Sometimes I get philosophical about the idea of service and what does it really mean. Is doing our job well the same thing as serving our clients well? I think that most of the time the answer is yes. Clients hire us to sell their homes, doing that quickly and for the highest possible price is the same thing as good service.

The occasional disconnect is the difference between filling their transactional need, which earns us a paycheck, and filling their emotional need, which earns us an advocate for life. So, what does this look like?

1) Strong communication. Even if you are doing things beyond what any other agent has ever done for their clients, if they aren’t aware of it they can’t appreciate it! Do something and tell them you did it. Always keep them informed of what is going on. This is the number one complaint that people tell the National Association of Realtors when they do surveys – they want to be communicated with more.

2) Listen. There are some things that always make up good service, but there are many pieces that you just need to ask the client what good service looks like to them. Do they like to talk on the phone, get emails, or text? It doesn’t matter your communication preference, listen to theirs. Do they want to maximize sales price with staging or would they rather take a bit less and sell it as-is? What’s most important to them? What are their expectations of the experience? And then ask another question, and take notes. Then ask another, and then another. Taking notes let’s them know that you heard them and are paying attention.

3) Be the expert. When people start getting frustrated that their home hasn’t sold yet, they start giving you marketing ideas. However, they don’t actually want to be the one with the ideas, they want you to do that. Tell them your marketing plan, why it works, and then make sure they know if it’s not working it’s because of pricing.

These are big areas that are easy to talk about but take diligence to actually do consistently. But it is worth doing!

I recently attended a conference where Jon Gordon was speaking. Both from stage and in his book “Training Camp” he talked about the idea of being 10% better than everyone else. The difference between someone who is adequate and someone who is amazing isn’t about the touchdown or the hole in one (to use sports terminology), it’s about doing all the little things over time 10%, 5%, or even 1% better than everyone else. He says “Interestingly enough, for all their greatness, the best aren’t that much better than other. They are simply a little better at a lot of things. Everyone thinks success is complicated, but it’s really simple. In fact, the best don’t do anything different. They just do the ordinary things better.”

This concept resonated with me. How can we serve our clients just a little bit better. It caused me to break down our processes of how we serve buyers, how we serve sellers, how we serve our agents and then ask the question: how can we do ordinary things better?

Ask yourself the same questions:
– How can we educate clients better on what to expect?
– How can we make sure they are connected with the best vendors?
– How can we negotiate on their behalf better?
– How do we serve them after closing?

Everyday, approach your day asking the question: where can I get 10% better? This slight increase will lead to big results!

I have many things in my life that I wish came easier. I know intellectually the positive affect on my life it would have if I would do those things. I’m sure you know what I mean: floss more often, drink more water, make more calls, etc. There are many behaviors where I know that if I did them consistently I would be more successful, healthier, and happier. As Jim Rohn says “Some things are easy to do, but they’re also easy not to do.”

In preparing for this month’s lunch and learn on how to create habits that support success in all areas of life, I came across the concept of Tiny Habits, as presented by BJ Fogg. You can watch his entire Ted Talk by clicking here. The idea is to take willpower out of the equation as much as you can by introducing small behaviors that are easy to do. Once these small behaviors become a habit they are easy to add on to and it grows.

The habit hack that he recommends are 3 simple steps:

1) Start really small. When I say small, I mean extremely small. So easy that even if you’re tired and pressed for time you will do it. For example, if you want to drink more water take the tiny step of putting a glass of water on your desk.

2) Identify a trigger. Tie your new small habit to something you already have in your routine. Choose something in your routine that you do with the same frequency as you’d like to do the new behavior. Is this something you’ll do once or five times a day? The formula is “After I ________ then I _________.”

3) Celebrate the good behavior. This doesn’t need to be big, but it does need to be immediate. You can give yourself a thumbs up, do a victory dance, say to yourself “You rock!”, say out loud “yay me!”, or imagine a roaring crowd cheering you on. This positive reinforcement, no matter how small, is fun and let’s your brain know that this was a good thing to do and you should do it again. Reinforcing this behavior makes it easier to do and therefore easier to build on.

So, what’s the tiny behavior that you will start with? What is the small step that will help you move you forward?

We all know that not every person is built the same way.  We say things like “Thats just how they are.” Or “I’m just not that type of person who enjoys that.”  Even though there is some things about personality where you know that we don’t all function the same way, we still tend to treat people as if they think like we do.  We do customer service the way that we would want to receive it.  However, if we recognize that customer service is not one size fits all then we can do it better.  If we recognize that not everyone has the same emotional need, them we are able to better meet the emotional need of the person we are currently serving.

Let’s just acknowledge that we are all individuals.  Like snowflakes, there are not two the same.  What we are about to talk about is ways to give a framework to give quick insights to the way that people respond to situations and decisions.  There are many assessment tools for evaluating personality types, but the one that I am going to focus on today is the DISC.  Most people are a combination of all 4, higher in some than others.  We are not going to get into the nuance of the combinations, instead we will just focus on characteristics of people who are highest in one of the 4 categories.

D – Dominance. This person is fast paced and task driven.  The can make decisions quickly and are most concerned about being effective.

I – Influence.  This person is also fast paced but more people focused.  They love to have fun and be social.  They are most concerned about being liked.

S – Steadiness.  This person is slower paced and people focused.  They are someone you would describe as really nice and agreeable.  They dislike change and value acceptance and security.

C – Conscientious.  This person is very thorough and contemplative.  They do all their research first and fear making a poor decision because they didn’t take the time to get all the facts.  They value accuracy and precision.

You can quickly see that the needs of a D who wants things fast and effective “Just bottom line this thing for me” is going to be much different from a C who wants every piece of research lined up and explained.  Our job is to see those needs and cater to them.  If your personality style is different from theirs this may not come naturally to you, but if you take the time to pay attention and use the DISC as a tool for understanding where they are coming from, you will both have a better experience.

Did you know that when people hire an assistant they often DOUBLE their production?

I can hear you saying “C’mon. I can see where my quality of life would improve, but double?”

Ok, the truth of the matter is that your production doubling is a very, very real and common occurrence when people get the administrative help that they need. The catch is that when you’re freed up from doing these tasks that you can delegate, your production only doubles if you use that time to follow up with leads more consistently and on proactive lead generation activities. Have you been meaning to make your phone calls but just couldn’t get to it? Has someone mentioned a need but you didn’t try as hard as you could’ve to connect because you’re already so overwhelmed?

If you think about the income producing tasks that you’ve let go to the wayside because there was time sensitive paperwork that needed to be shuffled, you will get an assistant immediately.

And, you’re right, your quality of life does improve.

Don’t be scared. Take that leap!

I (Julie) have hired and worked with many assistants and learned a lot about what to do and what to avoid in that process and I’m here to help you through it!