Do Something Completely Embarassing And Outside Of Your Comfort Zone …
And then you remember how some of your clients feel when they are buying and selling real estate.
A girlfriend of mine talked me into taking a Zumba class this summer. Zumba is a Latin dance inspired aerobics class, so basically aerobics with a whole lot of butt shakin’! I am a runner and swimmer, NOT someone that takes aerobics classes. My sister is a world class aerobics instructor and has that perfectly fit body with the super peppy attitude that makes you simultaneously envious and motivated at the same time. I have taken a handful of her classes over the years and in all honesty just feel a bit weird jumping around in a room with a bunch of other people. I would rather get into my zone and do my own thing when it comes to cardio, but this Zumba thing sounded like fun so I figured what the heck. Was I ever in for a surprise! The first class, all I could think is ‘what on earth possessed me to do this’!? I felt completely uncomfortable and awkward, but I keep going back each week and while I will not be entering any salsa competitions anytime soon I am starting to get the hang of the whole thing.
I do a lot of yoga and in that you mirror the instructor. So essentially when they tell you to do something on your left side they reverse themselves and use their right so that we are all seemingly going in the same direction. Well in this crazy Zumba class in addition to trying to keep up you do the opposite of the instructor so I am usually fumbling to figure out if I am using the correct foot and what not and then one day she started calling out ‘right side’ or ‘left side’ in the middle of class. That one little thing made it SO much easier to keep up and on track!
As I was leaving class that day I realized that this is how our clients feel a lot of the time ~ completely uncomfortable and embarrassed to ask questions because they do not want to seem unknowledgable. As agents we are desensitized to large numbers. What’s the big deal, it is another $25,000 in purchase price or $5,000 in repairs? Well we deal with hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. It would be interesting to take a poll but I am guessing that the biggest check most people write on a regular basis isn’t much over $200 so you can start to see the disconnect and how our being flippant about numbers could make clients uncomfortable. Also, they don’t always know the next steps in a transaction. Laying out for them, in writing, both ahead of time and each step of the way what is coming next goes a long way towards reducing their stress and making it easier for them to see the big picture and approach things rationally.
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