estate agents, because they have been known to be stereotyped. As a result we normally have to work harder than most to build a certain level of trust with each client. But, I don’t want you to have to work harder, that’s’ not what this is about.

If you can build trust online, you’ll actually find it a lot easier to succeed in real estate and you will be able to work less and achieve better results…Isn’t that what you want?
I recently read this quote about Building Trust in the book ‘The Speed of Trust – The One Thing That Changes Everything’. The author Steven M. R. Covey says,

“Trust is a function of two things: character and competence. Character includes your integrity, your motive, your intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, your results, your track record. And both are vital.”

Due to the transparent nature of the web, it is a lot easier now for consumers to identify the IT savvy agencies over the agent’s who are not so proficient.

A real estate agencies competency or lack of competency online will have a resounding affect on their success.

With the majority of real estate enquiry now coming from online advertising, the internet has become an extremely critical component of any real estate agency. For some agent’s their online marketing will act like an accelerator for others, unfortunately ‘the brake’.

There are a number of things that you can do to build trust online that I will share with you in a few future posts.